victims among those addicted to sexual excesses, either of an illicit
nature or within the marriage pale, for the physical effects are
essentially identical. This cause is especially active and fatal with
sedentary persons, but is sufficiently powerful to undermine the
constitution under the most favorable circumstances, as the following
case illustrates:--
The patient was a young man of twenty-two, large, muscular, and well
developed, having uncommonly broad shoulders and a full chest. His
occupation had been healthful, that of a laborer. Had had cough for
several months, and was spitting blood. Examination of lungs showed
that they were hopelessly diseased. There was no trace of consumption
in the family, and the only cause to which the disease could be
attributed was excessive sexual indulgence, which he confessed to have
practiced for several years.
Effects on Wives.--If husbands are great sufferers, as we have seen,
wives suffer still more terribly, being of feebler constitution, and
hence less able to bear the frequent shock which is suffered by the
nervous system. Dr. Gardner places this evil prominent among the causes
"the result of which we see deplored in the public press of the day,
which warns us that the American race is fast dying out, and that its
place is being filled by emigrants of different lineage, religion,
political ideas, and education."
The same author remarks further on the results of this with other causes
which largely grow out of it:--
"It has been a matter of common observation that the physical status
of the women of Christendom has been gradually deteriorating; that
their mental energies were uncertain and spasmodic; that they were
prematurely care-worn, wrinkled, and enervated; that they became
subject to a host of diseases scarcely ever known to the professional
men of past times, but now familiar to, and the common talk of, the
matrons, and often, indeed, of the youngest females in the community."
So prevalent are these maladies that Michelet says with truth that the
present is the "age of womb diseases."
Every physician of observation and experience has met many cases
illustrative of the serious effects of the evil named. Some years ago,
when acting as assistant physician in a large dispensary in an Eastern
city, a young woman applied for examination and treatment. She
presented a great variety of nervous symptoms, prominent among which
were those of mild hysteria and nervous exhaustion, together with
impaired digestion and violent palpitation of the heart. In our
inquiries respecting the cause of these difficulties, we learned that
she had been married but about six months. A little careful questioning
elicited the fact that sexual indulgence was invariably practiced every
night, and often two or three times, occasionally as many as four times
a night. We had the key to her troubles at once, and ordered entire
continence for a month. From her subsequent reports I learned that her
husband would not allow her to comply with the request, but that
indulgence was much less frequent than before. The result was not all
that could be desired, but there was marked improvement. If the husband
had been willing to "do right," entire recovery would have taken place
with rapidity.
Another case came under our observation in which the patient, a man,
confessed to having indulged every night for twenty years. We did not
wonder that at forty he was a complete physical wreck.
The Greatest Cause of Uterine Disease.--Dr. J. R. Black remarks as
follows on this subject:--
"Medical writers agree that one of the most common causes of the many
forms of derangement to which woman is subject consists in excessive
cohabitation. The diseases known as menorrhagia, dysmenorrhoea,
leucorrhoea, amenorrhoea, abortions, prolapsus, chronic inflammations
and ulcerations of the womb, with a yet greater variety of sympathetic
nervous disorders, are some of the distressing forms of these
derangements. The popular way of accounting for many of these ills is
that they come from colds or from straining lifts. But if colds and
great strain upon the parts in question develop such diseases, why are
they not seen among the inferior animals? The climatic alternations
they endure, the severe labor some of them are obliged to perform, ought
to cause their ruin; or else in popular phrase, 'make them catch their
deaths from cold.'"
Legalized Murder.--A medical writer of considerable ability presents
the following picture, the counterpart of which almost any one can
recall as having occurred within the circle of his acquaintance;
perhaps numerous cases will be recalled by one who has been especially
observing:--
"A man of great vital force is united to a woman of evenly-balanced
organization. The husband, in the exercise of what he is pleased to
term his 'marital rights,' places his wife, in a short time, on the
nervous, delicate, sickly list. In the blindness and ignorance of his
animal nature, he requires prompt obedience to his desires; and,
ignorant of the law of right in this direction, thinking that it is
her duty to accede to his wishes, though fulfilling them with a sore
and troubled heart, she allows him passively, never lovingly, to
exercise daily and weekly, month in and month out, the low and beastly
of his nature, and eventually, slowly but surely, to kill her. And this
man, who has as surely committed murder as has the convicted assassin,
lures to his net and takes unto him another wife, to repeat the same
programme of legalized prostitution on his part, and sickness and
premature death on her part."
