a great longing, has arisen in a boy’s heart, together with the
appearance of the powers requisite to gratify it. Everything, the
habits of the world, the keen appetite of youth for all that is
new, the example of companions, the pride of health and strength,
opportunity, all combine to urge him to give the rein to what seems
a natural propensity. The boy does not know that to his immature
frame every sexual indulgence is unmitigated evil. He does not think
that to his inexperienced mind and heart every illicit pleasure is a
degradation, to be bitterly regretted hereafter; a link in a chain
that does not need many to be too strong to break.”[12] The only
answer to this problem is for the boy to learn to possess his soul
in patience, and through example and advice, and earnest, prayerful
effort, to compel his own self-control, till he attains that full and
complete development of all his powers that distinguishes the man.
How small the proportion of all my readers who can lay their hands
upon their hearts and say, with perfect truthfulness, that up to
the time of reaching their majority they had never, for the sake of
selfish or illicit gratification, been guilty of any offence against
purity!
With these reflections, which are not of a character to make us
particularly self-confident or vainglorious, I approach the second
chapter of my task.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] Why Not? A Book for Every Woman. Lee & Shepard, Boston.
[6] Dr. Thomas W. Blatchford, of Troy, N. Y., died on the 7th of
January, 1866. One of the oldest and most influential members of the
American Medical Association, he was _beloved_ by all who knew him.
[7] Hints to Young Men on the True Relation of the Sexes. Boston,
1850.
[8] Discourses, &c., pp. 87, 88.
[9] Moral Education, p. 140.
[10] Functions and Disorders of the Reproductive Organs, p. 38.
[11] Yeast, p. 3.
[12] Loc. cit., p. 46.
II.—MARRIAGE AS A SANITARY MEASURE.
Having now shown that while it is natural for young men to be
impelled towards women by an instinctive yearning, this is not
unfrequently prematurely excited, I proceed briefly to call attention
to its evil effects, in many instances, both upon the individual and
upon society. I cannot do better, in commencing my remarks upon this
subject, than to quote a few words from Dr. Ware. “Unhappily for the
young, a just and elevated view of the relation of man to woman is
forestalled by impressions of a totally different sort, early made
and deeply rooted. Among the first lessons which boys learn of their
fellows are impurities of language, and these are soon followed by
impurities of thought. Foul words are in use among them before they
can actually comprehend their origin, or attach to them any definite
meaning.
“Most men who, when young, have been in the habit of unreserved
communication with others of their own sex, will recognize the
truth of this statement. Happy is he who can look back upon no such
recollections; happy is he, the surface of whose mind does not bear
upon it, through life, stains which were impressed thereon by the
corrupt associations and the corrupt habits of youth; happy indeed is
he if the evil have not eaten into the soul itself, and left behind
it such marks of its corrosion as neither time nor even repentance
can ever obliterate. When this is the training of boyhood, it is not
strange that the predominating ideas among young men, in relation
to the other sex, are too often those of impurity and sensuality.
Nor is this evil confined to large cities, though it there manifests
itself more distinctly in open and undisguised licentiousness, and
in the illicit commerce of the sexes. It equally exists in the most
secluded villages in the corruption of the thoughts and language, and
in modes of indulgence, which, if less obvious and remarked, are not,
therefore, the less dangerous to moral purity.
“We cannot be surprised, then, that the history of most young men
is, that they yield to temptation in a greater or less degree and in
different ways. With many, no doubt, the indulgence is transient,
accidental, and does not become habitual. It does not get to be
regarded as venial. It is never yielded to without remorse. The
wish and the purpose is to resist, but the animal nature bears down
the moral; still transgression is always followed by grief and
repentance. With too many, however, it is to be feared, it is not
so. The mind has become debauched by the dwelling of the imagination
on licentious images, and by indulgence in licentious conversation.
