CONJUGAL SINS. |[|ork;i bu Hiij same Jyi%r 
Old Wine in New Bottles; or, the Spare 
Hours of a Student in Paris. N. Y. 1844. 
I. 
11. 
The Causes and Curative Treatment of 
Sterility. 
111. 
Practical Treatise on the Diseases of 
the Sexual Organs. By Prof. Scanzoni, 
translated and much enlarged. 
The Modern Practice of Midwifery. A 
Course of Lectures by Prof. Wm. Tyler 
Smith. Edited and enlarged. 
IV. Conjugal Sins 
against the 
LAWS OF LIFE AND HEALTH 
AKD 
THEIR EFFECTS UPON THE FATHER, MOTHER 
AND CHILD. 
BY 
AUGUSTUS K. A.M., M.D 
IATE PROFESSOR OF DISEASES OF FEMALES AND CLINICAL MIDWIFERY 
IN THE NEW YORK MEDICAL COLLEGE 
NEW YORK 
J. 8. BED FIELD, P TJBLIBIIEB 
140 FULTON STREET 
1870 Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 18C9, by 
J. S. KEDFIELD, 
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States foi the 
Eastern District of New York. 
Edward O, Jenkins, 
PRINTER AND STEREOTYPED, 
No. 20 North William St. TO 
THE REVEREND CLERGY 
or THU 
jj N I T E D 
WHO BY EXAMPLE AND INSTRUCTION HAVE THE POWER 
TO ARREST THE RAPID EXTINCTION 
OF THE 
Native people; 
TO 
PREVENT THE BRUTALIZING OF THEIR BODIES, AND THE 
DEGRADATION OP THEIR SENSIBILITIES— 
With the Hope that this Earnest Effort mat contince them 
op their Duty in the premises— 
THIS WORK IS 
MOST RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED 
BT 
THE AUTHOR. Introduction. 
I have written this book because some pro- 
fessional statement seemed necessary to support 
the opinions very generally entertained by the 
community, enunciated by the Rev. Bishop Coxe 
of Western N.Y., in his pastoral address* to 
his people, and promulgated by the resolutions of 
the Presbyteria7i Assembly held in this city last 
spring; f also by Rev. Mr. Frothingham in a 
series of articles in the Tribune, in the spring of 
1868 ;by Rev. Mr. Higginson, in various pungent 
magazine articles ; by Dr. Allen of Lozuell, Mass., 
in his Report to the MassacJmsetts State Legisla- 
ture, on Hygiene; and by many other thinkers 
of the day. 
These statements are no crude utterances of 
rhapsodists, thoughtless demagogues, or ambi- 
tious, charlatan sensationists. They are the care- 
* See Appendix. \ See Appendix. 8 
INTRODUCTION. 
fully expressed opinions of thoughtful and con- 
scientious men, aiming to repress wrong-doing, to 
promote virtue, to guard against “ the sins which 
do so easily beset us.” They point out a great 
social evil, perhaps originating in ignorance of its 
moral wrong-doing, its physical injury and its 
reactive nervous disabilities. 
I have written this book, in the second place, 
because I thought myself qualified to do it. Twen- 
ty-five years spent in the almost exclusive study 
and practice of that particular branch of my 
profession, known as the Diseases of Females, have 
taught me to feel that I know something about 
these diseases, and seem to authorize me to speak 
with some authority upon these kindred themes; 
and to essay to stem the tide of error, sin and 
misery with which the community is being over- 
whelmed by unholy practices, the result of 'which 
we see deplored in the public press of the day, 
which warns us that the American race is fast dy- 
ing out, and that its place is being filled by emi- 
grants of different lineage, religion, political 
ideas and education. 
Nearly ten years ago, I published in the KNICK- 
ERBOCKER Magazine, an article on “ The Causes INTRODUCTION. 
9 
of the Physical Decli7ie of America7i WoTneTif * 
which was i7ite7ided for, a7id served as a warni7ig. 
This article was very generally welco77ied, a7id 
has ever si7ice been freely referred to and quoted 
fro77i by 7iU77ierons writers 071 this ki7idred topic. 
The prese7it work is but an exte7isio7i and a7npli- 
ficatio7i of the same idea, fortified by subsequc7it 
i7ivestigations, and supported by the opi7iio7is of 
other writers all over the world. Fro77i those of 
E7igland' Fra7ice'\ a7id Gcr77ia7iy I have freely 
quoted.\ and have endeavored to make my seco7id 
reaso7i evide7it to the readers of the followi7ig 
pages. 
It has been difficult to express the ideas of the 
present work in language which should neither be 
too technical for ge7ieral 7indersta7idi7ig, nor more 
explicit tha7i was acUtally 7iecessary for popular 
appreciatio7i. The delicacy of the the77ie requires 
soine reticence of expressio7i, which it is hoped 
zvill not lead to 77tisapprehe7isio7i. It has been my 
co7ista7it ai77t to prese7it the idea so fully, as 
to make the desired i77ipressio7i upon the minds of 
my readers, a7id yet so guardedly, as 7iot to 7ni7i- 
* See Appendix, f From Mayer I have quoted freely. IO 
INTRODUCTION. 
ister to the prurient curiosity of the thoughtless 
or the depraved. 