Prof. Gerrish, in a little work from which we take the liberty to quote,
speaks as follows on this subject:--
"One man reckless of his duty to the community, marries young, with
means and prospects inadequate to support the family which is so sure
to come ere long. His ostensible excuse is love; his real reason the
gratification of his carnal instincts. Another man, in exactly similar
circumstances, but too conscientious to assume responsibilities which
he cannot carry, and in which failure must compromise the comfort and
tax the purses of people from whom he has no right to extort luxuries,
forbears to marry; but, feeling the passions of his sex, and being
imbued with the prevalent errors on such matters, resorts for relief
to unlawful coition. At the wedding of the former, pious friends
assemble with their presents and congratulations, and bid the legalized
prostitution Godspeed. Love shields the crime, all the more easily
because so many of the rejoicing guests have sinned in precisely the
same way. The other man has no festival gathering.... Society applauds
the first and frowns on the second; but, to my mind, the difference
between them is not markedly in favor of the former."
"We hear a good deal said about certain crimes against nature, such
as pederasty and sodomy, and they meet with the indignant condemnation
of all right-minded persons. The statutes are especially severe on
offenders of this class, the penalty being imprisonment between one
and ten years, whereas fornication is punished by imprisonment for not
more than sixty days and a fine of less than one hundred dollars. But
the query very pertinently arises just here as to whether the use of
the condom and defertilizing injections is not equally a crime against
nature, and quite as worthy of our detestation and contempt. And,
further, when we consider the brute creation, and see that they, guided
by instinct, copulate only when the female is in proper physiological
condition and yields a willing consent, it may be suggested that
congress between men and women may, in certain circumstances, be a crime
against nature, and one far worse in its results than any other. Is
it probable that a child born of a connection to which the woman objects
will possess that felicitous organization which every parent should
earnestly desire and endeavor to bestow on his offspring? Can the
unwelcome fruit of a rape be considered, what every child has a right
to be, a pledge of affection? Poor little Pip, in 'Great Expectations,'
spoke as the representative of a numerous class when he said, 'I was
always treated as if I had insisted on being born, in opposition to
the dictates of reason, religion and morality, and against the
dissuading arguments of my best friends.' We enjoin the young to honor
father and mother, never thinking how undeserving of respect are those
whose children suffer from inherited ills, the result of the
selfishness and carelessness of their parents in begetting them.
"These accidental pregnancies are the great immediate cause of the
enormously common crime of abortion, concerning which the morals of
the people are amazingly blunted. The extent of the practice may be
roughly estimated by the number of standing advertisements in the
family newspapers, in which feticide is warranted safe and secret. It
is not the poor only who take advantage of such nefarious opportunities;
but the rich shamelessly patronize these professional and cowardly
murderers of defenseless infancy. Madame Restell, who recently died
by her own hand in New York, left a fortune of a million dollars, which
she had accumulated by producing abortions."
A husband who has not sunk in his carnality too far below the brute
creation will certainly pause a moment, in the face of such terrible
facts, before he continues his sensual, selfish, murderous course.
Indulgence during Menstruation.--The following remarks which our own
professional experience has several times confirmed, reveal a still
more heinous violation of nature's laws:--
"To many it may seem that it is unnecessary to caution against
contracting relationships at the period of the monthly flow, thinking
that the instinctive laws of cleanliness and delicacy were sufficient
to refrain the indulgence of the appetites; but they are little
cognizant of the true condition of things in this world. Often have
I had husbands inform me that they had not missed having sexual
relations with their wives once or more times a day for several years;
and scores of women with delicate frames and broken-down health have
revealed to me similar facts, and I have been compelled to make personal
appeals to the husbands."[21]
[Footnote 21: Gardner.]
The following is an important testimony by an eminent physician[22]
upon the same point:--
"Females whose health is in a weak state ... become liable, in
transgressing this law, to an infectious disorder, which, it is
commonly supposed, can only originate or prevail among disreputable
characters; but Dr. Bumstead and a number of other eminent authorities
believe and teach that gonorrhoea may originate among women entirely
virtuous in the ordinary sense of the term. That excessive venery is
the chief cause that originates this peculiar form of inflammation,
has long been the settled opinion of medical men."
[Footnote 22: Dr. J. R. Black.]
It seems scarcely possible that such enormity could be committed by
any human being, at least by civilized men, and in the face of the
injunctions of Moses to the Jews, to say nothing of the evident
indecency of the act. The Jews still maintain their integrity to the
observance of this command of their ancient lawgiver.
"Reason and experience both show that sexual relations at the menstrual
period are very dangerous to both man and woman, and perhaps also for
the offspring, should there chance to be conception."[23]
[Footnote 23: Mayer.]
The woman suffers from the congestion and nervous excitement which
occur at the most inopportune moment possible. Man may suffer physical
injury, though there are no grounds for the assertions of Pliny that
the menstrual blood is so potent for evil that it will, by a mere touch,
rust iron, render a tree sterile, make dogs mad, etc., or that of
Paracelsus that "of it the devil makes spiders, fleas, caterpillars,
and all the other insects that people the air."
