The Creation of a New and Irradiated Race
Ah, Love! could thou and I with fate conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,
Would not we shatter it to bits--and then
Remould it nearer to the Heart’s desire.
OMAR KHAYYAM.
On parents’ love for the helpless child depends the existence of our
race. Human parenthood necessitates not only the desire for offspring,
but the willing care of them during the long years while they are
helpless and dependent. Were this desire and willingness not deeply
implanted in us our race would become extinct, as in some strange way,
the higher type of ancient Greeks vanished from the world.
Not only throughout the lower creatures do we find the responsibilities
of parenthood increasing as we go up the scale towards the higher, but,
even in the various grades of highly civilized man, the responsibility
for the children is ever greater in proportion with the general culture
and position of the parents.
Not many years ago the labourer’s child could be set to work early and
could very shortly earn his keep; while at the same time the young
gentleman was an expense and care to his father and mother until he
had passed through the University of Oxford or Cambridge, and amongst
some even until he had made his “finishing” world tour. The trend of
legislation has continuously extended the age of irresponsible youth in
the lower and lower middle classes, until it now approaches that of the
middle and upper class youth. A stride in this direction was taken by
the last Education Act, which has made education compulsory throughout
the whole country to an age which is nearly university age.
I need not labour the resulting effect of the ever increasing
prolongation of youth. It is not only apparent but has received
sufficient treatment from the hands of various authors and thinkers.
Its corollary, however, has still not received that clear and direct
thought which its significance demands. Parenthood under the present
_régime_, is not only an increasing responsibility and expense, it
has become so great a strain upon the resources of those who have for
themselves and their children a high standard of living that it is
tending to become a rare privilege for some who would otherwise gladly
propagate large families.
As Dean Inge reminded us (_Outspoken Essays_, 1919), there was a stage
in the high civilization of Greece when slaves were only allowed to
rear a child as a reward for their good behaviour. I find a curious
parallel to this in the treatment of a section of our society by our
present community.
Crushed by the burden of taxation which they have not the resources to
meet and to provide for children also: crushed by the national cost of
the too numerous children of those who do not contribute to the public
funds by taxation, yet who recklessly bring forth from an inferior
stock individuals who are not self-supporting, the middle and superior
artisan classes have, without perceiving it, come almost to take the
position of that ancient slave population. It is only as a reward for
their thrift and foresight, for their care and self-denial that they
find themselves able (that is allowed by financial circumstances) to
have one or perhaps two children. Hence by a strange parallel working
of divers forces, the best, the thriftiest, the most serious-minded,
the most desiring of parenthood are to-day those who are forced by
circumstances into the position of the ancient slave and allowed
to rear but one or two children as a result perhaps of a lifetime
of valuable service and of loving union with a wife well fitted to
bear more offspring. While on the other hand, society allows the
diseased, the racially negligent, the thriftless, the careless, the
feeble-minded, the very lowest and worst members of the community,
to produce innumerable tens of thousands of stunted, warped, and
inferior infants. If they live, a large proportion of these are doomed
from their very physical inheritance to be at the best but partly
self-supporting, and thus to drain the resources of those classes
above them which have a sense of responsibility. The better classes,
freed from the cost of the institutions, hospitals, prisons and so
on, principally filled by the inferior stock, would be able to afford
to enlarge their own families, and at the same time not only to
save misery but to multiply a hundredfold the contribution in human
life-value to the riches of the State.
The immensity of the power of parenthood, both on the personal lives
which it brings into existence, and on the community of which each
individual is to form a part, is not yet perceived by our Statesmen in
its true perspective.
The power of parenthood ought no longer to be exercised by _all_,
however inferior, as an “individual right.” It is profoundly a duty
and a privilege, and it is essentially the concern of the whole
community. It should be the policy of the community to encourage in
every way the parenthood of those whose circumstances and conditions
are such that there is a reasonable anticipation that they will give
rise to healthy, well-endowed future citizens. It should be the policy
of the community to discourage from parenthood all whose circumstances
are such as would make probable the introduction of weakened, diseased
or debased future citizens. It is the urgent duty of the community
to make parenthood impossible for those whose mental and physical
conditions are such that there is well-nigh a certainty that their
offspring must be physically and mentally tainted, if not utterly
permeated by disease. That the community should allow syphilitic
parents to bring forth a sequence of blind syphilitic infants is a
state of affairs so monstrous that it would be hardly credible were it
not a fact.
