Safe Marriage Part 1

Safe Marriage.

by Ettie A. Rout.

PREFACE.

It affords me great pleasure to write a short preface to this book, since it deals with a matter in which I (in common with all those who are intensely interested in the health of our race) am glad to take an active part.

To no woman has it been permitted to do the same amount of good, and to save more misery and suffering, both during and after the war, than to Miss Ettie Rout. Her superhuman energy and indomitable perseverance enabled her to perform, in the most efficient manner possible, a work which few women would care to handle, and of which but an infinitesimally small number are capable. The French Government fully recognised the great services she rendered to the Allies, and did her honour. The book she has written is one of very great value, in that its object is the Health, Happiness, Morality and Well-being of the Community.

Not only has Miss Ettie Rout the qualities that characterise all great humanitarians, but she also possesses, in a unique degree, an intimate knowledge of the terrible troubles that arise from irregular intercourse, and of the manner in which they can be reduced and perhaps eliminated.

In this book she deals with such simple hygienic measures as are little known in England, though they are in common use in France and in the United States, in both of which countries sound practical common sense prevails.

She is persuaded that marriage is the goal to be reached by all, and that everything possible should be done to facilitate it, and so to diminish vice. In her efforts to bring about this happy issue she has the good wishes and congratulations of all who have the health of the community at heart.

W. ARBUTHNOT LANE. 21, Cavendish Square, London, W.1.

_March 25th, 1922._

FOREWORD.

This book embodies the considered opinions of twenty-five years' practical experience of adult life--as an official reporter and journalist, as a voluntary war-worker, and as a married woman. For many of the thoughts and expressions used I am indebted to large numbers of men and women whom I cannot name, and with whom I have been personally and professionally a.s.sociated in different parts of the world. I am also indebted to the following medical journals for the publication, during the last five years, of many letters, articles, notes, etc.: _The Lancet_, _The British Medical Journal_, _Public Health_, _Munic.i.p.al Engineering_, _Hospital_, _New York Medical Journal_, etc., etc.

I have to thank the Society for the Prevention of Venereal Disease, the National Birth-Rate Commission, and the Joint Select Committee (House of Lords) on Criminal Law Amendment Bills for recording various statements and evidence.

It remains only to state this fact: That on January 25th, 1922, Sir Arbuthnot Lane, Sir Frederick Mott, Surgeon-Commander Hamilton Boyden, of the Royal Navy, and Mr. Harman Freese, of Freese & Moon, manufacturing chemists, of 59, Bermondsey Street, London, S.E.1, met at my home to decide upon the best medical formulae for self-disinfecting ointment for men and contraceptive-disinfecting-suppositories for women. Mr. Freese made up sanitary tubes and sanitary suppositories in accordance with these formulae, but he is prohibited by law from recommending these for the prevention of venereal disease, and forbidden to supply printed directions with them, whereas similar medicaments are being retailed with printed directions in the State of Pennsylvania, and the Health Department circularises medical pract.i.tioners thus:--

"The self-treatment packet, obtainable at drug stores, to arrest venereal infection after exposure, is approved by the State Department of Health on the same principle as is ant.i.toxin given to diphtheria contacts. Proof is lacking that the use of this packet lowers social standards. Reduction in the incidence of venereal disease is a direct result."

But not only in the clear, cool air of American State Departments of Health is the knowledge and love of s.e.xual cleanliness fructifying. In the _Dublin Review_ for January-March, 1922, there is a wonderfully fine article on "The Church and Prost.i.tution," by the Right Rev. Monsignor Provost W.F. Brown, D.D., V.G., in which he quotes from a very recent Moral Theology, "De Cast.i.tate," by the Rev. A. Vermeersch, S.J., Professor of Moral Theology at the Gregorian University, Rome, published in May, 1921. The author of "De Cast.i.tate" gives brief answers to three questions put to him, which Mgr. Brown quotes in the original Latin, and of which the following is a translation furnished by a Catholic priest:--

"You ask

1. Whether or not it is formally sinful to use antiseptic ointment before illicit intercourse.

2. Whether or not the use of such ointment may be advocated.

3. Whether or not it is lawful for chemists to sell it.

Ad. 1. Although it seems that in England (_cf. Times_, January, 1917) some have made a scrupulous distinction between the use of this ointment _before_ and _after_, and have forbidden the former while approving the latter, you need make no such distinction (of course, supposing the ointment is not used by a woman to sterilize). It is not wrong to seek means, indifferent in themselves, which will prevent the evil consequences of sin.

