In Sex Factor in Marriage (Noel Douglas, 3s. 6d.) Dr.
Helena Wright has challenged the assumption implicit in nearly every book about sex written for adults that the actual physiological facts are too well known to need description or even mention. In a few short chapters she has set out simply, decently, and without circumlocution what she believes to be the indispensable minimum of information that all married persons should have about the physiology and anatomy of reproduction and the technique of sexual union. Up to the present the only book in English covering the same ground has been the translation of Van der Velde's Die Vollkommene Ehe under the title Ideal Marriage. But Van der Velde's work is sold only to members of the medical profession ; and, in any case, it is so technical that Dr. Wright's book may be regarded as the first attempt to present to lay readers in this country a scientific statement of the physical aspects of the marriage relation. The Archbishop of Canterbury, speaking recently at a meeting of the London Diocesan Council for Rescue Work, said : " I would rather have all the risks which come from free discussion of sex than the great risks we run by a conspiracy of silence. I notice how silence has given place to complete and free discussion. In my judgment this is a great improve- ment. . . . We want to liberate the sex impulse from the impression that it is always to be surrounded by negative warnings and restraint, and to place it in its rightful place among the great creative and formative things." In no other book devoted to a discussion of sex has silence so completely " given place to complete and free discussion."
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