Parenthood, with the divine gift of love in its power, with the
glorious potentialities of handing on a radiant, wholesome, beautiful
youth should be a sacred and preserved gift, a privilege only to be
exercised by those who rationally comprehend the counter-balancing
duties. But so long as parenthood is kept outside the realm of rational
thought and reasoned action, so long will we as a race slide at an
ever-increasing speed towards the utter deterioration of our stock
through the reckless increase of the debased, which is necessarily
counter-balanced by the unnatural limiting of the families of the more
educated and responsible, whose sense of duty to the unborn forbids
them to bring into the world children whom they cannot educate and
environ at least as well as they themselves were reared.
In earlier generations the child was taught to speak of its parents in
a respectful and grateful tone as the “august authors of its being,”
but this right and proper instruction in reverence was coupled with
an arbitrary disposal of the child, and a certain harshness in its
training against which the later generations have revolted. As is usual
the reformers have deviated from rectitude in the opposite direction,
so that to-day to find children with deep respect for their parents
is uncommon. Reverence is being exacted by some rather from the
parent towards the child as a fresh, new and unspoilt being. This too
often results in spoiling the child, which is an equally foolish and
hampering proceeding. The child should be taught from its earliest days
profound respect, reverence and gratitude towards its parents, and in
particular towards its mother, for of her very life she gave it the
incomparable gift of life. True parents give the child the best and
freshest and most beautiful impulses of their lives, and, at the cost
of bodily anguish the mother bears it, and its parents for long years
nurture it, sacrificing many enjoyments which they might have but for
the cost and care of rearing it. This should be realized by the child,
who then cannot but feel gratitude to and reverence for the authors of
its being.
The sheer beauty of the world, were there no other gain from living, is
so great that the gift of eyes and a mind to perceive it should place
the recipient of that gift for ever in a reverential debt towards the
pair who gave.
But the value of the beauty of life, and a just appreciation of the
immense gift which parenthood confers cannot be realized by all.
To-day alas, millions are born into circumstances so wretched that
life can scarcely involve a perception of beauty, or a probability of
moral action and social service. Also many myriads of children are
born of parents to whom they can feel that they owe nothing, because
they know or inwardly perceive that they were not desired, that they
were not profoundly and nobly loved throughout their coming, that they
were hurled into this existence through accident, self-indulgence or
stupidity. Yet parenthood which grants life even on these terms is a
wonderful power, a cruel and relentless force perverted from its divine
possibilities.
Youth tends ever to right itself if it but escape the taint of the
profound racial diseases, and the gift of a well-conditioned body is
the creation of an incomparable set of co-ordinated powers in a world
in which the potentialities for the use of those powers is magical.
Innumerable are the efforts at present being made by countless
different societies, official bodies and individual reformers to
diminish the ever increasing ill-health and deterioration of our race,
but their efforts are a fight on the losing side unless the fundamental
and hitherto uncontrollable factors which make for health are there.
Doctors may cure every disease known to humanity, but while they are
so doing, fresh diseases, further modifications of destructive germs,
may spring into existence, the possibility of which has recently been
demonstrated by French scientists who have experimented on the rapid
changes which may be induced in “germs.”
Prisons and reformatories, municipal milk, the feeding of school
children, improvement in housing, reform of our marriage laws, schools
for mothers, even schools for fathers, garden cities--not all these
useful and necessary things together and many more added to them
will ever touch the really profound sources of our race, will ever
cause freedom from degeneracy and ill-health, will ever create that
fine, glorious and beautiful race of men and women which hovers in
the dreams of our reformers. Is then this dream out of reach and
impossible; are then all our efforts wasted? No, the dream is not
impossible of fulfilment; but, at present, our efforts are almost
entirely wasted because _they are built upon the shifting sand and not
upon the steady rock_.
The reform, _the one central reform_, which will make all the others of
avail and make their work successful _is the endowing of motherhood,
not with money but with the knowledge of her own power_.