With this statement of the reasons which have 
impelled me to write this work—entered upon 
with much reluctance, carried on amid the bustle 
of a busy life, and completed with many hopes 
of benefits to accrue from the time, thought and 
prayers and fears excited by it—it is submitted to 
the world, hopefully and confidingly. 
237 East 13th Street, New York 
Jan. 1 st, 1870. CONTENTS. 
CHAPTER. PAGE. 
I.—The Modern Woman’s Physical Deteriora- 
tion . . . . • • 13 
II.—Local Disease in Children and its Causes . zo 
III. —At what Age should One Marry ? . . 26 
IV. —Is Continence Physically Injurious ? . . 35 
V.—Personal Pollution .... 69 
VI.—The Injurious Results of Physical Excess. 76 
. VII'.—Methods Used to Prevent Conception and 
their Consequences . . . -85 
VIII.—Infanticide . . . . . .ill 
IX.—Conjugal Relations during the Period of 
Menstruation . . . . . 133 
X.—Conjugal Relations between the Old . 150 
XI.—Marriage between Old Men and Young 
Girls . . . . . . 171 
XII.—What may be Done with Health in View, 
and the Fear of God before Us . . 176 
Appendix, . . . . . . .199 
(II) CONJUGAL SINS. 
CHAPTER I. 
THE MODERN WOMAN’S PHYSICAL DETERIO- 
RATION. 
It has been a matter of common observa- 
tion that the physical status of the women of 
Christendom has been gradually deteriora- 
ting ; that their mental energies were uncer- 
tain and spasmodic ; that they were nervous 
and irritable ; that they were prematurely 
care-worn, wrinkled and enervated ; that they 
became subject to a host of diseases scarcely 
ever known to the professional medical men 
of past times, but now familiar to, and the 
common talk of, the matrons, and often, in- 
deed, of the youngest females in the commu- 
nity; that a numerous class of specialists has 
arisen within a quarter of a century, devoting THE MODERN WOMAN’S 
14 
their whole energies to the investigation of 
the actualities of these complaints, to the in- 
venting of new instruments for the observa- 
tion and diagnosis of these physical lesions, 
and in seeking, by mechanical appliances and 
by curative agencies of every description, to 
remedy these diseases, some of which are most 
terrible in their manifestations, and all of them 
disastrous, by actual physical suffering either 
co-existing with them or which they produce, 
or the result of remote nervous complications 
created by their presence, rendering the days 
and nights of their unhappy possessors, hours 
of uselessness, and often of actual misery, and 
making of life itself a burden which is worse 
than valueless. 
For a period, such a flood of these new and 
obscure diseases came upon the profession, 
that they had no leisure to seek for their 
causes. Every energy was devoted to the ob- 
servation of the present actualities, to tracing 
obscure nervous debility through the sympa- 
thetic system till it was localized and made 
tangible and observable to the senses, in some 
lesion, in localities obscure and hitherto unsus- PHYSICAL DETERIORATION. 
15 
peeled as the nidus of such general constitu- 
tional disturbance. 
It took many years for the profession to do 
this, for so slight were the external and visible 
manifestations, that it was deemed impossible 
for these apparently trivial ulcerations and dis- 
organizations to be the causes of such a train 
of serious symptoms; often, too, very remotely 
situated from the primeval cause. Gradually, 
however, light began to dawn upon the ob- 
serving eye. The relation of one part of the 
body to the other was seen to be established 
through the nervous system, as the two hem- 
ispheres of the world itself are connected by 
the Atlantic cables. 
To the older men of the profession, these 
diseases have never been made evident, and it 
is only since the younger and unbiased men 
have come up, that real progress has been 
made—the result of continued observations 
and carefully conducted deductions. 
The first in order has been to determine 
upon what diseases so varied a train of symp- 
toms have depended. Next, and by far the 
easiest, after attaining to this diagnosis, THE MODERN WOMAN’S 
through numerous instrumentalities to be also 
discovered or initiated, was the treatment, 
curative or remedial, for them. This has been 
found, improved upon, altered and perfected. 
The treatment of these various complaints is 
now as simple and as potent as is the diagno- 
sis and treatment of any of the ills of flesh. 
We now come to a new and as yet but very 
imperfectly explored and understood field of 
inquiry, viz: the causes of these numerous 
diseases. 
For a long period our patients were accus- 
tomed to inquire if these were not new dis- 
eases, as their ancestors never heard of them; 
and many of the less advanced of the profes- 
sion were habituated to turn up their scien- 
tific noses at the specialist, and intimate, with 
more or less plainness, that the diseases ex- 
isted only in the imagination of the sufferer, 
and the dishonest, magnifying perceptions of 
the specialist. 
Even the erudite practitioner himself was 
for a long time deceived; he supposed that 
the fact was, that careful attention was now 
first directed to these recondite diseases, and PHYSICAL DETERIORATION. 
17 
aided by new means of exploration and ex- 
amination— the speculum, the uterine sound 
and the microscope—that he had only discov- 
ered for the first time, pathological causes of 
many heretofore obscure symptoms and illy 
understood general affections, long existing as 
unknown diseases. This, however, was but 
partially true. While, undoubtedly, these dis- 
eases are in nowise to be esteemed as new 
complaints, their frequency and importance 
are now greatly in excess of any former ap- 
pearance. 
