Transcriber’s Note
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IS IT I?
A BOOK FOR EVERY MAN.
A COMPANION TO
WHY NOT?
A BOOK FOR EVERY WOMAN.
BY
PROF. HORATIO ROBINSON STORER, M.D.,
OF BOSTON,
Vice-President of the American Medical Association.
_Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto._ TERENCE.
BOSTON:
LEE AND SHEPARD.
1868.
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1867, by
LEE AND SHEPARD,
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the District of
Massachusetts.
_Stereotyped at the Boston Stereotype Foundry,
4 Spring Lane._
TO
DR. THOMAS ADDIS EMMET,
OF NEW YORK,
Surgeon to the State Woman’s Hospital;
ONE OF THE ONLY TWO PURELY UTERINE SPECIALISTS
AS YET PRACTISING IN AMERICA;[1]
The Pupil and Successor of Marion Sims,
AND HIMSELF, AS AN OPERATOR, HIS GREAT MASTER’S
MORE THAN EQUAL.
MY DEAR DR. EMMET:
The little “Why Not?” of the American Medical Association is having
so large a sale that my publishers have besought me to write a book
for men, to cover ground that I had left untouched, relating to
the causation and prevention of various forms of uterine disease.
Many physicians and many lady patients have desired me to do the
same thing, and I have yielded to their advice. Our friend Dr.
Brown-Séquard permitted me to dedicate the second edition of the
former book to himself, kindly saying that he deemed it something
more than a compliment. At the outset I was uncertain of success, and
so the first edition went without sponsor.
In allowing me, in the case of the book now in press, thus to
manifest my personal esteem for yourself, and my appreciation of your
many contributions to the advancement of our science, you will become
my coadjutor in this attempt to preserve women from bodily and mental
anguish, from disease and from crime.
Yours, ever sincerely,
HORATIO R. STORER.
BOSTON, June 3, 1867.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
PREFATORY REMARKS 7
I. It is not Good to be Alone 17
II. Marriage as a Sanitary Measure 35
III. How Early in Life is Marriage to be Advised? 68
IV. The Rights of the Husband 87
V. Are these Rights Absolute, or Reciprocal, with Duties 99
VI. Should mere Instinct, or Reason, be the Rule? 111
VII. Arguments and Counter Arguments as to Divorce 118
VIII. A Plea for Woman 127
APPENDIX.—A Woman’s View of “Why Not?” 149
PUBLISHERS’ NOTE.
Since the first edition of “Why Not?” was published, we have received
many letters of approval, and of inquiry relative to its author. In
issuing this new treatise, which we believe destined like the first
to become a standard book, and to have even a greater circulation
than that, we have thought that a few lines of information on our
part would not be considered inappropriate.
Professor Storer’s writings are no inapt index to his own character.
He is thoroughly alive to his duties; sagacious to discern the truth,
fearless in asserting it. Progressive, without being too radical,
he is still sufficiently conservative to respect the opinions of
others, even though at variance with his own. Perhaps no American
physician of his own age, holds at the present time a more prominent
position in his profession. He has already been quoted as authority
by European writers; and in this country he seems everywhere to
have received the most flattering acknowledgment of his scientific
labors, save here in his own city, where for many years he has met
with uninterrupted opposition, and even personal abuse, from a
professional clique—the result, doubtless, of jealousy upon their
part, envy, and that spirit of antagonism which has long rendered the
disagreements of physicians a by-word.
Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes has happily described the present instance
in the last chapter yet published of his “Guardian Angel,” where he
says, “There is no possible success without some opposition as a
fulcrum; force is always aggressive, and crowds something or other,
if it does not hit or trample on it.”
There is one other reason which has undoubtedly gone far to render
Prof. Storer no exception to the rule that a leader is seldom
appreciated by those in his own immediate vicinity, until—as
is rapidly occurring in the present instance—he has conquered
renown. Resident for a long time at Edinburgh, in very intimate
relations with the celebrated Sir James Y. Simpson, the discoverer
of chloroform as an anæsthetic, Prof. Storer is peculiarly a
representative of the Scotch school of obstetrics, and has zealously
and successfully upheld its peculiar tenets, in opposition to
the many disciples of the French and Viennese schools among his
contemporaries.
It has been asserted of Dr. Storer that, when engaged in professional
controversy, he is pitiless and unsparing. These statements seem
traceable to opponents who have been worsted, and speak from bitter
experience. There may, however, be some reason to believe, that, like
his teacher, Dr. Simpson, he has profited by the advice of Polonius:—
“Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel; but, being in,
Bear it that the opposer may beware of thee.”
The character of the weapons that have been used against our author
may be judged by an extract from a personal attack contained—without
a word of palliation or excuse from the editors—in one of the latest
numbers of the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal.
In attempting to save a poor invalid—sure otherwise soon to
perish—Dr. Storer had performed one of the most tedious and difficult
operations in surgery, hitherto successful in a most notable instance
at his hands, namely, the removal of the womb by incision through the
abdomen: an operation with which his name will be forever identified.
In commenting upon it, the would-be critic used the following
language: “Allow me publicly to protest, most solemnly, against
such practice, and earnestly to beg of my professional brethren,
everywhere, to use their utmost influence to prevent their patients
and friends from employing or consulting such practitioners.”
