r condition is a much
more common source of sterility. "Any man," says Arthur Cooper
(_British Medical Journal_, May 11, 1907), "who has any sexual
defect or malformation, or who has suffered from any disease or
injury of the genito-urinary organs, even though comparatively
trivial or one-sided, and although his copulative power may be
unimpaired, should be looked upon as possibly sterile, until some
sort of evidence to the contrary has been obtained." In case of a
sterile marriage, the possible cause should first be investigated
in the husband, for it is comparatively easy to examine the
semen, and to ascertain if it contains active spermatozoa.
Prinzing, in a comprehensive study of sterile marriages ("Die
Sterilen Ehen," _Zeitschrift fuer Sozialwissenschaft_, 1904, Heft
1 and 2), states that in two-fifths of sterile marriages the man
is at fault; one-third of such marriages are the result of
venereal diseases in the husband himself, or transmitted to the
wife. Gonorrhoea is not now considered so important a cause of
sterility as it was a few years ago; Schenk makes it responsible
for only about thirteen per cent. sterile marriages (cf. Kisch,
_The Sexual Life of Woman_). Pinkus (_Archiv fuer Gynaekologie_,
1907) found that of nearly five hundred cases in which he
examined both partners, in 24.4 per cent. cases, the sterility
was directly due to the husband, and in 15.8 per cent. cases,
indirectly due, because caused by gonorrhoea with which he had
infected his wife.

When sterility is due to a defect in the husband's spermatozoa,
and is not discovered, as it usually might be, before marriage,
the question of impregnating the wife by other methods has
occasionally arisen. Divorce on the ground of sterility is not
possible, and, even if it were, the couple, although they wish to
have a child, have not usually any wish to separate. Under these
circumstances, in order to secure the desired end, without
departing from widely accepted rules of morality, the attempt is
occasionally made to effect artificial fecundation by injecting
the semen from a healthy male. Attempts have been made to effect
artificial fecundation by various distinguished men, from John
Hunter to Schwalbe, but it is nearly always very difficult to
effect, and often impossible. This is easy to account for, if