nly that a rich meat diet tends to cause sterility but that
it is also unfavorable to the development of the child in the womb.[10]

How far, if at all, it is often asked, should sexual intercourse be
continued after fecundation has been clearly ascertained? This has not
always been found an easy question to answer, for in the human couple many
considerations combine to complicate the answer. Even the Catholic
theologians have not been entirely in agreement on this point. Clement of
Alexandria said that when the seed had been sown the field must be left
till harvest. But it may be concluded that, as a rule, the Church was
inclined to regard intercourse during pregnancy as at most a venial sin,
provided there was no danger of abortion. Augustine, Gregory the Great,
Aquinas, Dens, for instance, seem to be of this mind; for a few, indeed,
it is no sin at all.[11] Among animals the rule is simple and uniform; as
soon as the female is impregnated at the period of oestrus she absolutely
rejects all advance of the male until, after birth and lactation are over,
another period of oestrus occurs. Among savages the tendency is less
uniform, and sexual abstinence, when it occurs during pregnancy, tends to
become less a natural instinct than a ritual observance, or a custom now
chiefly supported by superstitions. Among many primitive peoples
abstinence during the whole of pregnancy is enjoined because it is
believed that the semen would kill the foetus.[12]

The Talmud is unfavorable to coitus during pregnancy, and the
Koran prohibits it during the whole of the period, as well as
during suckling. Among the Hindus, on the other hand, intercourse
is continued up to the last fortnight of pregnancy, and it is
even believed that the injected semen helps to nourish the embryo
(W.D. Sutherland, "Ueber das Alltagsleben und die Volksmedizin
unter den Bauern Britischostindiens," _Muenchener Medizinische
Wochenschrift_, Nos. 12 and 13, 1906). The great Indian physician
Susruta, however, was opposed to coitus during pregnancy, and the
Chinese are emphatically on the same side.

As men have emerged from barbarism in the direction of civilization, the
animal instinct of refusal after impregnation has been completely lost in
women, while at the same time both sexes tend to become indifferent to
those ritual restraints which at an earlier period were almost as binding
as instinct. Sexual intercourse thus ca