Conservative estimates of future world population, based on yearly increments at current rates, project figures which are truly alarming. One such report foresees a world population of 150 billion within two centuries. A solution must be sought and applied quickly, yet haste must be tempered by considerations of acceptability, applicability, and safety. These limitations require assessment by socioeconomic, political, religious, and anthropological standards as well as biological adequacy. Nevertheless, whatever solutions do evolve will almost certainly be concerned with the mechanisms of conception.
A symposium was convened in 1959 to assemble available data into a common framework linking the interdependent phenomena involved in the physiology of conception. This book, based on the papers given there but revised and updated, is more than a simple record of proceedings; it becomes one of two basic texts now available in this field.
The organization of the material is straightforward. The original conference was