Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners Part 35

"It has often been a matter of wonder to me that men should, so heedlessly, and so injuriously to themselves, their wives and children, and their homes, demand at once, as soon as they get legal possession of their wives, the gratification of a pa.s.sion, which, when indulged merely for the sake of the gratification of the moment, must end in the destruction of all that is beautiful, n.o.ble and divine in man or woman. I have often felt that I would give the world for a friends.h.i.+p with man that should show no impurity in its bearing, and for a conjugal relation that would, at all times, heartily and practically recognize the right of the wife to decide for herself when she should enter into the relation that leads to maternity."

6. TIMELY ADVICE.--Here let me say that on no subject should a man and woman, as they are being attracted into conjugal relations, be more open and truthful with each other than on this. No woman, who would save herself and the man she loves from a desecrated and wretched home, should enter into the physical relations of marriage with a man until she understands what he expects of her as to the function of maternity, and the relation that leads to it. If a woman is made aware that the man who would win her as a wife regards her and the marriage relation only as the means of a legalized gratification of his pa.s.sions, and she sees fit to live with him as a wife, with such a prospect before her, she must take the consequences of a course so {261} degrading and so shameless. If she sees fit to make an offering of her body and soul on the altar of her husband's sensuality, she must do it; but she has a right to know to what base uses her womanhood is to be put, and it is due to her, as well as to himself, that he should tell beforehand precisely what he wants and expects of her.

Too frequently, man shrinks from all allusion, during courts.h.i.+p, to his expectations in regard to future pa.s.sional relations. He fears to speak of them, lest he should shock and repel the woman he would win as a wife.

Being conscious, it may be, of an intention to use power he may acquire over her person for his own gratification, he shuns all interchange of views with her, lest she should divine the hidden sensualism of his soul, and his intention to victimize her person to it the moment he shall get the license. A woman had better die at once than enter into or continue in marriage with a man whose highest conception of the relation is, that it is a means of licensed animal indulgence. In such a relation, body and soul are sacrificed.

7. ONE DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERISTIC of a true and n.o.ble husband is a feeling of manly pride in the physical elements of his manhood. His physical manhood, as well as his soul, is dear to the heart of his wife, because through this he can give the fullest expression of his manly power. How can you, my friend, secure for your person the loving care and respect of your wife? There is but one way: so manifest yourself to her, in the hours of your most endearing intimacies, that all your manly power shall be a.s.sociated only with all that is generous, just and n.o.ble in you, and with purity, freedom and happiness in her. Make her feel that all which const.i.tutes you a man, and qualifies you to be her husband and the father of her children, belongs to her, and is sacredly consecrated to the perfection and happiness of her nature. Do this, and the happiness of your home is made complete. Your _body_ will be lovingly and reverently cared for, because the wife of your bosom feels that it is the sacred symbol through which a n.o.ble, manly love is ever speaking to her, to cheer and sustain her.

8. WOMAN IS EVER PROUD, and justly so, of the manly pa.s.sion of her husband, when she knows it is controlled by a love for her, whose manifestations have regard only to her elevation and happiness. The power which, when bent only on selfish indulgence, becomes a source of more shame, degradation, disease and wretchedness, to {262} women and to children than all other things put together, does but enn.o.ble her, add grace and glory to her being, and concentrate and vitalize the love that encircles her as a wife when it is controlled by wisdom and consecrated to her highest growth and happiness, and that of her children. It lends enchantment to her person, and gives a fascination to her smiles, her words and her caresses, which ever breathe of purity and of heaven, and make her all lovely as a wife and mother to her husband and the father of her child. _Manly pa.s.sion is to the conjugal love of the wife like the sun to the rose-bud, that opens its petals, and causes them to give out their sweetest fragrance and to display their most delicate tints; or like the frost, which chills and kills it ere it blossoms in its richness and beauty._

9. A DIADEM OF BEAUTY.--Maternity, when it exists at the call of the wife, and is gratefully received, but binds her heart more tenderly and devotedly to her husband. As the father of her child, he stands before her invested with new beauty and dignity. In receiving from him the germ of a new life, she receives that which she feels is to add new beauty and glory to her as a woman--a new grace and attraction to her as a wife. She loves and honors him, because he has crowned her with the glory of a mother. Maternity, to her, instead of being repulsive, is a diadem of beauty, a crown of rejoicing; and deep, tender, and self-forgetting are her love and reverence for him who has placed it on her brow. How n.o.ble, how august, how beautiful is maternity when thus bestowed and received!

