e following pages are more in the nature of a manuscript, or
heart-to-heart talk between those who have mutual confidence in each
other, than of a technical, or strictly scientific treatise of the
subject in hand; and I cannot do better, for all parties concerned,
than to explain, just here in the beginning, how this came about,
and why I have concluded to leave the copy practically as it was
originally written.

In common with nearly all members of our profession who are engaged
in the general practice of medicine, I have had numbers of married men
and women, husbands and wives, patients and otherwise, who have come
to me for counsel and advice regarding matters which pertain to their
sex-life, as that problem presented itself to them personally. As we
all know, many of the most serious and complicated cases we have to
deal with have their origins in these delicate relations which so
often exist among wedded people, of all classes and varieties.

For a number of years I did what I could for these patrons of mine, by
way of confidential talks and the like, my experience in this regard
probably being about on a par with that of my medical brethren who are
engaged in the same kind of work. It is needless to say that I found,
as you have doubtless found under the same conditions, many obstacles
to prevent satisfactory results, by this method of procedure. My
patients were often so reticent, or timid and shame-faced, that it was
frequently difficult to get at the real facts in their cases, and, as
we all know, many of these would, for these and other reasons, conceal
more than they revealed, thereby keeping out of evidence the most
vital and significant items in their individual cases. All these
things, of course, tended to make bad matters worse, or resulted in
nothing that was really worth while.

After some years of this sort of experience, and meditating much on
the situation, I came to the conclusion that a very large percentage
of all this trouble which I and my patrons had to go up against, was
almost entirely the result of ignorance on the part of those who came
to consult me; and because knowledge is always the antidote for not
knowing, I came to the conclusion that, if it were possible to "put
these people wise" where they were now so uninformed, I might at
once save them from a deal of harm and myself from much trouble and
annoyance.

Further than this, I remembered once hearing a wise man say that often
"wh