ABSTRACT
The limitation of birth to one child in three years-unless the previous one had already died-was not achieved by abstinence from sexual life, but rather by the use of a method of birth control which I have discussed in detail elsewhere. Had these two factors affecting the increase of population continued in operation after the inhabitants of the Kiambu part of Kikuyu country had been so drastically reduced by famine and smallpox at the end of the last century, the population would still be small today and most of the land problems and land hunger which are causing so
much concern now would not exist. But the coming of the white man and all that this meant resulted in such a major change in social custom, religious beliefs and ideas about sickness and hygiene that the rate of population increase among the Kikuyu for the past 20 or 30 years has been very high indeed.
