conception into a happy accident.

It is often to the physician, too, that the father must look for
practical guidance and encouragement in those unforeseeable cases when
the mother perishes in connection with childbirth. It is he who is in
the best position to prevent the father from unconsciously attaching
blame to the unoffending child and harboring an undefined resentment
which may adversely affect both lives. The doctor can help the bereaved
father to cling to his dream of family life, can assist him in building
a happy home for his motherless child or children, or can advise him on
problems which may arise out of finding a new mother for them.

Another important function of the physician is to give aid to couples
who have difficulty in begetting children. The question of sterility
comes up frequently in our time, especially among cultivated and
intellectual people. Persistent failure to conceive we term _absolute_
sterility; persistent failure to carry pregnancy to a successful end, we
call _relative_ sterility. The latter is an obstetric problem and can
usually be dealt with successfully. So can the former in about forty
percent of the cases. We must remember the rule formulated by Matthews
Duncan, that the marriage of persons between twenty and thirty cannot be
regarded as sterile until at least four years of normal, happy sexual
intercourse have elapsed. I have known half a dozen instances in which a
child was born after five, six, ten, and, in one case, fifteen years of
complete failure to conceive. In these cases no special efforts were
made by the couple to bring about conception.

Couples who wish to make special efforts should have complete physical
examinations, both husband and wife, for though failure to conceive used
to be attributed solely to the wife, we now know that in about thirty
percent of cases it is the husband who is the cause. Many remediable
physical conditions may be responsible for sterility, and the doctor, by
correcting them, has a wonderful chance to contribute to human
happiness. Many families feel the tragedy of not having children, and
yet do not realize the need of finding out what the trouble is. They
just drift along, assuming that nothing can be done, and often they
could be made fertile. This subject is ably discussed in _Human
Sterility_ by Dr. Samuel R. Meaker of the Boston University School of
Medicine.

When the doctor decides that there is practically no chance of a
c