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Title: Is it I? A book for every man.
Author: Storer, Horatio Robinson
Language: English
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IS IT I?
A BOOK FOR EVERY MAN.
A COMPANION TO
WHY NOT?
A BOOK FOR EVERY WOMAN.
BY
PROF. HORATIO ROBINSON STORER, M.D.,
OF BOSTON,
Vice-President of the American Medical Association.
_Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto._ TERENCE.
BOSTON:
LEE AND SHEPARD.
1868.
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1867, by
LEE AND SHEPARD,
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the District of
Massachusetts.
_Stereotyped at the Boston Stereotype Foundry,
4 Spring Lane._
TO
DR. THOMAS ADDIS EMMET,
OF NEW YORK,
Surgeon to the State Woman’s Hospital;
ONE OF THE ONLY TWO PURELY UTERINE SPECIALISTS
AS YET PRACTISING IN AMERICA;[1]
The Pupil and Successor of Marion Sims,
AND HIMSELF, AS AN OPERATOR, HIS GREAT MASTER’S
MORE THAN EQUAL.
MY DEAR DR. EMMET:
The little “Why Not?” of the American Medical Association is having
so large a sale that my publishers have besought me to write a book
for men, to cover ground that I had left untouched, relating to
the causation and prevention of various forms of uterine disease.
Many physicians and many lady patients have desired me to do the
same thing, and I have yielded to their advice. Our friend Dr.
Brown-Séquard permitted me to dedicate the second edition of the
former book to himself, kindly saying that he deemed it something
more than a compliment. At the outset I was uncertain of success, and
so the first edition went without sponsor.
In allowing me, in the case of the book now in press, thus to
manifest my personal esteem for yourself, and my appreciation of your
many contributions to the advancement of our science, you will become
my coadjutor in this attempt to preserve women from bodily and mental
anguish, from disease and from crime.
Yours, ever sincerely,
HORATIO R. STORER.
BOSTON, June 3, 1867.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
PREFATORY REMARKS 7
I. It is not Good to be Alone 17
II. Marriage as a Sanitary Measure 35
III. How Early in Life is Marriage to be Advised? 68
IV. The Rights of the Husband 87
V. Are these Rights Absolute, or Reciprocal, with Duties 99
VI. Should mere Instinct, or Reason, be the Rule? 111
VII. Arguments and Counter Arguments as to Divorce 118
VIII. A Plea for Woman 127
APPENDIX.—A Woman’s View of “Why Not?” 149
PUBLISHERS’ NOTE.
Since the first edition of “Why Not?” was published, we have received
many letters of approval, and of inquiry relative to its author. In
issuing this new treatise, which we believe destined like the first
to become a standard book, and to have even a greater circulation
than that, we have thought that a few lines of information on our
part would not be considered inappropriate.
Professor Storer’s writings are no inapt index to his own character.
He is thoroughly alive to his duties; sagacious to discern the truth,
fearless in asserting it. Progressive, without being too radical,
he is still sufficiently conservative to respect the opinions of
others, even though at variance with his own. Perhaps no American
physician of his own age, holds at the present time a more prominent
position in his profession. He has already been quoted as authority
by European writers; and in this country he seems everywhere to
have received the most flattering acknowledgment of his scientific
labors, save here in his own city, where for many years he has met
with uninterrupted opposition, and even personal abuse, from a
professional clique—the result, doubtless, of jealousy upon their
part, envy, and that spirit of antagonism which has long rendered the
disagreements of physicians a by-word.
Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes has happily described the present instance
in the last chapter yet published of his “Guardian Angel,” where he
says, “There is no possible success without some opposition as a
fulcrum; force is always aggressive, and crowds something or other,
if it does not hit or trample on it.”
There is one other reason which has undoubtedly gone far to render
Prof. Storer no exception to the rule that a leader is seldom
appreciated by those in his own immediate vicinity, until—as
is rapidly occurring in the present instance—he has conquered
renown. Resident for a long time at Edinburgh, in very intimate
relations with the celebrated Sir James Y. Simpson, the discoverer
of chloroform as an anæsthetic, Prof. Storer is peculiarly a
representative of the Scotch school of obstetrics, and has zealously
and successfully upheld its peculiar tenets, in opposition to
the many disciples of the French and Viennese schools among his
contemporaries.
It has been asserted of Dr. Storer that, when engaged in professional
controversy, he is pitiless and unsparing. These statements seem
traceable to opponents who have been worsted, and speak from bitter
experience. There may, however, be some reason to believe, that, like
his teacher, Dr. Simpson, he has profited by the advice of Polonius:—
“Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel; but, being in,
Bear it that the opposer may beware of thee.”
The character of the weapons that have been used against our author
may be judged by an extract from a personal attack contained—without
a word of palliation or excuse from the editors—in one of the latest
numbers of the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal.
In attempting to save a poor invalid—sure otherwise soon to
perish—Dr. Storer had performed one of the most tedious and difficult
operations in surgery, hitherto successful in a most notable instance
at his hands, namely, the removal of the womb by incision through the
abdomen: an operation with which his name will be forever identified.
In commenting upon it, the would-be critic used the following
language: “Allow me publicly to protest, most solemnly, against
such practice, and earnestly to beg of my professional brethren,
everywhere, to use their utmost influence to prevent their patients
and friends from employing or consulting such practitioners.”
Abuse like this is sure, of course, to react upon those who employ
it, and to gain for its object the sympathy and active interest of
all lovers of fair play and justice. By a happy coincidence, the
article referred to chanced to be followed, on the same page, by
another, which we also quote:—
“At a meeting of the Physicians and Surgeons in attendance upon
Prof. H. R. Storer’s course of Lectures on the Surgical Diseases
of Women, just delivered at Hotel Pelham, in Boston, the following
preamble and resolutions were adopted:—
“_Whereas_, We, the attendants upon Prof. Storer’s first private
course of Lectures on the Surgical Diseases of Women, being regular
practising physicians and surgeons, have long experienced the
disadvantages arising from the very imperfect manner in which these
subjects have been treated in our text books, and by the professors
in our colleges; many of the most important diseases and operations
being entirely ignored by men who think deeply and reason candidly
in all other matters pertaining to medicine and surgery; and,
whereas, we cannot but feel that this class of diseases is the
most important, believing it to be the cause of more suffering
than any other, therefore—
“_Resolved_, That we tender to Dr. Storer our sincere gratitude for
taking the advance step which he has, thereby giving us, as we hope
he will hereafter give others, the opportunity of hearing these
subjects discussed thoroughly and impartially.
“_Resolved_, That a copy of these resolutions be presented to Prof.
Storer, and sent to The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, and
The New York Medical Record, for publication.
(Signed) CHAS. M. CARLETON, Norwich, Conn.
DANIEL MANN, Pelham, N. H.
G. E. BULLARD, Blackstone, Mass.
J. A. MCDONOUGH, Boston, ”
M. C. TALBOTT, Warren, Pa.
H. GEROULD, Erie, Pa.
E. F. UPHAM, W. Randolph, Vt.
W. A. I. CASE, Hamilton, C. W.
W. L. WELLS, Howell, Mich.”
These resolutions derive their significance from the fact that the
signers are neither students nor recent graduates, but practitioners,
chiefly of many years standing, who have become alive to the
importance of the special diseases of women.
It will be perceived, by our title page, that Dr. Storer, although
as yet hardly forty years of age, has already attained the highest
medical honor, save one, that can be conferred in this country—the
exception being the Presidency of the National Medical Association,
a position lately occupied by his distinguished father. The success
of the son will not be wondered at, when the extent and variety of
the contributions that he has made to medical science are taken into
consideration. In reply to several requests that have been made of
us, we append a list of the various professional works and monographs
of Dr. Storer, so far as we have been able to collect them. This list
is probably not entirely complete, in consequence of the author’s
disinclination to give us all the aid we could have wished in its
compilation, partly we suppose from a lack of leisure, and partly
from a desire, as we have reason to believe, to avoid any imputation
of courting publicity.
We are ourselves satisfied that the book that we now present to the
community will in nowise lessen his wellearned reputation.
* * * * *
I.
THE OBSTETRIC MEMOIRS AND CONTRIBUTIONS OF SIR JAMES Y. SIMPSON,
Professor of Midwifery in the University of Edinburgh. Edited by his
assistants, Drs. W. O. Priestley (now Professor in King’s College,
London), and H. R. Storer (now Professor in Berkshire Medical
College). Two large volumes. Edinburgh: Adam & Charles Black. 1855.
Also, THE ABOVE. American edition. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott &
Co. 1856.
II.
A WORD IN DEFENCE OF AN AMERICAN SURGEON. (Dr. J. Mason Warren, of
Boston.)
Controversy with Dr. Gillespie, of Edinburgh.
Letter I. London Medical Times and Gazette, May, 1855.
Letter II. American Journal of the Medical Sciences. Philadelphia:
October, 1855.
III.
BOSTON LYING-IN HOSPITAL REPORTS. Boston Medical and Surgical
Journal, 1855, 1856, &c.
IV.
ELM TENTS FOR THE DILATATION OF THE CERVIX UTERI.
Read before the Medico-Chirurgical Society of Edinburgh, May 1855.
Article I. Association Medical Journal of London, May, 1855.
Article II. Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, November, 1855.
V.
CASES ILLUSTRATIVE OF OBSTETRIC DISEASE.
Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, 1856 to 1865.
VI.
NEW FORM OF INTRA-UTERINE PESSARY.
Read before the Suffolk District Medical Society.
Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, November, 1856.
VII.
REVIEW OF CLAY’S “COMPLETE HANDBOOK OF OBSTETRIC SURGERY.”
Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, November, 1856.
VIII.
CAUSTIC POTASH AS AN APPLICATION TO THE INTERIOR OF THE UTERUS. ITS
FIRST SUGGESTION.
Article I. Read before the Suffolk District Medical Society. Boston
Medical and Surgical Journal, October, 1856.
Article II. Ibid., October, 1858.
Article III. Ibid., July, 1859.
IX.
CASES OF NYMPHOMANIA.
Read before the Boston Society for Medical Observation, July, 1856.
American Journal of the Medical Sciences, October, 1856.
X.
REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE APPOINTED BY THE SUFFOLK DISTRICT MEDICAL
SOCIETY, “to consider whether any future legislation is necessary
on the subject of Criminal Abortion; and to report to the Society
such other means as may seem necessary for the suppression of this
abominable, unnatural, yet common crime.”
DRS. H. R. STORER, _Chairman_.
H. I. BOWDITCH.
CALVIN ELLIS.
Read before the Society, May, 1857.
XI.
CUPPING THE INTERIOR OF THE UTERUS.
Read before the Boston Society for Medical Observation, February,
1857.
American Journal of the Medical Sciences, January, 1859.
XII.
THE USE AND ABUSE OF UTERINE TENTS.
American Journal of the Medical Sciences, January, 1859.
XIII.
CASES ILLUSTRATIVE OF CRIMINAL ABORTION.
American Journal of the Medical Sciences, April, 1859.
XIV.
THE UTERINE DILATOR; A NEW METHOD OF REACHING THE UTERINE CAVITY, AND
OF INDUCING PREMATURE LABOR.
American Journal of the Medical Sciences, July, 1859.
XV.
REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF THE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION, “to
investigate the subject of Criminal Abortion, with a view to its
general suppression.”
DRS. H. R. STORER, of Mass., _Chairman_.
T. W. BLATCHFORD, of New York.
HUGH L. HODGE, of Pennsylvania.
E. H. BARTON, of South Carolina.
A. LOPEZ, of Alabama.
W. H. BRISBANE, of Wisconsin.
A. J. SEMMES, of District Columbia.
Rendered at Louisville, May, 1859.
Transactions of the Association, 1860.
XVI.
IS ABORTION EVER A CRIME?
North American Medico-Chirurgical Review, January, 1859.
XVII.
ITS FREQUENCY, AND THE CAUSES THEREOF.
North American Medico-Chirurgical Review, March, 1859.
XVIII.
ITS VICTIMS.
Ibid., May, 1859.
XIX.
ITS PROOFS.
Ibid.
XX.
ITS PERPETRATORS.
Ibid.
XXI.
ITS INNOCENT ABETTORS.
Ibid., July, 1859.
XXII.
ITS OBSTACLES TO CONVICTION.
Ibid., September, 1859.
XXIII.
CAN IT BE AT ALL CONTROLLED BY LAW?
Ibid., November, 1859.
Also the above, from XVI. to XXIII., in a collective form, under the
title of CRIMINAL ABORTION IN AMERICA. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott
& Co. 1860.
XXIV.
A MEDICO-LEGAL STUDY OF RAPE.
New York Medical Journal, November, 1865.
XXV.
THE ABETMENT OF CRIMINAL ABORTION BY MEDICAL MEN.
Read before the Massachusetts Medical Society, May 30, 1866.
New York Medical Journal, September, 1866.
XXVI.
SUBCUTANEOUS INJECTION AS A CURE FOR THE TOOTHACHE OF PREGNANCY.
Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, October, 1859.
XXVII.
STUDIES OF ABORTION.
Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, February, 1863.
XXVIII.
ARTIFICIAL DILATATION OF THE OS AND CERVIX UTERI BY FLUID PRESSURE
FROM ABOVE; a reply to Drs. Keiller, of Edinburgh, and Arnott and
Barnes, of London.
Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, July, 1863.
XXIX.
ON CHLOROFORM INHALATION DURING LABOR. A reply to Dr. Robert Johns,
of Dublin.
Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, August, 1863.
XXX.
REPORT OF THE STATE COMMISSION ON INSANITY.
HON. JOSIAH QUINCY, JR.
DRS. ALFRED HITCHCOCK,
and H. R. STORER.
Mass. Legislative Document, (Senate 72.) Feb., 1864.
XXXI.
THE EMPLOYMENT OF ANÆSTHETICS IN CHILDBIRTH.
Read before the Massachusetts Medical Society, at Pittsfield, June,
1863.
Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, October, 1863.
The above was republished, under the name of EUTOKIA; A WORD TO
PHYSICIANS AND TO WOMEN. Boston: A. Williams & Co. 1863.
XXXII.
THE MEDICAL MANAGEMENT OF INSANE WOMEN.
Article I. Read before the Suffolk District Medical Society,
December, 1863; and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,
February, 1864.
Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, April, 1864.
Article II. Ibid., October, 1864.
Article III. Ibid., November, 1864.
XXXIII.
THE RELATIONS OF FEMALE PATIENTS TO HOSPITALS FOR THE INSANE.
Transactions of the American Medical Association. 1864.
XXXIV.
THE SURGICAL TREATMENT OF AMENORRHŒA.
American Journal of the Medical Sciences, January, 1864.
XXXV.
REPORT TO THE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION OF ITS DELEGATE TO THE
ASSOCIATION OF SUPERINTENDENTS OF ASYLUMS FOR THE INSANE.
Transactions of the American Medical Association. 1866.
XXXVI.
A NEW OPERATION FOR UMBILICAL HERNIA, WITH REMARKS UPON EXPLORATORY
INCISIONS OF THE ABDOMEN.
Article I. New York Medical Record, April, 1866.
Article II. Ibid., July, 1866.
XXXVII.
SUCCESSFUL REMOVAL OF THE UTERUS AND BOTH OVARIES BY ABDOMINAL
SECTION.
Read before the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, November 14,
1865.
American Journal of the Medical Sciences, January, 1866.
XXXVIII.
THE CLAMP SHIELD; AN INSTRUMENT DESIGNED TO LESSEN CERTAIN SURGICAL
DANGERS, MORE PARTICULARLY THOSE OF EXTIRPATION OF THE UTERUS BY
ABDOMINAL SECTION.
Article I. Transactions of the American Medical Association. Vol.
XVII. 1866.
Article II. Read before the Berkshire District Medical Society, July
25, 1866.
New York Medical Record, October, 1866.
XXXIX.
VESICO-VAGINAL FISTULA, AND THE OPERATIONS THEREFOR. A Review.
American Journal of the Medical Sciences, October, 1857.
XL.
THE CAUSATION, COURSE, AND RATIONAL TREATMENT OF INSANITY IN WOMEN.
Transactions of the American Medical Association. 1865.
XLI.
THE UNFITNESS OF WOMEN FOR MEDICAL PRACTITIONERS.
Letter of Resignation as Surgeon to the New England Hospital for
Women and Children.
Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, September, 1866.
XLII.
INEBRIETY IN WOMEN; an Appendix to the Treatise on Methomania, or
Alcoholic Poisoning, by Dr. ALBERT DAY, now Superintendent of the
New York State Asylum for Inebriates, at Binghamton. Boston: James
Campbell. 1867.
XLIII.
ON THE DECREASE OF THE RATE OF INCREASE OF POPULATION NOW OBTAINING
IN EUROPE AND AMERICA.
Read before the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, December 14,
1858.
American Journal of Science and Art, New Haven, March, 1867.
* * * * *
We are happy to be able to add that Prof. Storer has half promised
to prepare for us a book upon the Causation and Rational Treatment
of Insanity in Women, his report to the American Medical Association
having never been reprinted from the Transactions of that body,
although permission has been given him to do so. For this work it
is already well known that Dr. Storer is preëminently fitted. His
opportunities both for private and official observation have been
unusual, and his views are scientific, reasonable, and in great
measure at variance with the antiquated ones hitherto generally
entertained. The subject is one of intense interest to every member
of the community, and we are sure that the appearance of the book
will be eagerly looked forward to by thousands, alike of men and of
women, and that it will do a great deal of good.
LEE & SHEPARD.
BOSTON, August 1, 1867.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] As contradistinguished from especialists, of whom there are many.
PREFATORY REMARKS.
By its action in 1864, in offering a prize for the best “short and
comprehensive tract for circulation among females, for the purpose
of enlightening them upon the criminality and physical evils of
forced abortions,” and again in 1865, in authorizing the general
circulation of the successful essay, the American Medical Association
initiated a system, or rather method, of _general_ professional
influence hitherto entirely unknown. The experiment was a hazardous
one. There were many who viewed it with extreme anxiety, lest it
should result in the destruction of “the barrier which, for the
mutual protection, both of science and the community, had always
been allowed to stand,” there were those who, from having given no
observation whatever to the subject, were inclined to think that its
importance had been overrated; and others still, who, admitting the
facts, thought their discussion indelicate, unwise, or positively
dangerous. The event, however, has shown the propriety of the course
pursued by the Association. The demand for the little essay has been
so great as to astonish even booksellers themselves. Every medical
journal throughout the country, I am told, without exception, has
given it a kindly notice. The secular press has everywhere praised
the profession for its united effort thus to enlighten the so general
ignorance upon a professional topic; and even the pulpit has, in many
places, joined itself hand in hand with our own body in the good
work,[2] so that the times of old, when the clergyman was to the
physician an aid and a support, rather than as is now so frequently
the case, an adversary and a stumbling-block, have seemed almost to
be restored.
Upon carefully considering the whole subject, I am satisfied that
though much has thus been accomplished by the Association towards
enhancing the general weal, there is still further work to be done
ere all that is necessary can be effected. In the prize essay
referred to, I portrayed, and endeavored to do it with fidelity, the
criminality of wilfully tampering with the life of the unborn child,
and the physical injury sure, sooner or later, to result therefrom to
the mother, ordinarily causing her, far sooner than would pregnancies
naturally completed, to lose the bloom of her youth, and with it one
of the securities of her husband’s love, predisposing her to a wide
range of disease otherwise escaped, and in fact rapidly breaking her
down in health and in hope, alike of things earthly and of things
spiritual; for to most fœticidal women, after the climacteric, of
so-called “turn of life,” has passed, there comes a realizing sense
of the home they have lost through their own folly, their own sin.