There is no wish to resist. They are not overtaken by temptation,
for they seek it. With them the transgression becomes habitual,
and the stain on the character is deep and lasting. The prevailing
sentiment of the mind, the prevailing tendency of the will, is to
sensual vices; and there are no vices which so deeply contaminate
the soul of man, so degrade, so brutalize it, as these. The degree
of debasement has in some men, even in some communities, reached so
low as to suggest modes of indulging this appetite from which the
common sensualist shrinks with horror, and which cannot be even named
without loathing.”[13]
These statements must be acknowledged by every honest man to be true,
and it is therefore needless to adduce probatory evidence. Viewing
the matter, as I do, from a professional standpoint, it becomes
necessary for me to discuss methods of preventing habits as shameful
as they are injurious to physical and mental and moral health, and
sorrows that are but too often irremediable. Foremost among these
methods,—I shall speak of it more particularly as a sanitary
measure,—will be found Marriage.
In thus summarily, perhaps even roughly, referring to the most
important of all human relations, I shall, I doubt not, again shock
certain sensitive minds. In these delicate matters, however, it is
best to be frank and plain. At one time of his life or another, every
man, selfish or generous-hearted as he may be, delicate or brutal his
nature, looks forward to marriage: not as a spiritual blending of
two souls in one merely, not as a self-sacrificing means of making
some woman supremely happy, nor in fulfilment of a supposed duty to
leave children behind him, the latter being very generally considered
too old-fashioned doctrine for these days, but as the means of
gratifying certain instinctive, and therefore natural, although so
often condemned as carnal, bodily desires, and thereby, as many will
not hesitate to acknowledge, was their own purpose in marrying, of
keeping himself in the better physical health. I would not be thought
to believe that such selfish motives, low ones they may very properly
be called, actuate the majority of mankind. Many are governed by
sordid considerations, others by platonic, and still others by very
romance. Through almost every marriage, however, there runs this
thread of instinct, more or less strongly marked, more or less
distinctly recognized, at times indeed deliberately woven in, and
according as one or the other of these conditions obtains, so is it
generally that the after and relative life of the parties is decided.
Let us grant, to save time, what I have already assumed, that it is
natural for man to long for woman, and thus yearning, to seek her;
and that, constituted as they both are, the one reciprocally for the
other, not for the world’s purposes of population alone, but for
imparting to and receiving from each other the most exquisite of
physical sensations, it was intended by the Creator that, like every
other function, those pertaining to this most intimate acquaintance
should also occasionally be allowed gratification. The question now
confronts us, How is this possible? How can men lead manly lives,
fulfilling all the purposes for which they were constructed and for
which they were born, and yet avoid infringing upon the rights or the
happiness of others?
To this question a variety of answers have been given. Of late
years, many have advocated the so-called doctrine of Free-love, in
accordance with which, by some alleged process of elective affinity,
every positive would seek its negative, every male its female, and
this whether or no each of the parties were already legally the
property of some other person. Subversive as such views, if allowed,
would prove of all domestic unions, and therefore of the peace of
society, their interested advocates have found many proselytes. Many
more still carry into constant practice what they would be ashamed,
or would not dare openly to acknowledge.
The views now referred to are as repulsive to the best sense of
mankind as are those by which Mormonism is supported. In the one
instance, a man professes to satisfy himself with one mistress,
though he may possibly be conducting amours, at the same time,
secretly, with a dozen; in the other, he openly surrounds himself
with concubines, much as in the Eastern seraglio, save that with
the Latter Day Saints, the comparatively better education and
intelligence of the women, however deficient these may practically
be, render it advisable to invest the sealing with a semblance of
religious authority, at once to prevent rapine by other men and
quarrels among the women, however impossible this last may be to
accomplish. In both cases, the Mormon and the amative socialist take
to themselves a lion’s share; like some of the carnivora, who seem
to kill for the mere pleasure of destruction, or who slake their
thirst by a mere draught of their victim’s blood and then discard the
disfigured carcass, so useless to them, these men play with their
toys for a while and then throw them aside, heart-broken, dishonored.
