philosophical anatomists of our time—that, so far as the mere
structure of her body is concerned, woman has not attained so
advanced a stage of development as man. It is even alleged, by
thoughtful embryologists, that every man during the earliest period
of his existence was once a woman; that is to say, that in the fœtal
condition his was at one time identical with the female type, and
that this was subsequently outgrown. There is no doubt that many
facts support this opinion, as the persistence, for instance, in
every man, of a minute and undeveloped womb,[37] useless, save as
furnishing one of those homologies so abounding in the plan of
creation. Suppose, however, that we grant all this, and that in
purely intellectual matters woman varies normally from man, as she
does in physical strength; we must yet allow that in moral vigor,
in religious aspiration, and faith, and in all purely emotional
attributes, she far excels him. It is not from accident that the
chaste and good of all ages have selected the female rather than
the male as their ideal of angels and saints in heaven; but it is
in tacit yet universal recognition of her superiority in certain
matters over us. We men are of the earth, earthy, but they the gift
of God; and such, in the tradition, did Adam see in the beautiful
mother of mankind. Well for us all that she gave to him of the tree
of knowledge, else, if that tradition be true, we ourselves had never
been.
It is in accordance with those differences in feeling, dependent upon
differences of conformation, growing with their growth and increasing
with the years, and not in consequence of custom alone, that, just as
obtains with the lower mammals, the advances towards the union of the
sexes are made almost entirely by the man. He is impelled by that
strong and almost irresistible instinct by which the future peopling
of the earth is determined, while in the woman it is, to a great
extent, the subsequently awakened emotion of maternal love, which,
far stronger in her than that for simple congress, leads her in
very truth to lay down her life for her children; for this in every
household, where husband and wife live in accordance with the laws
of their being, is the practical result. The mother may live to a
good old age, but still the best energies of her life are expended on
her offspring, in rearing and caring for them till able to shift for
themselves; and in this lies, or should lie, her highest happiness.
I shall be told that many marriages are unfruitful. Granted. That
many must necessarily be such. Also granted, but with a limitation.
Every man of the present day knows that, of these unfruitful
marriages, by far the majority are such from intention. We seldom
now see families of any size; and yet women conceive as easily and
men are as potent as in the olden time. Every physician who has
considered the subject will aver that my statement is true, and
will acknowledge, moreover, that of the unfruitful marriages where
children are yet desired, the barrenness of the woman is often owing
to a brace of causes that are frequently easily removed by treatment;
in the one instance there being some form of organic displacement
or physical obstruction on the wife’s part, in the other temporary
or persistent impotence on that of the husband, generally owing to
previous careless or unphysiological ways of life. It is folly to
think, as so many do, that early years of intentional childlessness
can be atoned for by subsequent years of intentional plenty. Those
who begin by thwarting the laws of nature very constantly find that
in later life, when mere sensations pall, and physical weariness
supplants the freshness and ardor of youth, these laws, disobeyed,
will in turn disappoint them. This subject is of such importance, and
is so little understood, that I must here quote again from one of my
own previous writings upon the subject; indeed so few physicians have
dared to write or apparently to think of these matters, that there
are hardly others to whom I can refer.
In a paper read before the Massachusetts Medical Society in May
of last year, and published in one of the New York professional
periodicals,[38] I have laid down the following series of
propositions, which are startling, but undoubtedly true.
“1. That while, owing to the advance of our knowledge in the
treatment of childbed, more children are born living than formerly,
and more mothers saved, and owing to our wiser treatment of the
diseases of children, and their exposure to better sanitary
conditions, a much larger percentage of them reach maturity, yet
among the better class of inhabitants fewer infants are born; that is
to say, that the average number of births to each Protestant family
is less than it was half a century ago.
“2. That of the pregnancies in reality occurring in this class, fewer
reach completion.
“3. That of the instances of conjugal intercourse taking place, fewer
result in impregnation.