To stem the tide of fashion,—for it was fast becoming the way of
the world to bear no children,—and to show matters in their true
light by holding the mirror up to nature, was thus attempted by the
Association. The nail upon which society is to hang its faith has
been driven; to clinch it, and so to render its hold secure, another
blow is needed. The necessity I proceed to show, and the stroke to
give, only regretting that my feeble arm is not that of some one of
the Association’s stronger men, and my pen tipped with the flame
which should cause these words to burn their way to the very hearts
of those to whom they are addressed.
It may, perhaps, be alleged that the topics of which this book must
treat are such as cannot possibly be discussed without offending
good taste or transcending propriety. This opinion, like many that
are merely preconceived, may be found an erroneous one. It may also,
perhaps, be said that the field of inquiry is one that has been given
over, by tacit consent, to a class of writers who are theorists
only, without previous opportunities of extended observation, or
self-constituted moralists, who argue from abstract speculations
rather than from the facts that nature daily furnishes to the
physician in active practice. This has undoubtedly been the case.
I have been astonished at the mass of material of the description
referred to, that my publishers have sent me from their shelves for
inspection since the manuscript of this book was placed in their
hands. Essays of the most incoherent character, some of them utterly
unintelligible even, have vied for circulation with others, which,
under the guise of a rational physiology, or philosophy, or religion,
inculcate doctrines the most pernicious alike to body, mind, and
soul. It is my aim to avoid being confounded in any way whatever with
this class of writers. The views that I present are those accepted
as true by the physicians of our time most competent to judge, and it
will be seen that they are consistent with sound common sense. The
result of many years of study, under very unusual opportunities for
observing disease, I have not the slightest doubt as to the verdict
that will be passed upon them by the grand jury to whom they are now
submitted.
I have said that the Prize Essay upon Abortions has elicited extended
and very favorable comments. Among those that have been brought to
my notice there have been two of a very striking and very peculiar
character, both of them apparently made in the most perfectly good
faith, and from the most diametrically opposite quarters. As to the
personal identity of their authors, I know nothing. One of these
criticisms is offered by a woman, “the wife,” she is styled, “of a
Christian physician;” her plea is evidently the result of extended
observation, in no way, I trust, from personal experience, though it
must have been the unlocking of a warm, and brave, and sympathetic
heart. Its arguments are so weighty, and they are so well put, that I
copy the letter entire in an Appendix to this essay, and trust, with
the editors of the journal in which it appeared, “that it may find
its way, in some more popular form than their pages afforded, to the
eyes of every husband in the land.”[3]
The other article to which I refer is of a later date,[4] and this is
written by one of our own sex, who comments upon the preceding, or
“A Woman’s View,” stating that he is upon the eve of marriage, “and
though not a whit more sensual than most men, cannot be too grateful
for having thus forcibly brought to his mind a view which he for one
had doubtless scarce otherwise considered.” “I would to God,” he
continues, “that it might meet and claim the serious consideration
of every man born of woman’s agony.” The first of these articles,
to again quote from the editorial remarks concerning it, “certainly
expresses, with exceeding delicacy and truthfulness, the universal
feeling of her sex upon a subject which deserves more attention
from our profession than it has hitherto received.” The gentlemen
making this assertion, Drs. Abbot and White, of the Medical School of
Harvard University, are generally considered men of a conservative
cast of mind, very conservative indeed for Massachusetts, and not in
the least prone towards recognition of any “woman’s rights” that are
at all of a doubtful character. What, however, they do refer to will
probably make itself evident in the following pages. It is, indeed,
the fact, that besides our appeal to women upon these matters, so
pertinent to her physical and moral health, and to the well being
of society, we must pillory _the man_, who, under the guise of
affection, steals from the maid her pearl of great price; who,
under the plea of a husband’s prerogative, enforced, perchance, by
scriptural texts, makes of his wife, disappointed, suffering, perhaps
despairing, but the constant object of his savage lust, and makes of
himself what is worse than the savage, a brute;—or who, charged with
the sacred duty, alike a grateful privilege, of guarding the public
health, and of fathoming the mysteries both of sanitary and of social
science, yet under the dread of being thought a visionary, or what so
many consider as identical with this, a reformer or a philanthropist,
folds his hands demurely, and closes his eyes upon what he else
must see. Must these evils still endure, or ought we not all of us,
whether in or out of the professional ranks, when _the man_ is thus
placed face to face with his victim, to inquire of ourselves, soberly
and in all sincerity, “Is it I?”
In one of the papers referred to, that by the lady, it is stated that
“if Dr. Storer will perform as noble service for our brothers and
husbands as for ourselves, and send the two books out hand in hand,
they will bring him back a rich harvest of gratitude and amendment in
morals.” To attempt to do this is, I am well aware, a dangerous task.
There are undoubtedly those who will deny its necessity, find fault
with its execution, and perhaps impugn the motives of the writer.
Such, however, was the case, in each of these respects, with my
former essay, and as that met with so hearty and so general approval
on the part of the profession, I am emboldened again to enter the
arena, trusting again to disarm mistaken or unfriendly criticism.
Be this as it may, I, for my own part, have become deeply impressed
with the need of addressing a word to men; and believing in this as a
duty, I wait not for others to decide the question for me.
Accepting the labor in this light, I do not hesitate to repeat the
language of my previous essay, and state that “the writer presents
the accompanying paper neither for fame nor for reward. It has been
prepared solely for the good of the community. If it be considered
worthy its end, their approbation and that of the profession at large
would be more grateful to the writer than any tangible and therefore
trivial recompense.”
Encouraged by the action of the Association, both at the sessions of
1864 and 1865, by which it showed most unmistakably its belief that
researches like the present are for the advancement of science, and
their publication for the welfare of the race, I intrust this book
to the wheel of fate. Its manuscript has already passed through one
trying ordeal with a certain measure of success. Submitted to the
touchstone of the Prize Committee of the Association for the present
year, it was distanced by the essays of Drs. Black of Ohio, upon the
Cause of Intermittent and Remittent Fevers, and Pallen of Missouri,
upon the Treatment of certain Abnormities of the Uterus, treating
as these did of subjects of more direct and especial interest to
the medical profession; but it elicited the following letter from
the distinguished professor in the University of Maryland, who
represented the committee as its chairman, and was, of course,
unaware of the identity of the author, which had been carefully
disguised till I wrote to reclaim the manuscript.
“BALTIMORE, 21st May, 1867.
“DEAR DOCTOR:
“I have read your essay with very great interest, and hope that you
will publish it. It certainly will do good. The subject, although
one of great delicacy, is handled with marked ability. The whole
profession ought to feel grateful to you for your efforts to check
the fearful amount of crime in relation to abortions. Your essay
will, I have no doubt, meet with the general approval of the
Association.
“Very respectfully,
“F. DONALDSON.
“DR. H. R. STOKER, Boston.”
Such is the character and such the source of the above indorsement,
which was wholly unsolicited, that I consider my object in submitting
the essay to the Committee as fully gained.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] I refer more particularly to articles in the North Western
Christian Advocate, by Rev. Dr. Eddy, of Chicago, and in the
Congregationalist, by Rev. Dr. Todd, of Pittsfield, the latter having
been republished by Messrs. Lee & Shepard of Boston, under the title
of “Serpents in the Doves’ Nest.”
[3] Boston Med. and Surg. Journal, Nov. 1866, p. 274.
[4] Ibid., Jan. 1867, p. 490.
IS IT I?
A BOOK FOR EVERY MAN.
I.—IT IS NOT GOOD TO BE ALONE.
As stated in the prefatory remarks, the present essay is written, and
is intended for, the perusal of men. It is not impossible, however,
that copies of it may fall into the hands of, or be shown to,
individuals of the other sex. The subject upon which I shall speak,
itself a very delicate one, is thus rendered still more difficult
to treat. Inasmuch, however, as in my work upon the physical evils
of forced abortions,[5] published for the edification of women,
under the authority and with the sanction of the American Medical
Association, I seem to have so far succeeded in the duty intrusted
to me as to win the encomiums of many of the sterner sex, I make
bold to strike out for myself a similar path, let me hope, to the
conviction and betterment of _all_ my readers. If in doing this, I am
found roughly to hew down certain old branches of custom, and to root
up summarily certain privileges and alleged rights, usurped rather
than legitimately granted, it is that I may let in light where it has
long been needed, that I may remove causes of offence from the road
of life’s pilgrims, and widen that way, now too generally trodden in
single file, even where wedlock exists, to its intended dimensions,
sufficient for two to pass, side by side and hand in hand; and this
work, for humanity’s sake, I shall endeavor to do without fear or
favor.
To all men I speak—the young, middle aged, and the old; to the rich
and to the poor; to the gentle and the unrefined; to the single, the
married, and the widower; to the happy and to the miserable; to the
ardent and to the cold; to the religious and to the blasphemer.
The subject is one that concerns all, for it lies at the foundation
of society,—sexual health and disease, the need or advantage of
marriage, the need or advantage of divorce, the chance of home
being such or an empty name, an earthly heaven, or a worse than
purgatory,—these are topics that affect each man, however careless
or unconcerned he may think himself, or may appear to be. Therefore
is it that I am sure of the attention of the continent, that he may
gain still greater reason for self-control; of the prurient, for the
very title of my essay will serve to arrest his attention; and of the
brutish man, impelled by curiosity to learn upon what grounds I shall
condemn him.
Is it asked, if the disclosures that I shall make are not by their
very publication subversive of good morals, and the calling attention
to the true relation of the sexes suggestive to bad men of, and
conducive towards, their false relations? I answer,—
First, that to ignore the existence of sin, error, misery, is in
reality to encourage and to increase them. It is like walking upon
thinly-crusted lava, or upon breaking ice, certain to prevent our
saving others, ready indeed to ingulf even ourselves. We varnish over
or seek to conceal vice, and it loses half its grossness—it becomes
attractive perhaps, or fashionable; but if we strip it of its veil,
any soul, not wholly smirched, will recoil with horror.
Again, all of us learn the lessons of life by experience—sad
experience, indeed, it too often is. Many a man would give even his
own soul could his past life be restored to him, and its follies,
its sins be effaced. Too often his soul is no longer his own to
give: inextricably entangled in passion’s web, wound about and about
with its myriad threads, there remains but the dead and worthless
semblance of himself, that can be restored by nought save the
boundless grace of God. Who would not gladly escape such risk, and
welcome every premonition of danger?
Still again, many, claiming to be immaculate themselves, will ask,
“Am I my brother’s keeper?” And yet, living together in communities,
as we do, it must be confessed that we are responsible, every one of
us, and to a very great extent, for the shortcomings and evil deeds
of all the rest, and it must also be confessed that there does not
exist, that there probably never existed, a perfectly immaculate man,
who never once has erred in the very matter we are now considering,
either in deed, or in word, or in thought. Consoling indeed for those
of us who humbly confess our infirmities is this very fact. Take the
very basest of us, and he at times is conscious of vain regrets of
his own misdeeds, and a fond desire that those whom he loves, for
every man has such, may be better than he. Take the very best of us,
and he sees a height beyond any he has yet attained, that he prays he
may yet reach and pass.
And further: not merely are researches, such as this essay is founded
upon, publications for the general weal, such as it claims to be,
perfectly legitimate and advisable in themselves; they have been
sanctioned by precedents that have already been established. I do
not refer to the attempts of unprincipled empirics to terrify the
masses by overdrawn pictures of disease, nor of holy and well-meaning
men to turn them to better ways by fervent descriptions of the
wrath to come. We shall take neither the fear of things present
nor future as our standard in this discussion, but appeal solely
to each man’s reason—and such appeals have been made before. They
have been made in France by Ricord, by Lallemand, and others of the
great medical philosophers of the day; by Parent-Duchatelet and
by Diday. In England, there are men like Acton, who dare to sound
the trumpet of alarm, bringing forward their facts from private
practice, from the hospital, and from the dead-house, and drawing
from these indisputable conclusions. In our own country there are
men like those brave souls, now one of them at least translated to a
better country, Blatchford,[6] and Hodge, and Pope, and Barton, and
Lopez, and Brisbane, physicians of the very highest rank in their
profession, who were not ashamed, in the question of the frequency
and the ill results of criminal abortion, to take stand beside me
upon the platform of our personal knowledge, and knowing they dared
maintain. I will cite but one instance more. It is that of a good man
now gone to his rest, and a very rock he was to the swelling tide
of moral as well as physical evil—the late Professor John Ware, of
Massachusetts. His little work on a portion only of the topic we are
now considering,[7] has stayed many a headlong step and saved many a
soul alive. The book to which I refer has, however, probably obtained
but a limited circulation compared with that at which I now aim,
and its author, so good himself, used only the gentle, persuasive
eloquence of a tongue attuned by Nature to peaceful themes. For
myself, accustomed as I have been in the practice of my profession
in the especial department most bearing upon this subject, to probe
humanity to its lowest depths, I shall not hesitate to speak plainly
the truth as it is, to pile argument upon argument, to resort to
invective if need be, ay, and to apply the lash, till every man who
reads me stammers, conscience-stricken or indignant, “Is it I?” For,
one of themselves, both by birth and by nature, I know my ground, and
my answer shall be, “Thou hast said.”
I shall try, I have stated, while speaking cogently, to keep my
language within the bounds of the strictest decorum. Treating of
similar topics with Michelet and Jean Jacques Rousseau, I would
fain, while discussing the sphere, the charms, and the complaints of
woman, the force and the claims of the passion of love, whether pure
or illicit, and the unalloyed, unredeemable evils of purely selfish
gratification, escape all semblance alike of approving sensuality
and of condemning a rational yielding to natural laws—which last, as
I shall be found to define it, must be considered a far different
thing from the lustful appetite of a satyr or the nightly phantom of
the ascetic, who is such from cowardice alone. Composed as we are,
in this fleshly tabernacle, of many a member, and many an adaptation
of these to use, combined as one, there is the old, old combat
described by St. Paul,—our instincts warring with our better selves,
our will and our reason, for mastery. To govern a slave, and govern
him well, one need not crucify him. To govern one’s self, it may be
necessary severely to discipline, but not always to kill, the body
in which we have been placed for so many useful ends. To use, as not
abusing ourselves or others, is but collateral to the rule called
“golden”—together they form for us the safest of creeds.
All men, old or young, seek companionship. This is necessary for
their very self-possession, both in body and in mind; and the
companionship which they instinctively seek, as truly and as
unvaryingly as the loadstar seeks its pole, is that of the opposite
sex. Where this special yearning is absent or has never existed,
there is to be found, always, the effect of disappointment or of
disease. The disease, if such is present, may, it is true, have been
self-occasioned, but the vessel itself was either improperly built
for the voyage of life or was stopped in its course by some hidden
shoal: it has foundered or been wrecked, and we shall find that in
by far the majority of cases this was from neglect in obtaining the
necessary sailing charts or from non-adjustment of the compass.
And here let me answer in advance one question that would undoubtedly
be put to me by every one of my readers, Do I believe in fairweather
sailing alone? in hugging the shore, and never daring to put to sea?
Do I expect that each craft should be so stanch as to defy every
wave and every blast of danger? I do neither. It is not the zephyr
that calls into being the sturdiness of the oak, nor the mere heat
of the sun that separates from the dross its fine gold. It is the
burning that causes a child to dread the fire, and the philosophy
that learns these things tentatively, and not from chance, is not of
necessity sheer wickedness. I am no apologist for vice. A habit of
evil doing is one thing, and a slip, or even a momentary plunge into
the mire, is a very different thing. The last, by its very taste of
earth, may engender a longing, else unknown, for heaven. For myself I
have little faith in passive goodness; that is, in us men. Those who
have never been exposed to temptation, from staying quietly at home
or through accident alone, are the soonest to yield if the tempter
comes. Having never tested their strength, they find it but weakness.
As with eagles reared in a cage, there is no power of wing. It is
the fall to the ground from the eyry, and the often disappointment
when too fully self-relying, that gives the force of pinion to soar
to the highest ether, face to face with nought but the sun. That I
may be rightly understood upon this very threshold of our inquiry,
let me quote a few lines from one of the most thoughtful, most
chaste, and most accepted writers of the present day, the late Rev.
Mr. Robertson, of England. “The first use,” he says, “a man makes
of every power and talent given to him is a bad use. The first time
a man ever uses a flail, it is to the injury of his own head and of
those who stand around him. The first time a child has a sharp-edged
tool in his hand, he cuts his fingers. But this is no reason why
he should not be ever taught to use a knife. The first use a man
makes of his affections is to sensualize his spirit. Yet he cannot
be ennobled except through those very affections. The first time a
kingdom is put in possession of liberty, the result is anarchy. The
first time a man is put in possession of intellectual knowledge, he
is conscious of the approaches of sceptical feeling. But that is no
proof that liberty is bad, or that instruction should not be given.
It is a law of our humanity that man must know both good and evil; he
must know good _through_ evil. There never was a principle but what
triumphed through much evil; no man ever progressed to greatness and
goodness but through great mistakes.”[8]
These remarks apply more particularly to the young man, just becoming
conscious of his newly-awakened emotions and physical powers. Should
he be viewed and treated as a child, or allowed to go out from home
to the dangers of the world? In acquiescing, as a general rule,
in the latter course, I know that I shall shock the sensibilities
and prejudices of many superficial observers. Yet Sydney Smith
did not hesitate to avow a similar opinion. “Very few young men,”
acknowledges the reverend gentleman, “have the power of negation
in any great degree at first. Every young man must be exposed to
temptation; he cannot learn the ways of men without being witness to
their vices. If you attempt to preserve him from danger by keeping
him out of the way of it, you render him quite unfit for any style of
life in which he may be placed. The great point is, not to turn him
out too soon, and to give him a pilot.” He must be _taught_ purity.
There is no doubt that in very many children an improper tone of
thought is established even before the period of puberty, unnatural
as this must be allowed to be, and that oftentimes this sexual
precocity is induced very directly by causes within our control.
For a boy in our cities, or even our villages, to reach his teens
without learning from his associates or by observation something of
these matters, is simply impossible. It is for us to see to it that
he does not receive the idea that they constitute the whole or the
best part of life. “Remember,” says Herbert Spencer, “that the aim of
your discipline should be to produce a self-governing being, not to
produce a being to be governed by others. As your children are by and
bye to be free men, with no one to control their daily conduct, you
cannot too much accustom them to self-control while they are still
under your eye. Aim, therefore, to diminish the parental government
as fast as you can substitute for it in your child’s mind that
self-government arising from a foresight of results. All transitions
are dangerous, and the most dangerous is the transition from the
restraint of the family circle to the non-restraint of the world.
Hence the policy of cultivating a boy’s faculty of self-restraint
by continually increasing the degree in which he is left to his
self-restraint, and so bringing him, step by step, to a state of
unaided self-restraint, obliterates the ordinary sudden and hazardous
change from externally governed youth to internally governed
maturity.”[9]
With reference to this point, who of us does not agree with the
strictures of Acton upon the carelessness or prejudice which subjects
a boy to unnecessary and too early temptations, sanctioning perhaps
by parental advice his exposure to the wiliest and most dangerous of
foes, his own unbridled imagination? Humphrey Clinker and Roderick
Random are no longer to be found upon the family book-shelf. Griffith
Gaunt, and the exciting issues of the modern French press, have taken
their place. Lempriere, Ovid, and the other such meat for strong
men, are put into the boy’s hands with an expurgated text. What lad,
however, who has not been tempted to ransack his father’s library,
and every other collection of books within his reach, in the hope
of finding an original edition, just precisely as at a certain time
of his youth, longer or shorter as this may have been, he has found
himself turning to the coarsely translated and sometimes flagrant
pages of the Old Testament, rather than to the chaste and ennobling
language of the Gospels? “It has often surprised me,” writes
Acton,[10] “that the filthy stories of the loves of the heathen
mythology should have been so generally placed in the hands of lads.