10. CONCLUSION.--Would you, then, secure the love and trust of your wife, and become an object of her ever-growing tenderness and reverence? a.s.sure her, by all your manifestations, and your perfect respect for the functions of her nature, that your pa.s.sion shall be in subjection of her wishes. It is not enough that you have secured in her heart respect for your spiritual and intellectual manhood. To maintain your self-respect in your relations with her, to perfect your growth and happiness as a husband, you must cause your _physical_ nature to be tenderly cherished and reverenced by her in all the sacred intimacies of home. No matter how much she reverences your intellectual or your social power, if by reason of your uncalled-for pa.s.sional manifestations you have made your physical manhood disagreeable, how can you, in her presence, preserve a sense of manly pride and dignity as a husband?

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Heredity and the Transmission of Diseases.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HEALTH AND DISEASE.]

1. BAD HABITS.--It is known that the girl who marries the man with bad habits, is, in a measure, responsible for the evil tendencies which these habits have created in the children; and young people are constantly warned of the danger in marrying when they know they come from families troubled with chronic diseases or insanity. To be sure the warnings have had little effect thus far in preventing such marriages, and it is doubtful whether they will, unless the prophecy of an extremist writing for one of our periodicals comes to pa.s.s--that the time is not far distant when such marriages will be a crime punishable by law. {264}

2. TENDENCY IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION.--That there is a tendency in the right direction must be admitted, and is perhaps most clearly shown in some of the articles on prison reform. Many of them strongly urge the necessity of preventive work as the truest economy, and some go so far as to say that if the present human knowledge of the laws of heredity were acted upon for a generation, reformatory measures would be rendered unnecessary.

3. SERIOUS CONSEQUENCES.--The mother who has ruined her health by late hours, highly-spiced food, and general carelessness in regard to hygienic laws, and the father who is the slave of questionable habits, will be very sure to have children either mentally or morally inferior to what they might otherwise have had a right to expect. But the prenatal influences may be such that evils arising from such may be modified to a great degree.

4. FORMATION OF CHARACTER.--I believe that pre-natal influences may do as much in the formation of character as all the education that can come after, and that the mother may, in a measure, "will" what that influence shall be, and that, as knowledge on the subject increases, it will be more and more under their control. In that, as in everything else, things that would be possible with one mother would not be with another, and measures that would be successful with one would produce opposite results from the other.

5. INHERITING DISEASE. Consumption--that dread foe of modern life--is the most frequently encountered of all affections as the result of inherited predispositions. Indeed, some of the most eminent physicians have believed it is never produced in any other way. Heart disease, disease of the throat, excessive obesity, affections of the skin, asthma, disorders of the brain and nervous system, gout, rheumatism and cancer, are all hereditary.

A tendency to bleed frequently, profusely and uncontrollably, from trifling wounds, is often met with as a family affection.

6. MENTAL DERANGEMENTS.--Almost all forms of mental derangements are hereditary--one of the parents or near relation being afflicted. Physical or bodily weakness is often hereditary, such as scrofula, gout, rheumatism, rickets, consumption, apoplexy, hernia, urinary calculi, hemorrhoids or piles, cataract, etc. In fact, all physical weakness, if ingrafted in either parent, is transmitted from parents to offspring, and is often more strongly marked in the latter than in the former.

7. MARKS AND DEFORMITIES.--Marks and deformities are all transmissible from parents to offspring, equally with {265} diseases and peculiar proclivities. Among such blemishes may be mentioned moles, hair-lips, deficient or supernumerary fingers, toes, and other characteristics. It is also a.s.serted that dogs and cats that have accidentally lost their tails, bring forth young similarly deformed. Blumenbach tells of a man who had lost his little finger, having children with the same deformity.