Ad. 2. It would indeed be a sin to reveal such drugs or to persuade their use with the intention to induce a man to commit sin; but there is no harm in telling a man who is certainly going to sin how to avoid the consequences. Ad. 3. If men could be restrained from vice by prohibiting the sales, this should be done; but so many are ready to expose themselves to danger that you cannot hope for such a result from forbidding the sale. It is true this removes _fear_, but the general good, and the removal of danger to the innocent justifies this. Besides, it is a poor virtue which is kept from sin only by the fear of disease."

Having gone so far as to admit the desirability and necessity of the medical prevention of s.e.xual diseases, the Roman Catholic Church will certainly find itself later unable to deny the desirability and necessity of preventing the birth of children liable to be born diseased or unfit.

It is not practicable for a wife to take any suitable precautions against infection by a diseased husband, which precautions will not at the same time be effective, to a greater or lesser extent, in the prevention of conception. There is no half-way house in the matter of s.e.xual hygiene.

ETTIE A. ROUT.

I.--INTRODUCTION.

At present marriage is easily the most dangerous of all our social inst.i.tutions. This is partly due to the colossal ignorance of the public in regard to s.e.x, and partly due to the fact that marriage is mainly controlled by lawyers and priests instead of by women and doctors. The legal and religious aspects of marriage are not the primary ones. A marriage may be legal--and miserable; religious--and diseased. The law pays no heed to the suitability of the partners, and the Church takes no regard for their health. Nevertheless, the basis of marriage is obviously mating, or s.e.xual intercourse. Without that there is no marriage, and with it come not merely health and happiness but life itself. Cut out s.e.xual intercourse, and society becomes extinct in one generation. Every generation must, of necessity, pa.s.s through the bodies of its women; there is no other way of obtaining entry into the world. Hence, it is clearly the duty of women to understand precisely the processes involved, from beginning to end.

With the lower animals s.e.xual intercourse is desired only seasonally, and only for the purpose of reproduction. With the higher animals--man and women--s.e.xual intercourse is desired more or less continuously throughout adult life, and desired much more for romantic than for reproductive considerations--that is, for the sake of health and happiness rather than for the sake of procreation only. A few women, and still fewer men, have no s.e.xual desires. To them s.e.xual abstinence seems more natural than s.e.xual satisfaction. But for the majority of mankind and womankind--for all normally healthy men and women--there is this continuous desire to be happily mated.

For the sake of health and happiness there is everything to be said for early marriage, but better late than never.[A] The chief obstacles to early and happy marriage are financial, and these would largely disappear if women were able to control fecundity. The chief obstacles to healthy marriage are the venereal diseases, and these could be extirpated in two or three generations if s.e.xual cleanliness was properly taught to all adults, and if promiscuous intercourse was properly regulated during the same period. Unfortunately most women's idea of regulating promiscuous intercourse is to have none of it. This is impossible in the present stage of moral evolution, but it will become increasingly possible as we succeed in extirpating the venereal diseases, particularly syphilis.

Syphilis is the one great cause of immorality, because persons born with a syphilitic taint (and what family is entirely free from this hereditary disease?) are apt to be mentally and morally deficient; hence, tend to indulge in anti-social and unnatural practices, such as engaging in promiscuous intercourse.

[Footnote A: Marriage, whether early or late, cannot of course benefit and elevate society until the present mischievous and archaic Divorce Laws are simplified and reformed in accordance with modern sociology and ethics.

Unhappy and unsuitable marriages necessarily foster immorality and promote disease, and the community as a whole gains by their being dissolved in a ready but responsible and dignified manner. The refusal of the Church to marry diseased persons would greatly benefit the nation, whereas its refusal to marry healthy divorced persons not only injures the nation but dishonours the Church.--E.A.R.]

The normally healthy man is a highly selective creature, and the normally healthy woman still more fastidiously selective in romantic relations.h.i.+p.

