Featured on PDR in the collection Uncommon Sense: Edward B. Foote’s Plain Home Talk (1896 edition)

In 1876, the “Centennial year”, when patriotic Americans were celebrating the nation's progress, the physician Edward Bliss Foote (1829–1906) found himself at odds with his country’s obscenity laws. As he explained, sardonically excusing a major omission in Plain Home Talk, his encyclopedic tome of health advice: “The author of this work was compelled by the laws of his country to expurgate so much of this essay as in any way related to mechanical devices for the prevention of conception. . . . He would beg his readers to excuse him from giving any advice upon this subject until there is a change in our Congressional and State laws.”