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 sexual approaches in the highest degree painful as
well as repugnant; yet notwithstanding this, the demands of the husband
for the gratification of his bestial passions 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 lust 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 sexual 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 aptitude 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 pass 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 sexual 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
passions. 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 classes.
This subject cannot be concluded better than by the following
quotations from an excellent and able work entitled, "The Ten Laws of
Health"[29]:--
"The obvious design of the sexual desire is the reproduction of the
species.... The gratification of this passion, 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 sexual pleasure being to reproduce the species, it follows,
from the considerations just advanced, that when the sexual 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 sexual 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 constituting 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 sexual passion 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 sexual 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 assumed 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 God, 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 God! 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 Japan, 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, constituting 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 assertion 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.]
"From a very large verbal and written correspondence in this and other
States, I am satisfied that we have become _a nation of murderers_."[35]
[Footnote 35: Reamy.]
Said a distinguished clergyman of Brooklyn in a sermon, "Why send
missionaries to India when child-murder is here of daily, almost hourly,
occurrence; aye, when the hand that puts money into the
contribution-box to-day, yesterday or a month ago, or to-morrow, will
murder her own unborn offspring?
"The Hindoo mother, when she abandons her babe upon the sacred Ganges,
is, contrary to her heart, obeying a supposed religious law, and you
desire to convert her to your own worship of the Moloch of Fashion and
Laziness and love of Greed. Out upon such hypocrisy!"
Writers tell us that it has even become the boast of many women that
they "know too much to have babies."
Says the learned Dr. Storer, "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?'"[36]
[Footnote 36: "Is It I?"]
Says another well-known author, "Ladies boast to each other of the
impunity with which they have aborted, as they do of their expenditures,
of their dress, of their success in society. There is a fashion in this,
as in all other female customs, good and bad. The wretch whose account
with the Almighty is heaviest with guilt too often becomes a
heroine."[37]
[Footnote 37: A Woman's Thoughts about Women.]
Causes of the Crime.--Many influences may combine to cause the mother
ruthlessly to destroy her helpless child: as, to conceal the results
of sin; to avoid the burdens of maternity; to secure ease and freedom
to travel, etc., or even from a false idea that maternity is vulgar;
but it is true, beyond all question, that the primary cause of the sin
is far back of all these influences. The most unstinted and scathing
invectives are used in characterizing the criminality of a mother who
takes the life of her unborn babe; but a word is seldom said of the
one who forced upon her the circumstances which gave the unfortunate
one existence. Though doctors, ministers, and moralists have said much
on this subject, and written more, it is reasonable to suppose that
they will never accomplish much of anything in the direction of reform
until they recognize the part the man acts in all of these sad cases,
and begin to demand reform where it is most needed, and where its
achievement will effect the most good. As was observed in the remarks
upon the subject of "Prevention of Conception," this evil has its origin
in "marital excesses," and in a disregard of the natural law which makes
the female the sole proprietor of her own body, and gives to her the
right to refuse the approaches of the male when unprepared to receive
them without doing violence to the laws of her being.
The Nature of the Crime.--"The married and well-to-do, who by means
of medicines and operations produce abortions at early periods of
pregnancy, have no excuse except the pretense that they do not consider
it murder until the child quickens.
"No, not murder, you say, for 'there has not been any life in the child.'
Do not attempt to evade, even to man, a crime which cannot be hidden
from the All-seeing. The poor mother has not herself felt the life of
the child perhaps, but that is a quibble only of the laws of man, founded
indeed upon the view, now universally recognized as incorrect, that
the child's life began when its movements were first strong enough to
be perceptible. There is, in fact, no moment after conception when it
can be said that the child has not life, and the crime of destroying
human life is as heinous and as sure before the period of 'quickening'
has been attained as afterward. But you still defend your horrible deed
by saying, 'Well, if there be, as you say, this mere animal life,
equivalent at the most to simple vitality, there is no mind, no soul
destroyed, and therefore, there is no crime committed.' Just so surely
as one would destroy and root out of existence all the fowl in the world
by destroying all the eggs in existence, so certain is it that you do
by your act destroy the animal man in the egg, and the soul which
animates it. When is the period that intelligence comes to the infant?
Are its feeble first strugglings any evidence of its presence? Has it
any appreciable quantity at birth? Has it any valuable, useful quantity
even when a year old? When, then, is it, that destruction is harmless
or comparatively sinless? While awaiting your metaphysical answer, I
will tell you when it is sinful. Murder is always sinful, and murder
is the willful destruction of a human being at any period of its
existence, from its earliest germinal embryo to its final, simple,
animal existence in aged decrepitude and complete mental
imbecility."[38]
[Footnote 38: Gardner.]
"There are those who would fain make light of this crime by attempting
to convince themselves and others that a child, while in embryo, has
only a sort of vegetative life, not yet endowed with thought, and the
ability to maintain an independent existence. If such a monstrous
philosophy as this presents any justification for such an act, then
the killing of a newly-born infant, or of an idiot, may be likewise
justified. The destruction of the life of an unborn human being, for
the reason that it is small, feeble, and innocently helpless, rather
aggravates than palliates the crime. Every act of this kind, with its
justification, is obviously akin to that savage philosophy which
accounts it a matter of no moment, or rather a duty, to destroy feeble
infants, or old, helpless fathers and mothers."[39]
[Footnote 39: Black.]
Instruments of Crime.--"The means through which abortions are effected
are various. Sometimes it is through potent drugs, extensively
advertised in newspapers claiming to be moral!--the advertisements so
adroitly worded as to convey under a caution the precise information
required of the liability of the drug to produce miscarriages.
Sometimes the information is conveyed through secret circulars; but
more commonly the deed is consummated by professed abortionists, who
advertise themselves as such through innuendo, or through gaining this
kind of repute by the frequent commission of the act. Not a few women,
deterred by lingering modesty or some sense of shame, attempt and
execute it upon themselves, and then volunteer to instruct and
encourage others to go and do likewise."[40]
[Footnote 40: Black.]
Results of this Unnatural Crime.--It is the universal testimony of
physicians that the effects of abortion are almost as deadly upon the
mother as upon the child. The amount of suffering is vastly greater;
for that of the child, if it suffer at all, is only momentary, in general,
while the mother is doomed to a life of suffering, of misery, if she
survives the shock of the terrible outrage against her nature. It has
been proved by statistics that the danger of immediate death is _fifteen
times as great as in natural childbirth_. A medical author of note
asserts that a woman suffers more injury from one abortion than she
would from twenty normal births. Says Dr. Gardner on this point:--
"We know that the popular idea is that women are worn out by the toil
and wear connected with the raising of large families, and we can
willingly concede something to this statement; but it is certainly far
more observable that the efforts at the present day, made to avoid
propagation, are ten thousand-fold more disastrous to the health and
constitution, to say nothing of the demoralization of mind and heart,
which cannot be estimated by red cheeks or physical vigor."
An Unwelcome Child.--But suppose the mother does not succeed in her
attempts against the life of her child, as she may not; what fearful
results may follow! Who can doubt that the murderous intent of the
mother will be stamped indelibly upon the character of the unwelcome
child, giving it a natural propensity for the commission of murderous
deeds?
Then again--sickening thought--suppose the attempts to destroy the
child are unsuccessful, resulting only in horrid mutilation of its
tender form; when such a child is born, what terrible evidences may
it bear in its crippled and misshapen body of the cruel outrage
perpetrated upon it! That such cases do occur is certain from the
following narrative, which we might confirm by others similar in
character:--