Abuse like this is sure, of course, to react upon those who employ
it, and to gain for its object the sympathy and active interest of
all lovers of fair play and justice. By a happy coincidence, the
article referred to chanced to be followed, on the same page, by
another, which we also quote:—
“At a meeting of the Physicians and Surgeons in attendance upon
Prof. H. R. Storer’s course of Lectures on the Surgical Diseases
of Women, just delivered at Hotel Pelham, in Boston, the following
preamble and resolutions were adopted:—
“_Whereas_, We, the attendants upon Prof. Storer’s first private
course of Lectures on the Surgical Diseases of Women, being regular
practising physicians and surgeons, have long experienced the
disadvantages arising from the very imperfect manner in which these
subjects have been treated in our text books, and by the professors
in our colleges; many of the most important diseases and operations
being entirely ignored by men who think deeply and reason candidly
in all other matters pertaining to medicine and surgery; and,
whereas, we cannot but feel that this class of diseases is the
most important, believing it to be the cause of more suffering
than any other, therefore—
“_Resolved_, That we tender to Dr. Storer our sincere gratitude for
taking the advance step which he has, thereby giving us, as we hope
he will hereafter give others, the opportunity of hearing these
subjects discussed thoroughly and impartially.
“_Resolved_, That a copy of these resolutions be presented to Prof.
Storer, and sent to The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, and
The New York Medical Record, for publication.
(Signed) CHAS. M. CARLETON, Norwich, Conn.
DANIEL MANN, Pelham, N. H.
G. E. BULLARD, Blackstone, Mass.
J. A. MCDONOUGH, Boston, ”
M. C. TALBOTT, Warren, Pa.
H. GEROULD, Erie, Pa.
E. F. UPHAM, W. Randolph, Vt.
W. A. I. CASE, Hamilton, C. W.
W. L. WELLS, Howell, Mich.”
These resolutions derive their significance from the fact that the
signers are neither students nor recent graduates, but practitioners,
chiefly of many years standing, who have become alive to the
importance of the special diseases of women.
It will be perceived, by our title page, that Dr. Storer, although
as yet hardly forty years of age, has already attained the highest
medical honor, save one, that can be conferred in this country—the
exception being the Presidency of the National Medical Association,
a position lately occupied by his distinguished father. The success
of the son will not be wondered at, when the extent and variety of
the contributions that he has made to medical science are taken into
consideration. In reply to several requests that have been made of
us, we append a list of the various professional works and monographs
of Dr. Storer, so far as we have been able to collect them. This list
is probably not entirely complete, in consequence of the author’s
disinclination to give us all the aid we could have wished in its
compilation, partly we suppose from a lack of leisure, and partly
from a desire, as we have reason to believe, to avoid any imputation
of courting publicity.
We are ourselves satisfied that the book that we now present to the
community will in nowise lessen his wellearned reputation.
* * * * *
I.
THE OBSTETRIC MEMOIRS AND CONTRIBUTIONS OF SIR JAMES Y. SIMPSON,
Professor of Midwifery in the University of Edinburgh. Edited by his
assistants, Drs. W. O. Priestley (now Professor in King’s College,
London), and H. R. Storer (now Professor in Berkshire Medical
College). Two large volumes. Edinburgh: Adam & Charles Black. 1855.
Also, THE ABOVE. American edition. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott &
Co. 1856.
II.
A WORD IN DEFENCE OF AN AMERICAN SURGEON. (Dr. J. Mason Warren, of
Boston.)
Controversy with Dr. Gillespie, of Edinburgh.
Letter I. London Medical Times and Gazette, May, 1855.
Letter II. American Journal of the Medical Sciences. Philadelphia:
October, 1855.
III.
BOSTON LYING-IN HOSPITAL REPORTS. Boston Medical and Surgical
Journal, 1855, 1856, &c.
IV.
ELM TENTS FOR THE DILATATION OF THE CERVIX UTERI.
Read before the Medico-Chirurgical Society of Edinburgh, May 1855.
Article I. Association Medical Journal of London, May, 1855.
Article II. Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, November, 1855.
V.
CASES ILLUSTRATIVE OF OBSTETRIC DISEASE.
Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, 1856 to 1865.
VI.
NEW FORM OF INTRA-UTERINE PESSARY.
Read before the Suffolk District Medical Society.
Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, November, 1856.
VII.
REVIEW OF CLAY’S “COMPLETE HANDBOOK OF OBSTETRIC SURGERY.”
Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, November, 1856.
VIII.
CAUSTIC POTASH AS AN APPLICATION TO THE INTERIOR OF THE UTERUS. ITS
FIRST SUGGESTION.
Article I. Read before the Suffolk District Medical Society. Boston
Medical and Surgical Journal, October, 1856.
Article II. Ibid., October, 1858.
Article III. Ibid., July, 1859.
IX.
CASES OF NYMPHOMANIA.
Read before the Boston Society for Medical Observation, July, 1856.
American Journal of the Medical Sciences, October, 1856.
X.
REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE APPOINTED BY THE SUFFOLK DISTRICT MEDICAL
SOCIETY, “to consider whether any future legislation is necessary
on the subject of Criminal Abortion; and to report to the Society
such other means as may seem necessary for the suppression of this
abominable, unnatural, yet common crime.”
DRS. H. R. STORER, _Chairman_.
H. I. BOWDITCH.
CALVIN ELLIS.