The refinements of modern life—the listless 
and enervated condition of the modern wom- 
an—the pampered ease which riches and fash- 
ion and “ the latest improvements ” have 
brought in their train—the corrupt air of 
crowded cities—the neglect of healthy occu- 
pation—the change from the active house- 
keeper of our forefathers’ pattern, to the vacu- 
ity of mind and flabbiness of muscle of the 
ornamental women of the present epoch, 
“ who toil not, neither do they spin”—the al- 
teration from the period when the woman 
“ called the name of her first-born Gad, for 18 
THE MODERN WOMAN’S 
she said a troop cometh,” to the present time 
when women in every station in life sedulously 
seek to diminish the number of their offspring 
—these, and many other changes in the life 
of the women of to-day, have undoubtedly 
greatly increased the proportion of these dis- 
orders, so that now few, if any, of the better 
class, but who at some time in their career 
do not find themselves affected by some one 
or other of these complaints. 
To these and other general causes may be at- 
tributed all of these complaints, and this opin- 
ion is confirmed by the fact, that they are not 
confined to any class of the community, but 
that they are to be found in the humblest as 
well as the highest walks of life, among the 
religious as well as the irreligious, the moral 
as the corrupt, in the child, the young wom- 
an, as well as the old, among the unmarried 
alike with the married, with the barren as 
well as with the mother of a large family. 
Time, however, brings out the truth, and 
while all these observations are found to be 
correct, continued investigation developed an 
important fact, which is the key to the whole PHYSICAL DETERIORATION. 
19 
matter—that there is great difference in the 
proportion in which these complaints affect 
the various classes of females, partially enu- 
merated above. Thus, while it is found that 
these diseases are not specific, but general, lim- 
ited to no class, but common to all, yet they 
are very infrequent in children, rare in the vir- 
gin of any age; less common as the life is quiet 
and healthy, and only frequent and persistent 
in the class of females who live irregular lives 
or tamper with their health by attempting to 
interfere with the laws of life and the economy 
of their nature. CHAPTER 11. 
LOCAL DISEASE IN CHILDREN, AND ITS 
CAUSES. 
It would be foreign to the purpose of this 
work to enter into any description, or even to 
mention the names of the numerous ailments 
designated as “ female diseases.” In previous 
works I have undertaken this task, and have 
prepared elaborate treatises on each and all 
of them, which serve alike for the study of the 
aspirant and for refreshing the memory of the 
practitioner. 
My present object is to seek for the causes 
of these formidable complaints, and by draw- 
ing attention to them to prevent their continu- 
ance, or at least to greatly diminish their fre- 
quency. 
It has already been stated, that in rare cases, 
almost all the complaints so common to adult 
life, are to be noted in children of very imma- 
(*°) AND ITS CAUSES. 
21 
hire years. Many of them are the result of a 
■want of local cleanliness, the neglect of moth- 
ers and nurses—the consequence of local inju- 
ries—the local symptoms of a general stru- 
mous or cachectic diathesis—an hereditary ca- 
tarrhal irritation. These troubles are more or 
less exhausting in their character,’and vari- 
ously affect their possessor, as she may be ro- 
bust or delicate. 
It is the misfortune of the times that there 
are no children. We have infants, but no in- 
termediate steps of adolescence, Detween it 
and maturity, that important period, when the 
gristle hardens into bone, when in the female, 
the child becomes a woman physically—a pe- 
riod that should be one of repose—when nature 
should gather her powers and plant a firm 
foot on a basis of solid health, preparatory for 
the leap into the uncertainties of a future life 
with its toils and perils. The modern girl 
sees no such season. The critical period of 
a girl’s life, the installation of a new function 
of so momentous import, which changes not 
only her frame, expanding, transforming, and 
beautifying it, but which also warms the heart 22 
LOCAL DISEASE IN CHILDREN, 
with new life and even mounts to the throne 
of the intellect, and teaching the eye to see 
with new light and the ear to hear new sounds, 
compels the judgment to be swayed by a here- 
tofore unknown attribute, the newborn ele- 
ment of the nature, the capacity for, the de- 
sire of, the delight in, maternity. 
The establishment of the function of men- 
struation is little regarded in our present life. 
The girl not instructed, as she should be by a 
careful mother, is most frequently surprised, 
if not much alarmed, by its fearful appearance, 
and not rarely attempts by various means to 
conceal its manifestations, and by injudicious 
actions, appliances and bathings, checks the 
early onsets, and thereby lays the seeds of 
persistent troubles in the future. 
The subsequent life receives no modification 
from the presence of this important attribute 
of womanhood'; but prolonged walks, exer- 
cises, exposures to the inclemencies of the 
weather; the exigencies of parties and balls, 
with the exhausting dances; the stimulation 
of late suppers, with their highly spiced wines 
and stimulating food; the unaccustomed garb, AND ITS CAUSES. 
23 
the exposing of a large portion of the person 
usually kept covered and warm; and, what is 
perhaps fully as deleterious to the maturing 
girl, the nervous excitement of the company 
of the other sex, when nature will assert its 
claims; of music and fashionable society and 
the various etceteras any and all of these 
produce local, physical derangements, and lay 
the foundation of life-long disease, debility and 
sufferings. 
The young girl of former days had no such 
stimulations, either mental, moral or physical. 
Parties and balls, theatres and public amuse- 
ments, were generally infrequent, and life was 
quiet and sedate. And yet in view of all these 
changes, people wonder that there are more 
female diseases in the girls and women of the 
present day than formerly! 
