[Illustration: THE PATIENT MOTHER.]
1. The question is always asked, "Can Conception be prevented at all
times?" Certainly, this is possible; but such an interference with nature's
laws is inadmissible, and perhaps never to be justified in any case
whatever, except in cases of deformity or disease.
2. If the parties of a marriage are both feeble and so adapted to each
other that their children are deformed, insane or idiots, then to beget
offspring would be a flagrant wrong; if the mother's health is in such a
condition as to forbid the right of laying the burden of motherhood upon
her, then medical aid may safely come to her relief. If the man, however,
respects his wife, he ought to come to her relief without the counsel of a
physician. {241}
3. FORBEARANCE.--Often before the mother has recovered from the effects of
bearing, nursing and rearing one child, ere she has regained proper tone
and vigor of body and mind, she is unexpectedly overtaken, surprised by the
manifestation of symptoms which again indicate pregnancy. Children thus
begotten cannot become hardy and long-lived. By the love that parents may
feel for their posterity, by the wishes for their success, by the hopes for
their usefulness, by every consideration for their future well-being, let
them exercise precaution and forbearance until the wife becomes
sufficiently healthy and enduring to bequeath her own rugged, vital stamina
to the child she bears in love.
4. IMPOSTORS.--During the past few years hundreds of books and pamphlets
have been written on the subject, claiming that new remedies had been
discovered for the prevention of conception, etc., but these are all money
making devices to deceive the public, and enrich the pockets of miserable
and unprincipled impostors.
5. THE FOLLIES OF PREVENTION.--Dr. Pancoast, an eminent authority, says:
"The truth is, there is no medicine taken internally capable of preventing
conception, and the person who asserts to the contrary, not only speaks
falsely, but is both a knave and a fool. It is true enough that remedies
may be taken to produce abortion after conception occurs; but those who
prescribe and those who resort to such desperate expedients, can only be
placed in the category of lunatics and assassins!"
6. PATENT MEDICINES.--If nature does not promptly respond, there are many
patent medicines which when taken at the time the monthly flow is to begin,
will produce the desired result. Let women beware; for it is only a
question of a few years when their constitution, complexion, and health
will be a sorry evidence of their folly. The woman who continually takes a
drug to prevent conception, cannot retain her natural complexion; her eyes
will become dull, her cheeks flabby, and she will show various evidences of
poor health, and her sexual organs will soon become permanently impaired
and hopelessly diseased.
7. FOOLISH DREAD OF CHILDREN.--What is more deplorable and pitiable than an
old couple childless. Young people dislike the care and confinement of
children and prefer society and social entertainments and thereby do great
injustice and injury to their health and fit themselves in later years to
visit infirmities and diseases upon their children. The vigilant and rigid
measures which have to be resorted to in order to prevent conception for a
period of years unfits many a wife for the production of healthy children.
{242}
8. HAVING CHILDREN under proper circumstances never ruins the health and
happiness of any woman. In fact, womanhood is incomplete without them. She
may have a dozen or more, and still have better health than before
marriage. It is having them too close together, and when she is not in a
fit state, that her health gives way. Sometimes the mother is diseased; the
outlet from the womb, as a result of laceration by a previous child-birth,
is frequently enlarged, thus allowing conception to take place very
readily, and hence she has children in rapid succession.
Besides the wrong to the mother in having children in such rapid
succession, it is a great injustice to the babe in the womb and the one at
the breast that they should follow each other so quickly that one is
conceived while the other is nursing. One takes the vitality of the other;
neither has sufficient nourishment, and both are started in life stunted
and incomplete.
9. "THE DESIRABILITY AND PRACTICABILITY of limiting offspring," says Dr.
Stockham, "are the subject of frequent inquiry. Fewer and better children
are desired by right-minded parents. Many men and women, wise in other
things of the world, permit generation as a chance result of copulation,
without thought of physical or mental conditions to be transmitted to the
child. Coition, the one important act of all others, carrying with it the
most vital results, is usually committed for selfish gratification. Many a
drunkard owes his life-long appetite for alcohol to the fact that the
inception of his life could be traced to a night of dissipation on the part
of his father. Physical degeneracy and mental derangements are too often
caused by the parents producing offspring while laboring under great mental
strain or bodily fatigue. Drunkenness and licentiousness are frequently the
heritage of posterity. Future generations demand that such results be
averted by better pre-natal influences. The world is groaning under the
curse of chance parenthood. It is due to posterity that procreation be
brought under the control of reason and conscience.
10. "IT HAS BEEN FEARED THAT A KNOWLEDGE of means to prevent conception
would, if generally diffused, be abused by women; that they would to so
great an extent escape motherhood as to bring about social disaster. This
fear is not well founded. The maternal instinct is inherent and sovereign
in woman. Even the pre-natal influences of a murderous intent on the part
of parents scarcely ever {243} eradicate it. With this natural desire for
children, we believe few women would abuse the knowledge or privilege of
controlling conception. Although women shrink from forced maternity, and
from the bearing of children under the great burden of suffering, as well
as other adverse conditions, it is rare to find a woman who is not greatly
disappointed if she does not, some time in her life, wear the crown of
motherhood.
"An eminent lady teacher, in talking to her pupils, once said: 'The
greatest calamity that can befall a woman is never to have a child. The
next greatest calamity is to have one only.' From my professional
experience I am happy to testify that more women seek to overcome causes of
sterility than to obtain knowledge of limiting the size of the family or
means to destroy the embryo. Also, if consultation for the latter is
sought, it is usually at the instigation of the husband. Believing in the
rights of unborn children, and in the maternal instinct, I am consequently
convinced that no knowledge should be withheld that will secure proper
conditions for the best parenthood.
