ss, when all other methods of treatment have failed,
to recommend sexual intercourse as the best remedy. Dr. Max
Marcuse stands out as a conspicuous advocate of the unconditional
duty of the physician to advocate sexual intercourse in some
cases, both to men and to women, and has on many occasions argued
in this sense (e.g., _Darf der Arzt zum Ausserehelichen
Geschlechtsverkehr raten?_ 1904). Marcuse is strongly of opinion
that a physician who, allowing himself to be influenced by moral,
sociological, or other considerations, neglects to recommend
sexual intercourse when he considers it desirable for the
patient's health, is unworthy of his profession, and should
either give up medicine or send his patients to other doctors.
This attitude, though not usually so emphatically stated, seems
to be widely accepted. Lederer goes even further when he states
(_Monatsschrift fuer Harnkrankheiten und Sexuelle Hygiene_, 1906,
Heft 3) that it is the physician's duty in the case of a woman
who is suffering from her husband's impotence, to advise her to
have intercourse with another man, adding that "whether she does
so with her husband's consent is no affair of the physician's,
for he is not the guardian of morality, but the guardian of
health." The physicians who publicly take this attitude are,
however, a small minority. In England, so far as I am aware, no
physician of eminence has openly proclaimed the duty of the
doctor to advise sexual intercourse outside marriage, although,
it is scarcely necessary to add, in England, as elsewhere, it
happens that doctors, including women doctors, from time to time
privately point out to their unmarried and even married patients,
that sexual intercourse would probably be beneficial.

The duty of the physician to recommend sexual intercourse has
been denied as emphatically as it has been affirmed. Thus
Eulenburg (_Sexuale Neuropathie_, p. 43), would by no means
advise extra-conjugal relations to his patient; "such advice is
quite outside the physician's competence." It is, of course,
denied by those who regard sexual abstinence as always harmless,
if not beneficial. But it is also denied by many who consider
that, under some circumstances, sexual intercourse would do good.

Moll has especially, and on many occasions, discussed the duty of
the phy