Part 14 (1/2)
”Individual predispositions, acquired or hereditary, engender for each a series of peculiar ills. In some, the debility bears upon the pulmonary organs. Hence results the dry cough, prolonged hoa.r.s.eness, st.i.tch in the side, spitting of blood, and finally phthisis. How many examples are there of young debauchees who have been devoured by this cruel disease!... It is, of all the grave maladies, the one which venereal abuses provoke the most frequently. Portal, Bayle, Louis, say this distinctly.”
A Cause of Consumption.--This fatal disease finds a large share of its victims among those addicted to s.e.xual excesses, either of an illicit nature or within the marriage pale, for the physical effects are essentially identical. This cause is especially active and fatal with sedentary persons, but is sufficiently powerful to undermine the const.i.tution under the most favorable circ.u.mstances, as the following case ill.u.s.trates:--
The patient was a young man of twenty-two, large, muscular, and well developed, having uncommonly broad shoulders and a full chest. His occupation had been healthful, that of a laborer. Had had cough for several months, and was spitting blood. Examination of lungs showed that they were hopelessly diseased. There was no trace of consumption in the family, and the only cause to which the disease could be attributed was excessive s.e.xual indulgence, which he confessed to have practiced for several years.
Effects on Wives.--If husbands are great sufferers, as we have seen, wives suffer still more terribly, being of feebler const.i.tution, and hence less able to bear the frequent shock which is suffered by the nervous system. Dr. Gardner places this evil prominent among the causes ”the result of which we see deplored in the public press of the day, which warns us that the American race is fast dying out, and that its place is being filled by emigrants of different lineage, religion, political ideas, and education.”
The same author remarks further on the results of this with other causes which largely grow out of it:--
”It has been a matter of common observation that the physical status of the women of Christendom has been gradually deteriorating; that their mental energies were uncertain and spasmodic; that they were prematurely care-worn, wrinkled, and enervated; that they became subject to a host of diseases scarcely ever known to the professional men of past times, but now familiar to, and the common talk of, the matrons, and often, indeed, of the youngest females in the community.”
So prevalent are these maladies that Michelet says with truth that the present is the ”age of womb diseases.”
Every physician of observation and experience has met many cases ill.u.s.trative of the serious effects of the evil named. Some years ago, when acting as a.s.sistant physician in a large dispensary in an Eastern city, a young woman applied for examination and treatment. She presented a great variety of nervous symptoms, prominent among which were those of mild hysteria and nervous exhaustion, together with impaired digestion and violent palpitation of the heart. In our inquiries respecting the cause of these difficulties, we learned that she had been married but about six months. A little careful questioning elicited the fact that s.e.xual indulgence was invariably practiced every night, and often two or three times, occasionally as many as four times a night. We had the key to her troubles at once, and ordered entire continence for a month. From her subsequent reports I learned that her husband would not allow her to comply with the request, but that indulgence was much less frequent than before. The result was not all that could be desired, but there was marked improvement. If the husband had been willing to ”do right,” entire recovery would have taken place with rapidity.
Another case came under our observation in which the patient, a man, confessed to having indulged every night for twenty years. We did not wonder that at forty he was a complete physical wreck.
The Greatest Cause of Uterine Disease.--Dr. J. R. Black remarks as follows on this subject:--
”Medical writers agree that one of the most common causes of the many forms of derangement to which woman is subject consists in excessive cohabitation. The diseases known as menorrhagia, dysmenorrhoea, leucorrhoea, amenorrhoea, abortions, prolapsus, chronic inflammations and ulcerations of the womb, with a yet greater variety of sympathetic nervous disorders, are some of the distressing forms of these derangements. The popular way of accounting for many of these ills is that they come from colds or from straining lifts. But if colds and great strain upon the parts in question develop such diseases, why are they not seen among the inferior animals? The climatic alternations they endure, the severe labor some of them are obliged to perform, ought to cause their ruin; or else in popular phrase, 'make them catch their deaths from cold.'”
Legalized Murder.--A medical writer of considerable ability presents the following picture, the counterpart of which almost any one can recall as having occurred within the circle of his acquaintance; perhaps numerous cases will be recalled by one who has been especially observing:--
”A man of great vital force is united to a woman of evenly-balanced organization. The husband, in the exercise of what he is pleased to term his 'marital rights,' places his wife, in a short time, on the nervous, delicate, sickly list. In the blindness and ignorance of his animal nature, he requires prompt obedience to his desires; and, ignorant of the law of right in this direction, thinking that it is her duty to accede to his wishes, though fulfilling them with a sore and troubled heart, she allows him pa.s.sively, never lovingly, to exercise daily and weekly, month in and month out, the low and beastly of his nature, and eventually, slowly but surely, to kill her. And this man, who has as surely committed murder as has the convicted a.s.sa.s.sin, lures to his net and takes unto him another wife, to repeat the same programme of legalized prost.i.tution on his part, and sickness and premature death on her part.”