In such works the youth gloats over the pleasures which the heathen
deities are supposed to have indulged in, while his imagination
runs riot amid the most lascivious passages. The doctrine laid down
in these volumes seems to be, that lust went on unchecked, that it
was attended with no evil results, either physically or morally, to
the individual, or to the society in which such scenes are supposed
to have existed. To enable him to live as these gods of old are
supposed to have done, with what companions must he not associate? He
reads in them of the pleasures, nothing of the penalties, of sexual
indulgence, and it is at a later period that the poor schoolboy is
first to learn that sexual pleasure is not to be indulged in with
impunity. He is not intuitively aware that, if the sexual desires
are excited, it will require greater power of will to master them
than falls to the lot of most lads; that if indulged in, the man will
and must pay the penalty for the errors of the boy; that for one
that escapes ten will suffer; that an awful risk attends abnormal
substitutes for sexual intercourse; and that self-indulgence, long
pursued, tends ultimately to early death or self-destruction.”
Thus educated, and thus vainly imagining, a large proportion of our
boys pass from childhood into youth, with the preconceived idea
they soon find apparently confirmed by their own sensations, that
it is not good to be alone. Let Kingsley tell us what is but too
often the very reasonable result. Lancelot had discovered “a new
natural object, including in itself all—more than all yet found
beauties and wonders—Woman. What was to be expected? Pleasant things
were pleasant, there was no doubt of that, whatever else might be
doubtful. He had read Byron by stealth; he had been flogged into
reading Ovid and Tibullus, and commanded by his private tutor to
read Martial and Juvenal for the improvement of his style. All
conversation on the subject of love had been prudishly avoided, as
usual, by his parents and teacher. The parts of the Bible which
spoke of it had been kept out of his sight. Love had been to him,
practically, ground tabooed and carnal. What was to be expected? Just
what happened. If woman’s beauty had nothing holy in it, why should
his fondness for it? Just what happens every day—that he had to sow
his wild oats for himself, and eat the fruit thereof, and the dirt
thereof also.”[11]
“Here, then,” says Acton, “is our problem: A natural instinct,
a great longing, has arisen in a boy’s heart, together with the
appearance of the powers requisite to gratify it. Everything, the
habits of the world, the keen appetite of youth for all that is
new, the example of companions, the pride of health and strength,
opportunity, all combine to urge him to give the rein to what seems
a natural propensity. The boy does not know that to his immature
frame every sexual indulgence is unmitigated evil. He does not think
that to his inexperienced mind and heart every illicit pleasure is a
degradation, to be bitterly regretted hereafter; a link in a chain
that does not need many to be too strong to break.”[12] The only
answer to this problem is for the boy to learn to possess his soul
in patience, and through example and advice, and earnest, prayerful
effort, to compel his own self-control, till he attains that full and
complete development of all his powers that distinguishes the man.
How small the proportion of all my readers who can lay their hands
upon their hearts and say, with perfect truthfulness, that up to
the time of reaching their majority they had never, for the sake of
selfish or illicit gratification, been guilty of any offence against
purity!
With these reflections, which are not of a character to make us
particularly self-confident or vainglorious, I approach the second
chapter of my task.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] Why Not? A Book for Every Woman. Lee & Shepard, Boston.
[6] Dr. Thomas W. Blatchford, of Troy, N. Y., died on the 7th of
January, 1866. One of the oldest and most influential members of the
American Medical Association, he was _beloved_ by all who knew him.
[7] Hints to Young Men on the True Relation of the Sexes. Boston,
1850.
[8] Discourses, &c., pp. 87, 88.
[9] Moral Education, p. 140.
[10] Functions and Disorders of the Reproductive Organs, p. 38.
[11] Yeast, p. 3.
[12] Loc. cit., p. 46.
II.—MARRIAGE AS A SANITARY MEASURE.
Having now shown that while it is natural for young men to be
impelled towards women by an instinctive yearning, this is not
unfrequently prematurely excited, I proceed briefly to call attention
to its evil effects, in many instances, both upon the individual and
upon society. I cannot do better, in commencing my remarks upon this
subject, than to quote a few words from Dr. Ware. “Unhappily for the
young, a just and elevated view of the relation of man to woman is
forestalled by impressions of a totally different sort, early made
and deeply rooted. Among the first lessons which boys learn of their
fellows are impurities of language, and these are soon followed by
impurities of thought. Foul words are in use among them before they
can actually comprehend their origin, or attach to them any definite
meaning.
“Most men who, when young, have been in the habit of unreserved
communication with others of their own sex, will recognize the
truth of this statement. Happy is he who can look back upon no such
recollections; happy is he, the surface of whose mind does not bear
upon it, through life, stains which were impressed thereon by the
corrupt associations and the corrupt habits of youth; happy indeed is
he if the evil have not eaten into the soul itself, and left behind
it such marks of its corrosion as neither time nor even repentance
can ever obliterate. When this is the training of boyhood, it is not
strange that the predominating ideas among young men, in relation
to the other sex, are too often those of impurity and sensuality.
Nor is this evil confined to large cities, though it there manifests
itself more distinctly in open and undisguised licentiousness, and
in the illicit commerce of the sexes. It equally exists in the most
secluded villages in the corruption of the thoughts and language, and
in modes of indulgence, which, if less obvious and remarked, are not,
therefore, the less dangerous to moral purity.
“We cannot be surprised, then, that the history of most young men
is, that they yield to temptation in a greater or less degree and in
different ways. With many, no doubt, the indulgence is transient,
accidental, and does not become habitual. It does not get to be
regarded as venial. It is never yielded to without remorse. The
wish and the purpose is to resist, but the animal nature bears down
the moral; still transgression is always followed by grief and
repentance. With too many, however, it is to be feared, it is not
so. The mind has become debauched by the dwelling of the imagination
on licentious images, and by indulgence in licentious conversation.
There is no wish to resist. They are not overtaken by temptation,
for they seek it. With them the transgression becomes habitual,
and the stain on the character is deep and lasting. The prevailing
sentiment of the mind, the prevailing tendency of the will, is to
sensual vices; and there are no vices which so deeply contaminate
the soul of man, so degrade, so brutalize it, as these. The degree
of debasement has in some men, even in some communities, reached so
low as to suggest modes of indulging this appetite from which the
common sensualist shrinks with horror, and which cannot be even named
without loathing.”[13]
These statements must be acknowledged by every honest man to be true,
and it is therefore needless to adduce probatory evidence. Viewing
the matter, as I do, from a professional standpoint, it becomes
necessary for me to discuss methods of preventing habits as shameful
as they are injurious to physical and mental and moral health, and
sorrows that are but too often irremediable. Foremost among these
methods,—I shall speak of it more particularly as a sanitary
measure,—will be found Marriage.
In thus summarily, perhaps even roughly, referring to the most
important of all human relations, I shall, I doubt not, again shock
certain sensitive minds. In these delicate matters, however, it is
best to be frank and plain. At one time of his life or another, every
man, selfish or generous-hearted as he may be, delicate or brutal his
nature, looks forward to marriage: not as a spiritual blending of
two souls in one merely, not as a self-sacrificing means of making
some woman supremely happy, nor in fulfilment of a supposed duty to
leave children behind him, the latter being very generally considered
too old-fashioned doctrine for these days, but as the means of
gratifying certain instinctive, and therefore natural, although so
often condemned as carnal, bodily desires, and thereby, as many will
not hesitate to acknowledge, was their own purpose in marrying, of
keeping himself in the better physical health. I would not be thought
to believe that such selfish motives, low ones they may very properly
be called, actuate the majority of mankind. Many are governed by
sordid considerations, others by platonic, and still others by very
romance. Through almost every marriage, however, there runs this
thread of instinct, more or less strongly marked, more or less
distinctly recognized, at times indeed deliberately woven in, and
according as one or the other of these conditions obtains, so is it
generally that the after and relative life of the parties is decided.
Let us grant, to save time, what I have already assumed, that it is
natural for man to long for woman, and thus yearning, to seek her;
and that, constituted as they both are, the one reciprocally for the
other, not for the world’s purposes of population alone, but for
imparting to and receiving from each other the most exquisite of
physical sensations, it was intended by the Creator that, like every
other function, those pertaining to this most intimate acquaintance
should also occasionally be allowed gratification. The question now
confronts us, How is this possible? How can men lead manly lives,
fulfilling all the purposes for which they were constructed and for
which they were born, and yet avoid infringing upon the rights or the
happiness of others?
To this question a variety of answers have been given. Of late
years, many have advocated the so-called doctrine of Free-love, in
accordance with which, by some alleged process of elective affinity,
every positive would seek its negative, every male its female, and
this whether or no each of the parties were already legally the
property of some other person. Subversive as such views, if allowed,
would prove of all domestic unions, and therefore of the peace of
society, their interested advocates have found many proselytes. Many
more still carry into constant practice what they would be ashamed,
or would not dare openly to acknowledge.
The views now referred to are as repulsive to the best sense of
mankind as are those by which Mormonism is supported. In the one
instance, a man professes to satisfy himself with one mistress,
though he may possibly be conducting amours, at the same time,
secretly, with a dozen; in the other, he openly surrounds himself
with concubines, much as in the Eastern seraglio, save that with
the Latter Day Saints, the comparatively better education and
intelligence of the women, however deficient these may practically
be, render it advisable to invest the sealing with a semblance of
religious authority, at once to prevent rapine by other men and
quarrels among the women, however impossible this last may be to
accomplish. In both cases, the Mormon and the amative socialist take
to themselves a lion’s share; like some of the carnivora, who seem
to kill for the mere pleasure of destruction, or who slake their
thirst by a mere draught of their victim’s blood and then discard the
disfigured carcass, so useless to them, these men play with their
toys for a while and then throw them aside, heart-broken, dishonored.
So nearly are the sexes balanced in number, nominally, that were it
not for disturbances of the equipoise by emigration, the prevention
of pregnancy, its criminal subversion and the like, by the time men
and women have reached a suitable age they would stand very nearly
one woman to one man. At birth, in almost every country, the males
very slightly predominate, being usually some five or six in excess
to each hundred children born living. There are greater dangers to
the infant in male than in female births, the boy averaging a little
the larger, and therefore its body, and more particularly its brain,
being subjected to a greater and more prolonged pressure. Thus it
is that more boys than girls are born dead, and that more boys than
girls die during infancy and early childhood, their nervous system
not having entirely recovered from the comparatively greater shock
to which it had been exposed. If then but one woman actually belongs
to each man in a properly balanced community, what right has he to a
second or more?
To this argument will be opposed the statements, that like other
male mammalia, every man is physically competent to conjugally
care for an almost indefinite number of women, and that the normal
proportion of the sexes is already disturbed by the large number of
both who voluntarily remain single, and of both who, released from
an earlier bond by divorce or death, marry for a second, a third,
or even a fourth time, and by the comparatively earlier death or
decrepitude, on the large scale, of females. Upon the other hand, a
man’s possible uxorious ability is and should be, no gauge of what
it is advisable for him to undertake or to perform. Even in wedlock
it is too often the case that men liken themselves in practice to
the most bestial of the lower animals, and to their wives are the
most exacting and cruel of tyrants. The plea of merely yielding to
the impulses of a pure affection is used but too often to sanction
the vilest debauchery, for a man, if he choose, may make a brothel
of his own nuptial bed. As to plural marriages, confining that term
to instances where the unions are successive and legally solemnized,
there is a doubt whether as many, if not more, women are not married
a second time than men; and as to the comparative mortality of the
sexes, it is gradually becoming the way of physicians to study
invalid women more closely and more accurately than was formerly
the custom, and as a very natural consequence, much oftener to cure
them, so that the comparative death rates are gradually assuming
a relation more favorable to women than to men, especially if we
allow for the greater liability of the latter to accident and other
exposure. It will be noticed that the death rate, comparative or
positive, of a country is a very different thing from its birth
rate, and this again from the fecundity of its population,—that is
to say, the rate of its annual increase,—subjects all of them of
great interest, both to professional and to non-professional men; the
latter of them particularly so to us in our present inquiry, as will
hereafter be seen. I may mention, in this connection, that results of
two elaborate series of observations in our own country, made from
different points of view, but very coincident in their conclusions,
have been published by two of the members of the American Medical
Association, namely, Dr. Nathan Allen, of Lowell,[14] and myself.[15]
Not satisfied with bringing the subject before my own profession, I
have endeavored to fix the attention of the scientific world upon the
statistics that have been presented, more especially by an article
upon the subject in the March number of the leading scientific
journal of this country.[16]
To return. Other answers than those yet indicated have been made to
the main question that I have propounded. Prostitution, even to the
extent of a public and legal license, just as obtains in many of
the large cities of Europe, has even in our own country its avowed
and honest advocates, and by this I mean far other advocates than
lewd and licentious men. An engineer may study and direct systems of
sewerage, and yet neither desire, nor allow himself to attend to the
details of their management. I do not mean, however, to open the very
interesting and important problem here involved, although it is one
to which I have given much personal attention, both abroad and at
home. Suffice it merely to say, that as a safety valve to the latent
brutality and vice always heaving and raging beneath the surface in
great crowds of men, and to prevent, by frequent and authoritative
inspection of the unfortunates, led by circumstances far oftener
than by inclination to pander to the unbridled instincts of man’s
lower nature, the so frequent importation of the lecher’s contagion
into his household, setting its mark upon his innocent partner, if
not also upon her offspring, there is much to be said in favor of
the restricted license referred to.[17] Upon the other hand, what
more horrid thought to man’s pure companion, or to him with reference
to all others than himself! I do not here say that any restricted
license like that alluded to has my own approval, although I am not
sure but that of two evils it may prove the least. My question was,
How can natural instincts reasonably be gratified without infringing
upon the rights and happiness of others? By prostitution, even taking
so plausible an exception as that of the French grisette, the woman’s
happiness, certainly her highest happiness, is endangered, if not
assuredly wrecked; and I here take into account, that in France, so
peculiar are certain phases of society there, the public woman, after
years of shameless sale of herself, often retires upon a competency,
to marry and to lead a blameless life, and that in England, the
common drabs from the gutter, transported to distant colonies, and
sent into the bush, find themselves at a premium, marry, and have
fanned into a flame the spark of virtue that may still have lurked in
their bosoms. The same is true, to a more limited extent, of some of
our own outlying territories and states.
That I have referred to such a topic as the above, was requisite
in order that I might approach properly certain matters we have
still to discuss together. When sanctioned, as it has been by the
study and outspoken convictions of no less a person than Florence
Nightingale, who, stainless herself, is yet said to acknowledge
certain necessities in the conduct of armies and the care of camps,
no further apology upon my part is required.
And such I take it is the case also with the last of the answers
to which I shall at present refer, the still more terrible and
destructive custom of self-indulgence, that solitary sin that has
hurried so many men to the madhouse and to the grave. To this I
need but allude, for hardly the person exists who does not know,
from experience or from observation, its blighting effects. With
the prudery which prevents the parent from cautioning his son, or
the physician his patient, from this violation of every natural
instinct and every physiological law, I have not the slightest
patience. Enfeebling to the body, enfeebling to the mind, the
incarnation of selfishness, it effaces from its victim his fondness
for the other sex, unfits him for true love, and likens him in
very fact to that embodied concentration of all man’s frailties,
devoid of all the apparent virtues of animals still lower in the
scale, the ape. And yet, it must be acknowledged, that this baleful
habit, like the kindred self-indulgence, inebriety,[18] is in many
instances the result not of vice, but of disease. The congestion of
hæmorrhoids, the presence of ascarides in the rectum, the existence
of constipation, are all of them agencies, which, by their reflex
irritation, determining an abnormal excess of blood to the parts, and
inducing a state of hyperæsthesia, or undue nervous excitability, may
give rise to procedures which, in the same individual, at other and
more healthful seasons, would cause for him but the most revolting
disgust.
Such being the case, and I may consider it as frankly acknowledged
by my readers to be true, we are prepared to look more calmly at
Marriage as a sanitary measure, and to see whether or no it is for
this reason to be resorted to or advised.
Every man knows that when the sexual passion has once been aroused
and gratified, it can never afterwards be put entirely at rest,
even by the hermit in his cell. It is asserted by certain writers,
rather, however, upon theoretical than practical grounds, that such
passion may always, with comparative ease, be conquered, by sheer
force of will. To insure a peaceful life, it should undoubtedly be
vanquished; but few feel at first this necessity, and fewer still
have the required mental or moral strength. The confessions that
are made to every physician prove this. “The incontinent man,” says
Acton, “is indulging a servant, who, if he becomes a master, will
be what Cicero called him, a furious taskmaster. The slave of his
passions has no easy life. Nay, life itself may be in danger. Often
the patient falls a victim to sexual misery. The sexual feeling has
caused many a suicide; it has made many a misanthrope; many are
the cells now peopled by single men, who, unable to control their
feelings, have sought the monastery as an alleviation of their
sufferings, and there found it in fasting, penance, and prayer.”[19]
And again. “If a man wished to undergo the acutest sexual suffering,
he could adopt no more certain method than to be incontinent with
the intention of becoming continent again ‘when he had sown his wild
oats.’ The agony of breaking off a habit which so rapidly entwines
itself with every fibre of the human frame, is such that it would not
be too much to say to any young man commencing a career of vice, ‘You
are going a road on which you will never turn back. You had better
stop now.’”[20]
The Catholic Church has always recognized the tortures so often
accompanying a single life, when, exposed to temptation, as every
man occasionally is, he endeavors to preserve himself therefrom.
“Our strength is like the strength of tow thrown into the fire; it
is instantly burned and consumed. Would it not be a miracle if tow
cast into the fire did not burn? It would also be a miracle if we
exposed ourselves to the occasion and did not fall.” According to St.
Bernardine of Sienna, “It is a greater miracle not to fall in the
occasion of sin than to raise a dead man to life.” And thus quaintly
and forcibly concludes the learned translator of Bishop Liguori,
“Do not allow your daughters to be taught letters by a man, though
he be a St. Paul or St. Francis of Assissium. _The saints are in
heaven._”[21] Moreover, it is a rule of that church that applicants
for the priesthood should be fully formed and virile; for although
priests are required to observe a moral eunuchism, still they must
have the merit of resistance to the thorn in the flesh to obtain the
palm of recompense.[22]
I do not, of course, imply, nor do I believe, that the great majority
of unmarried men are habitually addicted to immoral practices, but
that a very great proportion of them, in curbing their desires and
keeping themselves under due subjection, undergo a frequent and
severe, however unsuspected, martyrdom, is a fact that cannot be
gainsaid.
In speaking, as I have done, of certain alternatives that are
extensively adopted instead of marriage, namely, the resorting to
houses of ill-fame and self-abuse, I have merely mentioned the fact.
I have not dwelt upon the risks, and frightful risks they are,
accompanying both these measures. The lurid halo surrounding the
strange woman, attracting men, as it were, by its very dangers, like
moths fluttering about the candle that is to prove their destruction,
has been commented upon through the centuries by writers sacred and
profane. It has remained, however, for modern science to prove,
what had long been suspected, that the venereal lues resulting from
unclean intercourse, is, in one of its forms at least, a disease
at times wholly ineradicable from the system, and transmissible
in all its virulence to children’s children.[23] Were physicians
to reveal to the unsuspecting victims of man’s treachery or early
backslidings, whom they are called upon to treat in the upper walks
of life, the actual character and history of many of their diseases,
there would indeed be weepings and wailings and gnashing of teeth. In
the absence of supervision, medical inspection, and the license of
public women, the chances are greatly in favor of the existence in
those poor fallen ones of contagious disease, which, remaining latent
in man’s system, or directly transplanted to his home, may wreck
all his hopes of future happiness. “Nothing tends more certainly
to wither the energies of youth and blast the hopes of manhood. It
is not merely that the mind is polluted; the body is enervated. A
thousand forms of disease may hang round the victim, embitter his
existence, or destroy his hopes in life, which he never imagines
to have had such an origin. But even farther than this: Providence
seems to have stamped this vice with more than its ordinary token
of displeasure, by rendering its votaries liable to that terrible
disease from which so few of them ultimately escape. The effects of
this disease, as is well known, are not always to be eradicated.
