Sex efficiency through exercises : special physical culture for women / by Th. H. van de Velde ; [photos, by E. Steinemann].

in the following pages, and then there are detailed the special gymnastic exercises suitable for pregnancy. We have a further requisite as well as complete muscular co-ordination for, after the act of birth, the woman's general health and genital efficiency must be fully restored. Every expert knows how grievously many individual women and many married couples suffer through the needless impair- ment or loss of feminine charm in this specific sense. More- over, the number of women—and men too—who avoid this damage and difficulty by avoiding parenthood itself is greater than might be supposed. The exercises after child- birth described in Chapter XIII., together with previous pelvic physical culture, will make possible timely prevention of such disfigurement and disablement. Thus, not only will the physical intimacy of marriage be much enhanced for both partners, but the maternal functions of woman—gestation and birth—will be relieved of much pain and fear. But, indispensable as is the technique of these exercises, I would not wish to lay the main stress on gymnastic methods, nor to write a " treatise on physical culture " in the accepted sense of these terms. These exercises are means to an end. And this end and aim is the recognition of the dignity and value of sex, its value mentally and emotionally as well as physically. Women should become gladly conscious of this, and so should all whose privilege it is to bring them healing and help. Therefore, I have written in considerable detail and offer my book not only to women themselves and to experts in physical culture, but to all who are occupied or interested in promoting human welfare in this department. As " Ideal Marriage" taught men the technique of physical love, so I hope that this book will give women the key to complete erotic satisfaction. " The woman of to-day has acquired consciousness of herself as an individual. Yet she is perturbed and tormented by the need to reconcile the strange contradiction in her being, for she is, biologically and organically, first and foremost, not an isolated independent unit, but linked with