ABSTRACT
It is a notorious fact that the families of the married often increase beyond what a regard for the young beings coming into existence, or the happiness of those who gave them birth, would dictate; and philanthropists, of first-rate moral character, in different parts of the world, have for years been endeavouring to obtain and disseminate a knowledge of means whereby men and women may refrain at will from becoming parents, without even a partial sacrifice of the pleasure which attends the gratification of their productive instinct. But no satisfactory means of fulfilling this object were discovered until the subject received the attention of a physician, who had devoted years to the investigation of the most recondite phenomena of the human system, as well as to chemistry. The idea occurred to him of destroying the fecundating property of the sperm by chemical agents; and upon this principle he devised “checks,” which reason alone would convince us must be effectual, and which have been proved to be so by actual experience.