“4. That of these incompleted pregnancies and apparent instances of
sterility, a large proportion are intentional.
“5. That such wilful interference with the laws of nature is
productive, as might have been expected, of a vast amount of
disease—disease whose causation has been unexplained, and whose
character is made evident alike by the confessions of the patient,
and by the results of a more natural course of life.
“6. That intentional abortions are a greater tax upon a woman’s
health, and more surely followed by uterine disease than pregnancies
completed, and this even though the patient may seem to rally from
them with impunity—the result showing itself, if not immediately,
then after a lapse of years, or at the turn of life.
“7. That the systematic prevention of pregnancy, by whatever means,
is also followed by prejudicial effects, affecting the nervous and
the uterine systems, not unfrequently producing sterility from an
organic cause, and laying the foundation of serious or incurable
disease.
“8. That when such prevention is occasioned by incompleted
intercourse, by whatever means effected, the effect is equally bad
for the husband’s health as for that of the wife—there resulting
dyspepsia, functional or organic nervous disease, and at times
impotence, temporary or persistent.”
It will be seen by the above, not merely that in many instances of
unfruitful marriage the barrenness is intentional, but that thus to
trifle with the full gratification of our natural instincts, whenever
the rein is given to them, is fraught with the most detrimental
consequences to both parties concerned,—to us men, as well as to our
associates,—and this in either event: for if we permit or counsel
them to destroy their unborn offspring, their health is very likely
to be thereby undermined, and our conjugal intercourse with them very
materially interfered with, or permanently ended; and if, on the
other hand, we allow ourselves to use them merely as mistresses, we
not only are liable to seriously injure their health, but are almost
sure to ruin our own. So that in both instances we are the losers.
It will thus be seen that certain of the conjugal rights that are
assumed by men, are, whether absolute or not, of a very questionable
character; harmful to our moral natures, destructive to our physical
constitutions, and much more wisely honored in the breach than in the
observance.
How is it with others? Some may allege that while they would neither
approve the wilful interference with or prevention of impregnation,
no harm can surely attach to very frequent indulgence in what
they call living a perfectly natural life, that is to say, giving
themselves up, fully and constantly, to unbridled sexual license.
To this I reply that some men are brutes. Even among husbands,
pledged truly to love and cherish those who generally give far more
real affection than they receive, there exist the veriest satyrs,
eroto-maniacs, madmen. Knowing that they are endangering their wife’s
life, that they are causing her health seriously to suffer, or to be
ruined, they still persist in their demands for what at the best is
but a momentary gratification, and when begrudged, becomes the most
selfish and the basest of all pleasures; and this they do in the face
of remonstrance, entreaties, tears. Many a married man has, as I
have said, virtually committed a rape upon his wife: though the crime
may be unrecognized as such by the law, it is none the less this in
fact, the element of consent having been wholly wanting.
