ANASTOMOSIS OF VAS DEFERENS AFTER PURPOSEFUL DIVISION FOR STERILITY

Abstract

Vasoligation, or surgical sterilization of the male, is done for various reasons: (<i>a</i>) with the idea of preventing the insane, the criminal or the perverse from producing offspring; (<i>b</i>) because the wife's health is said to be too precarious to risk bearing children, the wife being unable or refusing to undergo tubal ligation; (<i>c</i>) an agreement between husband and wife to prevent pregnancy; (<i>d</i>) to prevent the occurrence of epididymitis, a routine procedure in many clinics in the treatment of prostatism; (<i>e</i>) for the purpose of rejuvenation (Steinach), a false physiologic assumption and a clinical failure, and (<i>f</i>) mass sterilization for the purpose of racial limitation or extermination, as evidenced by recent Nazi treatment of persons of Jewish, Polish and other nationalities. Because of the situation created in Europe by the mass sterilization procedures of bilateral vasoligation, or resection of the vas, this subject has recently been a matter of