They are not confined to present suffering. They may set a mark upon
a man as indelible as that of Cain. They may cling to him through
life, may destroy his health, undermine his constitution, hasten his
death,—may even terminate in disfigurement and mutilation. Nay, they
may even so taint his blood as to descend to his very offspring,
and inflict upon another generation the fearful consequences of his
transgression.”[24]
The dangers environing those accustomed to consort with harlots
exist to almost the same degree where a single private mistress
is employed. To say nothing of the expense of supporting such,
usually much greater than that of honestly building a family, there
must always exist the fact that the woman who permits one man to
unlawfully use her will be very likely to grant similar favors to
his friend or any one else who may please her fancy or offer her
her price; and then comes the chance of her receiving and imparting
disease.
Many men think that all such risk is avoided in the case of
deliberate seduction. Such, however, is by no means always the case.
The popular spread of physiological knowledge has been productive of
many unforeseen results. Many women, as well as many men, imagine
that by the observance of certain precautions they can do as they
please with a friend without possible chance of discovery; the result
of all which is, that, in many instances of intercourse with supposed
virgins, the biter is sorely bitten, and repents him at his leisure.
Where true seduction is effected, not only is the offender oppressed
by a life-long sense of the wrong he has done, but he must also feel
that the prize thus unfairly gained is liable at any moment to slip
from his grasp, or to prove to him the veriest apple of Sodom.
Thus disappointed, or thus fearing, many, even of adult age,
resort to what is physiologically a worse crime against
nature—self-excitation. This yielded to in boyhood sometimes makes of
the young man a woman pursuer, but probably more often a woman hater;
while, on the other hand, it is often the last and final resort of
the old and broken-down debauchee. In either event the effect upon
the constitution is detrimental in the extreme. It is customary, but
still a grave error, to preserve silence upon this subject. “But,”
to apply to it the brave words of my friend Dr. Shrady, of New
York, when discussing prostitution, “notwithstanding our prejudices
of education, agitation will here, as in the kindred question of
pre-natal infanticide, finally culminate in reform.”[25] If the
subject is decided, as I believe will be the case, to be of the
importance that is claimed by every philosophical physician who has
looked into the matter, a voice will go out into every corner of the
land, caught up and re-echoed by all the medical men thereof, that
will cause those who care either for their souls or their bodies, to
pause and tremble.
I would not exaggerate this matter—I would not indorse that
empiricism in medicine which seeks to obtain gain through awakening
ungrounded fears, or imply that I believe that those who have
occasionally gone astray are necessarily incurably diseased, or their
souls irretrievably lost. On the contrary, it is my opinion, already
stated, that just as there is more joy in heaven over the repentant
sinner than over those who wandered not, so those who have learned
by bitter experience often make, here below, the better men. I have
more than once in this essay drawn from the language of Dr. Ware, an
old man, of widely-extended experience, close habits of observation,
a thoughtful mind, and of abounding charity for those who had erred.
There is no one among the wide circle of medical men who were on
terms of personal acquaintance with this distinguished member of our
profession who will not acknowledge that the following sketch is far
from being overdrawn:—
“There is another form of sensuality, far more common among the
young, it is to be feared, than that of which we have been speaking,
and equally demanding notice—solitary indulgence. This is resorted
to from different motives. With many there is no opportunity for the
natural gratification of their appetites; some are deterred from such
gratification by the fear of discovery, regard for character, or a
dread of disease; others there are whose consciences revolt at the
idea of licentious intercourse, who yet addict themselves to this
practice with the idea that there is in it less of criminality. It
is to be apprehended, however, that its commencement can usually
be traced to a period of life when no such causes can have been in
operation. It is begun from imitation, and taught by example, long
before the thoughts are likely to have been exercised, with regard
either to its dangers or its criminality.
“The prevalence of this vice among boys, there is great reason
to believe, has very much to do with the great amount of illicit
indulgence which exists among young men. The one bears the same
relation to the other, in a certain sense, that moderate drinking
does to intemperance. It prepares the way, it excites the appetite,
it debauches the imagination. There is little doubt that it
is often, if not commonly, begun at a period of life when the
natural appetite does not, and should not, exist. It is solicited,
prematurely developed; it is almost created. On every account,
then, this practice in the young demands especial notice. It is the
great corrupter of the morals of our youth, as well as a frequent
destroyer of their health and constitution. Could it be arrested,
the task of preventing the more open form of licentiousness would
be comparatively easy; for it creates and establishes, at a very
early age, a strong physical propensity, an animal want, of the most
imperious nature, which, like the longing of the intemperate man, it
is almost beyond human power to overcome. The brute impulse becomes a
habit of nearly irresistible force before the reason is instructed
as to its injurious influence on the health, or the conscience
awakened as to its true character as a sin.
“The deleterious, the sometimes appalling consequences of this vice
upon the health, the constitution, the mind itself, are some of the
common matters of medical observation. The victims of it should know
what these consequences are; for to be acquainted with the tremendous
evils it entails may assist them in the work of resistance. These
consequences are various in degree and in permanency according to
the extent to which the indulgence is carried, and also according to
the constitution of different individuals. But there is probably no
extent which is not in some degree injurious.
“Among the effects of this habit, in ordinary cases, we notice an
impaired nutrition of the body; a diminution of the rotundity which
belongs to childhood and youth; a general lassitude and languor,
with weakness of the limbs and back; indisposition and incapacity
for study or labor; dulness of apprehension; a deficient power
of attention; dizziness; headaches; pains in the sides, back, and
limbs; affections of the eyes. In cases of extreme indulgence, these
symptoms become more strongly marked, and are followed by others.
The emaciation becomes excessive; the bodily powers become more
completely prostrated; the memory and the whole mind partake in
the ruin; and idiocy or insanity, in their most intractable forms,
close the train of evils. It not unfrequently happens that, from
the consequences of this vice, when carried to an extreme, not even
repentance and reformation liberate the unhappy victim.
“Let no one say that we overstate the extent of this evil, or
exaggerate its importance to the health and morals of the young.
It is in vain that we attempt to stay the licentiousness of youth,
when we leave, unchecked in their growth, those seeds of the vice
which are sown in the bosom of the child. If there is impurity in
the fountain, there will be impurity in the stream which flows from
it. To what purpose is it that we make and execute laws against open
licentiousness; that we arm ourselves with policemen and spies;
that we prosecute the keepers of brothels; that we hunt the wretched
prostitute from the dram shop to the cellar, from the cellar to the
jail, from the jail to her grave? This does not purify society: it
stops merely one external development of a corruption which still
lurks, and cankers, and festers within. The licentiousness of the
brothel is clear and open in its character; nobody defends it; every
one is aware of its seductions and its dangers; the young man who
enters the house of shame knows that he does it at the peril of
reputation, and under the dread of disease. But the other form of
licentiousness is secret from its very nature. It may be practised
without suspicion; there is little fear of discovery or of shame. It
lurks in the school, the academy, the college, the workshop, ay, even
in the nursery. No age and no profession are without examples of the
dreadful ruin it can accomplish. Begun in childhood, and sometimes
even in infancy, it is indulged without a thought of its nature or
its effects. Gradually it winds around its unhappy victim a chain
which he finds it impossible to break. Continued for years, he may
wake at last to a sense of his degradation, but perhaps too late;
for it has often happened that neither the pressure of disease, the
stings of conscience, a strong sense of religious obligation, nor
even the fear of death, have been sufficient to enable the unhappy
sufferer to break from the habit which inthralls him.
“None but those who go behind the scenes of life, and are permitted
to enter the prison-house of the human heart, can know how many are
the terrible secrets which lie hid beneath the fair and even face of
society, as we see it in the common intercourse of the world. With
how many are their early days a struggle for life and death between
principle and passion, the spirit and the flesh! With how many are
those days spent in yielding and repenting, in reluctant indulgences,
followed by agonies of remorse and shame! With how many does the
conscience become callous, and vice a second nature! How often has it
happened that natures, really fair and pure, have gradually become
tarnished and dim, and the highest hopes of youth been defeated!
How often has it happened that young men of rare promise, of whose
success great expectations have been entertained, have suddenly
failed by the way; have seemed prematurely worn down by study, and
been forced to relinquish the career on which they were entering with
the brightest prospects! Little is it suspected by anxious friends,
or a sympathizing public, in such cases, that it is not too exclusive
devotion to study; that it is not midnight toil; that it is not
errors of diet, or want of air or exercise, that have withered their
energies and unnerved their frame. There may be a nearer and a more
inevitable destroyer than these.
“This is a subject most painful to dwell upon; one upon which it is
hard to think, to speak, or to write, without seeming to partake in
some measure of its pollution. Still, attention to it is vital to any
successful effort to arrest the vices of impurity. The evils which
are directly inflicted upon the health, the physical development, the
constitution, by these secret practices, are enough in themselves
to command our interest. It sometimes happens that the habit is
acquired by accident, or persons of a peculiar temperament are led
to it by a spontaneous impulse. More frequently, however, it is
taught by one generation to that which follows; and so general is
this education of evil, that it is rare to find those who have been
fortunate enough to escape wholly from its contamination. Unhappily
the physical pollution is not all; for, as a matter almost of
course, there are associated with it loose conversations, licentious
imaginings, and low ideas of the relations of the sexes. It leads to
the reading of obscene, or at least voluptuous books, gazing upon
pictures of the same description, and to general licentiousness of
thought and of language. It is not strange, when the mind is thus
filled with such images, and taught to dwell upon and brood over them
in the immature period of youth, that this part of our nature should
be prematurely and unnaturally developed, and that the opportunities
of more advanced years should lead to that state of morals among
young men which is so notorious, and so much to be deplored.
“Is it not obvious then, where the remedy is to be applied, if
indeed a remedy be possible? Is it not obvious that our success
must be small indeed if we confine ourselves to means intended to
check the overt indulgences of maturity in licentiousness in one
generation, whilst those who are to constitute the next are left to
the same fearful development of their animal passions, which must
lead them on, by steps as certain as the grave, in the same career of
indulgence?”[26]
Such being the case, and seeking what is for the good of men alone,
without regard as yet for the interests of women, we are compelled
to indorse marriage as a most important sanitary measure, alike for
enabling a reasonable gratification of the sexual instinct, for the
avoidance of disease, and for restraining men from alternatives alike
disastrous to themselves, their descendants, and to society.
I proceed now to discuss the time in a young man’s life at which
marriage becomes advisable.
FOOTNOTES:
[13] Hints to Young Men, &c., p. 36.
[14] Report of the Massachusetts Board of State Charities, 1867, p.
19.
[15] Criminal Abortion in America. Philadelphia, 1860, p. 14; North
Am. Med. Chir. Review, Mar. 1859, p. 260.
[16] American Journal of Science and Art. New Haven, March, 1867, p.
141.
[17] For remarks pertinent to the above, see editorials in the New
York Medical Record, February, 1867, p. 550, and in the Philadelphia
Medical and Surgical Reporter, for the same month, p. 137.
[18] To the million, drunkards themselves, or with drunkards in their
family, the concise and philosophical treatise upon Methomania, just
published by Dr. Albert Day, then of Boston, and now Superintendent
of the New York State Inebriate Asylum at Binghamton, will be found
to convey, with conviction, much comfort and hope.
[19] Loc. cit., p. 57.
[20] Loc. cit., p. 56.
[21] Instructions on the Commandments and Sacraments, pp. 154, 173.
[22] Acton, p. 192.
[23] Bumstead. Pathology and Treatment of Venereal Diseases.
[24] Ware. Loc. cit., p. 43.
[25] New York Medical Record, February, 1867, p. 550.
[26] Loc. cit., p. 45.
III.—HOW EARLY IN LIFE IS MARRIAGE TO BE ADVISED?
The answer to the above question varies with the circumstances under
which it is asked. Viewing the subject, as I am doing, solely from a
medical point of observation, it is unnecessary for me to give much
attention to the other arguments, for and against, that would else
have to be considered.
Political economists, almost without exception, have inveighed
against an early entrance into wedlock. I could give much evidence
upon this point, were it necessary. They base their reasonings upon
several assumptions, which are almost purely such. In some ancient
states, as Sparta, it was by law forbidden to men to marry under the
age of thirty. “And in this,” says Acton, “as in many other matters,
Lycurgus, the old lawgiver, showed his wisdom.”[27] In some modern
states, also, a time has been fixed, as twenty-five years, until
which men must remain celibate.
These restrictions have frequently been established for the purpose
of keeping alive a martial spirit. When a people are permitted to
follow the dictates of their own hearts, they are apt to anchor
themselves at home, tied down by the innumerable cords of affection
and pecuniary necessity or advantage. If this is prevented, the youth
remains for a certain number of years at the service of the state,
is taught that first of all lessons of life, obedience, without a
knowledge of which no man can himself come to rule; he is supposed
less likely to form a hasty or injudicious conjugal alliance, and
from having been sent hither or thither across the world at the
command of his superior, to be finally more anxious to settle
permanently down as a private citizen.
Again, in most countries, whether young or old, there is a tendency,
exaggerated, no doubt, in many instances, to become overstocked by
the human race; and theorists and lawgivers vie with each other in
their efforts to keep down the population. Not only is it thought
that by preventing the young from marriage, a direct check is thus
given, but that when that condition is entered at a more advanced
time of life, the man has become sobered by age, and what is
technically called “more prudent.”
Many suppose that the children of persons in the prime of life are
more likely to be sound in body and in mind than the offspring of
earlier years,—a result that does not necessarily occur,—while
others, among whom Mr. Acton, more or less distinctly denying the
benefit of marriage as a sanitary measure, add to the above arguments
a still more untenable one, that perfect continence is the only wise
and true measure of life. “Marriage,” he says, “is not the panacea of
all earthly woes, or the sole correction of all early vices. It often
interferes with work and success in life, and its only result is that
the poor man (poor in a pecuniary point of view) never reaches the
bodily health or social happiness he might otherwise have reasonably
expected. Under the age of twenty-five I have no scruple in enjoining
perfect continence. The sighing, lackadaisical boy should be bidden
to work and win his wife before he can hope to taste any of the
happiness or benefits of married life.”[28]
There is much that may be said in favor, and much in disproval, of
these several views. The great uprising of our own people, both North
and South, during the late civil conflict, the long and patient
endurance they exhibited, and the innumerable feats of great personal
valor that they performed, sufficiently prove that early marriages,
which are common in this country, and a national devotion for many
years to the arts of peace, do not necessarily deprive a race of its
most vigorous manhood. In our own instance, the conflict over, and
the best blood of the country spilled, we were yet ready, if need had
been, to defend our rights against the world.
As for becoming overstocked, there is for us no danger of this for
many long years to come. Our fertile prairies, and the long reaches
of arable land lying between the mountain ranges of the far West,
are destined to cradle untold millions; and if to these we add the
parched but still irrigable plains of the extreme Southwest, we see
that our country is still in its infancy. If older nations had but
followed the example of the Irish, the English, and the modern Jews,
all over-crowding would be more than met by emigration, the peaceful
transfer of colonists meeting the exigencies of the case far better
than the former eruptions of northern hordes, thinned by disease,
famine, and the sword.
Is it said, that contrary to the doctrines of physiologists and to
the precepts of Scripture, a purely ascetic life is the only normal
one? Acton has adverted to the fact, as he calls it, “that the
intellectual qualities are usually in an inverse ratio to the sexual
appetites. It would almost seem,” he continues, “as if the two were
incompatible; the exercise of the one annihilating the other.”[29]
With Thales, he would reply to those who ask when men should love, “A
young man, not yet—an old man, not at all;” and he styles Lord Bacon
the still wiser Englishman, quoting from him the following passages:
“You may observe that amongst all the great and worthy persons
whereof the memory remaineth, either ancient or recent, there is not
one who hath been transported to the mad degree of love; which shows
that great spirits and great business do keep out this weak passion.
By how much more ought men to beware of this passion, which loseth
not only other things, but itself. He that hath preferred Helena hath
quitted the gifts of Juno and Pallas, for whosoever esteemeth too
much of amorous affection quitteth both riches and wisdom. They do
best who, if they cannot but admit love, yet make it keep quarter,
and sever it wholly from their serious affairs and actions of life;
for if it check once with business, it troubleth men’s fortunes, and
maketh men that they can be no ways true to their own ends.”
As a fair offset to these remarks, I shall give a brief extract from
a letter to Mr. Acton from a Cambridge graduate, whose experience
will be found not so very different from that of intellectual and
sedentary men this side the water. “Looking from the academic side
of the question, the celibacy of Fellows would seem very desirable
(for thus only can they retain their fellowships and the annual
stipend pertaining), but no one can deny that such a principle
involves the sacrifice of individual comfort. Is this fair to the
celibate? I think not. It has always seemed to me that a single
man is in an unnatural position; a being created by the Almighty
to increase and multiply a race made from the beginning male and
female, will, of course, have his natural instincts in accordance
with this design; and mortify or control them as he may, they
are still there, and cannot become extinct. The sufferings of an
abstinent life I believe to be _cruel_ to every man between five and
twenty and five and forty; and though athletic exercises, regular
diet, and so forth, supply some slight relief, still it is never
permanent; and in any event of reaction, the sufferer will find
himself the worse for his previous regularity. Of course a sedentary
life aggravates the symptoms, and I cannot believe that any man
of ordinary vigor, so living and so abstaining, will be free from
nocturnal annoyance. Still, this would be among the least of his
distresses; nay, in nine cases out of ten, I presume the safety
valve of nature is a most happy and beneficial relief; and though
I cannot fly in the face of medical authority, and deny that there
is a pernicious class of the disorder, still I firmly believe all
those cases immensely exaggerated by the sufferers, and capable of
an easy cure, to wit, matrimony, unless the patient, by degrading
practices, has reduced himself to a state of impotence. Meanwhile a
man should go into training for a conflict with his appetites just
as keenly as he does for the University Eight, the only difference
being that the training will be more beneficial and more protracted.
Besides diet and exercise, let him be constantly employed; in fact,
let him have so many metaphorical irons in the fire that he will
find it difficult to snatch ten minutes for private meditation; let
his sleep be very limited, and the temperature he moves in as nearly
cold as he can bear; let neither his eye nor his ear be voluntarily
open to anything that could possibly excite the passions; if he see
or hear accidentally what might have this tendency, let him at once
resort to his dumb-bells, or any other muscular precaution, till he
is quite fatigued; whenever any sensual image occurs involuntarily
to his mind, let him fly to the same resource, or else to the
intellectual company of friends, till he feels secure of no return
on the enemy’s part. Lastly, I would fain add, let the sufferer from
sexual causes make his affliction the subject of most earnest prayer,
at any and all times, to that Ear where no supplication is made in
vain. Thus armed, he _may_ keep his assailant at bay, though I fear
conquest is impossible, and the struggle a most severe one. Sound
old Jeremy Taylor, after discoursing on chastity in something like
the above strain, says, if I remember right, ‘These remedies are
for extraordinary cases, but the ordinary remedy is good and holy
marriage.”
As I have said, the time at which marriage may be entered upon must
vary in accordance with the circumstances of each case. Love is
proverbially blind, and I shall be told that regard ought to be had
to the actual and relative ages of the parties, their health, their
pecuniary circumstances and prospects, the advice and wishes of
friends. All this is very true, to a certain extent, but far more
depends upon the mental and spiritual strength of the husband; if he
is determined to conquer adverse circumstances, he can generally do
so, just in proportion as he curbs and keeps under control himself.