8. CAUTION.--Taking facts like these into consideration, how very important is it for persons, before selecting partners for life, to deliberately weigh every element and circ.u.mstances of this nature, if they would insure a felicitous union, and not entail upon their posterity disease, misery and despair. Alas! in too many instances matrimony is made a matter of money, while all earthly joys are sacrificed upon the accursed altars of l.u.s.t and mammon.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

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Preparation for Maternity.

1. WOMAN BEFORE MARRIAGE.--It is not too much to say that the life of women before marriage ought to be adjusted with more reference to their duties as mothers than to any other one earthly object. It is the continuance of the race which is the chief purpose of marriage. The pa.s.sion of amativeness is probably, on the whole, the most powerful of all human impulses. Its purpose, however, is rather to subserve the object of continuing the species, than merely its own gratification.

2. EXERCISE.--Girls should be brought up to live much in the open air, always with abundant clothing against wet and cold. They should be encouraged to take much active exercise; as much, if they want to, as boys.

It is as good for little girls to run and jump, to ramble in the woods, to go boating, to ride and drive, to play and "have fun" generally, as for little boys.

3. PRESERVE THE SIGHT.--Children should be carefully prevented from using their eyes to read or write, or in any equivalent exertion, either before breakfast, by dim daylight, or by artificial light. Even school studies should be such that they can be dealt with by daylight. Lessons that cannot be learned without lamp-light study are almost certainly excessive. This precaution should ordinarily be maintained until the age of p.u.b.erty is reached.

4. BATHING.--Bathing should be enforced according to const.i.tutions, not by an invariable rule, except the invariable rule of keeping clean. Not necessarily every day, nor necessarily in cold water; though those conditions are doubtless often right in case of abundant physical health and strength.

5. WRONG HABITS.--The habit of daily natural evacuations should be solicitously formed and maintained. Words or figures could never express the discomforts and wretchedness which wrong habits in this particular have locked down upon innumerable women for years and even for life.

6. DRESS.--Dress should be warm, loose, comely, and modest rather than showy; but it should be good enough to satisfy a child's desires after a good appearance, if they are reasonable. Children, indeed, should have all their reasonable desires granted as far as possible; for nothing makes them reasonable so rapidly and so surely as to treat them reasonably.

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7. TIGHT LACING.--Great harm is often done to maidens for want of knowledge in them, or wisdom and care in their parents. The extremes of fas.h.i.+ons are very p.r.o.ne to violate not only taste, but physiology. Such cases are tight lacing, low necked dresses, thin shoes, heavy skirts. And yet, if the ladies only knew, the most attractive costumes are not the extremes of fas.h.i.+on, but those which conform to fas.h.i.+on enough to avoid oddity, which preserve decorum and healthfulness, whether or no; and here is the great secret of successful dress--vary fas.h.i.+on so as to suit the style of the individual.

8. COURTs.h.i.+P AND MARRIAGE.--Last of all, parental care in the use of whatever influence can be exerted in the matter of courts.h.i.+p and marriage.

Maidens, as well as youths, must, after all, choose for themselves. It is their own lives which they take in their hands as they enter the marriage state, and not their parents'; and as the consequences affect them primarily it is the plainest justice that with the responsibility should be joined the right of choice. The parental influence, then, must be indirect and advisory. Indirect, through the whole bringing up of their daughter; for if they have trained her aright, she will be incapable of enduring a fool, still more a knave.

9. A YOUNG WOMAN AND A YOUNG MAN HAD BETTER NOT BE ALONE TOGETHER VERY MUCH UNTIL THEY ARE MARRIED.--This will be found to prevent a good many troubles. It is not meant to imply that either s.e.x, or any member of it, is worse than another, or bad at all, or anything but human. It is simply the prescription of a safe general rule. It is no more an imputation than the rule that people had better not be left without oversight in presence of large sums of other folks' money. The close personal proximity of the s.e.xes is greatly undesirable before marriage. Kisses and caresses are most properly the monopoly of wives. Such indulgences have a direct and powerful physiological effect. Nay, they often lead to the most fatal results.