_For the power of a mother, consciously exerted in the voluntary
procreation and joyous bearing of her children is the greatest power
in the world._ It is through its conscious and deliberate exercise,
and through that alone, that the race may step from its present
entanglements on to a higher plane, where bodies will be not only a
delight to their possessors, but efficient tools in the service of the
souls which temporarily inhabit them.
I maintain that this wonderful rejuvenescence and reform of the race
need not be a dim and distant dream of the future. It is hovering so
close at hand that it is actually within reach of those who to-day are
in their young maturity; we, at present in the flesh may link hands
with grandchildren belonging to a generation so wonderful, so endowed,
and so improved out of recognition that the miseries and the depravity
of human nature, to-day so wide-spread, may appear like a black and
hideous memory of the past, as incredible to them as the habits of
cannibals are to us.
An ideal too distant, too remote, may interest the dreamer and the
reformer possibly, but it cannot inspire a whole nation. An ideal
within the range of possibility, that each one of us who lives a full
lifetime may actually perceive, such an ideal can spur and fire the
imagination, not only of our own nation, but of the world. It is my
prayer that I may present such a racial ideal, not only to my own
people but to humanity. It is my prayer that I may live to see in the
generation of my grandchildren a humanity from which almost all the
most blackening and distressing elements have been eliminated, and
in which the vernal bodily beauty and unsullied spiritual power of
those then growing up will surpass anything that we know to-day except
among the rare and gifted few. This is not a wild dream; it is a real
potentiality almost within reach. The materialization of this vital
racial vision is in the hands of the mothers for the next twenty or
thirty years.
If every woman will but consciously and deliberately exercise the
powers of her motherhood after learning of those powers; if she bear
only those children which she and her mate ardently desire; if she
refuse to bear any but these, and if she so space these children
that she herself rests and recovers vitality between their births,
and during their coming she lives in such a way as I have indicated
in the preceding chapters, and if at the same time the deadly and
horrible scourges of the venereal diseases and the multitude of
ramifications of racial baseness are eliminated _as they can be_, then
with a comparatively small percentage of accidents and unforeseeable
errors, the quality of those born will enormously improve, and by a
second generation all should be already far on the highway to new and
wonderful powers, which are to-day almost unsuspected.
What are the greatest dangers which jeopardize the materialization of
this glorious dream of a human stock represented only by well-formed,
desired, well-endowed beautiful men and women? Two main dangers are in
the way of its consummation; the first is ignorance. It is difficult
to reach the untutored mind, to teach a public hardened and deadened
to callousness and the lack of dreams of their own; even though if one
could but reach them it would be possible to make them understand.
A second and almost greater danger is not a simple ignorance, but the
inborn incapacity which lies in the vast and ever increasing stock of
degenerate, feeble-minded and unbalanced who are now in our midst and
who devastate social customs. These populate most rapidly, these tend
proportionately to increase, and these are like the parasite upon the
healthy tree sapping its vitality. These produce less than they consume
and are able only to flourish and reproduce so long as the healthier
produce food for them; but by ever weakening the human stock, in the
end they will succumb with the fine structure which they have destroyed.
There appear then two obstacles which might block the materialization
of my racial vision; on the one hand the ignorance of those who
have latent powers. This only needs to be stirred by knowledge and
the inspiration of an ideal, to become potent. This obstacle is not
unsurmountable. If one but speaks in sufficiently burning words, if
one but writes sufficiently contagiously, the ideas must spread with
ever increasing acceleration. Ignorance must be vanquished by winged
knowledge. I hold it to be the duty of the dreamer of great dreams
not only to express them in such a way that cognate souls may also
perceive them. It is the duty of a seer to embody his message in such
a form that its beauty is apparent and the vision can be seen by all
the people. The infectiousness of disease, the contagion of destructive
and horrible bacterial germs have become a commonplace in our social
consciousness, and we have forgotten, and our artists have in recent
years tended ever more and more to forget that the highest form of art
should also be infectious. Goodness, beauty and prophetic vision have
as strong a contagious quality as disease if they are embodied in a
form rendered vital by the mating of truth and beauty.