Read before the Society, May, 1857.
XI.
CUPPING THE INTERIOR OF THE UTERUS.
Read before the Boston Society for Medical Observation, February,
1857.
American Journal of the Medical Sciences, January, 1859.
XII.
THE USE AND ABUSE OF UTERINE TENTS.
American Journal of the Medical Sciences, January, 1859.
XIII.
CASES ILLUSTRATIVE OF CRIMINAL ABORTION.
American Journal of the Medical Sciences, April, 1859.
XIV.
THE UTERINE DILATOR; A NEW METHOD OF REACHING THE UTERINE CAVITY, AND
OF INDUCING PREMATURE LABOR.
American Journal of the Medical Sciences, July, 1859.
XV.
REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF THE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION, “to
investigate the subject of Criminal Abortion, with a view to its
general suppression.”
DRS. H. R. STORER, of Mass., _Chairman_.
T. W. BLATCHFORD, of New York.
HUGH L. HODGE, of Pennsylvania.
E. H. BARTON, of South Carolina.
A. LOPEZ, of Alabama.
W. H. BRISBANE, of Wisconsin.
A. J. SEMMES, of District Columbia.
Rendered at Louisville, May, 1859.
Transactions of the Association, 1860.
XVI.
IS ABORTION EVER A CRIME?
North American Medico-Chirurgical Review, January, 1859.
XVII.
ITS FREQUENCY, AND THE CAUSES THEREOF.
North American Medico-Chirurgical Review, March, 1859.
XVIII.
ITS VICTIMS.
Ibid., May, 1859.
XIX.
ITS PROOFS.
Ibid.
XX.
ITS PERPETRATORS.
Ibid.
XXI.
ITS INNOCENT ABETTORS.
Ibid., July, 1859.
XXII.
ITS OBSTACLES TO CONVICTION.
Ibid., September, 1859.
XXIII.
CAN IT BE AT ALL CONTROLLED BY LAW?
Ibid., November, 1859.
Also the above, from XVI. to XXIII., in a collective form, under the
title of CRIMINAL ABORTION IN AMERICA. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott
& Co. 1860.
XXIV.
A MEDICO-LEGAL STUDY OF RAPE.
New York Medical Journal, November, 1865.
XXV.
THE ABETMENT OF CRIMINAL ABORTION BY MEDICAL MEN.
Read before the Massachusetts Medical Society, May 30, 1866.
New York Medical Journal, September, 1866.
XXVI.
SUBCUTANEOUS INJECTION AS A CURE FOR THE TOOTHACHE OF PREGNANCY.
Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, October, 1859.
XXVII.
STUDIES OF ABORTION.
Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, February, 1863.
XXVIII.
ARTIFICIAL DILATATION OF THE OS AND CERVIX UTERI BY FLUID PRESSURE
FROM ABOVE; a reply to Drs. Keiller, of Edinburgh, and Arnott and
Barnes, of London.
Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, July, 1863.
XXIX.
ON CHLOROFORM INHALATION DURING LABOR. A reply to Dr. Robert Johns,
of Dublin.
Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, August, 1863.
XXX.
REPORT OF THE STATE COMMISSION ON INSANITY.
HON. JOSIAH QUINCY, JR.
DRS. ALFRED HITCHCOCK,
and H. R. STORER.
Mass. Legislative Document, (Senate 72.) Feb., 1864.
XXXI.
THE EMPLOYMENT OF ANÆSTHETICS IN CHILDBIRTH.
Read before the Massachusetts Medical Society, at Pittsfield, June,
1863.
Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, October, 1863.
The above was republished, under the name of EUTOKIA; A WORD TO
PHYSICIANS AND TO WOMEN. Boston: A. Williams & Co. 1863.
XXXII.
THE MEDICAL MANAGEMENT OF INSANE WOMEN.
Article I. Read before the Suffolk District Medical Society,
December, 1863; and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,
February, 1864.
Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, April, 1864.
Article II. Ibid., October, 1864.
Article III. Ibid., November, 1864.
XXXIII.
THE RELATIONS OF FEMALE PATIENTS TO HOSPITALS FOR THE INSANE.
Transactions of the American Medical Association. 1864.
XXXIV.
THE SURGICAL TREATMENT OF AMENORRHŒA.
American Journal of the Medical Sciences, January, 1864.
XXXV.
REPORT TO THE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION OF ITS DELEGATE TO THE
ASSOCIATION OF SUPERINTENDENTS OF ASYLUMS FOR THE INSANE.
Transactions of the American Medical Association. 1866.
XXXVI.
A NEW OPERATION FOR UMBILICAL HERNIA, WITH REMARKS UPON EXPLORATORY
INCISIONS OF THE ABDOMEN.
Article I. New York Medical Record, April, 1866.
Article II. Ibid., July, 1866.
XXXVII.
SUCCESSFUL REMOVAL OF THE UTERUS AND BOTH OVARIES BY ABDOMINAL
SECTION.
Read before the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, November 14,
1865.
American Journal of the Medical Sciences, January, 1866.
XXXVIII.
THE CLAMP SHIELD; AN INSTRUMENT DESIGNED TO LESSEN CERTAIN SURGICAL
DANGERS, MORE PARTICULARLY THOSE OF EXTIRPATION OF THE UTERUS BY
ABDOMINAL SECTION.