There are others of our number, who, kind at heart and not so
selfish, equally err through ignorance of the real nature of the
case, or from inconsiderateness. It is only of late that even
physicians are awakening to the importance of the manifold special
diseases of women, and to the very existence of many of them. It
is often asked if these diseases are not a new thing, if they have
not indeed wholly sprung up during the present century. This may be
true to a certain extent, in consequence of certain variations from
the normal standard of living; but there is no doubt, on the other
hand, that hosts of women used to die of disease, then undetected
or wholly misunderstood, that is now readily cured. Among these
diseases, all of which are enshrouded by the veil of a woman’s
natural delicacy, but which, involving as they do the very existence
of social life, come directly within the physician’s province, and
that also of simple common sense,—among them there is a very large
class, closely related to the subject of our present inquiry, those
occasioned or aggravated by excessive sexual indulgence. I shall,
of course, refrain from speaking more explicitly than I have now
done, but will merely say that we may all of us be thankful that our
development was carried to the positive extreme, and that we are not
women. They are subject to an immense variety of disease, of which,
from personal experience, we know nothing, and it is often attended
by the most exquisite suffering. This they are prone to conceal;
far from generally exaggerating it, they endeavor to undervalue it,
and suffer, with a fortitude that we could but feebly emulate, in
silence. There are exceptions to this statement, it is true, but
they are still but exceptions, and so prove the rule. Even where
such do exist, there is usually present great nervous excitement or
exaltation, which is often much more difficult to endure than direct
physical pain. Far from ridiculing or chiding these sufferers, they
deserve and should receive our hearty sympathy, which is by no
means sure, as it is so commonly supposed to do, of evoking a fresh
accession of the malady. Many a heart is broken by the sneer of
disbelief at the gentle complaint of bodily anguish; many a divorce
takes its origin in the charge of lost affection, because a wife
refuses to be accessory to her own slow destruction; in many cases
she prefers to this disgrace, and resorts to, suicide. These are
facts, instances of all of which have been known to me. There are
men, and very many women, who will thank me for so plainly stating
them. Men do I say? They are facts that should be made known to
every man, that, so warned, he may live a truly manly, generous, and
dutiful life.
For these rights, of which I have been speaking, are, in reality, not
absolute, but reciprocal with duties. How can we ourselves expect
enjoyment, if perchance we are inflicting terrible suffering? How
can we look for constant and untiring affection, if, inconsiderate
or brutal, we compel what would be withheld perhaps, however
reluctantly, by ill health? Is it thus we would cherish? As we sow,
even so must we reap. No true conjugal enjoyment can exist, unless
it is mutual. We cannot be loved, unless we are respected. We cannot
be respected, even by our wives, unless we respect them. The true
rule should be to take only what is freely given; were this the case,
far more freely would gifts be offered.
FOOTNOTES:
[37] Simpson. Obstetric Works, vol. ii. p. 294.
[38] New York Medical Journal, Sept., 1866, p. 423.
VI. SHOULD MERE INSTINCT, OR REASON, BE THE RULE?
I have said that while some men are brutal in their conjugal
relations, others are simply inconsiderate; and I have referred
somewhat plainly to very important matters that “prurient prudes”
would keep concealed. I have expressed my condemnation of the vile
practices by which the size of families is kept in these latter days
at the minimum. In ancient commonwealths, the most fruitful mother
was considered to have deserved well of her nation, and a statue was
erected in her honor. Now, on the contrary, such a wife is considered
as almost the greatest misfortune that can occur to a man, and
women have learned to consider the carrying into effect the noblest
purposes of their being as alike a disaster and a disgrace.
There are some husbands who, while shocked at the idea of interfering
in any way with the natural course of events, should such be really
established, yet consider excessive carnal indulgence necessary for
the preservation of their own physical vigor—a most mistaken opinion.
There are others who could not be persuaded to resort to direct
measures of a preventive character, and yet indulge in excessive
sexual intercourse for this very end, on the ground, say they, that
prostitutes, in proportion as they are constant in their attention to
their vile trade, are usually childless; and this opinion, true to a
certain extent, is yet in its effects as prejudicial as the other.
The sterility of prostitutes is in great measure owing to disease
that has been occasioned by the constant local excitement to which
they are exposed; I am not now speaking of lesions of a specific
or infectious character, but merely of those diseases which may be
occasioned in any wife when treated by her husband as a prostitute.
It is well known also that the common woman usually soon breaks
down in health, and dies early, not so much from the other forms of
debauchery to which she is exposed, as for the reason to which I have
now referred. Woe therefore to the man who would thus cause within
his own house disease and death.
As to the former of the excuses given: we are all of us prone in
early life to excess, and especially so during the first years
following marriage. As we grow older, we are compelled to live more
moderately, and it becomes very necessary for us to apply the brakes
when beginning to descend the down grade of life. Often, after a
period of abstinence or semi-abstinence, anything like the license
of earlier life becomes dangerous, or even fatal; and this it is
that explains the rapid decadence so often observed in men who have
married late in life, or in widowers, who, after a long period of
rest, have taken to themselves a youthful spouse.
