Delicate mothers who have already more children on their hands than they can care for, whose health is insufficient to longer endure the pains and burdens of pregnancy, but whose sensual husbands continue to demand indulgence, will echo in despairing tones, while acknowledging the truth, "What shall _we_ do?" We will answer the question for the latter first.
Mr. Mill, the distinguished English logician, in his work on "The Subjection of Woman," thus represents the erroneous view which is popularly held of the s.e.xual relations of the wife to the husband: "The wife, however brutal a tyrant she may be chained to--though she may know that he hates her, though it may be his daily pleasure to torture her, and though she may feel it impossible not to loathe him--he can claim from her and enforce the lowest degradation of a human being, that of being made the instrument of an animal function contrary to her inclinations."
Woman"s Rights.--A woman does not, upon the performance of the marriage ceremony, surrender all her personal rights. The law recognizes this fact if her husband beats her, or in any way injures her by physical force, or even by neglect. Why may she not claim protection from other maltreatment as well? or, at least, why may she not refuse to lend herself to beastly l.u.s.t? She remains the proprietor of her own body, though married; and who is so lost to all sense of justice, equity, and even morality, as to claim that she is under any moral obligation to allow her body to be abused?
Since the first edition of this work was published, we have many times been appealed to by suffering wives in the most pathetic terms. In many instances the poor wife was suffering with local disease of a serious character, making s.e.xual approaches in the highest degree painful as well as repugnant; yet notwithstanding this, the demands of the husband for the gratification of his b.e.s.t.i.a.l pa.s.sions were, in many instances, in no degree lessened by a knowledge of the facts in the case.
In cases like these it is often a very delicate and exceedingly difficult task to point out the duty of the suffering wife and mother.
The duty of the husband is very plain, and to him the wise physician will appeal in a manner which cannot fail to arouse him to a sense of his duty if there is yet left unconsumed by the fires of l.u.s.t even a vestige of genuine manhood.
What to Do.--Now to the question as asked by the first parties--married people who together seek for a solution of the difficulties arising from an abandonment of all protectives against fecundation. The true remedy, and the natural one, is doubtless to be found in the suggestion made under the heads of "Continence" and "Marital Excesses." By a course of life in accordance with the principles there indicated, all of these evils and a thousand more would be avoided. There would be less sensual enjoyment, but more elevated joy. There would be less animal love, but more spiritual communion; less grossness, more purity; less development of the animal, and a more fruitful soil for the culture of virtue, holiness, and all the Christian graces.
"But such a life would be impossible this side of Heaven." A few who claim to have tried the experiment think not. The Shakers claim to practice, as well as teach, such principles; and with the potent aids to continence previously specified, it might be found less difficult in realization than in thought.
A Compromise.--There will be many, the vast majority, perhaps, who will not bring their minds to accept the truth which nature seems to teach, which would confine s.e.xual acts to reproduction wholly. Others, acknowledging the truth, declare "the spirit willing" though "the flesh is weak." Such will inquire, "Is there not some compromise by means of which we may escape the greater evils of our present mode of life?"
Such may find in the following facts suggestions for a "better way,"
if not the _best_ way, though it cannot be recommended as wholly free from dangers, and though it cannot be said of it that it is not an _unnatural_ way:--
"Menstruation in woman indicates an apt.i.tude for impregnation, and this condition remains for a period of six or eight days after the entire completion of the flow. During this time only can most women conceive.
Allow twelve days for the onset of the menses to pa.s.s by, and the probabilities of impregnation are very slight. This act of continence is healthful, moral, and irreproachable."[28]
[Footnote 28: Gardner.]
It should be added to the above that the plan suggested is not absolutely certain to secure immunity from conception. The period of abstinence should certainly extend from the beginning of menstruation to the fourteenth day. To secure even reasonable safety, it is necessary to practice further abstinence for three or four days previous to the beginning of the flow.
Many writers make another suggestion which would certainly be beneficial to individual health; viz., that the husband and wife should habitually occupy separate beds. Such a practice would undoubtedly serve to keep the s.e.xual instincts in abeyance. Separate apartments, or at least the separation of the beds by a curtain, are recommended by some estimable physicians, who suggest that such a plan would enable both parties to conduct their morning ablutions with proper thoroughness and without sacrificing that natural modesty which operates so powerfully as a check upon the excessive indulgence of the pa.s.sions. Many will think the suggestion a good one and will make a practical application of it. Sleeping in single beds is reputed to be a European custom of long standing among the higher cla.s.ses.