Article I. Transactions of the American Medical Association. Vol.
XVII. 1866.
Article II. Read before the Berkshire District Medical Society, July
25, 1866.
New York Medical Record, October, 1866.
XXXIX.
VESICO-VAGINAL FISTULA, AND THE OPERATIONS THEREFOR. A Review.
American Journal of the Medical Sciences, October, 1857.
XL.
THE CAUSATION, COURSE, AND RATIONAL TREATMENT OF INSANITY IN WOMEN.
Transactions of the American Medical Association. 1865.
XLI.
THE UNFITNESS OF WOMEN FOR MEDICAL PRACTITIONERS.
Letter of Resignation as Surgeon to the New England Hospital for
Women and Children.
Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, September, 1866.
XLII.
INEBRIETY IN WOMEN; an Appendix to the Treatise on Methomania, or
Alcoholic Poisoning, by Dr. ALBERT DAY, now Superintendent of the
New York State Asylum for Inebriates, at Binghamton. Boston: James
Campbell. 1867.
XLIII.
ON THE DECREASE OF THE RATE OF INCREASE OF POPULATION NOW OBTAINING
IN EUROPE AND AMERICA.
Read before the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, December 14,
1858.
American Journal of Science and Art, New Haven, March, 1867.
* * * * *
We are happy to be able to add that Prof. Storer has half promised
to prepare for us a book upon the Causation and Rational Treatment
of Insanity in Women, his report to the American Medical Association
having never been reprinted from the Transactions of that body,
although permission has been given him to do so. For this work it
is already well known that Dr. Storer is preëminently fitted. His
opportunities both for private and official observation have been
unusual, and his views are scientific, reasonable, and in great
measure at variance with the antiquated ones hitherto generally
entertained. The subject is one of intense interest to every member
of the community, and we are sure that the appearance of the book
will be eagerly looked forward to by thousands, alike of men and of
women, and that it will do a great deal of good.
LEE & SHEPARD.
BOSTON, August 1, 1867.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] As contradistinguished from especialists, of whom there are many.
PREFATORY REMARKS.
By its action in 1864, in offering a prize for the best “short and
comprehensive tract for circulation among females, for the purpose
of enlightening them upon the criminality and physical evils of
forced abortions,” and again in 1865, in authorizing the general
circulation of the successful essay, the American Medical Association
initiated a system, or rather method, of _general_ professional
influence hitherto entirely unknown. The experiment was a hazardous
one. There were many who viewed it with extreme anxiety, lest it
should result in the destruction of “the barrier which, for the
mutual protection, both of science and the community, had always
been allowed to stand,” there were those who, from having given no
observation whatever to the subject, were inclined to think that its
importance had been overrated; and others still, who, admitting the
facts, thought their discussion indelicate, unwise, or positively
dangerous. The event, however, has shown the propriety of the course
pursued by the Association. The demand for the little essay has been
so great as to astonish even booksellers themselves. Every medical
journal throughout the country, I am told, without exception, has
given it a kindly notice. The secular press has everywhere praised
the profession for its united effort thus to enlighten the so general
ignorance upon a professional topic; and even the pulpit has, in many
places, joined itself hand in hand with our own body in the good
work,[2] so that the times of old, when the clergyman was to the
physician an aid and a support, rather than as is now so frequently
the case, an adversary and a stumbling-block, have seemed almost to
be restored.
Upon carefully considering the whole subject, I am satisfied that
though much has thus been accomplished by the Association towards
enhancing the general weal, there is still further work to be done
ere all that is necessary can be effected. In the prize essay
referred to, I portrayed, and endeavored to do it with fidelity, the
criminality of wilfully tampering with the life of the unborn child,
and the physical injury sure, sooner or later, to result therefrom to
the mother, ordinarily causing her, far sooner than would pregnancies
naturally completed, to lose the bloom of her youth, and with it one
of the securities of her husband’s love, predisposing her to a wide
range of disease otherwise escaped, and in fact rapidly breaking her
down in health and in hope, alike of things earthly and of things
spiritual; for to most fœticidal women, after the climacteric, of
so-called “turn of life,” has passed, there comes a realizing sense
of the home they have lost through their own folly, their own sin.
To stem the tide of fashion,—for it was fast becoming the way of
the world to bear no children,—and to show matters in their true
light by holding the mirror up to nature, was thus attempted by the
Association. The nail upon which society is to hang its faith has
been driven; to clinch it, and so to render its hold secure, another
blow is needed. The necessity I proceed to show, and the stroke to
give, only regretting that my feeble arm is not that of some one of
the Association’s stronger men, and my pen tipped with the flame
which should cause these words to burn their way to the very hearts
of those to whom they are addressed.
It may, perhaps, be alleged that the topics of which this book must
treat are such as cannot possibly be discussed without offending
good taste or transcending propriety. This opinion, like many that
are merely preconceived, may be found an erroneous one. It may also,
perhaps, be said that the field of inquiry is one that has been given
over, by tacit consent, to a class of writers who are theorists
only, without previous opportunities of extended observation, or
self-constituted moralists, who argue from abstract speculations
rather than from the facts that nature daily furnishes to the
physician in active practice. This has undoubtedly been the case.