Effects upon Offspring.--That those guilty of the transgression should
suffer, seems only just; but that an innocent being who had no part
in the sin--no voice in the time or manner of its advent into the
world--that such a one should suffer equally, if not more bitterly,
with the transgressors themselves, seems anything but just. But such
is nature's inexorable law, that the iniquities of the parents shall
be visited upon the children; and this fact should be a most powerful
influence to prevent parental transgression, especially in this
direction, in which the dire consequences fall so heavily and so
immediately upon an innocent being.
Says Acton, "The ill effects of marital excesses are not confined to
offending parties. No doubt can exist that many of the obscure cases
of sickly children, born of apparently healthy parents, arise from this
cause; and this is borne out by investigations amongst animals."
Breeders of stock who wish to secure sound progeny will not allow the
most robust stallion to associate with mares as many times during the
whole season as some of these salacious human males perform a similar
act within a month. One reason why the offspring suffer is that the
seminal fluid deteriorates very rapidly by repeated indulgence. The
spermatozoa do not have time to become maturely developed. Progeny
resulting from such immature elements will possess the same deficiency.
Hence the hosts of deformed, scrofulous, weazen, and idiotic children
which curse the race, and testify to the sensuality of their progenitors.
Another reason is the physical and nervous exhaustion which the parents
bring upon themselves, and which totally unfits them to beget sound,
healthy offspring.
The effects of this evil may often be traced in a large family of
children, nearly all of whom show traces of the excesses of their
parents. It commonly happens, too, that such large families are on the
hands of poor men who cannot earn enough to give them sufficient food
and comfortable clothing, with nothing whatever to provide for their
education. The overburdened mother has her strength totally exhausted
by the excessive demands upon her system incident to child-bearing,
so that she is unable to give her children that culture and training
which all children need. More than as likely as not she feels that they
were forced upon her, and hence she cannot hold for them all that tender
sympathy and affection a mother should feel. The little ones grow up
ignorant and often vicious; for want of home care drives them to the
street. Thus does one evil create another.
It is certainly a question which deserves some attention, whether it
is not a sin for parents to bring into the world more children than
they can properly care for. If they can rear and educate three children
properly, the same work would be only half done for six; and there are
already in the world a sufficiency of half-raised people. From this
class of society the ranks of thieves, drunkards, beggars, vagabonds,
and prostitutes, are recruited. Why should it be considered an improper
or immoral thing to limit the number of children according to the
circumstances of the parents? Ought it not to be considered a crime
against childhood and against the race to do otherwise? It is seriously
maintained by a number of distinguished persons that man "is in duty
bound to limit the number of his children as well as the sheep on his
farm; the number of each to be according to the adequacy of his means
for their support."
Indulgence during Pregnancy.--Transgressions of this sort are followed
by the worst results of any form of marital excess. The mother suffers
doubly, because laden with the burden of supporting two lives instead
of one. But the results upon the child are especially disastrous. During
the time when it is receiving its stock of vitality, while its plastic
form is being molded, and its various organs acquiring that integrity
of structure which makes up what is called constitutional
vigor,--during this most critical of all periods in the life of the
new being, its resources are exhausted and its structure depraved--and
thus constitutional tendencies to disease produced--by the unnatural
demands made upon the mother.
Effect upon the Character.--Still another terrible consequence results
from this practice so contrary to nature. The delicate brain, which
is being molded, with the other organs of the body, receives its cast
largely from those mental and nervous sensations and actions of the
mother which are the most intense. One of the most certain effects of
sexual indulgence at this time is to develop abnormally the sexual
instinct in the child. Here is the key to the origin of much of the
sexual precocity and depravity which curse humanity. Sensuality is born
in the souls of a large share of the rising generation. What wonder
that prostitution flourishes in spite of Christianity and civil law?
It is scarcely necessary to say that all medical testimony concurs in
forbidding indulgence during gestation. The same reasons require its
interdiction during the nursing period. The fact that fecundation would
be impossible during pregnancy, and that during this period the female,
normally, has no sexual desire, are other powerful arguments in favor
of perfect continence at this time.
We quote the following from a work on health by Dr. J. R. Black:--
"Coition during pregnancy is one of the ways in which the predisposition
is laid for that terrible disease in children, epilepsy. The unnatural
excitement of the nervous system in the mother by such a cause cannot
operate otherwise than by inflicting injury upon the tender germ in
her womb. This germ, it must be remembered, derives every quality it
possesses from the parents, as well as every particle of matter of which
it is composed. The old notion of anything like spontaneity in the
development of the qualities of a new being is at variance with all
the latest facts and inductions concerning reproduction. And so is that
of a creative fiat. The smallest organic cell, as well as the most
complicated organism, in form and quality, is wholly dependent upon
the laws of derivation.