In advising, as I am compelled to do, moderation, that golden mean,
wherein lie the highest duty and the truest happiness, it is
necessary that I refer to a still additional class of husbands—those
who, endeavoring to be reasonable in their demands, yet manage,
for one reason or another, to keep their wives in the state of
gestation the greater part of the time. From such, physicians often
hear complaints; but not so often as from their consorts. Extremes,
it is true, are dangerous: it is almost sure to be detrimental to
a woman living in wedlock to intentionally continue sterile: it is
frequently depressing to a woman’s health to be allowed no interval
of rest between her pregnancies. This fact, however, affords no
excuse, as it is constantly constrained to do, for preventing
impregnation or inducing a miscarriage. The remedy lies often in
the strictest continence, and in continence alone; for whatever
care be used as to the observance of certain times and seasons,—and
such is now the popular knowledge of physiology, that even little
boys and girls know at what times conception is, and at what times
it is not, probable,—accidents will sometimes occur. Ova, it is
true, are probably only disengaged from the ovary at the menstrual
period; but these in exceptional cases may be, and undoubtedly
often are, retained for a longer time than usual in a place and
condition favorable to impregnation. Moreover, while nursing women,
as is generally supposed, do not often conceive until after the
re-establishment of the catamenia, still they sometimes seem to do
so; the error probably being one of observation, and either from a
colorless leucorrhœa having taken the place of the usual sanguineous
discharge, or from the latter having been just about to show itself,
and having been suppressed, as an effect, by impregnation.
However this may be, it is clearly the husband’s duty to care for
his wife rather than for himself. Every married woman, save in very
exceptional cases, which should only be allowed to be such by the
decision of a competent physician, every married woman, until near
the so-called turn of life, should occasionally bear a child; not as
a duty to the community merely, nor a compliment to her husband, nor
even an additional bond of union between him and herself, but as the
best means of insuring her own permanent good health. How frequently
should this be? Usually the interval should be from two to two and a
half or three years, so as to allow a sufficient time for nursing, so
important both for the welfare of the child and its mother, and an
interval of subsequent rest. Did women half appreciate the importance
of lactation as a means, by establishing for a sufficiently long
period a tendency of the circulation towards the breasts and away
from the womb, of averting many of the common varieties of uterine
disease, fashion in this matter would have fewer votaries.
Is it asked, whether by my above remarks I intend to imply that
the conjugal approach should never be indulged in, save for the
sole purpose of begetting children? I hold no such opinion. The
case is a very parallel one to that concerning diet. Had it been
intended that we should confine ourselves, in amount and character
of food, to only so much as would barely support life, and this of
the simplest character, we should hardly have been supplied with
such exquisitely sensitive gustatory nerves. It cannot be said that
this was necessary to insure a proper consumption of food, for the
languor and craving induced by fasting would have been sufficient for
this. The pleasures of the table, restrained within due bounds, serve
not only to enhance the comfort of the individual, but they form that
centre of social attraction which serves to cement friendships, and
to increase as well as to render permanent the sweet communion of
each regularly assembling family circle. And so with the pleasures of
venery. Restrained within due bounds as to frequency, they serve to
add a charm to life, and to give fresh courage for enduring all its
vicissitudes. But to gain these, one single rule must be observed: it
is this—that the husband compel his wife to nothing that she herself
does not freely assent to. A forced union is even worse than the
solitary vice, whose baneful character was alluded to in an earlier
portion of this essay. It is even worse, for it is compelling an
unwilling and often a chaste-minded person to pander to the basest of
lusts. When such habits exist, we are not wholly to blame the woman
if she seek to avert her impending maternity, even though at the risk
of her life; forced upon her, it is repulsive, and her whole nature
rebels, even her most natural of instincts. It is rather the husband
who is to be condemned; his selfish hardness of heart, his brutality,
are the cause of her crime.
