No doubt it may be said they never had the validity they appeared to possess, even when we judge them by the crudest criterion, that of practice.

Thus, while it is the rule for physicians to proclaim the advantages of sexual continence, there is no good reason to believe that they have themselves practised it in any eminent degree.

A few years ago an inquiry among thirty-five distinguished physicians, chiefly German and Russian, showed that they were nearly all of opinion that continence is harmless, if not beneficial.

But Meirowsky found by inquiry of eighty-six physicians, of much the same nationalities, that only one had himself been sexually abstinent before marriage.

There seem to be no similar statistics for the English-speaking countries, where there exists a greater modesty--though not perhaps notably less need for it--in the making of such confessions.