11. "MANY OF THE MEANS USED TO PREVENT conception are injurious, and often
lay the foundation for a train of physical ailments. Probably no one means
is more serious in its results than the practice of withdrawal, or the
discharge of the semen externally to the vagina. The act is incomplete and
unnatural, and is followed by results similar to and as disastrous as those
consequent upon _masturbation_. In the male it may result in impotence, in
the female in sterility. In both sexes many nervous symptoms are produced,
such as headache, defective vision, dyspepsia, insomnia, loss of memory,
etc. Very many cases of uterine diseases can be attributed solely to this
practice. The objection to the use of the syringe is that if the sperm has
passed into the uterus the fluid cannot reach it. A cold fluid may, in some
instances, produce contractions to throw it off, but cannot be relied
upon."
12. IS IT EVER RIGHT TO PREVENT CONCEPTION? We submit the following case of
the _Juke_ family, mostly of New York State, as related by R. L. Dugdale,
when a member of the Prison Association, and let the reader judge for
himself:
"It was traced out by painstaking research that from one woman called
Margaret, who, like Topsy, merely 'growed' without pedigree as a pauper in
a village on the upper Hudson, about eighty-five years ago, there descended
673 {244} children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, of whom 200
were criminals of the dangerous class, 280 adult paupers, and fifty
prostitutes, while 300 children of her lineage died prematurely. The last
fact proves to what extent in this family nature was kind to the rest of
humanity in saving it from a still larger aggregation of undesirable and
costly members, for it is estimated that the expense to the State of the
descendants of Maggie was over a million dollars, and the State itself did
something also towards preventing a greater expense by the restrain
exercised upon the criminals, paupers, and idiots of the family during a
considerable portion of their lives."
13. THE LEGAL ASPECT.--By the Revised Statutes of the United States it is
provided "that no obscene, * * * or lascivious book, picture, or any
article or thing designed or intended for the prevention of conception or
producing of abortion shall be carried in the mail, and any person who
shall knowingly deposit or cause to be deposited for mailing or delivery
any of the hereinbefore mentioned things shall be guilty of misdemeanor,"
etc. In New Jersey, Oregon, South Carolina, Texas and District of Columbia
we find no local law against abortion. Nine states, viz.: New Hampshire,
Connecticut, New York, Indiana, Wisconsin, Dakotas, Wyoming and California
punish the woman upon whom the abortion is attempted; while Massachusetts,
New York, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Nebraska, Kansas and California punish
the advertising or furnishing of means for the prevention of conception;
and Ohio makes it a crime to even have such means in one's possession.
There is exception made in favor of every case where the early birth of the
infant is necessary to save the life of the mother. It will be noticed that
the common law punishes the furnishing or advertising of means for the
prevention of conception, and hence regards it as a crime. There is,
however, no ban of the civil law on Nature's law as laid down by Nature's
God and discovered by medical science, which we here make known.
14. IS NATURE'S METHOD RELIABLE?--Dr. Cowan says: "Sexual excitement
hastens the premature ripening and meeting of the germ cell with the sperm
cell, and impregnation may result, although intercourse occurs only in the
specified two weeks' absence of the egg from the uterus."
This is just possible under certain peculiar circumstances of diseased
conditions, or after long separation of husband and wife. However, it
seldom happens, and married people in normal health, temperate in the
sexual relation, desirous of controlling the size of their family, can
usually depend upon this law.
{245}
15. MODERATION.--Continence, self-control, a willingness to deny
himself--that is what is required from the husband. But a thousand voices
reach us from suffering women in all parts of the land that this will not
suffice; that men refuse thus to restrain themselves; that it leads to a
loss of domestic happiness and to illegal amour, or it is injurious
physically and morally; that, in short, such advice is useless because
impracticable.
16. NATURE'S METHOD.--To such we reply that Nature herself has provided, to
some extent, against over-production, and that it is well to avail
ourselves of her provision. It is well known that women, when nursing,
rarely become pregnant, and for this reason, if for no other, women should
nurse their own children, and continue the period until the child is at
least nine months or a year old. However, the nursing, if continued too
long, weakens both the mother and the child, and, moreover, ceases to
accomplish the end for which we now recommend it.
17. ANOTHER PROVISION OF NATURE.--For a certain period between her monthly
illness, every woman is sterile. Conception may be avoided by refraining
from coition except for this particular number of days, and there will be
no evasion of natural intercourse, no resort to disgusting practices, and
nothing degrading. The following facts have been established, without a
doubt: The Graafian Vesicle, containing the egg in the ovary, enlarges
during menstruation and bursts open to let the egg escape usually on the
first day after the flow ceases, and seldom, if ever, later than the fourth
day. It then takes from two to six days for the egg to pass down through
the Fallopian tube into the womb, where it remains from two to six days,
when, if not impregnated, it passes down through the vagina from the body.
After the egg has passed from the body, conception is not possible until
after the next menstrual flow.
The period, therefore, from after the sixteenth to within three days of the
following menstrual discharge is one of almost absolute safety. We say
within three days of the next menstruation, because the male seminal fluid
may be retained there till the egg leaves the ovary, and in that way
impregnation might follow. Impregnation would, however, rarely occur if the
period was extended to from the twelfth day after menstruation close up to
one day before it began again.
The above is the only physiological method (and it is no secret to a great
many people) by which conception can be limited, without the employment of
such means as involve danger and serious evils.
18. WARNING.--Let women be warned in the most emphatic manner against the
employment of the secret methods constantly advertised by quacks. Such
means are the almost certain cause of painful uterine diseases and of
shortened life. They are productive of more misery by far than
over-production itself.
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[Illustration: [1]New Revelation for Women.]