Considerations of health, and uncertainty as to the rearing of her
children, or any other personal cause may urge the mother of a
family to avoid frequent births. For this purpose precautions are
required by the married partners; and these means may be employed by
the wife as well as by the husband. These methods are not absolutely
infallible. (The only infallible methods are operations: viz., the
obstructing by a ligature or by compression of the Fallopian tubes;
the extirpation of the uterus or the ovaries in the female, and of
the testes in the male.) They must be made use of very carefully and
perseveringly if the couple wish to reduce to a minimum the chances
of increasing the number of children. We shall give the minutest
details about each of the methods known at the present day,
insisting, last of all, upon the _injections_, for the essential
part of every preventive method consists in cleanliness.
It is in the case of women who have had children that the methods
about which we have to speak are most easily applied; for the
narrower the female passage, the greater is the difficulty in making
use of them. Of course, we shall not speak here of sexual
satisfaction such as masturbation, which may be dangerous to health,
consisting in an artificial excitation rather than in the appeasing
of a physiological need.
When the accoucheur or midwife who examines a woman in labour pushes
the finger, moistened with a little soap, as far as possible into
the vagina, a small protuberance is felt like the tip of the finger,
which is the lower end of the womb. The womb, the mouth of which is
felt with some difficulty in the centre of the protuberance, is the
little nest in which the human egg is hatched.
As soon as the male fluid (sperm) has arrived within the orifice of
the womb the woman can no longer prevent impregnation, even if she
immediately use vaginal injections with the most sedulous care; and
to inject fluid into the womb or to make any other attempt to
destroy the ovulum within the womb is more or less dangerous, as it
may produce fever or hæmorrhage. These operations are in the
department of medicine or surgery, and are only permissible for the
prevention of some dangerous disease, or danger of sudden death. The
medicines or poisons recommended for re-establishing menstruation
are rarely of any effect, and are dangerous to life.
The following methods have simply the aim of preventing the male
fluid from entering into the mouth of the womb; they in nowise
injure the health, and are not forbidden in any civilised country
either by moral codes or by law.