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The consistency index of cervical mucus has been studied throughout the menstrual cycle in a group of 125 women. An attempt has been made to correlate consistency with other cyclical changes in mucus such as recoil, palm leaf reaction and tests for glucose content.The limits of consistency within which spermatozoa will move freely in mucus have been established from post-coital samples and invasion tests in vitro.The characteristics of twenty-four mucus samples obtained on the day when conception is known to have taken place are discussed.

A method is described for measuring the speed of human spermatozoa.Dilution with seminal plasma, buffered glucose solution and normal saline cause a fall in the average velocity of spermatozoa. During incubation the speed falls more rapidly in seminal plasma than in artificial diluents.The speed of the spermatozoa is sensitive to changes in pH of the suspending fluid which produce no measurable drop in motility.Seminal plasma from other semen samples may have a stimulating or depressing effect on speed when added to semen, but in most cases produces no change.Semen judged as satisfactory on other counts has a higher average speed, and a greater number of relatively fast spermatozoa, than semen of poorer quality.The speed of spermatozoa in cervical mucus, and in semen, indicates that it would be possible for them to enter the Fallopian tubes by their own activity within half an hour of insemination.

The spermicidal activities against human spermatozoa of a range of non-ionic, anionic and cationic surface-active agents have been determined with the method of Baker, Ransom & Tynen (1937).Although it has been concluded that surface-tension-lowering properties do not directly influence spermicidal power, the surfacetension/concentration curves of a number of the compounds were studied.Solubilities in water, hexane, and ethyl oleate were also determined in an attempt to find out whether there was any relationship between spermicidal action and solubilities in these solvents.The results obtained on the compounds studied showed broadly that appreciable oil solubility and good surface-tension-lowering properties were desirable for spermicidal activity in non-ionic and anionic surface-active agents. The cationic compounds studied were active in spite of low fat solubility.The lack of precision of the spermicidal results made definite activity/ solubility or activity/surface-tension relationships difficult to formulate.

A new method of comparison of spermicidal activities of compounds is presented. The method depends on the fact that spermatozoa, when suspended in a sub-lethal concentration of a spermicidal compound, show a reduction in speed of movement. This speed when expressed as a percentage of the speed of the untreated spermatozoa varies with the concentration of spermicidal compound; comparisons of spermicidal activity are made by including a standard material in each test series. The spermicidal activities of a number of substances were compared and the protective effect of seminal plasma on spermatozoa was demonstrated quantitatively.