So nearly are the sexes balanced in number, nominally, that were it
not for disturbances of the equipoise by emigration, the prevention
of pregnancy, its criminal subversion and the like, by the time men
and women have reached a suitable age they would stand very nearly
one woman to one man. At birth, in almost every country, the males
very slightly predominate, being usually some five or six in excess
to each hundred children born living. There are greater dangers to
the infant in male than in female births, the boy averaging a little
the larger, and therefore its body, and more particularly its brain,
being subjected to a greater and more prolonged pressure. Thus it
is that more boys than girls are born dead, and that more boys than
girls die during infancy and early childhood, their nervous system
not having entirely recovered from the comparatively greater shock
to which it had been exposed. If then but one woman actually belongs
to each man in a properly balanced community, what right has he to a
second or more?
To this argument will be opposed the statements, that like other
male mammalia, every man is physically competent to conjugally
care for an almost indefinite number of women, and that the normal
proportion of the sexes is already disturbed by the large number of
both who voluntarily remain single, and of both who, released from
an earlier bond by divorce or death, marry for a second, a third,
or even a fourth time, and by the comparatively earlier death or
decrepitude, on the large scale, of females. Upon the other hand, a
man’s possible uxorious ability is and should be, no gauge of what
it is advisable for him to undertake or to perform. Even in wedlock
it is too often the case that men liken themselves in practice to
the most bestial of the lower animals, and to their wives are the
most exacting and cruel of tyrants. The plea of merely yielding to
the impulses of a pure affection is used but too often to sanction
the vilest debauchery, for a man, if he choose, may make a brothel
of his own nuptial bed. As to plural marriages, confining that term
to instances where the unions are successive and legally solemnized,
there is a doubt whether as many, if not more, women are not married
a second time than men; and as to the comparative mortality of the
sexes, it is gradually becoming the way of physicians to study
invalid women more closely and more accurately than was formerly
the custom, and as a very natural consequence, much oftener to cure
them, so that the comparative death rates are gradually assuming
a relation more favorable to women than to men, especially if we
allow for the greater liability of the latter to accident and other
exposure. It will be noticed that the death rate, comparative or
positive, of a country is a very different thing from its birth
rate, and this again from the fecundity of its population,—that is
to say, the rate of its annual increase,—subjects all of them of
great interest, both to professional and to non-professional men; the
latter of them particularly so to us in our present inquiry, as will
hereafter be seen. I may mention, in this connection, that results of
two elaborate series of observations in our own country, made from
different points of view, but very coincident in their conclusions,
have been published by two of the members of the American Medical
Association, namely, Dr. Nathan Allen, of Lowell,[14] and myself.[15]
Not satisfied with bringing the subject before my own profession, I
have endeavored to fix the attention of the scientific world upon the
statistics that have been presented, more especially by an article
upon the subject in the March number of the leading scientific
journal of this country.[16]
To return. Other answers than those yet indicated have been made to
the main question that I have propounded. Prostitution, even to the
extent of a public and legal license, just as obtains in many of
the large cities of Europe, has even in our own country its avowed
and honest advocates, and by this I mean far other advocates than
lewd and licentious men. An engineer may study and direct systems of
sewerage, and yet neither desire, nor allow himself to attend to the
details of their management. I do not mean, however, to open the very
interesting and important problem here involved, although it is one
to which I have given much personal attention, both abroad and at
home. Suffice it merely to say, that as a safety valve to the latent
brutality and vice always heaving and raging beneath the surface in
great crowds of men, and to prevent, by frequent and authoritative
inspection of the unfortunates, led by circumstances far oftener
than by inclination to pander to the unbridled instincts of man’s
lower nature, the so frequent importation of the lecher’s contagion
into his household, setting its mark upon his innocent partner, if
not also upon her offspring, there is much to be said in favor of
the restricted license referred to.[17] Upon the other hand, what
more horrid thought to man’s pure companion, or to him with reference
to all others than himself! I do not here say that any restricted
license like that alluded to has my own approval, although I am not
sure but that of two evils it may prove the least. My question was,
How can natural instincts reasonably be gratified without infringing
upon the rights and happiness of others? By prostitution, even taking
so plausible an exception as that of the French grisette, the woman’s
happiness, certainly her highest happiness, is endangered, if not
assuredly wrecked; and I here take into account, that in France, so
peculiar are certain phases of society there, the public woman, after
years of shameless sale of herself, often retires upon a competency,
to marry and to lead a blameless life, and that in England, the
common drabs from the gutter, transported to distant colonies, and
sent into the bush, find themselves at a premium, marry, and have
fanned into a flame the spark of virtue that may still have lurked in
their bosoms. The same is true, to a more limited extent, of some of
our own outlying territories and states.