This subject cannot be concluded better than by the following quotations from an excellent and able work ent.i.tled, "The Ten Laws of Health"[29]:--
"The obvious design of the s.e.xual desire is the reproduction of the species.... The gratification of this pa.s.sion, or indeed of any other, beyond its legitimate end, is an undoubted violation of natural law, as may be determined by the light of nature, and by the resulting moral and physical evils."
"Those creatures not gifted with erring reason, but with unerring instinct, and that have not the liberty of choice between good and evil, cohabit only at stated periods, when pleasure and reproduction are alike possible. It is so ordered among them that the means and the end are never separated; and as it was the all-wise Being who endowed them with this instinct, without the responsibility resulting from the power to act otherwise, it follows that it is HIS LAW, and must, therefore, be the true copy for all beings to follow having the same functions to perform, and for the same end. The mere fact that men and women have the power and liberty of conforming or not conforming to this copy does not set them free from obedience to a right course, nor from the consequences of disobedience."
"The end of s.e.xual pleasure being to reproduce the species, it follows, from the considerations just advanced, that when the s.e.xual function is diverted from its end, reproduction, or if the means be used when the end is impossible, harm or injury should ensue."
"Perhaps the number is not small of those who think there is nothing wrong in an unlimited indulgence of the s.e.xual propensity during married life. The marriage vow seems to be taken as equivalent to the freest license, about which there need be no restraint. Yet, if there is any truth in the law in reference to the enjoyment of the means only when the end is possible, the necessity of the limitation of this indulgence during married life is clearly as great as for that of any other sensual pleasure.
"A great majority of those const.i.tuting the most highly civilized communities, act upon the belief that anything not forbidden by sacred or civil law is neither sinful nor wrong. They have not found cohabitation during pregnancy forbidden; nor have they ever had their attention drawn to the injury to health and organic development, which such a practice inflicts. Hence, a habitual yielding to inclination in this matter has determined their life-long behavior.
"The infringement of this law in the married state does not produce in the husband any very serious disorder. Debility, aches, cramps, and a tendency to epileptic seizures, are sometimes seen as the effects of great excess. An evil of no small account is the steady growth of the s.e.xual pa.s.sion by habitual unrestraint. It is in this way that what is known as libidinous blood is nursed as well among those who are strictly virtuous, in the ordinary meaning of the term, as among those who are promiscuous in their intercourse.
"The wife and the offspring are the chief sufferers by the violation of this law among the married. Why this is so, may in part be accounted for by the following consideration: Among the animal kind it is the female which decides when the approaches of the male are allowable.
When these are untimely, her instinctive prompting leads her to resist and protect herself with ferocious zeal. No one at all acquainted with the remarkable wisdom nature invariably displays in all her operations, will doubt that the prohibition of all s.e.xual intercourse among animals during the period of pregnancy must be for a wise and good purpose.
And, if it serves a wise and good purpose with them, why should an opposite course not serve an unwise and bad purpose with us? Our bodies are very much like theirs in structure and in function; and in the mode and laws that govern reproduction there is absolutely no difference.
The mere fact that we possess the power to act otherwise than they do during that period, does not make it right.
"Human beings having no instinctive prompting as to what is right and what is wrong, cohabitation, like many other points of the behavior, is left for reason or the will to determine; or, rather, as things now are to unreason; for reason is neither consulted nor enlightened as to what is proper and allowable in the matter. Nature"s rule, by instinct, makes it devolve upon the female to determine when the approaches of the male are allowable.
"But some may say that she is helpless in the matter. No one dare to approach her without consent before marriage; and why should man not be educated up to the point of doing the same after marriage? She is neither his slave, nor his property; nor does the tie of marriage bind her to carry out any unnatural requirement."
[Footnote 29: J. R. Black, M.D.]
INFANTICIDE AND ABORTION.
Few but medical men are aware of the enormous proportions which have been a.s.sumed by these terrible crimes during the present century. That they are increasing with fearful rapidity and have really reached such a magnitude as to seriously affect the growth of civilized nations, and to threaten their very existence, has become a patent fact to observing physicians. The crime itself differs little, in reality, from that considered in the last section, the prevention of conception. It is, in fact, the same crime postponed till a later period.