The mortality of a city is dependent in no 
little degree upon the fact, that the people are 
so crowded together, that even out of doors 
they are compelled to breathe the air over 
and over again. The occupants of tenement- 
houses die in larger proportions than those 
living in spacious mansions on Murray Hill, 24 
LOCAL DISEASE IN CHILDREN, 
because they have not as large a quantity of 
fresh air apiece. Some of our public schools 
have twelve or fifteen hundred pupils confined 
within their walls for six or eight hours a day, 
breathing an atmosphere out of which red- 
hot furnaces have already burnt a large part 
of its oxygen! 
The muscular dances of the present day, 
the polka, galop, etc., are entered into by 
young girls, irrespective of their condition. 
The parent exercises no restraint, and the 
thoughtless, giddy girl has never been taught 
any physiological reason for care. She has 
never been taught that at these periods the 
internal organs are praeternaturally gorged 
with blood, consequently unusually heavy, 
that the tissues are lax, that dresses tight 
around the waist must force these expanded 
organs into abnormal positions and places, and 
displacements and disease are very likely to 
be the permanent result. 
If I have not, in this very brief allusion to 
existing conditions of society, made it clear 
what are the causes of the presence of a larger 
amount of diseases among the girls of the AND ITS CAUSES. 
25 
time, than was noted a half century or more 
ago, I certainly have stated some facts which 
if they do not entirely account for all this 
great discrepancy, go far to do so. Those 
who have the care of children and youth, will 
do well to consider this necessarily imperfect 
statement. It is foreign to my purpose to di- 
late upon this matter, and it is only alluded to 
thus cursorily en passant, as a necessary state- 
ment, preliminary to entering upon a consid- 
eration of the subject, particularly embraced 
in the plan of this work. CHAPTER 111. 
AT WHAT AGE SHOULD ONE MARRY? 
It would seem as if health was of rare occur- 
rence among the married women of the pre- 
sent day. Most commonly in large cities, 
Europe no less than America—and probably 
the same is true of the more elevated classes 
of Asia and, Africa general debility, de- 
pendent upon local diseases, seems to be the 
condition of so many, that an uncomplaining 
woman is rare. This fact is so obvious that 
no proof seems necessary. Michelet calls 
this “ the age of womb diseases.”* What is 
the cause ? 
The causes commenced in youth, as already 
sufficiently alluded to in a previous chapter, 
and continuing into married life, are so infre- 
quent as to form but a small portion of the 
aggregate number for whose condition we 
desire to account. 
* L’Amour, Introduction, p. 6. 
(26) AT WHAT AGE TO MARRY? 
27 
Granting that many enter into the married 
state debilitated and imperfectly developed 
by imprudence during their childhood, the 
principal inciting cause of disease is the fact 
that too many marry at a too early age. 
Here, then, comes the important question, 
“ At what age should one marry ?” 
Civil laws, in various countries and at vari- 
ous epochs, have been made, fixing the most 
precocious age at which marriage is allowed; 
and these have been exceedingly variable, as 
different ideas have guided legislators. Nu- 
bility, with some, has been made identical 
with puberty, and this latter indefinite period 
has been legalized by the average age of the 
appearance of this function in different coun- 
tries and among different races. 
The capacity of generation and reproduc- 
tion, however, should not be considered as 
nubility, for “ a fitness for marriage and repro- 
duction can only be attained when the powers 
of procreation have attained their perfection of 
vigor; when the genital functions can perform 
their duty without detriment to the health of 
the individual, and when the character of the 28 
AT WHAT AGE 
species can be transmitted to the offspring in 
the fullest and most perfect manner.”* Pu- 
berty may, therefore, have existed for a con- 
siderable period before this condition is at- 
tained. Raisers of stock have noted this 
grand difference, and recognize the fact that 
a certain maturity is requisite for a proper 
propagation of the fullest characteristics of 
the race and species, as well as the perfect 
physical development of the individual, who 
is stunted and retarded in growth by this pre- 
mature tax upon the vital powers. The Ro- 
man law prescribing the age at which mar- 
riages should be legal, and looking to the 
possible cases of early precocity, had fixed 
that of the female at thirteen and fifteen for 
the males; Prussia, at fifteen for girls and 
nineteen for men ; France eighteen for men 
and sixteen for girls; Austria, twenty for 
men and sixteen for girls. In the United 
States marriage is allowed at various ages in 
different States, and these dates are generally 
very different from those of civil independ- 
ence. 
* Mayer. SHOULD ONE MARRY? 
29 
In the warlike nations of antiquity, procrea- 
tion was considered debilitating, and the ath- 
letes and warriors were guarded against every 
weakening act; and where the great aim 
was to raise only sturdy children “ fit for 
war’s alarms,” the weak being either killed at 
birth or so exposed in youth as either to die 
or to become hardened, the laws postponed 
the period of marriage to a very late period. 
Lycurgus fixed the age at thirty-seven for 
males and seventeen for females; Plato or- 
dained that of thirty and twenty years re- 
spectively ; Colon desired it to be thirty-five 
for men; and at Rome they were, at one time, 
interdicted from marriage before forty years. 