Neither man nor woman is naturally in the least attracted by promiscuous intercourse. On the contrary, it is repugnant to both. Both regard the elements of romance, reciprocity and permanence as essential. These elements are present in marriage and absent in prost.i.tution. Therefore, it is beneath the dignity of any decent, intelligent woman to suppose that promiscuous relations.h.i.+p can ever be as happy and satisfying and attractive as marriage. This, apart altogether from the fact that marriage is fertile and prost.i.tution infertile. No, both man and woman desire love-relations.h.i.+p, not loveless-relations.h.i.+p; and they are really quite fit to be trusted with the evolution of the race through pa.s.sionate love and the wors.h.i.+p of beauty, as soon as society makes harmonious provision for their normal s.e.xual needs. Until society does make early marriage practicable for all healthy adult men and women, say between twenty and twenty-five years of age, extra-marital relations.h.i.+p, however undesirable, is inevitable, because there are many men to whom, at times, any woman is better than no woman.

But extra-marital relations.h.i.+p is never even safe, because of its promiscuity and impermanence, except in properly conducted and effectively supervised tolerated houses. The tolerated house is absolutely necessary at present to protect women from disease and immorality, by confining this kind of intercourse as far as possible in certain definite channels. The abolition of the tolerated house spreads both disease and immorality into cla.s.ses of women who would otherwise be immune, and enormously increases the dangers of promiscuous intercourse. Separated from their toilet equipment the women cannot make and keep themselves clean; on the streets they are not taught to refuse intercourse with diseased men; thus their occupation becomes more and more dangerous as medical supervision is removed. They inevitably become diseased; sometimes contract mixed infections, which they pa.s.s on to their clients--the future husbands and fathers of the nation--and "The sins of the fathers are visited upon the children even unto the third and fourth generation." All this would be impossible if women generally would recognise the primary fact that because a man is immoral that it is no reason why he should become syphilitic. We all want to abolish sin, but failing that we must cease wanting to poison the sinner. We must actively work to save him from the penalties of his folly, for that is the only way in which we can save his victims and succeed ultimately in "Making Marriage Safe."

Similarly every effort should be made to prevent women becoming diseased, no matter how immoral they may be. The prost.i.tute is very often a woman of peculiar mentality or overdeveloped animal instincts; and many women are driven to prost.i.tution by drink and poverty. The prost.i.tute cla.s.s is largely recruited from mentally and morally deficient girls, who are themselves the offspring of syphilitic or alcoholic parents. Prost.i.tution is the effect--not the cause--of anti-social acts and conditions. We must remedy the causes of these before we can hope to remove the effects. Under present social conditions, attempting to abolish prost.i.tution by shutting up tolerated houses is just as idle as attempting to lower the temperature of a room by smas.h.i.+ng the thermometer. All we can do is to make and keep these women clean. If we decline to do even that, then diseased women will succeed in contaminating our men much faster than we can instruct the men in s.e.xual cleanliness.[B]

[Footnote B: Diseased women will continue to cater for men so long as they are left free to do so, but as knowledge grows their clients will tend to be limited to _diseased men_. Once men clearly understand that _every_ casual connection is a risk of disease, they will certainly tend to run fewer risks.--E.A.R.]

And again, just as the medical prevention of venereal disease was not proposed, and has not been applied for the purpose of fostering or condoning promiscuous intercourse,[C] so the conscious control of fecundity by contraception must not be applied in such a way as to lessen the proportion of well-born citizens in the nation taken as a whole.

Birth-control applied only by the responsible cla.s.ses of the community combined with indiscriminate fecundity among the irresponsible ma.s.ses, must inevitably lead to the lowering of the general average in character, brains and physique. It is a form of reverse selection--the responsible being out-bred by the irresponsible. What is wanted is the general application of birth-control by voluntary contraception, and the particular application of voluntary and compulsory sterilisation of the feeble-minded and unfit.

[Footnote C: My own experience among the troops quite convinced me that the more thoroughly and carefully self-disinfection was taught, the less immorality there was. It was impossible to teach self-disinfection properly without at the same time instilling a living sense of danger into the minds of men and women; and this danger-sense certainly led to more self-restraint.--E.A.R.]

Enthusiastic advocates of birth-control claim it as a means of _improving the race_. It is not necessarily anything of the kind. You cannot improve a flock of sheep or a herd of cattle by letting all the individuals breed; whether each individual has a small number or a large number of offspring makes comparatively little difference. The way to improve the flock or herd is to breed only from _the best_ and eliminate the unfit as breeding material. Changes in environment may improve or deteriorate the individuals of one generation, but such changes are not inheritable, excepting in the case of venereal disease. Syphilis, _e.g._, may damage the germ-cells of a man's body, and thus lead to his procreating diseased and damaged offspring--idiots, imbeciles, mental or moral deficients, and so forth, who unfortunately are fertile. Thus the prevention of venereal disease is a eugenic force. It is in fact the _only_ eugenic force in operation at present. Generally speaking, it is the well-developed and high-spirited and enterprising young men who travel most, and who, therefore, are most likely to contract and spread venereal disease. They come in contact with a much larger number of women than those who stay at home instead of wandering abroad. These well-to-do young travellers often marry the finest of our women, and later in life damage or sterilise them through latent or chronic venereal disease. Hence many one-child marriages--due not to the use of contraceptives, but to the action of the gonococcus transferred to the body of the wife.