We quote the following eloquent words on this subject:--
"Of all the sins, physical and moral against man and G.o.d, I know of none so utterly to be condemned as the very common one of the destruction of the child while yet in the womb of the mother. So utterly repugnant is it that I can scarcely express the loathing with which I approach the subject. Murder!--murder in cold blood, without cause, of an unknown child; one"s nearest relative; in fact, part of one"s very being; actually having, not only one"s own blood in its being, but that blood momentarily interchanging! Good G.o.d! Does it seem possible that such depravity can exist in a parent"s breast--in a mother"s heart!
""Tis for no wrong that it has committed that its sweet life is so cruelly taken away. Its coming is no disgrace; its creation was not in sin, but--its mother "don"t want to be bothered with any more brats; can hardly take care of what she has got; is going to Europe in the spring."
"We can forgive the poor deluded girl--seduced, betrayed, abandoned--who, in her wild frenzy, destroys the mute evidence of her guilt. We have only sympathy and sorrow for her. But for the married shirk who disregards her divinely-ordained duty, we have nothing but contempt, even if she be the lordly woman of fashion, clothed in purple and fine linen. If glittering gems adorn her person, within there is foulness and squalor."[30]
[Footnote 30: Gardner.]
Not a Modern Crime.--Although this crime has attained remarkable proportions in modern times, it is not a new one by any means, as the following paragraph will suffice to show:--
"Infanticide and exposure were also the custom among the Romans, Medes, Canaanites, Babylonians, and other Eastern nations, with the exception of the Israelites and Egyptians. The Scandinavians killed their offspring from pure fantasy. The Norwegians, after having carefully swaddled their children, put some food into their mouths, placed them under the roots of trees or under the rocks to preserve them from ferocious beasts. Infanticide was also permitted among the Chinese, and we saw, during the last century, vehicles going round the streets of Pekin daily to collect the bodies of the dead infants. To-day there exist foundling hospitals to receive children abandoned by their parents. The same custom is also observed in j.a.pan, in the isles of the Southern Ocean, at Otaheite, and among several savage nations of North America. It is related of the Jaggers of Guinea, that they devour their own children."[31]
[Footnote 31: Burdach.]
The Greeks practiced infanticide systematically, their laws at one time requiring the destruction of crippled or weakly children. Among all the various nations, the general object of the crime seems to have been to avoid the trouble of rearing the children, or to avoid a surplus, objects not far different from those had in view by those who practice the same crimes at the present time.
The destruction of the child after the mother has felt its movements is termed infanticide; before that time it is commonly known as abortion.
It is a modern notion that the child possesses no soul or individual life until the period of quickening, an error which we have already sufficiently exposed. The ancients, with just as much reason, contended that no distinct life was present until after birth. Hence it was that they could practice without scruple the crime of infanticide to prevent too great increase of population. "Plato and Aristotle were advocates of this practice, and these Stoics justified this monstrous practice by alleging that the child only acquired a soul at the moment when it ceased to have uterine life and commenced to respire. From hence it resulted that, the child not being animated, its destruction was no murder."
The prevalence of this crime will be indicated by the following observations from the most reliable sources:--
"We know that in certain countries abortion is practiced in a manner almost public, without speaking of the East, where it has, so to speak, entered into the manners of the country. We see it in America, in a great city like New York, const.i.tuting a regular business and not prevented, where it has enriched more than one midwife."
"England does not yield to Germany or France in the frequency of the crime of infanticide."[32]
[Footnote 32: Jardien.]
"Any statistics attainable are very incomplete. False certificates are daily given by attending physicians. Men, if they are only rich enough, die of "congestion of the brain," not "delirium tremens;" and women, similarly situated, do not die from the effects of abortion, but of "inflammation of the bowels," etc."
"Infanticide, as it is generally considered (destroying a child after quickening), is of very rare occurrence in New York, whereas abortions (destroying the embryo before quickening) are of daily habit in the families of the best informed and most religious; among those abounding in wealth, as well as among the poor and needy."[33]
[Footnote 33: Gardner.]
"Perhaps only medical men will credit the a.s.sertion that the frequency of this form of destroying human life exceeds all others by at least fifty per cent, and that not more than one in a thousand of the guilty parties receive any punishment by the hand of civil law. But there is a surer mode of punishment for the guilty mother in the self-executing laws of nature."[34]
[Footnote 34: Black.]