To overcome mere ignorance in others is, therefore, by no means a
hopeless task, and it is the valiant work of the artist-prophet. Youth
is the time to catch the contagion of goodness. To youth I appeal.
The other obstacle presents a deeper and more difficult task. It must
deal with the terrible debasing power of the inferior, the depraved and
feeble-minded, to whom reason means nothing and can mean nothing, who
are thriftless, unmanageable and appallingly prolific. Yet if the good
in our race is not to be swamped and destroyed by the debased as the
fine tree by the parasite, this prolific depravity must be curbed. How
shall this be done? A very few quite simple Acts of Parliament could
deal with it.
Three short and concise Bills would be sufficient to afford the most
urgent social service for the preservation of our race. They should
be simply worded and based on possibilities well within the grasp of
modern science.
The idea of sterilization has not yet been very generally understood
or accepted, although it is an idea which our civilization urgently
needs to assimilate. I think that a large part of the objections to
it, often made passionately and eloquently by those from whom one
would otherwise have expected a more intelligent attitude, is due to
complete ignorance of the facts. Even otherwise instructed persons
confuse sterilization with castration. The arguments which to-day in
a chance discussion of the subject are always brought forward against
sterilization have been, in my experience, only those which apply to
castration. To castrate any male is, of course, not only to deprive him
of his manhood and thus to injure his personal consciousness, but to
remove bodily organs, the loss of which adversely affects his mentality
and which will also affect the internal secretions which have a
profound influence on his whole organization. I fully endorse the views
of the opponents of this process.
It is, however, neither necessary to castrate nor is it suggested by
those who, like myself, would like to see the sterilization of those
totally unfit for parenthood made an immediate possibility, indeed made
compulsory. As Dr. Havelock Ellis stated in an article in the _Eugenics
Review_, Vol. I, No. 3, October 1909, pp. 203-206, sterilization under
proper conditions is a very different and much simpler matter and one
which has no deleterious and far reaching effects on the whole system.
The operation is trivial, scarcely painful, and does not debar the
subject from experiencing all his normal reaction in ordinary union; it
only prevents the procreation of children.
It has been found in some States of America, and as I know from private
correspondents in this country, there are men who would welcome the
relief from the ever present anxiety of potential parenthood which they
know full well would be ruinous to the future generation.
There is also the possibility of sterilization by the direct action
of “X” rays. At present sterility is known as an unfortunate danger
to those engaged in scientific research with radium, but it might,
under control, be wisely used as a painless method of sterilization.
This may prove of particular value for women in whom the operation
corresponding to the severance of the ducts of the man is more serious.
It appears however, not always to be permanent in its effect. In some
circumstances this may be an advantage, in others a disadvantage.
With reference to the sterilizing effect of “X”-rays, the following
quotation from F. H. Marshall, _The Physiology of Reproduction_, 1910,
is pertinent:--
A more special cause of sterility in men is one which operates in
the case of workers with radium or the Röntgen rays. Several years
ago Albers-Schönberg noticed that the X-rays induced sterility
in guinea pigs and rabbits, but without interfering with the
sexual potency. These observations have been confirmed by other
investigators, who have shown, further, that the azoöspermia is
due to the degeneration of the cells lining the seminal canals. In
men it has been proved that mere presence in an X-ray atmosphere
incidental to radiography sooner or later causes a condition
of complete sterility, but without any apparent diminution of
sexual potency. As Gordon observes, for those working in an X-ray
atmosphere adequate protection for all parts of the body not
directly exposed for examination or treatment is indispensable,
but, on the other hand, the X-rays afford a convenient, painless
and harmless method of inducing sterility, in cases in which it is
desirable to effect this result.
When Bills are passed to ensure the sterility of the hopelessly
rotten and racially diseased, and to provide for the education of the
child-bearing woman so that she spaces her children healthily, our race
will rapidly quell the stream of depraved, hopeless and wretched lives
which are at present ever increasing in proportion in our midst. Before
this stream at present the thoughtful shrink but do nothing. Such
action as will be possible when these bills are passed will not only
increase the relative _proportion_ of the sound and healthy among us
who may consciously contribute to the higher and more beautiful forms
of the human race, but by the elimination of wasteful lives which are
to-day seldom self-supporting, and which are so largely the cause of
the cost and outlay of public money in their institutional treatment
and their partial relief, will check an increasing drain on our
national resources. The setting free of this public money would make
it possible for those now too heavily taxed to reproduce their own and
more valuable kinds.