But there is this hope. It is among the mentally alert and well-informed men and women that birth-control is first understood and applied, and it is among this very same cla.s.s that the medical prevention of venereal disease is also first understood and applied. Thus, there will tend to be less disease among this cla.s.s than among the mentally torpid and ill-informed ma.s.ses of the community. This in itself will not _improve_ the race, but it will prevent the deterioration of certain cla.s.ses and increase their numbers. Nevertheless, so long as the irresponsible and feeble-minded and diseased are permitted to multiply indiscriminately, as at present, they must ultimately outnumber and overwhelm the cla.s.ses which are practising self-restraint or applying birth-control. This process may even be hastened by a political enfranchis.e.m.e.nt, which enables twelve feeble-minded persons to outvote two wise men six times over. Thus, to succeed democracy must raise and maintain the general average of brains and character throughout the community. In so far as it permits low-grade individuals to be born in the homes of the ma.s.ses, and high-grade individuals in the homes of the cla.s.ses, it is manufacturing a rod to thrash its own back, successful rebellion against which mode of Government ends in mere anarchy and chaos.[D]

[Footnote D: The present need of the white race is to increase its numbers of fit and decrease its numbers of unfit. Over-population (except in a few patches of the Old World) is not likely to be a problem for the white race for centuries. They have several continents practically empty and undeveloped, and science has as yet touched only the fringe of the possible productivity of the earth in the matter of food supplies. The worst feature of the British Empire is that there are too many Englishmen and not enough Anzacs.--E.A.R.]

One duty at any rate is quite clear. No woman should run any chance of conception unless she is certain of her own health and the health of her partner--the man who is to be the father of the child she is to bring into the world. If her husband's health is unsound, and she cannot avoid intercourse, she can certainly take precautions against conception and against infection. The control of fecundity and the control of infection are parallel problems, and generally speaking, the measures a woman takes to prevent conception will also prevent infection. If these precautions are not taken, a woman may not only become seriously ill herself, but she may blast the health of her unborn babe--or infect it herself during or after birth. Clearly then it is her personal, as well as her maternal and national, duty to apply preventive measures.

Women should understand that there is _always_ a great deal of venereal disease--millions of fresh cases every year in the British Empire. During the war there were about half-a-million fresh infections per annum among the soldiers in the British armies alone--about two million men infected altogether at the very least.[E] Some were cured, others patched up; some very badly treated; some not treated at all; many demobilised while in an infective condition, and thus liable to come home and sow in the bodies of clean women the seeds of diseases picked up in foreign lands in moments of excitement and folly. Blame these men if we must, but in all fairness let us ask ourselves: _Who infected them?_ And the answer is: _Diseased women._

[Footnote E: The devastation of these diseases among the British armies abroad (in the Rhine, Black Sea, and Palestine areas, etc.) has been much worse since the Armistice than during the war. Approximately one-fourth (sometimes one-half) of these armies become infected with venereal disease every year. From 1919 to 1921 somewhat soothing statistics were issued for the army of the Rhine, but these have now been admitted in Parliament to be "_quite unreliable_" (Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons, November 3rd, 1921, p. 1952). It must be remembered that, owing to the exchange value of the , the English soldier on the Rhine is now being paid about 8 or 10 per day; that is, he draws a far higher salary than the highest paid German official; hence there is no riotous pleasure, however expensive and extravagant, which he cannot afford. These conditions do not promote manly virtue or even s.e.xual cleanliness.--E.A.R]

The venereal diseases are pa.s.sed on from one s.e.x to the other in a continuous chain, but the chain can be broken at any time _by either s.e.x_.

And now it is the _married women_ on whom we must rely to see that these infections are stopped. Leaving women to the chance protection of their partners is demonstrably a failure. Here is an extract from a letter sent me recently by an old and experienced medical pract.i.tioner:--