Part 15 (1/2)
[Footnote 24: Dr. Gerrish.]
What May Be Done?--But what is the practical conclusion to be drawn from all the foregoing? What _should_ people do? what _may_ they do?
Dr. Gardner offers the following remarks, which partially answer the questions:--
”We have shown that we can 'DO RIGHT' without prejudice to health by the exercise of continence. Self-restraint, the ruling of the pa.s.sions, is a virtue, and is within the power of all well-regulated minds. Nor is this necessarily perpetual or absolute. The pa.s.sions may be restrained within proper limitations. He who indulges in lascivious thoughts may stimulate himself to frenzy; but if his mind were under proper control, he would find other employment for it, and his body, obedient to its potent sway, would not become the master of the man.”
What are the ”proper limitations,” every person must decide for himself in view of the facts which have been presented. If he find that the animal in his nature is too strong to allow him to comply with what seems to be the requirements of natural law, let him approximate as nearly to the truth as possible. ”Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind,” and act accordingly, not forgetting that this is a matter with serious moral bearings, and, hence, one in which conscience should be on the alert. It is of no use to reject truth because it is unpalatable. There can be nothing worse for a man than to ”know the truth and do it not.”
It is but fair to say that there is a wide diversity of opinion among medical men on this subject. A very few hold that the s.e.xual act should never be indulged except for the purpose of reproduction, and then only at periods when reproduction will be possible. Others, while equally opposed to the excesses, the effects of which have been described, limit indulgence to the number of months in the year.
Read, reflect, weigh well the matter, then fix upon a plan of action, and, if it be in accordance with the dictates of better judgment, do not swerve from it.
If the suggestion made near the outset of these remarks, in comparing the reproductive function in man and animals--viz., that the seasons of s.e.xual approach should be governed by the inclination of the female--were conscientiously followed, it would undoubtedly do away with at least three-fourths of the excesses which have been under consideration. Before rejecting the hint so plainly offered by nature, let every man consider for a moment whether he has any other than purely selfish arguments to produce against it.
Early Moderation.--The time of all others when moderation is most imperatively demanded, yet least likely to be practiced, is at the beginning of matrimonial life. Many a woman dates the beginning of a life of suffering from the first night after marriage; and the mental suffering from the disgusting and even horrible recollections of that night, the events of which were scarred upon her mind as well as upon her body, have made her equally as wretched mentally as bodily.
A learned French writer, in referring to this subject, says, ”The husband who begins with his wife by a rape is a lost man. He will never be loved.”
We quote the following very sensible words from Dr. Napheys:--
”It sometimes happens that marriage is consummated with difficulty.
To overcome this, care, management, and forbearance should always be employed, and anything like precipitation and violence avoided.”
Cases have come under our care of young wives who have required months of careful treatment to repair the damage inflicted on their wedding night. A medical writer has reported a case in which he was called upon to testify in a suit for divorce, which is an ill.u.s.tration of so gross a degree of sensuality that the perpetrator certainly deserved most severe punishment. The victim, a beautiful and accomplished young lady, to please her parents, was married to a man much older than herself, riches being the chief attraction. She at once began to pine, and in a very few months was a complete wreck. Emaciated, spiritless, haggard, she was scarcely a shadow of her former self. The physician who was called in, upon making a local examination, found those delicate organs in a state of most terrible laceration and inflammation. The bladder, r.e.c.t.u.m, and other adjacent organs, were highly inflamed, and sensitive in the highest degree. Upon inquiring respecting the cause, he found that from the initial night she had been subjected to the most excessive demands by her husband, ”day and night.” The tortures she had undergone had been terrific; and her mind trembled upon the verge of insanity.
She entered suit for divorce on the charge of cruelty, but was defeated, the judge ruling that the law has no jurisdiction in matters of that sort.
In another somewhat similar case which came to our knowledge, a young wife was delivered from the lecherous a.s.saults of her husband--for they were no better--by the common sense of her neighbor friends, who gathered in force and insisted upon their discontinuance. It is only now and then that cases of this sort come to the surface. The majority of them are hidden deep down in the heart of the poor, heart-broken wife, and too often they are hidden along with the victim in an early grave.