I have been astonished at the mass of material of the description
referred to, that my publishers have sent me from their shelves for
inspection since the manuscript of this book was placed in their
hands. Essays of the most incoherent character, some of them utterly
unintelligible even, have vied for circulation with others, which,
under the guise of a rational physiology, or philosophy, or religion,
inculcate doctrines the most pernicious alike to body, mind, and
soul. It is my aim to avoid being confounded in any way whatever with
this class of writers. The views that I present are those accepted
as true by the physicians of our time most competent to judge, and it
will be seen that they are consistent with sound common sense. The
result of many years of study, under very unusual opportunities for
observing disease, I have not the slightest doubt as to the verdict
that will be passed upon them by the grand jury to whom they are now
submitted.
I have said that the Prize Essay upon Abortions has elicited extended
and very favorable comments. Among those that have been brought to
my notice there have been two of a very striking and very peculiar
character, both of them apparently made in the most perfectly good
faith, and from the most diametrically opposite quarters. As to the
personal identity of their authors, I know nothing. One of these
criticisms is offered by a woman, “the wife,” she is styled, “of a
Christian physician;” her plea is evidently the result of extended
observation, in no way, I trust, from personal experience, though it
must have been the unlocking of a warm, and brave, and sympathetic
heart. Its arguments are so weighty, and they are so well put, that I
copy the letter entire in an Appendix to this essay, and trust, with
the editors of the journal in which it appeared, “that it may find
its way, in some more popular form than their pages afforded, to the
eyes of every husband in the land.”[3]
The other article to which I refer is of a later date,[4] and this is
written by one of our own sex, who comments upon the preceding, or
“A Woman’s View,” stating that he is upon the eve of marriage, “and
though not a whit more sensual than most men, cannot be too grateful
for having thus forcibly brought to his mind a view which he for one
had doubtless scarce otherwise considered.” “I would to God,” he
continues, “that it might meet and claim the serious consideration
of every man born of woman’s agony.” The first of these articles,
to again quote from the editorial remarks concerning it, “certainly
expresses, with exceeding delicacy and truthfulness, the universal
feeling of her sex upon a subject which deserves more attention
from our profession than it has hitherto received.” The gentlemen
making this assertion, Drs. Abbot and White, of the Medical School of
Harvard University, are generally considered men of a conservative
cast of mind, very conservative indeed for Massachusetts, and not in
the least prone towards recognition of any “woman’s rights” that are
at all of a doubtful character. What, however, they do refer to will
probably make itself evident in the following pages. It is, indeed,
the fact, that besides our appeal to women upon these matters, so
pertinent to her physical and moral health, and to the well being
of society, we must pillory _the man_, who, under the guise of
affection, steals from the maid her pearl of great price; who,
under the plea of a husband’s prerogative, enforced, perchance, by
scriptural texts, makes of his wife, disappointed, suffering, perhaps
despairing, but the constant object of his savage lust, and makes of
himself what is worse than the savage, a brute;—or who, charged with
the sacred duty, alike a grateful privilege, of guarding the public
health, and of fathoming the mysteries both of sanitary and of social
science, yet under the dread of being thought a visionary, or what so
many consider as identical with this, a reformer or a philanthropist,
folds his hands demurely, and closes his eyes upon what he else
must see. Must these evils still endure, or ought we not all of us,
whether in or out of the professional ranks, when _the man_ is thus
placed face to face with his victim, to inquire of ourselves, soberly
and in all sincerity, “Is it I?”
In one of the papers referred to, that by the lady, it is stated that
“if Dr. Storer will perform as noble service for our brothers and
husbands as for ourselves, and send the two books out hand in hand,
they will bring him back a rich harvest of gratitude and amendment in
morals.” To attempt to do this is, I am well aware, a dangerous task.
There are undoubtedly those who will deny its necessity, find fault
with its execution, and perhaps impugn the motives of the writer.
Such, however, was the case, in each of these respects, with my
former essay, and as that met with so hearty and so general approval
on the part of the profession, I am emboldened again to enter the
arena, trusting again to disarm mistaken or unfriendly criticism.
Be this as it may, I, for my own part, have become deeply impressed
with the need of addressing a word to men; and believing in this as a
duty, I wait not for others to decide the question for me.
Accepting the labor in this light, I do not hesitate to repeat the
language of my previous essay, and state that “the writer presents
the accompanying paper neither for fame nor for reward. It has been
prepared solely for the good of the community. If it be considered
worthy its end, their approbation and that of the profession at large
would be more grateful to the writer than any tangible and therefore
trivial recompense.”
Encouraged by the action of the Association, both at the sessions of
1864 and 1865, by which it showed most unmistakably its belief that
researches like the present are for the advancement of science, and
their publication for the welfare of the race, I intrust this book
to the wheel of fate. Its manuscript has already passed through one
trying ordeal with a certain measure of success. Submitted to the
touchstone of the Prize Committee of the Association for the present
year, it was distanced by the essays of Drs. Black of Ohio, upon the
Cause of Intermittent and Remittent Fevers, and Pallen of Missouri,
upon the Treatment of certain Abnormities of the Uterus, treating
as these did of subjects of more direct and especial interest to
the medical profession; but it elicited the following letter from
the distinguished professor in the University of Maryland, who
represented the committee as its chairman, and was, of course,
unaware of the identity of the author, which had been carefully
disguised till I wrote to reclaim the manuscript.
“BALTIMORE, 21st May, 1867.