Let him look forward and determine to use and not abuse his marital
privileges, to respect his wife, and not make of her a mere plaything
that will early wear out, and a man will find the lions that seemed
to stand in his path the veriest illusion. The points, however, that
I have referred to are worthy a moment’s consideration.
As to age, there can be no doubt that, for some reasons, it would
be better for no man to marry before he has reached the age of
twenty-five, and for no woman until she is twenty; for till this
time neither party can be considered, physically, as really mature.
To apply this rule, however, rigidly to practice, would, in this
country, be very difficult. With us, such is the precocity of mental
development, that the young child is often in many things the old
man. Taken from the nursery almost before the first dentition has
occurred, placed in business or upon the classics almost at the time
of assuming the boy’s distinctive garments, many of our merchants and
manufacturers have achieved a fortune, and many of our professional
men a reputation, by the time they have hardly passed their majority.
Precocity of youth, spent under the stimulus of the American
atmosphere, climatic, intellectual, and moral, can but result in a
certain kind of precocity of manhood.
The same is also true of our women. Subjected as they are to
excessively early excitement of the mind, in school and in society,
they rapidly press their mothers from the stage, and though
physically not giving earlier signs of being nubile than the
girls of other nations, they are far earlier in the market, as it
were, for the sale, as it too often is in fact, of their charms
and of their lives. No doubt this so early “coming out” from the
chrysalid of youth is detrimental to both man and woman. An early
bloom is too apt to presage an early decay; and though our mortuary
statistics, thanks to the advance of medical and sanitary science,
do undoubtedly show that the average duration of life is becoming
more and more extended, and that the Golden Age, in this respect,
is before us rather than in the past; yet, taking a given number of
persons exposed and not exposed to all the excitements of modern
American civilization, there can be no doubt that the unfashionable
live longer than the fashionable, the steady than the unsteady, the
slowly matured than the Pallas-like monstrosities of our own day and
generation. Whether or no the slow and sedate life is the happier of
the twain, and whether or no the life of threescore years and ten can
be compressed within the limits of two twenties, are questions beyond
the scope of the present inquiry. We all know that, at the best, life
is but a quickly passing dream.
Provided, then, there exist sufficient self-control to wait a while,
very early marriages are not so desirable as those where the ages
I have mentioned have been attained; that is to say, provided the
man has led a life of continence and purity, or has the strength
to do so. If he has not, it may become advisable for him, in case
circumstances otherwise favor, early to enter the married state;
awake, as he should be, to the responsibilities this brings with
it, to many of which I shall hereafter refer. And here let it be
understood that extremes are always, almost without exception, to
be condemned. The marriages of young children are very properly
forbidden by the law; those of older children too often become
necessary through their own indiscretion, and result in future as in
present unhappiness. The marriage of very old people, permissible on
platonic or economical grounds, is sanitarily to be disapproved, and
in many instances is but the folly of the second childhood. Great
disparities in age are almost always matches of interest rather
than affection: the selfish greediness, the shameless yet impotent
lechery, of old age joins itself well with that ambition or thirst
for wealth which sells the young girl to her worse than slavery—this
mating of youth to a virtual corpse.
I do not like to advise marriage to parties in ill health; and yet,
as a medical measure, this is often advisable. We have seen that
a single life is for men, and on sanitary grounds, not the best.
There are many cases where it is as unadvisable for women. As a
class they need marriage, for a different reason than ourselves.
Constructed as evidently for companionship, their yearnings are more
mental than physical. They are less conscious of any bodily needs,
that is, in their normal condition, but more craving of a spiritual
sympathy; more angelic than ourselves, we may truly call them. The
point to which I would now refer, however, is the fact that, in many
instances, women are deterred from consenting to marriage upon the
ground of their own ill health; and I merely shall say that, in very
many instances, far more than is usually supposed, marriage would
prove for such ill health the most certain cure. I do not make this
remark too sweepingly, for there are some affections under which
women suffer that would only be aggravated by the change; there
are certain bars, as that of cousinship, which, on some accounts,
ought never to be passed, and there are certain physical evils of
which marriage is only but too productive. Plainly I would avow my
conviction that just as marriage should be avoided among blood
relations, for the reason that any family taint, as scrofula,
deformity, or insanity, is thus rendered nearly certain to their
children, so should the same similarity of constitution be avoided,
so far as possible, by Cœlebs in search of a wife. If, selfishly,
he would avoid defects in her, is it not his duty also to see to it
that he brings to her a constitution of his own unmarred, so far as
he himself has been concerned? And when, as is too often the case,
men who carry with them a system infected by that terrible disease of
the licentious, marry pure and unsuspecting women, a great outrage is
committed upon society, which no penance and no individual suffering
can ever efface or atone for. One of the worst features of this
whole matter, as I shall hereafter point out, is as yet generally
unknown—that the most ineradicable form of the disease has its period
of incubation; the primary sign of it may escape notice, the virus
may lie latent, and when it does exhibit itself, the party really to
blame may throw the whole enormity of the trouble upon an innocent
person, and thus, on the wreck he has made of his home, immolate its
guardian.
But I have not time to pursue these collateral lines of thought,
manifold as they are, and as important as they are interesting. One
of the great rules of life being to try to have and to preserve a
sound mind in a sound body, and it being essential for this that the
conscience should be sound also, we are forced to admit that, all
things being equal, a comparatively early marriage is better for the
man than a late one; this on its medical grounds, and uninfluenced by
business, or other considerations. Were I to discuss these and push
them to their legitimate conclusions, I am afraid I might bring grief
to some of my readers—if, for instance, I should assert that it were
better for the wives of many seafaring men, especially those going
very long voyages, if their husbands had never married them at all,
or at least had waited till their days of absence, and peril, and
exposure, in foreign ports, to worse dangers than those of the sea,
were permanently over. By this remark I am reminded of the question
of long engagements—a very pertinent one to our present inquiry.
In presenting Mr. Acton’s opinion as to the advisability of early
marriage. I might have said that this very writer contradicts
himself, as must every one who undertakes to ignore the great
underlying and controlling passions of men. I have quoted some of
his remarks concerning continence. In another connection, however,
he says, “If an adult is in a position to marry, by all means let
him do so. If his sexual desires are strong, and his intellectual
powers not great, early marriage will keep him out of much mischief
and temptation.” He then goes on to say, what I myself hold, that
“for any one, especially a young man, to enter into a long engagement
without any immediate hope of fulfilling it, is physically an almost
unmitigated evil. It is bad for any one to have sexual ideas and
desires constantly before his mind, liable to be excited by every
interview with the lady. The frequent correspondence, further,
keeps up a morbid dwelling upon thoughts which it would be well to
banish altogether from the mind; and I have reason to know that this
condition of constant excitement has often caused most dangerous
and painful affections. These results, to an alarming extent,
often follow the progress of an ordinary courtship. The danger and
distress may be much more serious when the marriage is postponed
for years.”[30] The same evil results of hope deferred may also
be observed in the female. Physicians devoted to the study of her
diseases attribute the causation of some of them, or their increase,
to the same identical influences. Mental emotions, even in the purest
and chastest minded, are often reflected upon the reproductive
system, acting as excitants, even where the mind is unconscious of
anything like a bodily sensation; and, on the other hand, physical
excitement, which may exist unconsciously as it were, constantly
reflects itself back again upon the mind, increasing the force and
intensity of its emotions. “It is no whim,” remarks that close
student of minds, healthy and diseased, Dr. Isaac Ray, of Providence,
“but a suggestion of sound physiology, that the nervous erethism,
excited even by courtship, has a controlling influence over the
female will.”[31]
I should do wrong, moreover, did I not here allude to the dangers,
so often proved to exist by their results, of undue waiting, to the
moral as well as the physical health. When parties have plighted to
each other their faith, they often consider themselves as already
one, and demean themselves together too much as such,—forgetting for
the time that thus they are almost sure to lose their mutual and
self-respect,—they are more likely, for this very reason, to take
offence at some unintended trifle, or to become wearied of each other
and so to break their engagement, and that they run great risk, by
a forced and hasty marriage, of giving its tongue to scandal, and
confessing each other’s shame.
The length of a betrothal, just as the time of its inception, is too
often dependent upon circumstances of a trivial character. Where
these endanger the happiness of the man alone, he himself should
judge as to the propriety of allowing them undue weight. He has no
right, however, as so often occurs, to drag or to coax a young girl
to the altar, who is as yet but half matured, or to condemn her to
remain for years half-mated, through his selfish fears that unless
thus pledged she would elude his grasp. As I have said, too early
bloom is apt to presage too early decay; and even with the best of
care our American dames at fifty are prone to pass into the condition
called old, even while their husbands, more advanced in years, are
still in the very prime of life. A word to the wise should surely
be sufficient. Let us hope that Lord Bacon erred in declaring love
wholly inconsistent with wisdom, and now consider,—
FOOTNOTES:
[27] Loc. cit., p. 76.
[28] Loc. cit., p. 76.
[29] Loc. cit., p. 73.
[30] Loc. cit., p. 77.
[31] American Journal of Insanity, October, 1866, p. 267.
IV.—THE RIGHTS OF THE HUSBAND.
Most men would claim these to be absolute. In view of such claim,
which is constantly in practice enforced, married women are expected
to quietly yield themselves, often most unwilling victims. Have I any
ground for this last assertion? I have. Is it gained from observation
or from confession? It is gained from both. Is it a conclusion
hastily founded? On the contrary, it is the result of the daily study
and direct questionings of fifteen long years.
But it is evident that there are two very distinct sides to this
important inquiry; and it is requisite that they should both be
fairly presented before the balance can be struck between them. Are
these rights absolute, or are they the rather reciprocal with duties?
Should mere instinct, or reason, be the rule?
The rights of the husband regarding his wife, I have said, are
usually considered total and indisputable. Till now they have seldom
been challenged; certainly seldom of men by a man. In listening, as I
have done, to the plaints of women, I have neither eavesdropped nor
suggested. In presenting them now after these years of comparison and
cross-examination, it is with no quixotic feeling of championship,
but solely with the desire of an earnest physician to assuage
physical and mental pains, very real though often uncomplained of and
unappreciated, to carry comfort to hearts disappointed and well nigh
broken, to check abuses whose authors may not have recognized them as
such, and to evoke a higher manliness than is our usual wont, as men,
to exhibit.
What, then, do we usually claim? All that the law, and still more
tyrannical custom, grants to us, in our wives; all that they have,
and all that they are, in person and in very life. And here let
me say, that I intend taking no ultra ground; that I am neither a
fanatic nor professed philanthrope; and that in loosing, as I hope
to do, some of woman’s present chains, it is solely for professional
purposes, to increase her health, prolong her life, extend the
benefits she confers upon society—in a word, selfishly to enhance
her value to ourselves; and yet there is somewhat in this effort, as
I believe there is also in the hearts of all those who will peruse
it, of gratitude to her for the love with which she has solaced us,
as mother, and sister, and wife, and daughter,—all of which I have
myself possessed; unhappy he who has not. Give to her, then, the
serious consideration due from every man “born of woman’s agony,”
the depth and measure of which but few of us ever really know. I am
no advocate for unwomanly women; I would not transplant them, from
their proper and God-given sphere, to the pulpit, the forum, or the
cares of state, nor would I repeat the experiment, so patiently
tried by myself, and at last so emphatically condemned[32]—of
females attempting the practice of the medical profession. I would
undoubtedly open to single women every legitimate avenue to an
honorable self-support, and thus keep them from many of the pitfalls
which so closely environ them, and by causing for the married woman
more or greater occasion to respect her husband, I would redouble for
him her affection. These are some of my claims to be heard, and they
are weighty ones in truth.
In the early history of nations, woman has always been the slave.
She is still such, confessed, in all barbarous or but partially
civilized tribes. Condemned, by custom or her lord’s caprice, to
menial offices, she has pandered to his transient emotion, suffered
its hardest consequences, and still drudged on. Save in name, in what
does this description differ from that of thousands of our own women?
They do not, in their best estate, it is true, bear the nominal
burdens of life, the hoe and the venison meat, the tent pole and the
paddle; but a queen’s finery, to the higher natures of our time, may
be far heavier than these.
In former days, or in distant lands, husbands have held for their
wives the tenure of life or death; were they disobedient, or their
fidelity even questioned, the bowstring or sack of the Bosphorus, or
being built aside by masonry while still alive, in countries perhaps
nominally Christian, are but a portion of the penalties that were
meted them. In what, save in being easier to bear, do these differ
from enforced seclusion, as in private lunatic asylums not so very
many years ago, or the still more dreadful divorce, where not desired
and not deserved, with all its attendant publicity?
In by-gone times, and among heathen, as at present in a remote valley
of our own great land, so jealous of the honor of its people, and
so lenient towards their crimes, women have been openly held as
concubines, to possess an abundance of whom were as worthy as to
number one’s children. What variance in this from the secret amours
and liaisons of our own time, so easy to indulge in, so difficult to
detect, in consequence of the almost universal knowledge of the means
of preventing or escaping the natural consequences of illicit sexual
indulgence?
In days long past, and in tribes far down in ignorance and
superstition, it has been the custom to slaughter new-born infants,
to avoid the trouble of their support, or to appease the gods. In
Sparta, it was alleged that such destruction of the puny or deformed
was justified for the sake of preserving the race in all its pristine
beauty and vigor. Is such a deed, at the hands of even a heathen
Greek, to be compared for wickedness with the pre-natal murders of
the present day, daily in occurrence, fashionable even, and bepraised
by professing Christians, repeated over and over again by the same
married woman and mother? You will exclaim with horror that it is
not! And yet, in a very large proportion of instances, this shocking
and atrocious act is advised and abetted, if not compelled, by the
husband—by us men. Who enjoys asking now, “Is it I?”
For the woman, enfeebled perhaps by too excessive child-bearing, for
which her husband is generally wholly responsible, for few of our
wives do not become, sooner or later, virtually apathetic; for the
woman, timid, easily alarmed, prone to mental depression or other
disturbance, and dreading the yet safe and preferable labor that
awaits her, and withal under that strange and mastering thraldom of
fashion, there is a certain measure of excuse. For her husband, none.
This is a matter concerning which the public mind is now undergoing
a radical change. Slow to set in motion, but every day gaining more
rapidly in force, the world’s revival proceeds. In “Why Not?” or “Why
should women not commit this crime?” I have sounded almost a trump
to awake the dead. Would, indeed, that it might arouse a better life
in every man who reads these words: “Of the mother, by consent or by
her own hand, imbrued with her infant’s blood; of the more guilty
father, who counsels or allows the crime; of the wretches who, by
their wholesale murders, far out-Herod Burke and Hare; of the public
sentiment which palliates, pardons, and would even praise this, so
common, violation of all law, human and divine, of all instinct, all
reason, all pity, all mercy, all love, we leave those to speak who
can.”[33]
What, then, I repeat, do husbands usually claim? The right to their
wives’ persons, to use or abuse at their pleasure; the right to their
wives’ happiness, and to endanger or destroy it, as they may choose;
the right to their wives’ lives and those of their offspring, and to
destroy these also, the latter directly, the former thus indirectly,
and at times also, by their physical violence or their persistent
though petty cruelties, very directly too.
Formerly men had control, exclusive and entire, of any possessions
their wives might bring them. Now, and with us at least, the law has
very materially curtailed the husband’s power in this respect, save
it be granted him by the wife’s consent. Will the time come, think
ye, when husbands can no longer, as they now frequently do, commit
the crime of rape upon their unwilling wives, and persuade them or
compel them to allow a still more dreadful violence to be wreaked
upon the children nestling within them—children fully alive from the
very moment of conception, that have already been fully detached from
all organic connection with their parent, and only re-attached to her
for the purposes of nutriment and growth, and to destroy whom “is a
crime of the same nature, both against our Maker and society, as to
destroy an infant, a child, or a man”?[34]
I cannot be too emphatic upon these points. It is of no use to
say that I am straining them to conclusions that are forced and
unwarranted. That these are in accordance with fact must be allowed
by every medical man at all familiar with the practice of his
profession, and indeed by every layman who will for a moment think
of the matter. It is one of the simplest common sense, as well as in
unison with the teachings of the purest science, and its results are
already showing themselves in the ill health of our women and in the
gradual dying out of our native population, just as some of the means
for preventing pregnancy are evincing themselves to the practised
eye in the dyspepsias, the unsteady step, gray hairs, and premature
decrepitude of many of our men.
In pointing out the physical diseases resulting to woman from
intentional abortion, I instanced insanity, of which at that time
several cases, thus occasioned, had come under my observation. To
this, as to some other of my views concerning the causation of
insanity in women, many psychologists have been inclined to take
exception. One of the most influential asylum superintendents in the
country (I refer to Dr. John P. Gray, of the New York State Asylum at
Utica), has lately given most emphatic approval of my views. In his
Report for the present year, just published, Dr. Gray devotes several
pages to this special question, taking occasion to speak very kindly
of “Why Not?” and using the following impressive language: “All
must admit the corrupting tendency of vice in any of its shades,
and especially when in intent or fact it seeks to thwart, by actual
violence, the beneficent laws of our being, and turn the purposes
of God, in ordering the ‘holy estate of matrimony,’ into the basest
species of prostitution. The existence of this horrid, unnatural,
secret crime, carried out, often, by the mutual consent and
connivance of husbands and wives, is not new. Its terrible prevalence
has steadily increased. I have for many years received and treated
patients whose insanity was directly traceable to this crime, through
its moral and physical effects.” And again: “I need not here discuss
at length the disorders consequent on this crime, in any and all of
its shades, but I deem it no less than my duty to declare, as already
stated, that it is, directly and indirectly, one of the causes of
insanity.”[35] This being the case, well might I preface one of my
earlier works by the following quotation from Granville’s Treatise
on Sudden Death: “Let the legislator and moralist look to it, for as
sure as there is in any nation a hidden tampering with infant life,
whether frequent or occasional, systematic or accidental, so sure
will the chastisement of the Almighty fall on such a nation.”[36]
I pass now to discuss these rights of the husband still further, and
to see whether they are unaccompanied, or not, by obligations which
should control them.
FOOTNOTES:
[32] Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, September, 1866, p. 191.
New York Monthly Medical Journal, November, 1866, p. 156.
[33] Prize Essay of the American Medical Association, p. 79.
[34] Percival. Medical Ethics, p. 79.
[35] Twenty-fourth Annual Report of the Managers of the New York
State Lunatic Asylum, pp. 33 to 37. Legislative Document. Albany,
1867.
[36] Criminal Abortion in America. Philadelphia, 1860. Title-page.
V. ARE THESE RIGHTS ABSOLUTE, OR RECIPROCAL, WITH DUTIES?
In the first place, let us see under what circumstances the rights I
have now described were assumed, and whether it was by the power of
the strong over the weak, or from a belief that woman was in reality
inferior to man, as well as physically not as fully developed, or
whether it was from a belief that such assumption was intended by the
Creator, and inculcated both by natural and revealed religion, and in
the latter instance by both the old and the newer Scripture.
Probably all these arguments have weighed, but stronger than these
even has been possession, that nine points of the law. Custom, handed
down from father to son, from time immemorial, has sanctioned what
so often results in tyranny. Appeals are made to Genesis, to the
Proverbs, and to the Acts of the Apostles, and it is asserted that
the inferiority of woman is thus proved to a demonstration, just as
the Bible has been made to evidence the divinity of the institution
of slavery, and to disprove—for some still assert this—the truths
of geology, astronomy, and all other natural science. If no man
should put asunder those whom God has joined, we must confess, in all
conjugal matters at least, their full equality; and in relinquishing
the title of lord and master, we must also waive the point of
unreasoning and blind obedience, and so shall we gain the more
complete obedience where such is really to be desired.