Among the Germanic nations a limit was esta- 
blished for the generative act, itself independ- 
ent of marriage. Girls were not considered 
nubile till eighteen, and it was deemed dis- 
graceful for a young man to marry before 
twenty. “In general it may be established 
that the normal epoch for marriage is the 
twentieth year for women and the twenty- 
fourth for men. Usage, however, delays these 
dates some years. The statistics of Paris for 30 
AT WHAT AGE 
the 18th century show that the average date 
of marriage has been twenty-nine for males 
and twenty-four for females.”* 
In this country I think the average date 
of marriages has heretofore been somewhat 
earlier, although the tendency at the present 
time is to retard them to an age somewhat 
near this period, and too often to postpone 
them indefinitely. It is reasonable to suppose 
that for a girl to become a mother and thus 
to impose upon the constitution the double 
task of self-development and the formation of 
a child and its subsequent nursing, must be 
exhausting, and eventually deteriorating to 
both. Yet we find many girls, still young, in 
some of whom the menstrual functions have 
never been visibly established, becoming moth- 
ers, nursing their offspring, and, at the same 
time, increasing several inches in altitude, and 
obtaining the development of frame and sys- 
tem usual to this period. I had a patient my- 
* Des Rapports Conjugaux considerees sous le triple 
point de vue, de la population, de le sante et de la morale 
publique, par le Doc. Alex. Mayer.—Paris: Balliere. et 
Cie. 1868. SHOULD ONE MARRY? 
31 
self some twenty years ago who had given 
birth to five living children, at different times, 
before she had attained her twenty-first year. 
Some of the children died, and neither of her 
or of them, have I had any subsequent knowl- 
edge. Apparently she was in the full vigor 
of health, but yet it is quite possible that her 
life might have been shortened by such pre- 
mature tax upon her vigor. 
We know that the popular idea is, that 
women are worn out by the toil and wear con- 
nected with the raising of large families, and 
we can willingly concede something to this 
statement; but it is certainly far more observ- 
able that the efforts at the present day, made 
to avoid propagation, are ten thousand-fold 
more disastrous to the health and constitution, 
to say nothing of the demoralization of mind 
and heart, which cannot be estimated by red 
cheeks or physical vigor. 
A point incidentally connected with that 
now under consideration, and being of general 
interest, as well as of real importance, it may 
be well to allude to here. This is the relative 
danger and difficulty attendant upon maternity 32 
AT WHAT AGE 
at early ordate periods of life. Popular opin- 
ion, and, indeed, the heretofore generally ex- 
pressed professional opinions have been, that 
the woman of advanced age who essays matri- 
mony and the joys of motherhood, does it with 
great peril to herself as well as to her off- 
spring. As supporting this generally received 
opinion, we quote the statistical statement of 
Riecke. He says, “the proportion of cases in 
which primiparas have called for the assist- 
ance of art is one to twenty-eight in the total 
number of women; while in women who have 
attained thirty years, the proportion has been 
one in nine; and while the proportion of 
deaths after a first confinement has been to 
the deaths in general as one to sixteen, it was 
raised to one in nine in the class of primiparas 
of thirty years of age.”* 
Cazeaux, less statistical, but fully as com- 
petent authority, says, to the contrary, as fol- 
lows : “ The age of the female has not the 
injurious relation to the duration of the labor 
* Riecke. Beitrage zur geburtsiilfiichen Topographic, 
p. 32. Stuttgart: 1827, SHOULD ONE MARRY? 
33 
which accoucheurs give to it.”* “ There has 
always been,” says Madame Lachapelle, “upon 
this point an opinion to which I cannot agree. 
It is generally believed that the dilatation of 
the passages is more difficult in persons of 
advanced age. There is not an accoucheur 
who has not anxiety for a woman of thirty 
to thirty-five in a first confinement. There 
is not a woman of this age who does not look 
forward with fear to the time of her first la- 
bor. Experience has too often proved the 
falsity of these predictions for me to adopt 
them. Truly, we often see a slow and painful 
labor in a woman of advanced age who has 
never had children ; but is it not so with even 
the youngest? The proportion, I dare say, is 
perfectly equal. If four in ten primiparas 
have an easy delivery, four in ten of the oldest 
will have an equally easy time.” 
Mr. Mayer, in commenting upon these op- 
posite sentiments, sides to that of Mr. Riecke, 
“ My own pretty extensive experience places 
me in the partizanship of Cazeaux and La- 
chapelle’s opinions. I have never seen more 
* Cazeaux, “Traito des Accouchements,” p. 286. 1849. 34 
AT WHAT AGE TO MARRY. 
difficulty in the old than the young woman, 
and I do not look forward with any more 
anxiety for the safety of a woman of forty-fiv £ 
than to a girl of fifteen.”* In this opinion, too, 
we have the support derived from the veteri- 
nary art. It is well known that valuable 
blood-mares of racing stock are kept upon the 
turf till some accident or advanced age has 
impaired their powers in this direction, and 
are withdrawn, then to be, for the first time, 
employed for stock purposes. The ablest and 
most experienced raisers testify that the pro- 
portion of the difficulties and deaths is not 
greater in these old mares than in the young 
fillies. 
There is still another inquiry in this direc- 
tion, viz., the oldest period at which one 
should marry. But we shall defer its consi- 
deration to another portion of this work and 
in another connection. 
* Mayer, Loc. cit., p, 109. 1868. CHAPTER IV. 
IS CONTINENCE PHYSICALLY INJURIOUS? 