“DEAR DOCTOR:
“I have read your essay with very great interest, and hope that you
will publish it. It certainly will do good. The subject, although
one of great delicacy, is handled with marked ability. The whole
profession ought to feel grateful to you for your efforts to check
the fearful amount of crime in relation to abortions. Your essay
will, I have no doubt, meet with the general approval of the
Association.
“Very respectfully,
“F. DONALDSON.
“DR. H. R. STOKER, Boston.”
Such is the character and such the source of the above indorsement,
which was wholly unsolicited, that I consider my object in submitting
the essay to the Committee as fully gained.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] I refer more particularly to articles in the North Western
Christian Advocate, by Rev. Dr. Eddy, of Chicago, and in the
Congregationalist, by Rev. Dr. Todd, of Pittsfield, the latter having
been republished by Messrs. Lee & Shepard of Boston, under the title
of “Serpents in the Doves’ Nest.”
[3] Boston Med. and Surg. Journal, Nov. 1866, p. 274.
[4] Ibid., Jan. 1867, p. 490.
IS IT I?
A BOOK FOR EVERY MAN.
I.—IT IS NOT GOOD TO BE ALONE.
As stated in the prefatory remarks, the present essay is written, and
is intended for, the perusal of men. It is not impossible, however,
that copies of it may fall into the hands of, or be shown to,
individuals of the other sex. The subject upon which I shall speak,
itself a very delicate one, is thus rendered still more difficult
to treat. Inasmuch, however, as in my work upon the physical evils
of forced abortions,[5] published for the edification of women,
under the authority and with the sanction of the American Medical
Association, I seem to have so far succeeded in the duty intrusted
to me as to win the encomiums of many of the sterner sex, I make
bold to strike out for myself a similar path, let me hope, to the
conviction and betterment of _all_ my readers. If in doing this, I am
found roughly to hew down certain old branches of custom, and to root
up summarily certain privileges and alleged rights, usurped rather
than legitimately granted, it is that I may let in light where it has
long been needed, that I may remove causes of offence from the road
of life’s pilgrims, and widen that way, now too generally trodden in
single file, even where wedlock exists, to its intended dimensions,
sufficient for two to pass, side by side and hand in hand; and this
work, for humanity’s sake, I shall endeavor to do without fear or
favor.
To all men I speak—the young, middle aged, and the old; to the rich
and to the poor; to the gentle and the unrefined; to the single, the
married, and the widower; to the happy and to the miserable; to the
ardent and to the cold; to the religious and to the blasphemer.
The subject is one that concerns all, for it lies at the foundation
of society,—sexual health and disease, the need or advantage of
marriage, the need or advantage of divorce, the chance of home
being such or an empty name, an earthly heaven, or a worse than
purgatory,—these are topics that affect each man, however careless
or unconcerned he may think himself, or may appear to be. Therefore
is it that I am sure of the attention of the continent, that he may
gain still greater reason for self-control; of the prurient, for the
very title of my essay will serve to arrest his attention; and of the
brutish man, impelled by curiosity to learn upon what grounds I shall
condemn him.
Is it asked, if the disclosures that I shall make are not by their
very publication subversive of good morals, and the calling attention
to the true relation of the sexes suggestive to bad men of, and
conducive towards, their false relations? I answer,—
First, that to ignore the existence of sin, error, misery, is in
reality to encourage and to increase them. It is like walking upon
thinly-crusted lava, or upon breaking ice, certain to prevent our
saving others, ready indeed to ingulf even ourselves. We varnish over
or seek to conceal vice, and it loses half its grossness—it becomes
attractive perhaps, or fashionable; but if we strip it of its veil,
any soul, not wholly smirched, will recoil with horror.
Again, all of us learn the lessons of life by experience—sad
experience, indeed, it too often is. Many a man would give even his
own soul could his past life be restored to him, and its follies,
its sins be effaced. Too often his soul is no longer his own to
give: inextricably entangled in passion’s web, wound about and about
with its myriad threads, there remains but the dead and worthless
semblance of himself, that can be restored by nought save the
boundless grace of God. Who would not gladly escape such risk, and
welcome every premonition of danger?
Still again, many, claiming to be immaculate themselves, will ask,
“Am I my brother’s keeper?” And yet, living together in communities,
as we do, it must be confessed that we are responsible, every one of
us, and to a very great extent, for the shortcomings and evil deeds
of all the rest, and it must also be confessed that there does not
exist, that there probably never existed, a perfectly immaculate man,
who never once has erred in the very matter we are now considering,
either in deed, or in word, or in thought. Consoling indeed for those
of us who humbly confess our infirmities is this very fact. Take the
very basest of us, and he at times is conscious of vain regrets of
his own misdeeds, and a fond desire that those whom he loves, for
every man has such, may be better than he. Take the very best of us,
and he sees a height beyond any he has yet attained, that he prays he
may yet reach and pass.