It is very probable—for such are the teachings of the most
philosophical anatomists of our time—that, so far as the mere
structure of her body is concerned, woman has not attained so
advanced a stage of development as man. It is even alleged, by
thoughtful embryologists, that every man during the earliest period
of his existence was once a woman; that is to say, that in the fœtal
condition his was at one time identical with the female type, and
that this was subsequently outgrown. There is no doubt that many
facts support this opinion, as the persistence, for instance, in
every man, of a minute and undeveloped womb,[37] useless, save as
furnishing one of those homologies so abounding in the plan of
creation. Suppose, however, that we grant all this, and that in
purely intellectual matters woman varies normally from man, as she
does in physical strength; we must yet allow that in moral vigor,
in religious aspiration, and faith, and in all purely emotional
attributes, she far excels him. It is not from accident that the
chaste and good of all ages have selected the female rather than
the male as their ideal of angels and saints in heaven; but it is
in tacit yet universal recognition of her superiority in certain
matters over us. We men are of the earth, earthy, but they the gift
of God; and such, in the tradition, did Adam see in the beautiful
mother of mankind. Well for us all that she gave to him of the tree
of knowledge, else, if that tradition be true, we ourselves had never
been.
It is in accordance with those differences in feeling, dependent upon
differences of conformation, growing with their growth and increasing
with the years, and not in consequence of custom alone, that, just as
obtains with the lower mammals, the advances towards the union of the
sexes are made almost entirely by the man. He is impelled by that
strong and almost irresistible instinct by which the future peopling
of the earth is determined, while in the woman it is, to a great
extent, the subsequently awakened emotion of maternal love, which,
far stronger in her than that for simple congress, leads her in
very truth to lay down her life for her children; for this in every
household, where husband and wife live in accordance with the laws
of their being, is the practical result. The mother may live to a
good old age, but still the best energies of her life are expended on
her offspring, in rearing and caring for them till able to shift for
themselves; and in this lies, or should lie, her highest happiness.
I shall be told that many marriages are unfruitful. Granted. That
many must necessarily be such. Also granted, but with a limitation.
Every man of the present day knows that, of these unfruitful
marriages, by far the majority are such from intention. We seldom
now see families of any size; and yet women conceive as easily and
men are as potent as in the olden time. Every physician who has
considered the subject will aver that my statement is true, and
will acknowledge, moreover, that of the unfruitful marriages where
children are yet desired, the barrenness of the woman is often owing
to a brace of causes that are frequently easily removed by treatment;
in the one instance there being some form of organic displacement
or physical obstruction on the wife’s part, in the other temporary
or persistent impotence on that of the husband, generally owing to
previous careless or unphysiological ways of life. It is folly to
think, as so many do, that early years of intentional childlessness
can be atoned for by subsequent years of intentional plenty. Those
who begin by thwarting the laws of nature very constantly find that
in later life, when mere sensations pall, and physical weariness
supplants the freshness and ardor of youth, these laws, disobeyed,
will in turn disappoint them. This subject is of such importance, and
is so little understood, that I must here quote again from one of my
own previous writings upon the subject; indeed so few physicians have
dared to write or apparently to think of these matters, that there
are hardly others to whom I can refer.
In a paper read before the Massachusetts Medical Society in May
of last year, and published in one of the New York professional
periodicals,[38] I have laid down the following series of
propositions, which are startling, but undoubtedly true.
“1. That while, owing to the advance of our knowledge in the
treatment of childbed, more children are born living than formerly,
and more mothers saved, and owing to our wiser treatment of the
diseases of children, and their exposure to better sanitary
conditions, a much larger percentage of them reach maturity, yet
among the better class of inhabitants fewer infants are born; that is
to say, that the average number of births to each Protestant family
is less than it was half a century ago.
“2. That of the pregnancies in reality occurring in this class, fewer
reach completion.
“3. That of the instances of conjugal intercourse taking place, fewer
result in impregnation.
“4. That of these incompleted pregnancies and apparent instances of
sterility, a large proportion are intentional.
“5. That such wilful interference with the laws of nature is
productive, as might have been expected, of a vast amount of
disease—disease whose causation has been unexplained, and whose
character is made evident alike by the confessions of the patient,
and by the results of a more natural course of life.
“6. That intentional abortions are a greater tax upon a woman’s
health, and more surely followed by uterine disease than pregnancies
completed, and this even though the patient may seem to rally from
them with impunity—the result showing itself, if not immediately,
then after a lapse of years, or at the turn of life.
“7. That the systematic prevention of pregnancy, by whatever means,
is also followed by prejudicial effects, affecting the nervous and
the uterine systems, not unfrequently producing sterility from an
organic cause, and laying the foundation of serious or incurable
disease.
“8. That when such prevention is occasioned by incompleted
intercourse, by whatever means effected, the effect is equally bad
for the husband’s health as for that of the wife—there resulting
dyspepsia, functional or organic nervous disease, and at times
impotence, temporary or persistent.”
It will be seen by the above, not merely that in many instances of
unfruitful marriage the barrenness is intentional, but that thus to
trifle with the full gratification of our natural instincts, whenever
the rein is given to them, is fraught with the most detrimental
consequences to both parties concerned,—to us men, as well as to our
associates,—and this in either event: for if we permit or counsel
them to destroy their unborn offspring, their health is very likely
to be thereby undermined, and our conjugal intercourse with them very
materially interfered with, or permanently ended; and if, on the
other hand, we allow ourselves to use them merely as mistresses, we
not only are liable to seriously injure their health, but are almost
sure to ruin our own. So that in both instances we are the losers.
It will thus be seen that certain of the conjugal rights that are
assumed by men, are, whether absolute or not, of a very questionable
character; harmful to our moral natures, destructive to our physical
constitutions, and much more wisely honored in the breach than in the
observance.
How is it with others? Some may allege that while they would neither
approve the wilful interference with or prevention of impregnation,
no harm can surely attach to very frequent indulgence in what
they call living a perfectly natural life, that is to say, giving
themselves up, fully and constantly, to unbridled sexual license.
To this I reply that some men are brutes. Even among husbands,
pledged truly to love and cherish those who generally give far more
real affection than they receive, there exist the veriest satyrs,
eroto-maniacs, madmen. Knowing that they are endangering their wife’s
life, that they are causing her health seriously to suffer, or to be
ruined, they still persist in their demands for what at the best is
but a momentary gratification, and when begrudged, becomes the most
selfish and the basest of all pleasures; and this they do in the face
of remonstrance, entreaties, tears. Many a married man has, as I
have said, virtually committed a rape upon his wife: though the crime
may be unrecognized as such by the law, it is none the less this in
fact, the element of consent having been wholly wanting.
There are others of our number, who, kind at heart and not so
selfish, equally err through ignorance of the real nature of the
case, or from inconsiderateness. It is only of late that even
physicians are awakening to the importance of the manifold special
diseases of women, and to the very existence of many of them. It
is often asked if these diseases are not a new thing, if they have
not indeed wholly sprung up during the present century. This may be
true to a certain extent, in consequence of certain variations from
the normal standard of living; but there is no doubt, on the other
hand, that hosts of women used to die of disease, then undetected
or wholly misunderstood, that is now readily cured. Among these
diseases, all of which are enshrouded by the veil of a woman’s
natural delicacy, but which, involving as they do the very existence
of social life, come directly within the physician’s province, and
that also of simple common sense,—among them there is a very large
class, closely related to the subject of our present inquiry, those
occasioned or aggravated by excessive sexual indulgence. I shall,
of course, refrain from speaking more explicitly than I have now
done, but will merely say that we may all of us be thankful that our
development was carried to the positive extreme, and that we are not
women. They are subject to an immense variety of disease, of which,
from personal experience, we know nothing, and it is often attended
by the most exquisite suffering. This they are prone to conceal;
far from generally exaggerating it, they endeavor to undervalue it,
and suffer, with a fortitude that we could but feebly emulate, in
silence. There are exceptions to this statement, it is true, but
they are still but exceptions, and so prove the rule. Even where
such do exist, there is usually present great nervous excitement or
exaltation, which is often much more difficult to endure than direct
physical pain. Far from ridiculing or chiding these sufferers, they
deserve and should receive our hearty sympathy, which is by no
means sure, as it is so commonly supposed to do, of evoking a fresh
accession of the malady. Many a heart is broken by the sneer of
disbelief at the gentle complaint of bodily anguish; many a divorce
takes its origin in the charge of lost affection, because a wife
refuses to be accessory to her own slow destruction; in many cases
she prefers to this disgrace, and resorts to, suicide. These are
facts, instances of all of which have been known to me. There are
men, and very many women, who will thank me for so plainly stating
them. Men do I say? They are facts that should be made known to
every man, that, so warned, he may live a truly manly, generous, and
dutiful life.
For these rights, of which I have been speaking, are, in reality, not
absolute, but reciprocal with duties. How can we ourselves expect
enjoyment, if perchance we are inflicting terrible suffering? How
can we look for constant and untiring affection, if, inconsiderate
or brutal, we compel what would be withheld perhaps, however
reluctantly, by ill health? Is it thus we would cherish? As we sow,
even so must we reap. No true conjugal enjoyment can exist, unless
it is mutual. We cannot be loved, unless we are respected. We cannot
be respected, even by our wives, unless we respect them. The true
rule should be to take only what is freely given; were this the case,
far more freely would gifts be offered.
FOOTNOTES:
[37] Simpson. Obstetric Works, vol. ii. p. 294.
[38] New York Medical Journal, Sept., 1866, p. 423.
VI. SHOULD MERE INSTINCT, OR REASON, BE THE RULE?
I have said that while some men are brutal in their conjugal
relations, others are simply inconsiderate; and I have referred
somewhat plainly to very important matters that “prurient prudes”
would keep concealed. I have expressed my condemnation of the vile
practices by which the size of families is kept in these latter days
at the minimum. In ancient commonwealths, the most fruitful mother
was considered to have deserved well of her nation, and a statue was
erected in her honor. Now, on the contrary, such a wife is considered
as almost the greatest misfortune that can occur to a man, and
women have learned to consider the carrying into effect the noblest
purposes of their being as alike a disaster and a disgrace.
There are some husbands who, while shocked at the idea of interfering
in any way with the natural course of events, should such be really
established, yet consider excessive carnal indulgence necessary for
the preservation of their own physical vigor—a most mistaken opinion.
There are others who could not be persuaded to resort to direct
measures of a preventive character, and yet indulge in excessive
sexual intercourse for this very end, on the ground, say they, that
prostitutes, in proportion as they are constant in their attention to
their vile trade, are usually childless; and this opinion, true to a
certain extent, is yet in its effects as prejudicial as the other.
The sterility of prostitutes is in great measure owing to disease
that has been occasioned by the constant local excitement to which
they are exposed; I am not now speaking of lesions of a specific
or infectious character, but merely of those diseases which may be
occasioned in any wife when treated by her husband as a prostitute.
It is well known also that the common woman usually soon breaks
down in health, and dies early, not so much from the other forms of
debauchery to which she is exposed, as for the reason to which I have
now referred. Woe therefore to the man who would thus cause within
his own house disease and death.
As to the former of the excuses given: we are all of us prone in
early life to excess, and especially so during the first years
following marriage. As we grow older, we are compelled to live more
moderately, and it becomes very necessary for us to apply the brakes
when beginning to descend the down grade of life. Often, after a
period of abstinence or semi-abstinence, anything like the license
of earlier life becomes dangerous, or even fatal; and this it is
that explains the rapid decadence so often observed in men who have
married late in life, or in widowers, who, after a long period of
rest, have taken to themselves a youthful spouse.
In advising, as I am compelled to do, moderation, that golden mean,
wherein lie the highest duty and the truest happiness, it is
necessary that I refer to a still additional class of husbands—those
who, endeavoring to be reasonable in their demands, yet manage,
for one reason or another, to keep their wives in the state of
gestation the greater part of the time. From such, physicians often
hear complaints; but not so often as from their consorts. Extremes,
it is true, are dangerous: it is almost sure to be detrimental to
a woman living in wedlock to intentionally continue sterile: it is
frequently depressing to a woman’s health to be allowed no interval
of rest between her pregnancies. This fact, however, affords no
excuse, as it is constantly constrained to do, for preventing
impregnation or inducing a miscarriage. The remedy lies often in
the strictest continence, and in continence alone; for whatever
care be used as to the observance of certain times and seasons,—and
such is now the popular knowledge of physiology, that even little
boys and girls know at what times conception is, and at what times
it is not, probable,—accidents will sometimes occur. Ova, it is
true, are probably only disengaged from the ovary at the menstrual
period; but these in exceptional cases may be, and undoubtedly
often are, retained for a longer time than usual in a place and
condition favorable to impregnation. Moreover, while nursing women,
as is generally supposed, do not often conceive until after the
re-establishment of the catamenia, still they sometimes seem to do
so; the error probably being one of observation, and either from a
colorless leucorrhœa having taken the place of the usual sanguineous
discharge, or from the latter having been just about to show itself,
and having been suppressed, as an effect, by impregnation.
However this may be, it is clearly the husband’s duty to care for
his wife rather than for himself. Every married woman, save in very
exceptional cases, which should only be allowed to be such by the
decision of a competent physician, every married woman, until near
the so-called turn of life, should occasionally bear a child; not as
a duty to the community merely, nor a compliment to her husband, nor
even an additional bond of union between him and herself, but as the
best means of insuring her own permanent good health. How frequently
should this be? Usually the interval should be from two to two and a
half or three years, so as to allow a sufficient time for nursing, so
important both for the welfare of the child and its mother, and an
interval of subsequent rest. Did women half appreciate the importance
of lactation as a means, by establishing for a sufficiently long
period a tendency of the circulation towards the breasts and away
from the womb, of averting many of the common varieties of uterine
disease, fashion in this matter would have fewer votaries.
Is it asked, whether by my above remarks I intend to imply that
the conjugal approach should never be indulged in, save for the
sole purpose of begetting children? I hold no such opinion. The
case is a very parallel one to that concerning diet. Had it been
intended that we should confine ourselves, in amount and character
of food, to only so much as would barely support life, and this of
the simplest character, we should hardly have been supplied with
such exquisitely sensitive gustatory nerves. It cannot be said that
this was necessary to insure a proper consumption of food, for the
languor and craving induced by fasting would have been sufficient for
this. The pleasures of the table, restrained within due bounds, serve
not only to enhance the comfort of the individual, but they form that
centre of social attraction which serves to cement friendships, and
to increase as well as to render permanent the sweet communion of
each regularly assembling family circle. And so with the pleasures of
venery. Restrained within due bounds as to frequency, they serve to
add a charm to life, and to give fresh courage for enduring all its
vicissitudes. But to gain these, one single rule must be observed: it
is this—that the husband compel his wife to nothing that she herself
does not freely assent to. A forced union is even worse than the
solitary vice, whose baneful character was alluded to in an earlier
portion of this essay. It is even worse, for it is compelling an
unwilling and often a chaste-minded person to pander to the basest of
lusts. When such habits exist, we are not wholly to blame the woman
if she seek to avert her impending maternity, even though at the risk
of her life; forced upon her, it is repulsive, and her whole nature
rebels, even her most natural of instincts. It is rather the husband
who is to be condemned; his selfish hardness of heart, his brutality,
are the cause of her crime.
VII. ARGUMENTS AND COUNTER ARGUMENTS AS TO DIVORCE.
The ease with which marriages are consummated in this country, and
their bonds loosed again, are among the features of our social system
that are most wonderful to foreigners.[39] Some of our States have
acquired an unenviable reputation as places of unshacklement for
those who tire of their self-imposed burdens, and journeys have
repeatedly been made, of hundreds of miles, that, by a short sojourn
at this distance from home, the lenient legal requisitions might be
complied with, and the knot unloosed that in old time only death
could sever.
Of the thousand reasons alleged for divorce, most of them depend
upon the simple cause for unhappiness I have already indicated.
The parties tire of each other, the wife wearied by her husband’s
unreasonableness, and the husband, still more unreasonable,
complaining of the very weariness he has himself occasioned. Cases
undoubtedly occur where disability for marriage originally existed,
there being some physical impediment or some disenabling disease of
body or mind, such as is adjudged by courts to be a sufficient bar.
As to these, however, the progress of medical and surgical science
has rendered it now possible, in many instances, to effect a cure,
and to change the husband’s or wife’s disappointment into joy. In
many of the instances referred to, the parties live unhappily on,
dreading the scandal of a public application for divorce or trial
in court, and ignorant that relief is ever otherwise possible. The
extent at times of their unhappiness may be judged, when it is stated
that, in cases of deformity, men have repeatedly, through mistake,
been married as women, and women as men. For every instance of the
kind that has been publicly reported, it is probable that a hundred
have occurred.
Other cases undoubtedly exist, where, for proved and patent
unfaithfulness upon the part of one of the parties, it is rendered
impossible for the other to remain conjoined in wedlock. I would not
palliate such wickedness as adultery, but would merely state, from
studying such cases,—for they fall within the scope of my observation
both as a teacher and an expert,—that at times the offender has been
actuated by motives of jealousy or of revenge: fancying himself or
herself sinned against in this same identical manner, the false step
has been taken as an offset, just as in many instances the husband
has gone from home and astray, because he honestly thought that his
wife had deliberately ceased to love him, while she, poor creature,
pining for him at heart, was yet compelled to deny him her favors, on
account of bodily suffering that perhaps he himself had occasioned.
There are still other causes of divorce. Their importance is so
great, and the subject so closely concerns every citizen, that I
have no hesitation in being even more explicit. In many cases the
charge of infidelity is rested upon the communication, or supposed
communication of infectious disease from one of the parties to the
other. Often the charge is true, often it is false, at least so far
as the imputation of sinful conduct is concerned. I disbelieve the
statement so often made, that either one or the other of the two
forms of specific disease has been occasioned, in the adult, by
other than by sexual contact. The allegations as to water closets,
soiled linen, &c., it has irreverently been remarked, should be
allowed weight only in the cases of clergymen, or others supposed
by their position to be above the scandalous practices of the every
day world. There is no doubt that to children such disease has been
communicated by suckling an unclean wet nurse, or by her using to
bathe it the foul rags with which she had cleansed her own sores. In
the case of adults, however, there are certain mistakes that can be
made, that indeed have been made, and have plunged families into the
deepest distress, the suspected party being wholly innocent. One of
these errors depends upon the fact that the primary lesion of the
most dreadful disease of unchastity may escape even the most careful
scrutiny, or from its insignificant appearance may be considered
of trifling importance. The disease being inheritable, may yet not
be evinced in husband or wife save as tainting their children, the
unmistakable signs of such taint being familiar to every physician,
and upon this discovery of infidelity, it may be attributed to the
wrong party. Another source of error is, that the other result
of unfaithfulness may be simulated by the effects of peculiar
irritations, or of the chastest congress under certain circumstances.
Of this fact there is not the slightest doubt.
Where none of these causes exist, the fire that consumes the bonds
of marriage as tow, is kindled from a spark, the veriest trifle in
itself, some unkind or careless word or look, perhaps unnoticed even
by the offender. This spark, through our own innate perversity, for
I contend that here as elsewhere, in sexual relations, the fault
lies generally with the man, or through the malicious or ill-judged
meddling of third parties, is fanned into flame, and then the work
is done: a separation, with or without the formality of a legal
divorce, becomes but too often inevitable, or if not carrying matters
to this extent, perhaps for the sake of the children, the parties
still live together, united in semblance, but in reality living the
most dreary of prison lives, each virtually changed to a foe.
