ABSTRACT
The influence of nutrition on human reproduction is a complex and difficult problem that has only been studied and analyzed for a relatively short period of time. Today it is still possible to find experts in obstetrics, gynecology, and sterility who interest themselves with the nutrition of their patients on only the most superficial plane, and who are concerned with the detailed biochemical problems of reproduction only to the smallest extent, if at all. The reason for this lies in all probability in what may be termed the “mass” approach to population rise and fall. The elevation or decline over a period of years of the population of any single country, particularly if individual socioeconomic and racial groups are primarily considered, relates more readily to religious, economic, migratory, political, and social factors and to the degree to which contraception is practiced rather than to the nutritional state of its inhabitants. Seen from the mass standpoint, would, for example, any doctor in China at the present time be thanked by his society for finding a nutritional method of doubling the birthrate? Nevertheless, after this rather forbidding introduction, one must say that it is clearly the duty of the doctor in a civilized state to consider the interests of the individual patient rather than that of the mass of the population. In taking into account individual cases, we may come across a large number where nutritional factors have seriously affected the reproductive performance of husband and wife or both.