And further: not merely are researches, such as this essay is founded
upon, publications for the general weal, such as it claims to be,
perfectly legitimate and advisable in themselves; they have been
sanctioned by precedents that have already been established. I do
not refer to the attempts of unprincipled empirics to terrify the
masses by overdrawn pictures of disease, nor of holy and well-meaning
men to turn them to better ways by fervent descriptions of the
wrath to come. We shall take neither the fear of things present
nor future as our standard in this discussion, but appeal solely
to each man’s reason—and such appeals have been made before. They
have been made in France by Ricord, by Lallemand, and others of the
great medical philosophers of the day; by Parent-Duchatelet and
by Diday. In England, there are men like Acton, who dare to sound
the trumpet of alarm, bringing forward their facts from private
practice, from the hospital, and from the dead-house, and drawing
from these indisputable conclusions. In our own country there are
men like those brave souls, now one of them at least translated to a
better country, Blatchford,[6] and Hodge, and Pope, and Barton, and
Lopez, and Brisbane, physicians of the very highest rank in their
profession, who were not ashamed, in the question of the frequency
and the ill results of criminal abortion, to take stand beside me
upon the platform of our personal knowledge, and knowing they dared
maintain. I will cite but one instance more. It is that of a good man
now gone to his rest, and a very rock he was to the swelling tide
of moral as well as physical evil—the late Professor John Ware, of
Massachusetts. His little work on a portion only of the topic we are
now considering,[7] has stayed many a headlong step and saved many a
soul alive. The book to which I refer has, however, probably obtained
but a limited circulation compared with that at which I now aim,
and its author, so good himself, used only the gentle, persuasive
eloquence of a tongue attuned by Nature to peaceful themes. For
myself, accustomed as I have been in the practice of my profession
in the especial department most bearing upon this subject, to probe
humanity to its lowest depths, I shall not hesitate to speak plainly
the truth as it is, to pile argument upon argument, to resort to
invective if need be, ay, and to apply the lash, till every man who
reads me stammers, conscience-stricken or indignant, “Is it I?” For,
one of themselves, both by birth and by nature, I know my ground, and
my answer shall be, “Thou hast said.”
I shall try, I have stated, while speaking cogently, to keep my
language within the bounds of the strictest decorum. Treating of
similar topics with Michelet and Jean Jacques Rousseau, I would
fain, while discussing the sphere, the charms, and the complaints of
woman, the force and the claims of the passion of love, whether pure
or illicit, and the unalloyed, unredeemable evils of purely selfish
gratification, escape all semblance alike of approving sensuality
and of condemning a rational yielding to natural laws—which last, as
I shall be found to define it, must be considered a far different
thing from the lustful appetite of a satyr or the nightly phantom of
the ascetic, who is such from cowardice alone. Composed as we are,
in this fleshly tabernacle, of many a member, and many an adaptation
of these to use, combined as one, there is the old, old combat
described by St. Paul,—our instincts warring with our better selves,
our will and our reason, for mastery. To govern a slave, and govern
him well, one need not crucify him. To govern one’s self, it may be
necessary severely to discipline, but not always to kill, the body
in which we have been placed for so many useful ends. To use, as not
abusing ourselves or others, is but collateral to the rule called
“golden”—together they form for us the safest of creeds.
All men, old or young, seek companionship. This is necessary for
their very self-possession, both in body and in mind; and the
companionship which they instinctively seek, as truly and as
unvaryingly as the loadstar seeks its pole, is that of the opposite
sex. Where this special yearning is absent or has never existed,
there is to be found, always, the effect of disappointment or of
disease. The disease, if such is present, may, it is true, have been
self-occasioned, but the vessel itself was either improperly built
for the voyage of life or was stopped in its course by some hidden
shoal: it has foundered or been wrecked, and we shall find that in
by far the majority of cases this was from neglect in obtaining the
necessary sailing charts or from non-adjustment of the compass.
And here let me answer in advance one question that would undoubtedly
be put to me by every one of my readers, Do I believe in fairweather
sailing alone? in hugging the shore, and never daring to put to sea?
Do I expect that each craft should be so stanch as to defy every
wave and every blast of danger? I do neither. It is not the zephyr
that calls into being the sturdiness of the oak, nor the mere heat
of the sun that separates from the dross its fine gold. It is the
burning that causes a child to dread the fire, and the philosophy
that learns these things tentatively, and not from chance, is not of
necessity sheer wickedness. I am no apologist for vice. A habit of
evil doing is one thing, and a slip, or even a momentary plunge into
the mire, is a very different thing. The last, by its very taste of
earth, may engender a longing, else unknown, for heaven. For myself I
have little faith in passive goodness; that is, in us men. Those who
have never been exposed to temptation, from staying quietly at home
or through accident alone, are the soonest to yield if the tempter
comes. Having never tested their strength, they find it but weakness.
As with eagles reared in a cage, there is no power of wing. It is
the fall to the ground from the eyry, and the often disappointment
when too fully self-relying, that gives the force of pinion to soar
to the highest ether, face to face with nought but the sun. That I
may be rightly understood upon this very threshold of our inquiry,
let me quote a few lines from one of the most thoughtful, most
chaste, and most accepted writers of the present day, the late Rev.
Mr. Robertson, of England. “The first use,” he says, “a man makes
of every power and talent given to him is a bad use. The first time
a man ever uses a flail, it is to the injury of his own head and of
those who stand around him. The first time a child has a sharp-edged
tool in his hand, he cuts his fingers. But this is no reason why
he should not be ever taught to use a knife. The first use a man
makes of his affections is to sensualize his spirit. Yet he cannot
be ennobled except through those very affections. The first time a
kingdom is put in possession of liberty, the result is anarchy. The
first time a man is put in possession of intellectual knowledge, he
is conscious of the approaches of sceptical feeling. But that is no
proof that liberty is bad, or that instruction should not be given.
