1st child, still-born, in eighth month, April 1832.
2nd child, abortion at end of 6th month.
3rd child, abortion at end of 6th month.
4th child, abortion at end of 5th month.
5th child, abortion soon after quickening, Summer, 1838.
6th child, still-born, 7th October, 1839.
7th child, no clear record given.
Also other somewhat parallel cases given, the constant incidental
accompaniment being painful physical suffering and grave inconvenience,
frequently with fatal results. Medical records are full of similar
histories. To the unsophisticated mind, two questions sternly suggest
themselves: Firstly, Is it meet or right for an honourable profession,
or any individual member of it, to be _particeps criminis_ in such
proceedings as the above? and, secondly, is the indicated connubial
morality on any higher level, or likely to be attended with any better
consequences, than the prior ignorant or savage abuses which are
responsible for woman’s present physical condition?
The advocacy of cardinal reform in this direction—in the wrong done both
to the individual and the race—is urgent part of the duty of our
newly-taught medical women. Nor are their eyes closed nor their mouths
dumb in the matter. Dr. Caroline B. Winslow is quoted by the _Woman’s
Journal_ of Boston, U.S., 16th Jan., 1892, as saying in an article on
“The Right to be Well Born”: “What higher motive can a man have in life
than to labour steadily to prepare the way for the coming of a higher,
better humanity?... Dense ignorance prevails in our profession, and is
reflected by laymen. All their scientific studies and years of medical
practice have failed to convict men of the wrongs and outrages done to
women; wrongs that no divine laws sanction, and no legal enactments can
avert....
“The physician is a witness of the modern death-struggles and horrors of
maternity; he sees lives pass out of his sight; he makes vain attempts
to restore broken constitutions, broken by violating divine laws that
govern organic matter: laws that are obeyed by all animal instinct; yet
all this knowledge, observation, and experience have failed to reveal to
the benighted intellect and obtuse moral sense of the ordinary
practitioner this great wrong. He makes no note of the unhallowed abuse
that only man dares; neither will he mark the disastrous and
deteriorating effect of this waste of vital force on his own offspring.
The mental, moral, and physical imperfections of the rising generation
are largely the result of outraged motherhood.”
7.—“_The spurious function growing_ ...”
Mr. Francis Darwin, in a paper on “Growth Curvatures in Plants,” says of
the biologist, Sachs, who had made researches in the same phenomena: “He
speaks, too, of _custom_ or _use_, _building up_ the specialised
‘instinct’ for certain curvatures. (Sachs’ ‘Arbeiten,’ 1879.) These are
expressions consistent with our present views.”—(Presidential Address to
the Biological Section of the British Association, 1891.)
In the same section was also read a paper by Francis Darwin and Dorothea
F. N. Pertz, “On the _Artificial_ Production of Rhythm in Plants,” in
which were detailed results very apposite to this “growing of a spurious
function.”
8.—“... _almost natural use the morbid mode appears_.”
“So true is it that unnatural generally only means uncustomary, and that
everything which is usual appears natural.”—J. S. Mill (“The Subjection
of Women,” p. 22).