For these sad experiences is there no remedy? Some would find it in
legislation, and would so extend the legal grounds for divorce that
it might become a relief or a luxury within the reach of every one.
To this, however, there are many grave objections of such importance
that they must everywhere be acknowledged; enumerating some of them,
I shall not attempt to present them all, for my remarks upon this
subject are not intended to be exhaustive, but are only collateral to
the general inquiry we have been pursuing.
First. Were divorces made more common, there would be far more
children and invalid women thrown upon other persons than their
legitimate owners for support, that is to say, upon the community.
The long and bitter trials that take place between parents for
the custody of their children, do not always rest upon parental
affection; they are sometimes based upon spite or revenge.
Secondly. The weaknesses and evil passions of mankind are only
controlled, to a great degree, by the existence of law, to thwart
which is attended by personal detriment. Remove or relax the
statutes, and an inducement, as it were, is held out to baseness
and to crime. “The saints,” said the wise observer I have already
quoted, “are all in heaven.” We are all of us mortal, and prone to
selfishness, to retort when irritated, to fly into passion when
retorted to. There is too much reason to believe that were divorces
possible wherever, at one time or another, they have been longed for,
scarce a house on earth would stand. The test would be too much for
poor human nature. If he would challenge this assertion, let every
man first ask himself “Is it I?”, and then he may look into the
mysteries of the circle of neighbors surrounding him.
It has very truly been said that every person in this world bears his
cross, and that in every house there is a skeleton. The closet may
be adroitly concealed, and its door may be kept closed, but though
the dry bones never rattle, though indeed they drop into dust, yet
the knowledge that they are surely there, robs home life to many
of half or of all its charm. In the little chafes and ills, the
disappointments and sorrows of married life, the rule of safety is
to bear and forbear, recollecting that every really chivalrous or
whole-hearted man should, seek, as the stronger, to bear more than an
even half of the natural burden.
Thirdly. Were divorces more common, or more readily obtained,
the very foundation of all society and civil government would be
uprooted. The stability of the state rests upon that of the elements
of which it is composed. When these return to chaos, or dissolve
themselves into the thinnest air, the commonwealth itself must prove
a bubble, collapsing as soon as pricked by circumstance.
And, fourthly. To seek peace and mental quiet through a divorce is,
as a general thing, but cowardice. To encourage them is, therefore,
to offer a premium for pusillanimity. Were marriages, or rather
engagements, contracted less hastily, and never, as is sometimes
confessed, from curiosity, coquetry, or for fun, much, very much evil
and suffering would be prevented. Men and women are often but the
silliest of children, playing with each other’s hearts as though they
were toys, and sowing for themselves and for each other a harvest of
life-long misery. I am writing no homily. I am stating what every man
who reads this knows to be the fact, and there is not a single one of
us, however happy his present relation, who has not some careless,
or rude, or positively unkind word or act to regret, possibly
to bitterly repent himself of. We may well excuse women for the
witching, though sometimes galling, arts they practise on us, for it
is but a part of their charm. Let us, however, never excuse ourselves
for inflicting hurt upon them, or disaster. If carelessly done, it
should be sincerely regretted. No gentleman could commit such an act
with malice aforethought.
Were these the rules of life generally followed, and were they all
embodied in the single line, “To err is human, to forgive divine,”
divorces would no more be thought of, and we should taste even in
this world that best of refreshments, the sweet sleep of the just.
FOOTNOTES:
[39] The reader will find this subject fully discussed in a late
publication upon Marriage in the United States by Mons. A. Carlier,
of Paris, and Dr. B. J. Jeffries, of Boston.
VIII.—A PLEA FOR WOMAN.
In bringing this essay, which I hope has not wholly been a tedious
one to my readers, to a close, I cannot do better than recapitulate
my reasons for writing it, the main argument that I have advanced,
and the end or effect I have labored to accomplish, the latter being
to cure, as a physician, the great and festering sore on our body
politic, corrupting its life-blood and threatening its very existence.
I have endeavored to discuss the relations of the sexes to each
other in their social bearings and from a professional standpoint,
and have been moved so to do from a belief, resting upon my own
careful investigations into the subject as a medical man, and upon
the confessions of many men and the allegations of many women, that
these relations are very frequently unlike what they should be in the
better, the more respectable walks of life. Lest I be said to judge
of others by myself, I will frankly state that I make no pretence to
be, naturally, more effeminate or more apathetic than the average
of men, and I hold that to most of us refinement, purification,
godliness, come less by grace than by fire. Assailed by temptations
from without and within, all of which are so freely acknowledged by
Dr. Ware, and other candid writers upon the subject, the boy runs a
gantlet which is not ended with manhood. We dig pitfalls for women;
they, deceived, if surviving their disappointment, in turn lay snares
for us. Happy those of either sex who have never suffered themselves,
nor caused others to suffer!
Starting with the premises that for much the greater part of the
domestic woes in this world our own sex is to blame, and for much
of the wrong and wickedness committed by women we ourselves are
accountable, I proceeded to show that by natural instinct, divinely
implanted for the furtherance of the Infinite Plan, we are forced
from our earliest childhood to perceive that it is not good to be
alone, and that both sexes are impelled, the male by far the more
strongly, towards bodily union.
Conscious or unconscious of the desires awakened within him, the man
instinctively seeks their gratification. Sometimes, and very often
it is, in the middle aged as in the young, he endeavors to find
pleasure or relief in an unnatural and wholly selfish abasement of
himself; sometimes, and very often this is also, he consorts with
abandoned women, and thus degrades himself to their level; sometimes,
though this is comparatively seldom, until by impure thought or
improper deed he has bestained himself (for if a man lusteth after a
woman hath he not already committed adultery?) he seeks legitimate
happiness in honorable marriage, blending the physical with the
spiritual union, the earthly with that which we hope may survive all
time.
By remarks such as these, it will be probably said by those whose
professions have been of a higher character than their lives, I but
lower the standard, and nature, and objects of marriage. I would not
intentionally or willingly do so. But that it may be seen that I have
reasoned only in accordance with the fact, I shall draw once more
from that unchallenged authority, who was to myself, while a student,
the same teacher I would fain make him to be for my fellow-men. His
voice now comes to us from the grave; it is none the less earnest or
impressive for this. “It is easier,” says Dr. Ware, “to show that a
remedy is needed than to discover and apply it. In this case, indeed,
we encounter the most difficult question presented to us in the moral
education of our race. At the early age at which the evil begins to
exist, when it is gradually creeping into the thoughts and habits of
the child, how are we to detect and counteract it? In the present
state of the relations between the old and the young, between parents
and children, this is a task of extreme delicacy. It can only be done
by the judicious observation and management of the associations, the
conversation, the intercourse, the amusements, and the habits of
children from their earliest days, both in families and in schools.
But alas! how few parents, how few instructors, have the knowledge,
the discretion, the tact, the judgment, to qualify them for such an
office! How often must those who are fully aware of their duty shrink
from its performance, from the apprehension that they may suggest,
instead of preventing, the evil they fear!
“At a later period of life, the attempt to counteract the tendency
to sensual indulgence is also encompassed with great difficulties,
though there is less embarrassment as to the exact means which are
to be put in force to accomplish the object. At this age, we are
to depend not so much upon the watchful care of others as upon the
establishment in the mind of the young man himself of a principle of
resistance founded upon reason and conscience. We can often succeed
in doing this, and although, where the mind and body have both been
debauched by early training, the mind filled with impure images,
and the body stimulated by unnatural gratification, the struggle is
painful and often protracted, yet it is frequently effectual.
“The young man who becomes sensible of the dangers to which he is
exposed, should fortify himself by every motive that can aid him in
his endeavor to escape them. A regard to reputation, the fear of
disease, may do much to restrain, and these are considerations not
unworthy of regard; but the surest safeguard is to be found in the
cultivation of an internal principle of resistance to evil because
it is evil. Much may be done by those who sincerely aim to save
themselves from these early temptations by a sedulous discipline of
the thoughts, and a corresponding carefulness of words. Thoughts
lead to words, and words lead to thoughts; both are liable to be
consummated in actions. Purity of language in the intercourse of
society should be regarded as an essential quality of the gentleman,
and the want of it exclude him from good company as much as any other
vulgar habit.
“Another safeguard is to be found in the cultivation of a just
perception of the true relation of the sexes. Let the young man
cherish a high estimate of, and a reverence for, the character of the
true and pure woman, and a corresponding detestation and horror of
her who abuses and prostitutes the privileges of her sex. Such a view
of this relation as has been inculcated, if it be fully appreciated
and heartily received, will lead him to regard a legitimate and
permanent union with one of the other sex as the most desirable
object in life, and will fill him with a loathing for any other than
such a union. The young man who looks forward with honorable feelings
to such a connection with a congenial and virtuous woman, will find
in the hopes and prospects which it opens to him in life the surest
defence against the temptations which continually assail him.”[40]
Reasoning from the above, I endeavored to show that while very early
marriages were probably contracted at the expense of the vigor
of their offspring, it was yet well to begin to found one’s home
while young, and pointed out that a house was never a home till it
contained one’s children. The rights of the husband, alleged and
actual, were then discussed; and it was proved to a demonstration
that so far from being absolute, these rights are all of them
reciprocal with duties, and that in their assertion and realization
reason rather than mere instinct must govern us. From this point,
glancing at its relations to divorce, as affording arguments and
counter arguments, I have come to the recapitulation, which, rightly
weighed, of itself affords one of the strongest of pleas for woman.
She pleads for what? For undue power in public life, for undue
control in domestic affairs, for privileges not justly her own? The
true wife desires none of these. Suffering through the centuries, and
the varying phases of social civilization, she has been consecutively
man’s slave, his idol for the moment, his toy. If recognized at
all as in equality of rights, it has been in the right to suffer,
and lest by nature she should not possess enough of this, woes
unnecessary, unmentionable, innumerable, have been heaped upon her.
Every one knows this, whether man or woman, and if woman’s voice has
till now been nearly silent, she will none the less value these words
of grateful appreciation, of sympathy, and of appeal to my fellows.
We owe kindness to her for her kindness to us; we owe it, that we may
still possess her to comfort and to cheer us; we owe it, for the sake
of our children, that they may be healthy and well cared for, that
indeed they may be born. The terrible fashion now so prevalent, of
slaughtering the innocents while still in nature’s lap, is, in great
measure, attributable to our own apathy, our own neglect, our own
teachings, our own cruelty, and it behooves every one of us to make
such amends as he best can. By his own life and his own example every
man can show his detestation of that depravity of spirit which would
turn a woman’s purity into an offence, and would nail to the block of
sensuality and licentiousness the wings of angels,—so much chaster
are women than ourselves. Woe unto those of us by whom such offences
come.
As very pertinent to this especial point, I shall here present
portions of a private letter, written to me by a lady of great
intellectual and moral worth, well known indeed throughout the
country.[41] Her remarks are of a kind to rivet attention, plain
spoken and yet delicate as they are. “I have just laid down,” she
says, “your ‘Book for Every Woman,’ and I want to thank you with
all my heart for having written it. I was very slow to be convinced
that any woman of decent character would consciously perpetrate
an abortion; still slower to see how any woman calling herself
pure minded could so degrade the sanctities of marriage as to make
steady and persistent attempts to prevent impregnation,—and yet I
had for many years felt sure that a great many so-called ‘female
diseases’ were incited and developed by the luxurious and indolent
habits of our women, which permit them, when neither cultivated nor
philanthropic, to become conscious of every phase of gestative action
or sexual excitement. To live straight on is the only wholesome way
to live, and I could see that women were not doing this, but watching
themselves in a morbid fashion sure to make mischief.
“When my friend, Dr. E. H. C., had opened my eyes to the actual fact,
I felt so disgusted that I could have prayed to die. Since I could
not do that, I did not hesitate to speak with unction to the large
class of women who privately appealed to me, and to whose plain
language I had not before known how to return any adequate answer.
“Will you believe me, when I say that I usually find it easier to
induce the victim of seduction to take the consequences of her
weakness than to persuade the fashionable woman to refrain from
crime? The nether millstone is not so hard as the heart of a worldly
woman. You will hardly concede to me the right to speak to you upon
the matter in a physiological way, but will you overlook the seeming
want of modesty which permits me to say that there is one argument
which has weight with this class of women that has not been appealed
to? From the moment that I understood the frequency of the attempts
made to prevent impregnation and induce abortion, I felt that I had
a key to the loss of beauty, of expression, and the sweet maternal
charm, which every one who thinks must miss in this generation of
women.
“You speak feelingly of the large families which used to make
the homestead charming and attractive, but you say nothing of
that element of motherliness, which I have missed for years, and
especially of that genial, loving, thoughtful grandmother who used to
be the beneficent fairy of childhood.
“I despised myself for it, but I did look in women’s faces to see
what marks their lives had left, and I tell you that it is a simple
fact, that women who habitually prevent impregnation grow cold,
debased, unlovely in their expression, and that those who resort to
abortion become sharp, irritable, and ungenial, everything, in short,
that we mean by unmotherly.
“Now we may predict disease and death to these fashionable women
forever in vain. They will not believe; they are sure they shall
escape whoever else is lost; but if you tell them that they are
destroying all sweetness, grace, and charm, and that this innermost
secret of their lives is written plain on lip and brow for him who
runs to read, the mirror itself will bear witness to them. And if to
their startled consciousness you go on to urge the loveliness which
wraps that woman round who gives herself gracefully to this, the
highest function of her life, not merely loving him who gives her
children to her, but loving them so much that she would rather live
on the simplest food, and wear the plainest dress, draped and crowned
with this maternal honor, than have all luxury and all power, about
an unlovely and lonely way,—I think one often may, through woman’s
very weakness, appeal to and touch the most sacred impulses of her
nature.
“But the book needs a counterpart addressed to _men_. Till _they_ are
willing to spend as freely for wife and children as for the mistress,
hidden but a few doors off, women will hardly be free agents in this
matter. No woman dreads her travail, as she dreads the loss of what
she calls, in her unhappy ignorance and blindness, her husband’s
love. O, that we could restore the happy simplicity of thirty years
ago, when there were homes where we now have houses, mothers and
housekeepers in the place of lady patronesses, fathers and husbands
instead of loungers at the club! But the world moves onward, never
backward, and you must ring the bugle call again and again, till it
brings conscience and harmony into the irregular and ‘purposeless’
march.”
Before this, however, can be done, men must have a higher respect
for women. They must be taught that in childhood the female mind is
far oftener stainless than that of the male, and that, saving only
those exceptional cases where unchastity, like other family diseases,
seems to descend from parent to child, the vice, really such, has
been engendered, fostered, developed in woman by man. So truly is
this the case, that I have never hesitated to consider the victims
of seduction as generally sinned against rather than sinning, and to
teach that even in the mire may be found many pearls of great price
well worth the saving.
It is not generally known, though most men have had individual
experience of the fact, that a large majority of married women,
whatever their natural temperament, become considerably or entirely
apathetic after a few years of conjugal life; that many married
women never become sexually awakened at all, so far as sensations of
pleasure or physical yearning are concerned, and that, despite all
the evil in the world, and all the spread of knowledge, advisable
and unadvisable, there still exist many unmarried women, not only
entirely innocent of improper act or thought, but foolishly,
inexcusably ignorant concerning matters which every mother who would
save her daughters from the chance of great risk, and possibly still
greater mental and bodily suffering, should teach them beforehand, as
is done to so much greater extent in England than in this country.
These are the facts, and it is an insult to the sex when men treat
women, whether single or even their own wives, as though they were
as sensually minded as themselves. Says Acton, “We offer, I think,
no apology for light conduct when we admit that there are some few
women, who, like men, in consequence of hereditary predisposition
or ill-directed moral education, find it difficult to restrain
their passions, while their more fortunate sisters have never
been tempted, and have, therefore, never fallen. This, however,
does not alter the fact which I would venture again to impress on
the reader, that in general women do not feel any great sexual
tendencies. The unfortunately large numbers whose lives would seem to
prove the contrary, are to be accounted for on much more mercenary
motives—vanity, giddiness, greediness, love of dress, distress,
hunger, make women prostitutes, but not generally sensuality.”[42]
I know that there are none so prone to plunge a fallen woman deeper
into the mire, alike by their acts and their tongues, as women
themselves. Thoughtless, forgetting that if exposed to the same
dangers or the same temptations they also might have erred, women
too often give to us men the impression that they are themselves but
hypocrites and whited sepulchres; too often the first step towards a
woman’s ruin has been from mere curiosity to see if she were really
the immaculate and unapproachable creature her words would proclaim
her. A woman’s hasty and uncharitable condemnation of an erring
sister may well serve as a challenge to the tester of souls. As for
us, he that is without sin let him cast the first stone.
Men often complain of the apathy in their wives, to which I have
just referred, and improperly attribute it to want of affection. It
is in no small number of cases the result of physical suffering,
often extreme, and sometimes endured without a word of complaint even
to the end. The spirit prompting this great patience is one of the
truest and most self-sacrificing heroism. I do not, however, hesitate
to pronounce it wrong, and to declare the silence of one woman,
under such circumstances, is a positive harm to her whole sex. It
is often through a mistaken sense of duty—an opinion encouraged of
course by the husband, and sometimes even by the medical attendant,
to whom the simplest principles of his science should teach a more
reasonable view. Thus one eminent writer remarks: “In some instances,
indeed, feeling has been sacrificed to duty, and the wife has
endured, with all the self-martyrdom of womanhood, what was almost
worse than death.”[43] Even in these later days, since it has been
discovered that there almost always exists a physical cause for
all the many peculiar woes that women suffer, there are still many
husbands, there are still physicians, who see in a wife’s languor,
a wife’s disability, a wife’s complaints, but the vain imaginings
of a distempered mind, or the restless chafing of a soured and
impatient disposition, and think that by according even but trifling
sympathy, they are encouraging a groundless whim, or exciting to
ennui, hysteria, or rebellion. Hard, indeed, the lives of these
poor sufferers,—who, if half confessing their secret distress, are
thought to exaggerate a trifling ailment, or to fabricate one for the
occasion. And yet it is upon just these troubles, actual and very
real, upon just these sufferings, harassing and often very intense,
that half the woes of a woman’s life are based. They cause her to
reject her husband, to destroy her unborn offspring; they make her
moody and despondent, and to look forward without hope; they often
send her to the insane asylum, and not unfrequently cause her to
take her life; just these simple troubles, so easily detected when
searched for, and many of them so easily cured.
These are matters upon which we may well ponder. They concern every
man, whether gentleman by birth, education, or pretence, and he who
scoffs at the word as usurped, yet generally makes of its idea the
standard he would be glad to reach. If we have no such aim, we do
not deserve to live; and of all the tests of such, the one always
nominally most acknowledged, has been respectful conduct towards
women, and the endeavor to protect them from harm. Courteous to
strangers, we should be still more so to our own, and so be most
truly brave in fighting down and conquering ourselves. To aid us
in such chivalrous work was one chief end of The Good Physician;
himself master of self, and, therefore, free from sin. It is surely
no slight labor to endeavor thus to evangelize, no slight gain can we
but thus be chastened, for chasteness is only to be gained by strict
self-chastening, which, fruit from a perfect blossom, is the sign of
a fuller love thus gained to us, both human and divine.
