I have discussed the various measures fully with leading medical authorities in London and Paris and elsewhere during the last five years, and have gradually evolved the recommendations made here, and these recommendations have the highest medical and scientific support and approval.  Other methods than those recommended are referred to in Appendix I; to enumerate here those that have been eliminated would be purposeless and confusing.  We are satisfied that we have selected the least harmful and most reliable methods known to science yet.  These methods and these only will be explained and recommended.  Everything possible has been done to make the methods acceptable to women.

UNATTAINABLE CONDITIONS.

Before detailing these methods, I want to ask every woman to rid her mind of certain false hopes and impossible demands.  It is no use asking for something which gives no trouble at all, which costs nothing, and which is at the same time absolutely certain to prevent conception.  These conditions are unattainable.  But almost absolute control of her reproductive functions is most certainly attainable by every careful, intelligent woman willing to spend a good deal less time and money over her sexual toilet than she now spends over the care of her teeth, for example.

SEXUAL TOILET OUTFIT.

To begin with, it is necessary to obtain suitable sexual toilet outfit, and the requirements for this are as follows:—­

Enamel bidet, soluble suppositories, suitable syringe, and properly-fitting rubber pessary.  These are illustrated on pages 38 and 43.

[Illustration:  Diagram 4]

GENERAL CONDITIONS.

1. Cleanliness.—­Sexual control is largely a matter of sexual cleanliness.  We must all learn to keep the genital passages cleansed in the same way as we keep all the other openings of the body clean.  The ears, eyes, nostrils, mouth, anus, orifice to the urethra, and the vagina should be appropriately cleansed daily.  The openings of the body which stand most in need of daily cleansing are the anus and the vagina, and yet many women fail to cleanse these properly at all.  Every home should have a suitable bidet (preferably fitted into the bath-room, with hot and cold water attached), and every member of the family should be trained from childhood to use the bidet, night and morning, with the same care and regularity as they use their sponge or toothbrush.  All over the Continent and in the United States of America this is done in well-ordered households nowadays, but hardly anywhere in the British Empire is it done at all.