Prof. Gerrish, in a little work from which we take the liberty to quote, speaks as follows on this subject:--
”One man reckless of his duty to the community, marries young, with means and prospects inadequate to support the family which is so sure to come ere long. His ostensible excuse is love; his real reason the gratification of his carnal instincts. Another man, in exactly similar circ.u.mstances, but too conscientious to a.s.sume responsibilities which he cannot carry, and in which failure must compromise the comfort and tax the purses of people from whom he has no right to extort luxuries, forbears to marry; but, feeling the pa.s.sions of his s.e.x, and being imbued with the prevalent errors on such matters, resorts for relief to unlawful coition. At the wedding of the former, pious friends a.s.semble with their presents and congratulations, and bid the legalized prost.i.tution G.o.dspeed. Love s.h.i.+elds the crime, all the more easily because so many of the rejoicing guests have sinned in precisely the same way. The other man has no festival gathering.... Society applauds the first and frowns on the second; but, to my mind, the difference between them is not markedly in favor of the former.”
”We hear a good deal said about certain crimes against nature, such as pederasty and sodomy, and they meet with the indignant condemnation of all right-minded persons. The statutes are especially severe on offenders of this cla.s.s, the penalty being imprisonment between one and ten years, whereas fornication is punished by imprisonment for not more than sixty days and a fine of less than one hundred dollars. But the query very pertinently arises just here as to whether the use of the condom and defertilizing injections is not equally a crime against nature, and quite as worthy of our detestation and contempt. And, further, when we consider the brute creation, and see that they, guided by instinct, copulate only when the female is in proper physiological condition and yields a willing consent, it may be suggested that congress between men and women may, in certain circ.u.mstances, be a crime against nature, and one far worse in its results than any other. Is it probable that a child born of a connection to which the woman objects will possess that felicitous organization which every parent should earnestly desire and endeavor to bestow on his offspring? Can the unwelcome fruit of a rape be considered, what every child has a right to be, a pledge of affection? Poor little Pip, in 'Great Expectations,'
spoke as the representative of a numerous cla.s.s when he said, 'I was always treated as if I had insisted on being born, in opposition to the dictates of reason, religion and morality, and against the dissuading arguments of my best friends.' We enjoin the young to honor father and mother, never thinking how undeserving of respect are those whose children suffer from inherited ills, the result of the selfishness and carelessness of their parents in begetting them.
”These accidental pregnancies are the great immediate cause of the enormously common crime of abortion, concerning which the morals of the people are amazingly blunted. The extent of the practice may be roughly estimated by the number of standing advertis.e.m.e.nts in the family newspapers, in which feticide is warranted safe and secret. It is not the poor only who take advantage of such nefarious opportunities; but the rich shamelessly patronize these professional and cowardly murderers of defenseless infancy. Madame Restell, who recently died by her own hand in New York, left a fortune of a million dollars, which she had acc.u.mulated by producing abortions.”
A husband who has not sunk in his carnality too far below the brute creation will certainly pause a moment, in the face of such terrible facts, before he continues his sensual, selfish, murderous course.
Indulgence during Menstruation.--The following remarks which our own professional experience has several times confirmed, reveal a still more heinous violation of nature's laws:--
”To many it may seem that it is unnecessary to caution against contracting relations.h.i.+ps at the period of the monthly flow, thinking that the instinctive laws of cleanliness and delicacy were sufficient to refrain the indulgence of the appet.i.tes; but they are little cognizant of the true condition of things in this world. Often have I had husbands inform me that they had not missed having s.e.xual relations with their wives once or more times a day for several years; and scores of women with delicate frames and broken-down health have revealed to me similar facts, and I have been compelled to make personal appeals to the husbands.”[21]
[Footnote 21: Gardner.]
The following is an important testimony by an eminent physician[22]
upon the same point:--
”Females whose health is in a weak state ... become liable, in transgressing this law, to an infectious disorder, which, it is commonly supposed, can only originate or prevail among disreputable characters; but Dr. b.u.mstead and a number of other eminent authorities believe and teach that gonorrhoea may originate among women entirely virtuous in the ordinary sense of the term. That excessive venery is the chief cause that originates this peculiar form of inflammation, has long been the settled opinion of medical men.”
[Footnote 22: Dr. J. R. Black.]
It seems scarcely possible that such enormity could be committed by any human being, at least by civilized men, and in the face of the injunctions of Moses to the Jews, to say nothing of the evident indecency of the act. The Jews still maintain their integrity to the observance of this command of their ancient lawgiver.