ary abstinence (the only
form of abstinence he recognizes), partly on the ground that the
evils of abstinence are not serious or permanent, and partly
because the patient is fairly certain to exercise his own
judgment in the matter. But in some classes of cases he
recommends such intercourse, and notably to bisexual persons, on
the ground that he is thus preserving his patient from the
criminal risks of homosexual practices.

It seems to me that there should be no doubt whatever as to the correct
professional attitude of the physician in relation to this question of
advice concerning sexual intercourse. The physician is never entitled to
advise his patient to adopt sexual intercourse outside marriage nor any
method of relief which is commonly regarded as illegitimate. It is said
that the physician has nothing to do with considerations of conventional
morality. If he considers that champagne would be good for a poor patient
he ought to recommend him to take champagne; he is not called upon to
consider whether the patient will beg, borrow, or steal the champagne.
But, after all, even if that be admitted, it must still be said that the
physician knows that the champagne, however obtained, is not likely to be
poisonous. When, however, he prescribes sexual intercourse, with the same
lofty indifference to practical considerations, he has no such knowledge.
In giving such a prescription the physician has in fact not the slightest
knowledge of what he may be prescribing. He may be giving his patient a
venereal disease; he may be giving the anxieties and responsibilities of
an illegitimate child; the prescriber is quite in the dark. He is in the
same position as if he had prescribed a quack medicine of which the
composition was unknown to him, with the added disadvantage that the
medicine may turn out to be far more potently explosive than is the case
with the usually innocuous patent medicine. The utmost that a physician
can properly permit himself to do is to put the case impartially before
his patient and to present to him all the risks. The solution must be for
the patient himself to work out, as best he can, for it involves social
and other considerations which, while they are indeed by no means outside
the sphere of medicine, are certainly entirely outside the control of the
individual private practitioner of medicine.

Moll also is of opinion that this impartial presentation of the
cas