10. IGNORANCE BEFORE MARRIAGE.--At some time before marriage those who are to enter into it ought to be made acquainted with some of the plainest common-sense limitations which should govern their new relations to each other. Ignorance in such matters has caused an infinite amount of disgust, pain, and unhappiness. It is not necessary to specify particulars here: see other portions of this work.

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Impregnation.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A HEALTHY MOTHER.]

1. CONCEPTION OR IMPREGNATION.--Conception or impregnation takes place by the union of the male sperm and female sperm. Whether this is accomplished in the ovaries, the oviducts or the uterus, is still a question of discussion and investigation by physiologists.

2. Pa.s.sING OFF THE OVUM.--"With many woman," says Dr. Stockham in her Tokology, "the ovum pa.s.ses off within twenty-four or forty-eight hours after menstruation begins. Some, by careful observation, are able to know with certainty when this takes place. It is often accompanied with malaise, nervousness, headache or actual uterine pain. A minute substance like the white of an egg; with a fleck of blood in it, can frequently be seen upon the clothing. Ladies who have noticed this phenomenon testify to its recurring very regularly upon the same day after menstruation. Some delicate women have observed it as late as the fourteenth day."

3. CALCULATIONS.--Conception is more liable to take place either immediately before or immediately after the period, and, on that account it is usual when calculating the date at which to expect labor, to count from the day of disappearance of the last period. The easiest way to make a calculation is to count back three months from the date of the last period and add seven days; thus we might say that the date was the 18th of July; counting back brings us to the 18th of April, and adding the seven days will bring us to the 25th day of April, the expected time.

4. EVIDENCE OF CONCEPTION.--Very many medical authorities, distinguished in this line, have stated their belief that women never pa.s.s more than two or three days at the most beyond the forty weeks conceded to pregnancy--that is two hundred and eighty days or ten lunar months, or nine calendar months and a week. About two hundred and eighty days will represent the average duration of pregnancy, counting from the last day of the last period. Now it must be borne in mind, that there are many disturbing elements which might cause the young married woman to miss a time. During the first month of pregnancy there is no sign by which the condition may be positively known. The missing of a period, especially in a person who has been regular for some time, may lead one to suspect it; but there are many attendant causes in married life, the little annoyances of household duties, embarra.s.sments, and the enforced gayety which naturally surrounds the bride, and {270} these should all be taken into consideration in the discussion as to whether or not she is pregnant. But then, again, there are some rare cases who have menstruated throughout their pregnancy; and also cases where menstruation was never established and pregnancy occurred.

Nevertheless, the non-appearance of the period, with other signs, may be taken as presumptive evidence.

5. "ARTIFICIAL IMPREGNATION.--It may not be generally known that union is not essential to impregnation; it is possible for conception to occur without congress. All that is necessary is that seminal animalcules enter the womb and unite there with the egg or ovum. It is not essential that the s.e.m.e.n be introduced through the medium of the male organ, as it has been demonstrated repeatedly that by means of a syringe and freshly obtained and healthy s.e.m.e.n, impregnation can be made to follow by its careful introduction. There are physicians in France who make a specialty of "Artificial Impregnation," as it is called, and produce children to otherwise childless couples, being successful in many instances in supplying them as they are desired."

Signs and Symptoms of Pregnancy.

1. THE FIRST SIGN.--The first sign that leads a lady to suspect that she is pregnant is her ceasing-to-be-unwell. This, provided she has just before been in good health, is a strong symptom of pregnancy; but still there must be others to corroborate it.

2. ABNORMAL CONDITION.--Occasionally, women menstruate during the entire time of gestation. This, without doubt, is an abnormal condition, and should be remedied, as disastrous consequences may result. Also, women have been known to bear children who have never menstruated. The cases are rare of pregnancy taking place where menstruation has never occurred, yet it frequently happens that women never menstruate from one pregnancy to another. In these cases this symptom is ruled out for diagnotic purposes.