The most prolific causes for the injury to the 
public health of the age, are the methods which 
have for their aim, the prevention of having 
children. Mayer has divided these into two 
forms, which he entitles preventive and destruc- 
tive, and we will follow this division. 
The first may be subdivided into three very 
distinct categories, viz: abstinence from all sex- 
ual relations, modifications in the organic con- 
dition of the woman, or the use in the gener- 
ative act of artifices capable of preventing the 
natural consequences; conjugal onanism, etc. 
Marriage is entered into for various reasons. 
The approach of the sexes is in its purest con- 
dition the result of a natural instinct, the end 
of which is the reproduction of the species. 
Still, however, we are far from saying that this 
ultimate result is in any proportion of cases 
the actual thought in the minds of the parties 
(35) 36 
IS CONTINENCE 
digged. It is rather to be looked upon as 
an appetite, intended by God to be very im- 
perative in its demands upon our natures. 
A principle is announced, and defended 
by some doctors of divinity, that the laws 
which preside over the propagation of the hu- 
man species ought to be understood, and that 
the intellectual powers should be so applied 
as to provide means whereby we can prevent 
the general population of a country from sur- 
passing the limits compatible with the happi- 
ness of humanity. 
What is deemed the true policy for nations 
and states, is held to be more exacting still in 
the case of families and individuals. The man, it 
is claimed, is in duty bound to limit the num- 
ber of his children, as well as the sheep on his 
farm; the number of each to be according to 
the adequacy of his means for their support. 
Malthus has designated one of the effectual 
means, that of abstinence, as moral restraint, 
a title which a bitter opponent has satirized 
by calling it double onanism. 
But if marriage has been entered upon from 
a supposed necessity, the “moral restraint” PHYSICALLY INJURIOUS? 
37 
called for is evidently impossible, for what 
was physically injurious before, becomes 
doubly aggravating in the constant inter- 
course of two persons of similar ages and 
tastes, who are attached by common sympa- 
thies and affections. 
But the necessity is denied, and many works 
and treatises have been written on both sides 
of this question. 
Dunoyer, member of the Academy of Moral 
and Political Sciences,* says, “ It is incredible 
that the act of bringing men into life, that act 
of humanity, without contradiction of the 
most consequence, should be the one of which 
there should have been the least supposed 
necessity for regulation, or which has been 
regulated the least beneficially. It is true, 
there is a religious and civil recognition; but 
marriage once contracted, the results have 
been left, so to speak, to the will of God. The 
only rule prescribed has been either to abstain 
from all intercourse, or to omit nothing which 
would render the union fruitful. While the 
Memoirs a consulter.” Paris, 1835 3§ 
IS CONTINENCE 
married pair can think that they perform no 
empty work, the casuist’s morality finds no 
fault, but if they themselves omit any thing, 
.f either of them commit any abuse, if more- 
over, they disregard the third, absent and per- 
naps unlucky party, whom they may call to 
life without any thought of the lot which 
awaits him—no matter. The essential point 
is not that they should avoid an act of triple 
injury, the important thing is that they 
should escape a useless act. Such is casuistic 
morality, in entire opposition to good sense 
and good morals, for good sense and good 
morality ask not so much certainly that they 
should refrain from useless deeds as that they 
should refrain from wrong-doing. 
“So the truth, in spite of these gravely 
enunciated follies, is, that if the married couple 
ought not to consider as blamable every ap- 
proach which was not intended to result in 
an increase of posterity, they nevertheless, 
even in the most fully authorized relationships, 
in the bosom of the most legitimate unions, 
should care, either for themselves, or one for 
the other; or it may be both, in relation to PHYSICALLY INJURIOUS ? 
39 
the third, that might be the result of their 
union!” 
To Mr. Mayer the morality of the writer is 
very lax, and a calumny upon the opinion 
of Malthus whom he seems not to com- 
prehend. In all cases, with the casuists, he 
maintains that it is necessary, either to abstain 
from all connection, or to omit nothing which 
might render the relationship fruitful, and this 
is the true idea of the phrase, moral restraint. 
Hereafter it will be seen how utterly we are 
opposed to all the artifices employed to pre- 
vent fecundation. 
The object of the present work is to con- 
sider not the moral, but the physical aspect 
of the subject, but Mr. Mayer is so full upon 
this point of general interest, that I have not 
hesitated to draw largely from the second 
chapter of the work already cited. 
“ The first point that is presented for con- 
sideration here is whether absolute continence 
at an age when the sexual organs are fully de- 
veloped, and when the man is fit for repro- 
duction, can be the cause of illness. We know 
that this opinion is held by men of the world, 40 
IS CONTINENCE 
and that many physicians share it. This belief 
appears to us to be erroneous, without founda- 
tion and easily refuted. It is, moreover, the 
corner-stone of the edifice which we have un- 
dertaken to overthrow, for it is in the name 
of nature and its indefeasible rights, in the 
name of morality and the sacred interests 
which it is its mission to protect, that anathe- 
mas will perhaps be fulminated against the 
doctrines we announce, and that we shall be 
accused of tyranny and irreligion, unless, in- 
deed, we may be styled utopist, as an excuse 
for discussing the subject with us 
“To sustain the statement that moral re- 
straint results in perturbations of the health, 
it must be admitted that sexual relations are 
absolutely necessary from the period of pubert}’ 
itself, and that the venereal necessities should 
be gratified as soon as they are manifested. 