How can I better close my plea for a purer port towards woman than
by the pungent, sensible, philosophical maxims of Jeremy Taylor? Let
this good old prelate, whose whole life was in accordance with his
own unsullied precepts, be to ourselves as to those who long ago
preceded us, a Ductor Dubitantium, to lead us from the devious paths
of sensuality into the Golden Grove of an earthly paradise.[44]
“Married persons,” he says, “must keep such modesty and decency of
treating each other that they never force themselves into high and
violent lusts with arts and misbecoming devices. It is the duty of
matrimonial chastity to be restrained and temperate in the use of
their lawful pleasures. In their permissions and license, they must
be sure to observe the order of nature and the ends of God. He is
an ill husband that uses his wife as a man treats a harlot, having
no other end but pleasure. Concerning which our best rule is, that
although in this, as in eating and drinking, there is an appetite to
be satisfied, which cannot be done without satisfying that desire,
yet since that desire and satisfaction was intended by nature for
other ends, they should never be separate from those ends, but always
be joined with all or one of these ends,—with a desire of children,
or to avoid fornication, or to lighten and ease the cares and
sadnesses of household affairs, or to endear each other; but never
with a purpose, either in act or desire, to separate the sensuality
from those ends which hallow it.”[45]
There are men who live thus soberly and wisely. Let each of my
readers, before closing this book, again ask himself, “IS IT I?”
FOOTNOTES:
[40] Ware. Loc. cit., p. 60.
[41] Mrs. Caroline H. Dall, of Boston.
[42] Loc. cit., p. 137.
[43] Ibid., p. 134.
[44] To some of the oldest among us, the expressions noted above will
recall the titles of two of Jeremy Taylor’s best known works.
[45] Rule and Exercise of Holy Living, p. 70.
APPENDIX.
[From the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal for November 1, 1866.]
“WHY NOT? A BOOK FOR EVERY WOMAN.”
A WOMAN’S VIEW.[46]
The light in which a subject presents itself depends very much upon
the standpoint from which we view it. Dr. Storer’s arguments and
statements are earnest, conscientious and powerful; but women, the
chief players in this tragedy of life, feel that while the facts are
in possession of medical men, their motives are not so well known
and appreciated. Often they are of such a character as may not be
repeated, even to the long-tried and trusted physician; for there are
certain things of too painfully delicate a nature for woman’s lips to
utter to a masculine ear, while to a sister sympathizer, perhaps, the
whole story is freely poured out.
Abortion is fearfully frequent, even more so than Dr. Storer has
assumed, and is rapidly increasing. One great reason of the aversion
to child-bearing is the thousand disagreeable and painful experiences
which attend the long months of patient waiting, and the certain
agony at the end—agony which is akin to nothing else on earth—agony
which the tenderest susceptibilities and sympathies of the noblest
physician can but faintly imagine—agony which, in not one case in
a hundred, is mitigated by anæsthesia. If the blessed, benevolent
suggestion of the general use of chloroform could be adopted, the
world would hear less of abortions. The thousand times reiterated
fact, that “it is a woman’s _duty_ to suffer this,” and that it is
“the end to which she was created,” is but sorry comfort in the hour
of her anguish, and such injunctions will, of themselves, never work
reformation.
It is a suggestive fact that it is not young wives, but mothers,
who most frequently procure abortion; women of mature years, who
know what they are doing, and the danger before them. That they are
guilty of taking life is not generally understood (that there is life
actually existing at the time the bud is blighted), but that the
essential principle, which, under favoring circumstances, might at
some distant day produce life, is removed.
It is not strange that women of delicate organization shrink from
suffering, and perhaps grow cowardly in the face of duty. Many is
the intelligent woman, noble in all else, who says, consciously
and deliberately, “I would rather die than pass through that agony
again;” and, in such a frame of mind, how long would the prospect
of feeble health at some distant day, weigh with the prospect of
immediate suffering, almost, or quite to death? I do not say she is
right. I only say she needs something else than censure.
The true and _greatest_ cause of abortion is one hidden from the
world, viz., unhappiness and want of consideration towards wives
in the marriage relation, the more refined education of girls,
and their subsequent revolting from the degradation of being a
mere thing—an appendage. All the world knows that in this “age of
progress” marriage is too often corrupted from a sanctuary of love
and purity, to a convenience for revelling and grossness. Many is
the intellectual, spiritual woman bound to such a condition, which
she will not, for pride’s sake, or honor’s sake, report. Stung by
disappointment, she rebels, and is perhaps told that marital rights
are ordained of society and Heaven, and that she, knowing it,
should not have come within their power. A very common argument,
true within limits; but power does not necessarily imply right of
abuse. She is, perhaps, on the way to motherhood, and with her
feeble strength, depressed spirits, and waning ambition and courage,
she needs sympathy, comfort, and encouragement. Surely her burden
is heavy enough. But if she grieves or complains, she is perhaps
confronted with the assertion that it is what she is made for; and
with bitterness of heart and sorrow of soul, looking down through
long weeks of heart-sickness and physical pain and unrest, to the
dreaded, unknown crisis, to the after years of care, labor, and
anxiety, and all to bear without hearty sympathy, what wonder that
she is in despair, and little cares whether she live or die? Yet
she must smile, and be cheerful to the world, and it never guesses
all is not right at home. This is not fancy (would it were!), but
veritable, everyday life. If she learns a way of escape, what
wonder that she count herself happy to be rid of, not so much
the pledge of a husband’s love, as of his selfishness, that has
haunted her life! What wonder if she for a time forget her moral
obligations in her extremity, and is indifferent to the life which
is no longer a blessing! Remonstrance is met at home, perhaps with
inattention, perhaps with blame. Remonstrance abroad is forbidden.
Whither shall she turn? What is left but to bury her grief in her
own heart, and live on as best she may? Deal tenderly with these
stricken ones. Condemn them not utterly, for though they sin, they
are sinned against. Don’t load them with all the guilt, for they are
already overborne. Not that sin in one excuses sin in another, but
it is harder to walk with a mountain in our way, than in a smooth,
well-beaten path.
Dr. Storer says, if women would avoid consequences, they must make
choice of time; but in the goodness and generosity of his heart, he
fails to see that no choice is allowed them in many cases. They are
not independent, but subject; and all teaching tends to keep them
so. Here is just where the trouble begins. This is why they rebel.
Save themselves from the _cause_ they cannot. The consequence is
mainly within their power, and the temptation is strong to throw off
the bond which confines them to the fireside. Domestic and maternal
duties and joys, in moderate degree, make women nobler and better;
but do not for a moment imagine that an almost absolute imprisonment
at home, for ten years or more, as is common, with finances ranging
as they ordinarily do, can tend to make wives more intelligent, more
companionable, more Christian, _or more happy_. It may be duty, but
of the stamp unmingled with joy.
It is noticeable that happy wives, strong in the affectionate regard
of considerate husbands, rarely attempt this violence. There is but
one stronger element known to society than that of a true woman’s
love for a worthy husband; one who is careful for her comfort and her
preferences. It is generally admitted that women are not more selfish
than men; that they are as ready to sacrifice comfort, to yield to
inconvenience, as quick to appreciate consideration and to requite
it, as men. Let such a woman, be she ever so slight and fragile,
ever so much averse to motherhood, let her but be convinced that her
husband would be happier with little voices singing in his home,
and let him sustain her, and _pity her_, and she will bear it all,
even to the end, cheerfully. No complaints will be heard, and the
influence of that household will be pure.
Do not accuse me of justifying abortion, or of seeking to lay blame
upon innocent shoulders. Abortion is a crime, and women are guilty of
it, but they sin not alone. While attention is being called to the
fact, why not also to the cause? Wives’ burdens are too heavy, as
blanched cheeks and early graves continually testify,—and the more
intelligent they are, the more they recoil in disgust from the life
they are led; for, mark it, it is not the ignorant class who are
guilty of procuring abortion.
But what shall we say for the unhappy, unfortunate women, by no means
few or inferior, who are victims of selfish and gross husbands, who
are allowed no choice of time or convenience, whose hearts ache with
disappointment and degradation, who find the heaviest burdens of life
heaped upon them without feeling, who go almost into the shadow of
death, and yet return to make the pilgrimage again and again—what
shall we say for them, if they do, in their desperation, find an
escape from the consequences of what was unwillingly forced upon
them? Will the Father of the sorrowful have no mercy on them? Surely
they are in evil case, and their numbers are manifold. Thank God,
there are yet some royal souls true to principle.
If Dr. Storer will perform as noble service for our brothers and
husbands as for ourselves, and send the two books out hand in hand,
they will bring him back a rich harvest of gratitude, and amendment
in morals. Let women feel that they are honored and appreciated,
_really_, for their worth, not for their convenience, and the mass
will not attempt to defeat the purposes of their being. For those to
whom fashion is god, I have not a word to offer. Let them plead for
themselves.
FOOTNOTES:
[46] This communication, a proper supplement to Dr. Storer’s prize
essay published under the above title, has been sent to us by a lady,
“the wife of a Christian physician,” who has certainly expressed with
exceeding delicacy and truthfulness the universal feeling of her sex
upon a subject which deserves more attention from our profession
than it has hitherto received. We publish it with pleasure, and wish
that it might find its way, in some more popular form than our pages
afford, to the eyes of every husband in the land.—_Editors Medical
and Surgical Journal._
WHY NOT?
A BOOK FOR EVERY WOMAN
BY
_PROF. H. R. STORER, M. D._
OPINIONS OF THE PRESS.
The American Medical Association have done a good work in authorizing
the issue of this essay for general circulation. To the majority
of medical men, of any large experience, of course the subject
is sufficiently familiar, and the evils of forced abortions,
independently of the moral obliquity of the act, are well known.
But those most directly interested—the women of the country—are, as
a rule, ignorant of their evil effects, and all the influence of
their medical advisers has hitherto proved ineffectual to put a stop
to the lamentable and criminal sacrifice of fœtal life. Curiously
enough, any moral considerations of the question have little or no
weight with those determined to prevent any further increase of their
families,—for it is among the married that the practice obtains to
the largest degree,—and it is only by direct appeals to the common
sense of females, and by convincing proofs of the long train of
diseases that are so sure to follow this unnatural crime, that any
good results can be hoped for. This point Dr. Storer has forcibly
considered, and placed the matter in its true light so far as relates
to the subjects themselves.
The opinion has somehow gained credence that induced abortions
are not unfrequently effected by the better class of physicians.
Dr. Storer, while repudiating this gross misrepresentation, and
claiming that physicians are unanimous as to the sanctity of fœtal
life, admits that they have, to a certain extent, innocently and
unintentionally given grounds for the prevalent ignorance on this
subject, and lays down as a fundamental principle that abortion, no
matter how indicated, should never be induced by a physician upon his
own uncorroborated opinion. The law should provide this safeguard
against the destruction of fœtal life. As in insanity, where, in some
of our States, the certificate of at least two physicians is required
before a legal commitment to the asylum can be obtained, so here the
law should provide at once the safeguard against the destruction of
fœtal life, and extend to the physician its protection against the
claims of pity, or personal sympathy, or importunate entreaty, to say
nothing of direct offer of comparatively enormous compensation.
We cannot follow Dr. Storer in his arguments. They are so concisely
stated that to give even a fair exposition of them would necessitate
the quotation of a large part of the work.—_New York Medical Journal,
Sept., 1866._
* * * * *
Such a production from a physician of character and eminence has long
been needed, for the extent to which the crime to which it relates is
practised, even by women holding respectable positions in society, is
fearfully great; and we rejoice that Dr. Storer, with such manifest
intrepidity, learning and thoroughness, has done his full duty to
humanity in the preparation of this paper. “Why not” should the
subject be discussed?—for nothing is so intimately connected with the
health and happiness of women, the welfare of the community, and
the greatness of the nation, as the birth of vigorous children. The
present edition is a neat and convenient volume, and just the thing
for a present to every young wife.—_Boston Commonwealth._
* * * * *
“Why Not? a Book for every Woman,” cannot be too universally read. It
is a prize essay on criminal abortion, which has become so alarmingly
common, and is brief, concise, plain, free from technicalities,
earnestly written, and calculated to do much good. It is high time
that physicians “spoke out” in regard to this crime, and Dr. Storer,
from his great experience, and the large attention he has given
to this subject, seems to be the one above all others from whom a
recitation of the evils of abortion, and an appeal to the women in
behalf of themselves and their offspring, would have the most weight.
No false modesty or squeamishness should prevent the advocates of a
reform of this evil from assisting to give this little book a wide
circulation.—_Springfield (Mass.) Republican._
* * * * *
Dr. Storer evinces high moral courage in addressing the public upon
a subject which it would be more agreeable to most men to pass
without observation. But having become familiar, in his medical
studies and practice, with causes which he believes are not without
a baneful influence upon the constitution of many of the female
sex, he ventures to present for their consideration this chapter
of medical science and ethics. He is plain, direct, and earnest in
the presentation of his views upon a subject which, we believe, he
is the first to make the theme for public disquisition.—_Worcester
Palladium._
* * * * *
The subject of this essay is one, we believe, which is largely
engaging the attention of the medical fraternity, as well as that of
many others at the present time. Few have cared to investigate the
full extent of the evil. Those who have done so, find this system
of abortion, especially on the part of married women, a great and
growing danger. Already in many parts of our country the number of
foreign births is largely in excess of native ones, and the large
families of our ancestors find no counterpart in our day. Without
passing judgment upon all of Dr. Storer’s conclusions, or claiming
that his argument is altogether sound, as that of few enthusiasts is,
we yet recommend to every woman a perusal of the work.—_Northampton
Free Press._
* * * * *
Dr. Storer has given more attention to this subject than any other
professional man in the country; and he is so deeply impressed by
his knowledge of the frequency, criminality, immorality, and dangers
of the practice in question, that his appeal to “every woman” is
most direct, forcible, earnest, and eloquent. Many readers will be
astonished at the evidence adduced by Dr. Storer to show the increase
and frequency of this crime in our country. But few will wonder
at the earnestness and even intense feeling with which the author
presses this subject home upon the feelings, the consciences, and the
fears of his readers, after they have read his startling exposition
of the evils, dangers, and fatal results which are produced by this
great offence against the laws of God and man.—_Salem Observer._
* * * * *
We commend this essay to every wife, and to all women about to be
married. The subject is treated with commendable fidelity to the
good of humanity, and a genuine zeal for truth, and at the same
time with all due delicacy, and no false modesty should prevent any
pure-hearted woman from seeking to know its contents. _Honi soit
qui mal y pense_, as the French say; or, as the highest authority
saith, “To the pure all things are pure.” So let no one object to
this notice, but forthwith read and circulate the book, that erring,
mistaken, guilty ones may know “Why Not?”—_Ladies’ Repository._
* * * * *
This elegantly written little book, unexceptionable in tone and
singularly free from pedantry, discusses the subject of criminal
abortion in all its bearings. The moralist and politico-economist
will find much that will awaken thought, if not arouse to action,
while the very large class to whom it is addressed cannot fail to be
convinced—and may we not hope _converted_?—by the stern logic of its
well put scientific truths.—_American Homœopathic Review, Detroit,
Michigan._
* * * * *
The evidence adduced by Dr. Storer is unanswerable. Every married
man and woman in the land knows its truth. He does not exaggerate,
but rather under-estimates the evil; and were it possible to make
extracts from a work of this kind in a newspaper, any page out of
the hundred would blanch many very respectable married people’s
cheeks with righteous shame. It is the best antidote to quack
pills and vile “French inventions” that has been issued within the
century.—_Waukegan Gazette._
“A PLEA FOR JUSTICE TO WOMEN.”
THE COLLEGE, THE MARKET, AND THE COURT;
OR,
Woman’s Relation to Education, Labor, and Law.
BY MRS. CAROLINE H. DALL.
Crown 8vo. Tinted paper. $2.50.
Opinions of the Press.
The _Independent_ says:
The work of Mrs. Dall, in addition to its eloquent and forcible
appeals, abounds in statistical facts and figures of great interest
and value to those who are laboring in behalf of the elevation of
woman. Her statements are as convincing to the intellect as they are
suggestive to the imagination. Her zeal in the cause is justified by
her ability in its support. As a woman she does honor to a movement
which numbers among its advocates so many of the finest minds and
noblest hearts of the age in the other sex.
She has taken hold of a great subject, one that is more and more
engaging the attention of the civilized world, and her investigations
and conclusions show a grasp of thought which many a man might well
envy.—_Congregationalist._
The marked ability with which the author advocates her cause, should
and will command for her the respectful consideration of even her
opponents.—_Home Journal._
It must be acknowledged that the author has made many strong
points—points that it would be difficult to gainsay.—_Toledo Blade._
An eloquent and sensible plea for justice to women. It deserves to be
read, and will be read, for it is too interesting to escape even the
idle and thoughtless.—_New York Evening Post._
The cause of Equal Rights can no longer be accused of dulness. Mrs.
Dall has taken from it that reproach. There is satisfaction in seeing
her clear common sense walk straight and calm to its mark, which is
justice; and more than satisfaction in the grace of words and the
beauty of quotations with which she adorns her going.—_Worcester Spy._
_Sold by all Booksellers and Newsdealers, and sent by mail, postpaid,
on receipt of price._
LEE AND SHEPARD, Publishers,
149 WASHINGTON STREET, BOSTON.
“The Best Novels of the Day”
BY
MISS AMANDA M. DOUGLAS.
I.
STEPHEN DANE.
12mo. Price $1.50.
“STEPHEN DANE” has great merit, and gives more promise than any
American novel that has lately appeared. The plot is artistically
constructed and developed; the characters, though but little more
than outlines, are finely drawn, and the story sweeps on steadily to
its climax, without being lost from time to time in a wilderness of
fine words and pretty drivel.—_New York Atlas._
Miss Douglas is at once interesting and instructive. She is a
vigorous thinker, with sound notions of the wants and follies of
society. Her novels are well calculated to do good. They rest on a
firm foundation of good sense, and will aid in making the world not
only wiser but better and happier.—_Albany Evening Post._
II.
IN TRUST;
OR,
DR. BERTRAND’S HOUSEHOLD.
12mo, cloth. Price $1.50.
We like this book, and so will every reader in whose breast a
love of home and its lessons are cherished. Call it a novel or a
tale, or what you will, but if fiction were never subdued to baser
objects than this, the novel writer’s mission would be kingly or
apostolic.—_Chicago Journal._
In the present work she (the author) has thrown all the brilliancy
and strength of her woman’s genius, and the result is a thrillingly
interesting work.—_Troy Whig._
It is a fine picture of real family life, pervaded by a genuine
Christianity. We promise an unusual success for the work.—_Boston
Post._
_Sold by all Booksellers and Newsdealers, and sent by mail postpaid,
on receipt of price._
LEE AND SHEPARD, Publishers,
149 WASHINGTON STREET, BOSTON.
“_THE BOYS’ AND GIRLS’ FAVORITE._”
Oliver Optic’s Magazine,
“OUR BOYS AND GIRLS,”
PUBLISHED WEEKLY.
The Cheapest, Handsomest, and Best issued in America.
Edited by Oliver Optic,
Who writes for no other juvenile publication, and who contributes to
each number. His new story,—
BREAKING AWAY;
OR,
The Fortunes of a Student,
Just commenced in No. 27 (July 6, 1867), which contains
A STEEL PORTRAIT OF OLIVER OPTIC.
“=OUR BOYS AND GIRLS=” for 1867 will contain THREE STORIES BY OLIVER
OPTIC, the price of which, separately, would be $3.75.
Each number has a handsome cover, printed in colors, and is profusely
illustrated with drawings made expressly for it.
Each number contains illustrated Rebuses, Geographical Puzzles,
Exercises in Declamation, Original Dialogues, &c.
Each number contains articles on the topics of the day, History,
Natural History, the Sciences, &c., carefully prepared by able
scholars.
Each number contains sixteen pages, making a yearly volume of eight
hundred and thirty-two pages.
TERMS.
Per Year $2.50.
Single Numbers 6 cents.
Back numbers furnished at all times. Any boy or girl who will write
to the publishers shall receive a specimen copy by mail.
LEE AND SHEPARD, Publishers,
149 Washington Street, Boston.
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