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INTRODUCTION

In 1892, while a student in Biology in the University of Wisconsin, I was asked to discuss the marital relation in a Mothers' Club composed largely of college women. The discussion was based on the replies given by the members to a questionnaire. Since that time additional information has been added as it has come to me in course of a ten years experience in the practice of medicine. To this data has been added certain observations made on athletic college women. This material, which represents the experience of 47 women, has given the investigator a priceless knowledge for a practicing physician and teacher; a background sufficiently broad to avoid prejudice in her work with women.

About twenty years after this study was undertaken, the writer received from Dr. David Starr Jordan a letter stating that he had given testimony before the Physiologic Committee of the Royal Birthrate Commission in England. He also stated that he had given the Commission my name, and that I would probably hear from them. Later one or more letters