It is therefore necessary to condemn our civil 
laws which permit marriage only on the man’s 
arriving at eighteen years and the woman at 
fifteen years. With still more reason, we must 
protest in the name of science against that re- 
ligious celibacy which endures through life. PHYSICALLY INJURIOUS? 
41 
“ This is in fact the opinion of a great number 
of physiologists, who, (relying on the one hand 
upon the irresistible character of the gene- 
rative instinct, and on the other upon the 
physiological necessity of satisfying the want 
by which it is manifested,) have been led to 
condemn celibacy in a most absolute manner.” 
Mr. Mayer claims that no peculiar disease, 
nor any abridgment of the duration of life, can 
be ascribed to such continence, and in fact 
that statistics testify to the contrary, and cites 
the following figures in support of this view. 
“ i. During a period of ten years, embracing 
that between sixteen and twenty-five years 
inclusive, among the different religious orders 
of both sexes, who have taken vows of chas- 
tity, the mortality has been 2.68 in 100, while 
it is but 1.48 in 100, among the laity of both 
sexes engaged in various professions. 
“ 2. During a period of ten years, from thirty- 
one to forty inclusive, the mortality was 4.40 
in 100 of the religious, and 2.74 in 100 of the 
laity. 
“ These tables conform to those of Depar- 
cieux, whose tables were published in 1746, 42 
IS CONTINENCE 
and go to show the ill results from continency, 
if the dumb testimony of figures is called 
for, but nothing can be mors uncertain than 
such conclusions. 
“We will now show why these statistics 
should be discredited. 
“ First, to be able to sustain with certainty 
the alleged action of continence on the health 
of many, the cause should be isolated from 
every other cause which attends the chances of 
longevity at these given periods of life. So it 
cannot be rigorously exact to reason from the 
figures cited, and to say continence is far from 
being injurious to health ; on the contrary, it 
is favorable, since fewer individuals die at an 
age when the sexual relations do not fre- 
quently occur, although the genital sense may 
be already developed, than at the period when, 
on the contrary, the sexual relations take place 
without hindrance. 
“ This reasoning would also be faulty, inas- 
much as it takes no count of the peculiar mor- 
bid predispositions of each age. 
“ One would be deceived also if he consid- 
ered he had obtained a criterion for the solu- PHYSICALLY INJURIOUS? 
43 
tion of the problem in question, by consider- 
ing, as we have done, the mean of the mortal- 
ity among the religious on the one hand, and 
the laity on the other, at the two fixed peri- 
ods of life. In fact, to announce that conti- 
nence causes a greater mortality, based upon 
the statistics of religious corporations, it 
should be assumed that the rules of chastity 
are not infringed upon, which we dare not 
guarantee, especially at those periods concern- 
ing which these tables were made, that is the 
middle of the eighteenth century. 
“ Further, the influence of the habits and 
discipline of cloister life upon its duration 
should be taken into account, which would 
greatly alter the result obtained. 
“ It is easily seen that the points of compari- 
son fail in identity, and cannot but lead to fic- 
titious results. This is why we appeal rather 
to the general experience to corroborate our 
own and to verify what we have said relative 
to the viciousness of continence at any period 
of life. 
“ It is determined in our opinion that the 
commerce of the sexes has no necessities that IS CONTINENCE 
44 
cannot be restrained without peril, and the 
very lively solicitations which spring from the 
genital sense, have no other end than to in- 
sure the perpetuity of the race by the attrac- 
tion of pleasure. 
“A part has been assigned to spermatic 
plethora in the etiology of various mental affec- 
tions. Among others, priapism has been at- 
tributed to it. In our opinion, this malady 
originates in a disturbance of the cerebral 
nerve power; but it is due much less to the 
retention of sperm than to its exaggerated 
loss; much less to virtuous abstinence than to 
moral depravity. 
“ A work has appeared upon the subject, 
now under consideration, an examination of 
which is appropriate here.* The author makes 
the query: “ God has made the regular perform- 
ance of the organic functions the condition of 
life and health—has He wished that disease 
or death should be the punishment of infring- 
* Examen de I’ouvrage publie par M. le docteur Duf- 
fieux, sous ce titre Nature et Virginity considerations phy- 
siologiques sur le celibat religieux par M. le Dr. Diday. 
(V. Gazette Medicale de Paris, 1854.) PHYSICALLY INJURIOUS? 
45 
ing this precept, by preserving an absolute 
continence ? 
“‘No,’ says M. Duffieux; and he bases his 
answer upon two distinct considerations, one 
rational, one experimental. He, in the first 
place makes it appear that the accumulation 
in the organism of the material of generation, 
never constitutes a danger, because nature 
knows how to get rid of it herself. In the sec- 
ond place, he claims that the diseases attribu- 
ted to continence by some authors, proceed 
from other causes. 
“ These are also our views, as may be seen 
by what has preceded ; but we do not entirely 
agree with M. Duffieux in his explanations, 
but on the contrary, are of the opinion of the 
learned physician of Lyons, M. Diday. In 
fact, on this point the author starts with a 
very specious argument, which demands our 
attention. 