The miserable, the degenerate, the utterly wretched in body and mind,
who when reproducing multiply the misery and evil of the world, would
be the first to be thankful for the escape such legislation would offer
from the wretchedness entailed not only on their offspring but on
themselves. The Labour Party, all Progressives, and all Conservatives
who desire to conserve the good can unite to support measures so
directly calculated to improve the physical condition, the mental
happiness and the general well-being of the human race.
Even to-day almost all the thriftiest and better of the working class,
and the artisan class in particular, are already in the ranks of those
who are sponged upon, and to some extent taxed, for the upkeep of
the incompetent, and it is just from among the best artisan and from
the middle class that the most serious minded parents and those who
recognize their racial responsibilities are principally to be found.
There is throughout the whole Labour movement, as throughout the less
vocal but deeper feeling of the middle class, a passionate desire to
eliminate the misery and human degradation which on every hand to-day
saddens the tender conscience. The limiting of their own families to
meet the pressure of circumstances will never achieve their desires.
The best to-day are making less and less headway, and the inferior are
increasing more and more in proportion to them.
Directly, however, the need for such legislation as I have outlined
above is realized, and such legislation is passed, then the tide will
be turned. Then, at last, we shall begin to see the elimination of the
horror and degradation of humanity, which at present is apparently so
hopeless and permanent a blot upon the world. And then, and then at
once, will the positive effects of the conscious working of love and
beauty and desired motherhood begin to take effect. The evolution of
humanity will take a leap forward when we have around us only fine and
beautiful young people, all of whom have been conceived, carried and
born in true homes by conscious, powerful and voluntary mothers.
Meanwhile the prison reformers, psycho-analysts, doctors, teachers and
reformers of all sorts will be going on with their reforms, and will be
claiming this and that wonderful improvement in the school children,
and they will probably never realize that it will not be their reforms
which have worked these apparent miracles; it will be the change in
the attitude of the mother, the return to the position of power of the
mother, her voluntary motherhood, the conscious and deliberate creation
by the mother and her mate of the fine and splendid race which to-day,
as God’s prophet, I see in a vision and which might so speedily be
materialized on earth.
APPENDICES
A. PHYSICAL SIGNS OF COMING MOTHERHOOD.
B. ON BIRTH.
C. SUGGESTIONS FOR CALCULATING DATE OF ANTICIPATED BIRTH.
APPENDIX A
PHYSICAL SIGNS OF COMING MOTHERHOOD
Sometimes a woman is doubtful whether or not she is about to become a
mother, and may be too shy to ask those with whom she is associated.
She should, if it is possible, seek the advice of a highly qualified
midwife or medical practitioner, but this is not always possible, and
it may be useful for her to know the following signs:--
The first and most widely recognized indication that conception has
taken place is “missing a period” or the cessation of the menstrual
flow, while, at the same time, there is no ill-health. A woman may even
feel unusually bright and well.
There is generally an increase in the size of the breast, followed
as the months progress by a very noticeable increase in the size and
bright blue colour of the veins round the breast, and also a darkening
in colour and a changing from pink to brownish tint of the area round
the centre of the breast.
After the third month, there is visible a steadily increasing
enlargement of the lower part of the body, but, as this also happens
with some forms of illness, this alone and without the other signs is
not proof that motherhood has commenced.
“Quickening” or the movements of the child, are a much better
indication of motherhood, and these are generally to be perceived about
the twentieth week, or roughly half-way through the whole period of
prenatal life; but see further the remarks in Chapter XIII, p. 113.
The perception of the child’s heart beats is absolute proof of coming
motherhood. These may be perceived after the fourth or fifth month
quite readily by a nurse or other observer, though the mother herself
can but seldom perceive them.
“Morning Sickness,” which is so often experienced, and in most books
for the “expectant mother” is quoted as one of the first signs of
pregnancy, _should never occur at all_--see Chapter XI--although
unfortunately it is true that it does frequently occur in women who are
bearing children under present conditions.
