We have come some way since sheep's bladder condoms but male contraceptive options are still pretty basic. Not counting one Chinese invention - a small electronic device worn in the underpants, which causes infertility for a month after a current is switched on briefly - it is still down to the old favourites: abstinence, coitus interruptus, condoms or vasectomy.

What talk we to these jovialists? It is liberty , with them , for a man to speak what he thinks , to take what he likes , to do what he lists ; without restriction, without controulment

[…] We are engaged in a great work, a treatise on our river fortifications, perhaps? But since when did army officers afford the luxury of amanuenses in this simple republic? […]

Armstrong goes on [sic] discuss the psychologist Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which he again presents diagrammatically, and again modified somewhat.