That I have referred to such a topic as the above, was requisite
in order that I might approach properly certain matters we have
still to discuss together. When sanctioned, as it has been by the
study and outspoken convictions of no less a person than Florence
Nightingale, who, stainless herself, is yet said to acknowledge
certain necessities in the conduct of armies and the care of camps,
no further apology upon my part is required.
And such I take it is the case also with the last of the answers
to which I shall at present refer, the still more terrible and
destructive custom of self-indulgence, that solitary sin that has
hurried so many men to the madhouse and to the grave. To this I
need but allude, for hardly the person exists who does not know,
from experience or from observation, its blighting effects. With
the prudery which prevents the parent from cautioning his son, or
the physician his patient, from this violation of every natural
instinct and every physiological law, I have not the slightest
patience. Enfeebling to the body, enfeebling to the mind, the
incarnation of selfishness, it effaces from its victim his fondness
for the other sex, unfits him for true love, and likens him in
very fact to that embodied concentration of all man’s frailties,
devoid of all the apparent virtues of animals still lower in the
scale, the ape. And yet, it must be acknowledged, that this baleful
habit, like the kindred self-indulgence, inebriety,[18] is in many
instances the result not of vice, but of disease. The congestion of
hæmorrhoids, the presence of ascarides in the rectum, the existence
of constipation, are all of them agencies, which, by their reflex
irritation, determining an abnormal excess of blood to the parts, and
inducing a state of hyperæsthesia, or undue nervous excitability, may
give rise to procedures which, in the same individual, at other and
more healthful seasons, would cause for him but the most revolting
disgust.
Such being the case, and I may consider it as frankly acknowledged
by my readers to be true, we are prepared to look more calmly at
Marriage as a sanitary measure, and to see whether or no it is for
this reason to be resorted to or advised.
Every man knows that when the sexual passion has once been aroused
and gratified, it can never afterwards be put entirely at rest,
even by the hermit in his cell. It is asserted by certain writers,
rather, however, upon theoretical than practical grounds, that such
passion may always, with comparative ease, be conquered, by sheer
force of will. To insure a peaceful life, it should undoubtedly be
vanquished; but few feel at first this necessity, and fewer still
have the required mental or moral strength. The confessions that
are made to every physician prove this. “The incontinent man,” says
Acton, “is indulging a servant, who, if he becomes a master, will
be what Cicero called him, a furious taskmaster. The slave of his
passions has no easy life. Nay, life itself may be in danger. Often
the patient falls a victim to sexual misery. The sexual feeling has
caused many a suicide; it has made many a misanthrope; many are
the cells now peopled by single men, who, unable to control their
feelings, have sought the monastery as an alleviation of their
sufferings, and there found it in fasting, penance, and prayer.”[19]
And again. “If a man wished to undergo the acutest sexual suffering,
he could adopt no more certain method than to be incontinent with
the intention of becoming continent again ‘when he had sown his wild
oats.’ The agony of breaking off a habit which so rapidly entwines
itself with every fibre of the human frame, is such that it would not
be too much to say to any young man commencing a career of vice, ‘You
are going a road on which you will never turn back. You had better
stop now.’”[20]
The Catholic Church has always recognized the tortures so often
accompanying a single life, when, exposed to temptation, as every
man occasionally is, he endeavors to preserve himself therefrom.
“Our strength is like the strength of tow thrown into the fire; it
is instantly burned and consumed. Would it not be a miracle if tow
cast into the fire did not burn? It would also be a miracle if we
exposed ourselves to the occasion and did not fall.” According to St.
