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This article describes the contraceptive usage of the wives of Melbourne; a portrait of birth control in Sydney would undoubtedly be very similar and indeed the picture is probably a faithful representation of the situation throughout the greater part of Australia. Apart from the evidence it presents on Melbourne, the chief contribution of this paper lies in two methodological innovations. The first is the use of "main" method of family planning for specified time periods; the "main" method being defined as the method used for the greatest proportion of time during the period. The second innovation is the analysis of the contraceptive practice of those women who were not knowingly infecund at the time. By coding separately those women who were not practising birth control but believed themselves to be fecund and those who were using nothing but believed themselves to be infecund, researchers have a reasonable base from which to calculate those at risk of practising contraception. A analysis shows that levels of family planning practice have been largely a function of the period and the technology, and, with the exception of the very young still without children or pregnant at marriage and the older women with increasingly impaired fecundity, the levels of practice have varied little with age. Total practice has increased steadily so that the proportion of fecund women employing some family planning method rose from about two-thirds at the end of the 1940's, to almost three-quarters at the end of the 1950's to nine-tenths in the early 1970's.

National provisions for medical care in western societies fall broadly into three categories. The Government may provide a comprehensive range of services universally available and financed wholly or largely by taxation, as in Great Britain and a number of European countries. Alternatively, private individuals and institutions may be the main providers of medical services whose range, quality and availability is determined by the price which the patient is willing to pay, as in the U.S.A. Between these two extremes there may be a combination of government subsidy to private institutions which provide a range of limited cash benefits financed on a voluntary insurance basis by the recipients, as in Australia. The emphasis of each system largely reflects the predominant orientation of public thinking on social welfare, and on health in particular. The British system is broadly collectivist, the American unmistakably individualistic and the Australian a curious combination of the two. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]