VII. ARGUMENTS AND COUNTER ARGUMENTS AS TO DIVORCE.
The ease with which marriages are consummated in this country, and
their bonds loosed again, are among the features of our social system
that are most wonderful to foreigners.[39] Some of our States have
acquired an unenviable reputation as places of unshacklement for
those who tire of their self-imposed burdens, and journeys have
repeatedly been made, of hundreds of miles, that, by a short sojourn
at this distance from home, the lenient legal requisitions might be
complied with, and the knot unloosed that in old time only death
could sever.
Of the thousand reasons alleged for divorce, most of them depend
upon the simple cause for unhappiness I have already indicated.
The parties tire of each other, the wife wearied by her husband’s
unreasonableness, and the husband, still more unreasonable,
complaining of the very weariness he has himself occasioned. Cases
undoubtedly occur where disability for marriage originally existed,
there being some physical impediment or some disenabling disease of
body or mind, such as is adjudged by courts to be a sufficient bar.
As to these, however, the progress of medical and surgical science
has rendered it now possible, in many instances, to effect a cure,
and to change the husband’s or wife’s disappointment into joy. In
many of the instances referred to, the parties live unhappily on,
dreading the scandal of a public application for divorce or trial
in court, and ignorant that relief is ever otherwise possible. The
extent at times of their unhappiness may be judged, when it is stated
that, in cases of deformity, men have repeatedly, through mistake,
been married as women, and women as men. For every instance of the
kind that has been publicly reported, it is probable that a hundred
have occurred.
Other cases undoubtedly exist, where, for proved and patent
unfaithfulness upon the part of one of the parties, it is rendered
impossible for the other to remain conjoined in wedlock. I would not
palliate such wickedness as adultery, but would merely state, from
studying such cases,—for they fall within the scope of my observation
both as a teacher and an expert,—that at times the offender has been
actuated by motives of jealousy or of revenge: fancying himself or
herself sinned against in this same identical manner, the false step
has been taken as an offset, just as in many instances the husband
has gone from home and astray, because he honestly thought that his
wife had deliberately ceased to love him, while she, poor creature,
pining for him at heart, was yet compelled to deny him her favors, on
account of bodily suffering that perhaps he himself had occasioned.
There are still other causes of divorce. Their importance is so
great, and the subject so closely concerns every citizen, that I
have no hesitation in being even more explicit. In many cases the
charge of infidelity is rested upon the communication, or supposed
communication of infectious disease from one of the parties to the
other. Often the charge is true, often it is false, at least so far
as the imputation of sinful conduct is concerned. I disbelieve the
statement so often made, that either one or the other of the two
forms of specific disease has been occasioned, in the adult, by
other than by sexual contact. The allegations as to water closets,
soiled linen, &c., it has irreverently been remarked, should be
allowed weight only in the cases of clergymen, or others supposed
by their position to be above the scandalous practices of the every
day world. There is no doubt that to children such disease has been
communicated by suckling an unclean wet nurse, or by her using to
bathe it the foul rags with which she had cleansed her own sores. In
the case of adults, however, there are certain mistakes that can be
made, that indeed have been made, and have plunged families into the
deepest distress, the suspected party being wholly innocent. One of
these errors depends upon the fact that the primary lesion of the
most dreadful disease of unchastity may escape even the most careful
scrutiny, or from its insignificant appearance may be considered
of trifling importance. The disease being inheritable, may yet not
be evinced in husband or wife save as tainting their children, the
unmistakable signs of such taint being familiar to every physician,
and upon this discovery of infidelity, it may be attributed to the
wrong party. Another source of error is, that the other result
of unfaithfulness may be simulated by the effects of peculiar
irritations, or of the chastest congress under certain circumstances.
Of this fact there is not the slightest doubt.