APPENDIX B
ON BIRTH
The usual agonies of child birth vary greatly in extent according
to the structure of the woman. But, as was shown in Chapter II, the
tendency already is present, and probably will increase, for this to
be an almost intolerable strain upon the woman. Tardily indeed have
efforts to relieve her agonies in child birth been made; Queen Victoria
took a grave and adventurous step when she bore one of her children
under chloroform. Chloroform, however, only deadens consciousness at a
comparatively late stage in child birth, and its use through the many
long hours, even perhaps sometimes days of agony which precede the
later stages is not often possible. It is, therefore, for some types of
women a very insufficient narcotic.
Natural “painless Child Birth” is, of course, the ideal, and is claimed
to be the result of the “fruit and rice diet,” see _Tokology_ by Dr.
Alice Stockham, but although this greatly reduces the pain for many,
and undoubtedly makes the months of pregnancy easier, it cannot make
birth anything but a torture if the proportion of the child’s head to
the bony arch is above a given limit. The “Christian Science” claim
for not only painless but bloodless birth has been reported to me, but
never at first hand, and I have not yet had the first-hand statements
of women who are said to have experienced it.
“Twilight Sleep,” a comparatively recent discovery, has been much
advocated, much praised and much blamed. There may be types of women
who find it advantageous, but the fact that it necessitates going to
a nursing home, away from home, is very much against its use under
ideal circumstances. For those who have no home, or a sordid and
overcrowded one, a nursing home may be a place of refuge. “Twilight
Sleep” (scopolamine-morphine) is, however, for the more sensitive type
of woman, an extremely unreliable drug, which may frequently take no
narcotic effect upon the patient, who suffers added agony as the result
of relying upon it, and it may be very dangerous for the child.
There is also the method of birth through the soft part of the body,
avoiding the birth of the child through the bony structure altogether.
This operation is described as Cesarean section, and involves incision
both through the abdominal walls and through the walls of the womb.
For some women with very small bones Cesarean section is necessary if
they are to produce living children. Even for women who, by paying
the price of agony, can produce children by normal birth, this method
may be found very advantageous. I see a possibility of its widely
extended future use. In hundreds, perhaps thousands of years hence when
the child’s head will be proportionately even larger in comparison
with the mother’s bones than it is to-day, it may indeed be the only
method which will stand between the higher human races and their total
extinction.
There is a certain amount of rather gossipy opinion that women who are
spared the full torture of child birth do not have equally passionate
love for the child. This, however, is nonsense. Love depends far more
on the mother’s desire for parenthood at the time of the child’s
conception and her feelings towards it all through the months of
waiting than on the hours of birth, although the appealing weakness
and fascination of a baby may win a deeper love than the mother-to-be
expected to feel for her child.
APPENDIX C
SUGGESTIONS FOR CALCULATING THE DATE OF ANTICIPATED BIRTH
The leading authority in the _Manual of Human Embryology_, edited by
Franz Keibel and Franklin P. Mall in two volumes, London, 1910, says:--
“In ancient times it was generally believed that the duration
of pregnancy in man, unlike that in lower animals, was of very
uncertain length; and it was not until the seventeenth century that
it was more accurately fixed, by Fidele of Palermo, at forty weeks,
counting from the last menstrual period. In the next century Haller
found that if pregnancy is reckoned from the time of a fruitful
copulation it is usually thirty-nine weeks, and rarely forty weeks
in duration. In general these results are fully confirmed by the
thousands of careful data collected during the nineteenth century.”
* * * * *
“However, from thousands of records it is found that the mean
duration of a pregnancy varies in first and second pregnancies, is
more protracted in healthy women, in married women, in winter, and
in the upper classes.”
* * * * *
“From these figures it is seen that most pregnancies take place
during the first week after menstruation, and that the duration
of pregnancy is longer if copulation takes place towards the end
of the intermenstrual period. And this is explained if we assume
that in the first week, especially the first few days after the
cessation of menstruation, the ovum is in the upper end of the
tube awaiting the sperm and that conception immediately follows
copulation. When the fruitful copulation takes place in the latter
two weeks of the month the opposite is usually the case; the sperm
wanders to the ovary and there awaits the ovum; and, therefore, on
an average, pregnancy is prolonged in this group of cases, when
determined from the time of copulation.”
