This "inconvenience" remains to-day a stumbling-block with many excellent authorities. "Except when there is a tendency to miscarriage," says Kossmann (Senator and Kaminer, Health and Disease in Relation to Marriage, vol. i, p. 257), "we must be very guarded in ordering abstinence from intercourse during pregnancy," and Ballantyne (The Fœtus, p. 475) cautiously remarks that the question is difficult to decide. Forel also (Die Sexuelle Frage, fourth edition, p. 81), who is not prepared to advocate complete sexual abstinence during a normal pregnancy, admits that it is a rather difficult question.
This point is discussed, for instance, by Séropian in a Paris Thesis (Fréquence comparée des Causes de l'Accouchement Prémature, 1907); he concludes that coitus during pregnancy is a more frequent cause of premature confinement than is commonly supposed, especially in primiparæ, and markedly so by the ninth month.
"Infantile Mortality: The Huddersfield Scheme," British Medical Journal, Dec., 1907; Samson Moore, "Infant Mortality," ib., August 29, 1908.