It is a law of our humanity that man must know both good and evil; he
must know good _through_ evil. There never was a principle but what
triumphed through much evil; no man ever progressed to greatness and
goodness but through great mistakes.”[8]
These remarks apply more particularly to the young man, just becoming
conscious of his newly-awakened emotions and physical powers. Should
he be viewed and treated as a child, or allowed to go out from home
to the dangers of the world? In acquiescing, as a general rule,
in the latter course, I know that I shall shock the sensibilities
and prejudices of many superficial observers. Yet Sydney Smith
did not hesitate to avow a similar opinion. “Very few young men,”
acknowledges the reverend gentleman, “have the power of negation
in any great degree at first. Every young man must be exposed to
temptation; he cannot learn the ways of men without being witness to
their vices. If you attempt to preserve him from danger by keeping
him out of the way of it, you render him quite unfit for any style of
life in which he may be placed. The great point is, not to turn him
out too soon, and to give him a pilot.” He must be _taught_ purity.
There is no doubt that in very many children an improper tone of
thought is established even before the period of puberty, unnatural
as this must be allowed to be, and that oftentimes this sexual
precocity is induced very directly by causes within our control.
For a boy in our cities, or even our villages, to reach his teens
without learning from his associates or by observation something of
these matters, is simply impossible. It is for us to see to it that
he does not receive the idea that they constitute the whole or the
best part of life. “Remember,” says Herbert Spencer, “that the aim of
your discipline should be to produce a self-governing being, not to
produce a being to be governed by others. As your children are by and
bye to be free men, with no one to control their daily conduct, you
cannot too much accustom them to self-control while they are still
under your eye. Aim, therefore, to diminish the parental government
as fast as you can substitute for it in your child’s mind that
self-government arising from a foresight of results. All transitions
are dangerous, and the most dangerous is the transition from the
restraint of the family circle to the non-restraint of the world.
Hence the policy of cultivating a boy’s faculty of self-restraint
by continually increasing the degree in which he is left to his
self-restraint, and so bringing him, step by step, to a state of
unaided self-restraint, obliterates the ordinary sudden and hazardous
change from externally governed youth to internally governed
maturity.”[9]
With reference to this point, who of us does not agree with the
strictures of Acton upon the carelessness or prejudice which subjects
a boy to unnecessary and too early temptations, sanctioning perhaps
by parental advice his exposure to the wiliest and most dangerous of
foes, his own unbridled imagination? Humphrey Clinker and Roderick
Random are no longer to be found upon the family book-shelf. Griffith
Gaunt, and the exciting issues of the modern French press, have taken
their place. Lempriere, Ovid, and the other such meat for strong
men, are put into the boy’s hands with an expurgated text. What lad,
however, who has not been tempted to ransack his father’s library,
and every other collection of books within his reach, in the hope
of finding an original edition, just precisely as at a certain time
of his youth, longer or shorter as this may have been, he has found
himself turning to the coarsely translated and sometimes flagrant
pages of the Old Testament, rather than to the chaste and ennobling
language of the Gospels? “It has often surprised me,” writes
Acton,[10] “that the filthy stories of the loves of the heathen
mythology should have been so generally placed in the hands of lads.
In such works the youth gloats over the pleasures which the heathen
deities are supposed to have indulged in, while his imagination
runs riot amid the most lascivious passages. The doctrine laid down
in these volumes seems to be, that lust went on unchecked, that it
was attended with no evil results, either physically or morally, to
the individual, or to the society in which such scenes are supposed
to have existed. To enable him to live as these gods of old are
supposed to have done, with what companions must he not associate? He
reads in them of the pleasures, nothing of the penalties, of sexual
indulgence, and it is at a later period that the poor schoolboy is
first to learn that sexual pleasure is not to be indulged in with
impunity. He is not intuitively aware that, if the sexual desires
are excited, it will require greater power of will to master them
than falls to the lot of most lads; that if indulged in, the man will
and must pay the penalty for the errors of the boy; that for one
that escapes ten will suffer; that an awful risk attends abnormal
substitutes for sexual intercourse; and that self-indulgence, long
pursued, tends ultimately to early death or self-destruction.”
Thus educated, and thus vainly imagining, a large proportion of our
boys pass from childhood into youth, with the preconceived idea
they soon find apparently confirmed by their own sensations, that
it is not good to be alone. Let Kingsley tell us what is but too
often the very reasonable result. Lancelot had discovered “a new
natural object, including in itself all—more than all yet found
beauties and wonders—Woman. What was to be expected? Pleasant things
were pleasant, there was no doubt of that, whatever else might be
doubtful. He had read Byron by stealth; he had been flogged into
reading Ovid and Tibullus, and commanded by his private tutor to
read Martial and Juvenal for the improvement of his style. All
conversation on the subject of love had been prudishly avoided, as
usual, by his parents and teacher. The parts of the Bible which
spoke of it had been kept out of his sight. Love had been to him,
practically, ground tabooed and carnal. What was to be expected? Just
what happened. If woman’s beauty had nothing holy in it, why should
his fondness for it? Just what happens every day—that he had to sow
his wild oats for himself, and eat the fruit thereof, and the dirt
thereof also.”[11]