* * * * *
“In determining the age of human embryos it is probably more
nearly correct to count from the _end_ of the last period, for
all evidence points to that time as the most probable at which
pregnancy takes place.”
On the whole it is generally found that 280 days (_i.e._, 40 weeks)
can be reckoned as the average period during which the child develops
internally if the date is counted from the first day of the last
menstrual period and 269 days if estimated from the date of actual
union.
Leuckart tabulated results from a large number of births which took
place within the first ten months of marriage, and found that there
was a maximum number of births on the 275th day, then a decrease and
a second maximum on the 293rd day. Nevertheless, in spite of careful
reckoning, there are, as will be recognized, many sources of error, and
medical men and nurses are often wisely cautious of giving any exact
date for an anticipated birth; sometimes too cautious even to suggest
the week within which the birth will take place. I have known a good
many mothers, however, who were much more accurately certain about this
point than their attendants, and have found that the birth took place
exactly on the day they anticipated. As an illustration of this, I give
the answer from one of my correspondents, both of whose children were
born on the exact day she anticipated. I asked her how she estimated
these periods, and she said:--
“I simply took old Dr. Chevasse’s rule which he gives in _Advice to
a Wife_; you know how he puts the date of conception and opposite
it the probable date of birth. I went by the first union after the
last period. It so happened that my husband was seedy and there
was no union for a fortnight after the end of the period. I took
that first union as the date of conception and looking up the date
in Chevasse and the corresponding date of birth opposite, I found
it to be August 20th, and sure enough on August 20th he was born.
With the second boy, the union took place the day after the last
period, and I took that as the starting date and against it I found
January 21st and on January 21st he arrived in spite of the doctors
insisting in each case that it would be three weeks earlier. What I
do is, I always make a mark in my diary against the date of first
union after every period. Then when I had missed a period and so
knew that there was probably conception, I could at once tell the
probable date.”
The table Chevasse quoted from Galabin is as follows--
From Jan. 1st to Oct. 1st = 273 (274) days, add 5 (4) days
„ Feb. 1st to Nov. 1st = 273 (274) „ „ 5 (4) „
„ Mar. 1st to Dec. 1st = 275 „ „ 3 „
„ Apl. 1st to Jan. 1st = 275 „ „ 3 „
„ May 1st to Feb. 1st = 276 „ „ 2 „
„ June 1st to Mar. 1st = 273 (274) „ „ 5 (4) „
„ July 1st to Apl. 1st = 274 (275) „ „ 4 (3) „
„ Aug. 1st to May 1st = 273 (274) „ „ 5 (4) „
„ Sep. 1st to June 1st = 273 (274) „ „ 5 (4) „
„ Oct. 1st to July 1st = 273 (274) „ „ 5 (4) „
„ Nov. 1st to Aug. 1st = 273 (274) „ „ 5 (4) „
„ Dec. 1st to Sep. 1st = 274 (275) „ „ 4 (3) „
_Printed in Great Britain by_
UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED, THE GRESHAM PRESS, WOKING AND LONDON
* * * * *
Transcriber's Note
The following apparent errors have been corrected:
p. 2 "hearts’ desire" changed to "hearts desire"
p. 26 "undertsand" changed to "understand"
p. 73 "incapacities is," changed to "incapacities, is"
p. 124 "diappointments" changed to "diappointments"
p. 130 "parent this" changed to "parent: this"
p. 148 "agggravation" changed to "aggravation"
p. 150 "ffower" changed to "flower"
p. 154 "want to to" changed to "want to"
p. 218 "ignorance" changed to "ignorance."
p. 233 "Franz, Keibel" changed to "Franz Keibel"
The following possible errors have not been changed:
p. 4 millenium
p. 34 co-incidently
p. 132 August 24 1893
p. 235 follows--
The following are used inconsistently in the text:
lifelong and life-long
overstrained and over-strained
prenatal and pre-natal
shamefaced and shame-faced
X-rays, “X” rays and “X”-rays
End of Project Gutenberg's Radiant Motherhood, by Marie Carmichael Stopes