"These laws are competent to explain, however subtle the ultimate
process may be, the great diversities of human organization and
character. Impressions from without, the emotions, conduct, and play
of the organic processes within, are never alike from day to day, or
from hour to hour; and it is from the aggregate of these in the parents,
but especially of those in the mother immediately before and after
conception, that the quality of the offspring is determined. Suppose,
then, that there is every now and then an unnatural, excited, and
exhausted state of the nervous system produced in the mother by
excessive cohabitation, is it any wonder that the child's nervous
system, which derives its qualities from those of its parents, should
take its peculiar stamp from that of the parent in whom it lives, moves,
and has its being?
"In the adult, epilepsy is frequently developed by excessive venery;
and the child born with such a predisposition will be exceedingly liable
to the disease during its early years when the nervous system is
notoriously prone to deranged action from very slight disturbing
causes.
"The infringement of this law regulating intercourse during pregnancy
also reacts injuriously upon the mental capacity of the child, tending
to give it a stupid, animalized look; and, there is also good reason
to believe, aids in developing the idiotic condition."
A Selfish Objection.--The married man will raise the plea that
indulgence is to him a necessity. He has only to practice the principles
laid down for the maintenance of continence to entirely remove any such
necessity should there be the slightest semblance of a real demand.
Again, what many mistake for an indication of the necessity for
indulgence, to relieve an accumulation of semen, is in fact, to state
the exact truth, but a call of nature for a movement of the bowels.
How this may occur, has already been explained, as being due to the
pressure of the distended rectum upon the internal organs of generation
situated at the base of the bladder. It is for this reason, chiefly,
that a good share of sexual excesses occur in the morning.
But, aside from all other considerations, is it not the most supreme
selfishness for a man to consider only himself in his sexual relations,
making his wife wholly subservient to his own desires? As a learned
professor remarks, in speaking of woman, "Who has a right to regard
her as a therapeutic agent?"
Brutes and Savages More Considerate.--It is only the civilized,
Christianized (?) male human being who complains of the restraint
imposed upon him by the laws of nature. The untutored barbarian, even
some of the lowest of those who wear the human form, together with nearly
all of the various classes of lower animals, abstain from sexual
indulgence during pregnancy. The natives of the Gold Coast and many
other African tribes regard it as a shameful offense to cohabit during
gestation. In the case of lower animals, even when the male desires
indulgence, the female resents any attempt of the sort by the most
vigorous resistance.
Are not these wholesome lessons for that portion of the human race which
professes to represent the accumulated wisdom, intelligence, and
refinement of the world? Those who need reproof on this point may
reflect that by a continuance of the evil practice they are placing
themselves on a plane even below the uncouth negro who haunts the
jungles of Southern Africa.
We quote the following from the pen of a talented professor in a
well-known medical college:--
"I believe we cannot too strenuously insist upon this point--that
sexual intercourse should never be undertaken with any other object
than procreation, and never then unless the conditions are favorable
to the production of a new being who will be likely to have cause to
thankfully bless his parents for the gift of life. If this rule were
generally observed, we should have no broken-nosed Tristram Shandys
complaining of the carelessness of their fathers in begetting
them."[24]
[Footnote 24: Dr. Gerrish.]
What May Be Done?--But what is the practical conclusion to be drawn
from all the foregoing? What _should_ people do? what _may_ they do?
Dr. Gardner offers the following remarks, which partially answer the
questions:--
"We have shown that we can 'DO RIGHT' without prejudice to health by
the exercise of continence. Self-restraint, the ruling of the passions,
is a virtue, and is within the power of all well-regulated minds. Nor
is this necessarily perpetual or absolute. The passions may be
restrained within proper limitations. He who indulges in lascivious
thoughts may stimulate himself to frenzy; but if his mind were under
proper control, he would find other employment for it, and his body,
obedient to its potent sway, would not become the master of the man."
What are the "proper limitations," every person must decide for himself
in view of the facts which have been presented. If he find that the
animal in his nature is too strong to allow him to comply with what
seems to be the requirements of natural law, let him approximate as
nearly to the truth as possible. "Let every man be fully persuaded in
his own mind," and act accordingly, not forgetting that this is a matter
with serious moral bearings, and, hence, one in which conscience should
be on the alert. It is of no use to reject truth because it is
unpalatable. There can be nothing worse for a man than to "know the
truth and do it not."
It is but fair to say that there is a wide diversity of opinion among
medical men on this subject. A very few hold that the sexual act should
never be indulged except for the purpose of reproduction, and then only
at periods when reproduction will be possible. Others, while equally
opposed to the excesses, the effects of which have been described, limit
indulgence to the number of months in the year.
Read, reflect, weigh well the matter, then fix upon a plan of action,
and, if it be in accordance with the dictates of better judgment, do
not swerve from it.