PREVENTION OF CONCEPTION: ITS EVILS AND DANGERS.
The evil considered in the preceding section is by far the greatest cause of those which will be dwelt upon in this. Excesses are habitually practiced through ignorance or carelessness of their direct results, and then to prevent the legitimate result of the reproductive act, innumerable devices are employed to render it fruitless. To even mention all of these would be too great a breach of propriety, even in this plain-spoken work; but accurate description is unnecessary, since those who need this warning are perfectly familiar with all the foul accessories of evil thus employed. We cannot do better than to quote from the writings of several of the most eminent authors upon this subject. The following paragraphs are from the distinguished Mayer, who has already been frequently quoted:--
”The numerous stratagems invented by debauch to annihilate the natural consequences of coition, have all the same end in view.”
Conjugal Onanism.--”The soiling of the conjugal bed by the shameful maneuvers to which we have made allusion, is mentioned for the first time in Gen. 38:6, and following verses: 'And it came to pa.s.s, when he [Onan] went in unto his brother's wife, that he spilled it on the ground, lest that he should give seed to his brother. And the thing which he did displeased the Lord; wherefore he slew him.'
”Hence the name of _conjugal onanism_.
”One cannot tell to what great extent this vice is practiced, except by observing its consequences, even among people who fear to commit the slightest sin, to such a degree is the public conscience perverted upon this point. Still, many husbands know that nature often succeeds in rendering nugatory the most subtle calculations, and reconquers the rights which they have striven to frustrate. No matter; they persevere, none the less, and by the force of habit they poison the most blissful moments of life, with no surety of averting the result that they fear.
So, who knows if the infants, too often feeble and weazen, are not the fruit of these in themselves incomplete _procreations_, and disturbed by preoccupations foreign to the generic act? Is it not reasonable to suppose that the creative power, not meeting in its disturbed functions the conditions necessary for the elaboration of a normal product, the conception might be from its origin imperfect, and the being which proceeded therefrom, one of those monsters which are described in treatises on teratology?”
”Let us see, now, what are the consequences to those given to this practice of conjugal onanism.
”We have at our disposition numerous facts which rigorously prove the disastrous influence of abnormal coitus to the woman, but we think it useless to publish them. All pract.i.tioners have more or less observed them, and it will only be necessary for them to call upon their memories to supply what our silence leaves. 'However, it is not difficult to conceive,' says Dr. Francis Devay, 'the degree of perturbation that a like practice should exert upon the genital system of woman by provoking desires which are not gratified. A profound stimulation is felt through the entire apparatus; the uterus, fallopian tubes, and ovaries enter into a state of o.r.g.a.s.m, a storm which is not appeased by the natural crisis; a nervous super-excitation persists. There occurs, then, what would take place if, presenting food to a famished man, one should s.n.a.t.c.h it from his mouth after having thus violently excited his appet.i.te. The sensibilities of the womb and the entire reproductive system are teased for no purpose. It is to this cause, too often repeated, that we should attribute the multiple neuroses, those strange affections which originate in the genital system of woman.
Our conviction respecting them is based upon a great number of observations. Furthermore, the normal relations existing between the married couple undergo unfortunate changes; this affection, founded upon reciprocal esteem, is little by little effaced by the repet.i.tion of an act which pollutes the marriage bed; from thence proceed certain hard feelings, certain deep impressions which, gradually growing, eventuate in the scandalous ruptures of which the community rarely know the real motive.'
”If the good harmony of families and their reciprocal relations are seriously menaced by the invasion of these detestable practices, the health of women, as we have already intimated, is fearfully injured.
A great number of neuralgias appear to us to have no other cause. Many women that we have interrogated on this matter have fortified this opinion. But that which to us has pa.s.sed to the condition of incontestable proof, is the prevalence of uterine troubles, of enervation among the married, hysterical symptoms which are met with in the conjugal relation as often as among young virgins, arising from the vicious habits of the husbands in their conjugal intercourse....