Bernardine of Sienna, “It is a greater miracle not to fall in the
occasion of sin than to raise a dead man to life.” And thus quaintly
and forcibly concludes the learned translator of Bishop Liguori,
“Do not allow your daughters to be taught letters by a man, though
he be a St. Paul or St. Francis of Assissium. _The saints are in
heaven._”[21] Moreover, it is a rule of that church that applicants
for the priesthood should be fully formed and virile; for although
priests are required to observe a moral eunuchism, still they must
have the merit of resistance to the thorn in the flesh to obtain the
palm of recompense.[22]
I do not, of course, imply, nor do I believe, that the great majority
of unmarried men are habitually addicted to immoral practices, but
that a very great proportion of them, in curbing their desires and
keeping themselves under due subjection, undergo a frequent and
severe, however unsuspected, martyrdom, is a fact that cannot be
gainsaid.
In speaking, as I have done, of certain alternatives that are
extensively adopted instead of marriage, namely, the resorting to
houses of ill-fame and self-abuse, I have merely mentioned the fact.
I have not dwelt upon the risks, and frightful risks they are,
accompanying both these measures. The lurid halo surrounding the
strange woman, attracting men, as it were, by its very dangers, like
moths fluttering about the candle that is to prove their destruction,
has been commented upon through the centuries by writers sacred and
profane. It has remained, however, for modern science to prove,
what had long been suspected, that the venereal lues resulting from
unclean intercourse, is, in one of its forms at least, a disease
at times wholly ineradicable from the system, and transmissible
in all its virulence to children’s children.[23] Were physicians
to reveal to the unsuspecting victims of man’s treachery or early
backslidings, whom they are called upon to treat in the upper walks
of life, the actual character and history of many of their diseases,
there would indeed be weepings and wailings and gnashing of teeth. In
the absence of supervision, medical inspection, and the license of
public women, the chances are greatly in favor of the existence in
those poor fallen ones of contagious disease, which, remaining latent
in man’s system, or directly transplanted to his home, may wreck
all his hopes of future happiness. “Nothing tends more certainly
to wither the energies of youth and blast the hopes of manhood. It
is not merely that the mind is polluted; the body is enervated. A
thousand forms of disease may hang round the victim, embitter his
existence, or destroy his hopes in life, which he never imagines
to have had such an origin. But even farther than this: Providence
seems to have stamped this vice with more than its ordinary token
of displeasure, by rendering its votaries liable to that terrible
disease from which so few of them ultimately escape. The effects of
this disease, as is well known, are not always to be eradicated.
They are not confined to present suffering. They may set a mark upon
a man as indelible as that of Cain. They may cling to him through
life, may destroy his health, undermine his constitution, hasten his
death,—may even terminate in disfigurement and mutilation. Nay, they
may even so taint his blood as to descend to his very offspring,
and inflict upon another generation the fearful consequences of his
transgression.”[24]
The dangers environing those accustomed to consort with harlots
exist to almost the same degree where a single private mistress
is employed. To say nothing of the expense of supporting such,
usually much greater than that of honestly building a family, there
must always exist the fact that the woman who permits one man to
unlawfully use her will be very likely to grant similar favors to
his friend or any one else who may please her fancy or offer her
her price; and then comes the chance of her receiving and imparting
disease.
Many men think that all such risk is avoided in the case of
deliberate seduction. Such, however, is by no means always the case.
The popular spread of physiological knowledge has been productive of
many unforeseen results. Many women, as well as many men, imagine
that by the observance of certain precautions they can do as they
please with a friend without possible chance of discovery; the result
of all which is, that, in many instances of intercourse with supposed
virgins, the biter is sorely bitten, and repents him at his leisure.
Where true seduction is effected, not only is the offender oppressed
by a life-long sense of the wrong he has done, but he must also feel
that the prize thus unfairly gained is liable at any moment to slip
from his grasp, or to prove to him the veriest apple of Sodom.