Thus Dr. August Forel, formerly professor of psychiatry at Zurich and a physician of world-wide reputation, published a few years ago at Munich a book on the sexual question, Die Sexuelle Frage, in which all the questions of the sexual life, biological, medical, and social, are seriously discussed with no undue appeal to an ignorant public; it had an immediate success and a large sale. Dr. Forel had not entered this field before; he had merely come to the conclusion that every man at the end of his life ought to set forth his observations and conclusions regarding the most vital of questions. Again, at about the same time, Dr. Iwan Bloch, of Berlin, published his many-sided work on the sexual life of our time, Das Sexualleben Unserer Zeit, a work less remarkable than Forel's for the weight of the personal authority expressed, but more remarkable by the range of its learning and the sympathetic attitude it displayed towards the best movements of the day; this book also met with great success.
10 Still more recently (1912) Dr. Albert Moll, with characteristic scientific thoroughness, has edited, and largely himself written, a truly encyclopædic Handbuch der Sexualwissenschaften.
The eminence of the writers of these books and the mental calibre needed to read them suffice to show that we are not concerned, as a careless observer might suppose, with a matter of supply and demand in prurient literature, but with the serious and widespread appreciation of serious investigations.
This same appreciation is shown not only by several bio-sociological periodicals of high scientific quality, but by the existence of a journal like Sexual-Probleme, edited by Dr. Max Marcuse, a journal with many distinguished contributors, and undoubtedly the best periodical in this field to be found in any language.
At the same time the new movement of German women, however it may arise from or be supported by political or scientific movements, is