“ ‘ Menstruation,’ he says, ‘ is a means insti- 
tuted by Providence to maintain the equilib- 
rium of the economy, by eliminating the ma- 
terials of generation, when they are not em- 
ployed by nature, and thus to prevent the ills 46 
IS CONTINENCE 
that might arise, either from the afflux of blood 
toward the genitals of the woman, or from su- 
perabundance in the entire organism. Vir- 
ginity may then invoke this phenomenon in its 
favor, and it can then be considered as an au- 
thorization of celibacy, given by nature itself, 
for it testifies that virginity cannot be injuri- 
ous to the health, for the very simple reason 
that menstruation disembarrasses the economy 
of the generative material, and prevents the 
plethoric trouble which continence might give 
rise to.’ 
“If any embarrassment is felt from the as- 
pect of this proposition, it is because it ex- 
presses a very exact fact, the application of 
which is erroneous. It is positive, that at each 
catemenial epoch, the ripe ovules are spon- 
taneously evacuated; but has not nature in 
thus expelling them, desired to put them in 
conditions favorable for fecundation, or has it 
simply desired to get rid of them ? The truth 
is the more difficult to penetrate, as the ple- 
thoric accidents, in fact, spring very certainly 
from the suppression, retarding or insuffi- 
ciency of the courses. PHYSICALLY INJURIOUS ? 
47 
“ But under the vague name of plethora, the 
author, as may be easily seen, has confounded 
the superabundance of the generative mate- 
rial-—the ovules—with the congestion result- 
ing from the retention of blood, which flows 
spontaneously at each ovulation. Take from 
this thesis the support of this equivocation, 
and it crumbles immediately. For if menstru- 
ation should fail, there will be amassed in the 
economy an excess of genesaic material, from 
which various consequences should proceed ; 
while unfortunately for the thesis of M. Duf- 
fieux, every day’s observation presents us with 
facts to confute it. 
“ Thus, a woman menstruating imperfectly, 
ought to be fecundated more easily, since she 
retains, so to speak, ovules in reserve. But 
the contrary is one of the unfortunate truths 
of practical medicine. Two girls menstruate 
at fourteen or fifteen years of age, one contin- 
ues to menstruate regularly; the other, after 
some normal returns, finds the flow stopped 
at eighteen years of age. What an amount 
of heat must excite the genital instincts, stim- 
ulated by retention for four years of these ele- 48 
IS CONTINENCE 
ments, according to Duffieux, so threatening 
to continence! Well, observation shows, that 
if in fact she is subject to these various conges- 
tions, passion most generally slumbers as qui- 
etly with her as with her well-regulated com- 
panion. 
“ Furthermore,—and we now return to the 
study of the normal condition—if the men- 
strual evacuation was instituted to facilitate 
continence, after each epoch, the warmth of 
the desires would be essentially deadened, and 
would fall to their minimum. But exactly the 
contrary fact is noted. And if Mr. Duffieux, 
pre-occupied by ideas of another character, 
has been badly situated to observe the fact, we, 
as well as all those who have directed their at- 
tention to the point, can assure him that the 
genital appetite has its paroxysms at this 
period; that some women, who are generally 
unaccustomed to such impressions, never per- 
ceive these sensations which astonish them, 
except immediately after the menstrual tribute. 
“ Is it worth while to prove still further the 
hypottpsis? Can it be that nature, in the 
regular return of this phenomenon, has no PHYSICALLY INJURIOUS ? 
49 
other end in view than like a new Penelope, 
to destroy in three days the work of an entire 
month! Do you call by the name of excre- 
ment, the pollen floating in the air, this weighty 
letter that nature knows how to carry it to its 
address ! Do you designate as a vile discharge 
the multitude of eggs the female fish spread 
out upon the sands ! You can see nothing but 
a precaution providentially ordered to facili- 
tate continence. As we have chanced to note 
that the male does not long delay to follow in 
her track, we must suspect that it was for some 
other purpose than that of furnishing an argu- 
ment. 
“ For the masculine sex the question is 
not doubtful. ‘ But I must own,’ says M. 
Diday, ‘ that it is with a sort of pain that the 
other elevates to the rank of a natural function, 
those seminal losses which are the shame and 
disgust of every man, of which he reproaches 
himself, even if involuntary, and which always 
leaves behind a profound and lasting feeling 
of sadness. Compare the moral condition with 
the past joy, the instinctive pride which, in 
spite of the gentle melancholy of the first mo- 5o 
IS CONTINENCE 
ments, follows the free and entire possession 
of the beloved object, and say if after, as be- 
fore, nature has not sufficiently designated, 
what pleases it and what violates it.’ 
“You have fully expressed, M. Diday, and 
with a poetry peculiar to yourself, that which 
especially makes the delectation of the genital 
act, normally consummated, —1 the pride at 
the free and entire possessiojt of the beloved one I 
That which constitutes the sadness and shame 
of the nocturnal pollution, is awaking to the 
deception. Assuredly, the heart is not satis- 
fied to see the exciting dream vanish away, full 
of charms, which just now held him breathless 
in its empire; but the organism is no less ex- 
onerated from a painful course of stimulation, 
and calm reigns where the storms roared and 
order is re-established. That the desires of na- 
ture should be satisfied, and that the material 
and unclean excretion should take place, as an 
ordinary rule, from the pleasures of love, 
the legitimate aim of which is procreation, 
none will dare to deny. Certain it is that we 
will never sustain any opposing sacrilegious 
view. PHYSICALLY INJURIOUS ? ' 
51 
“ Starting from the erroneous principle which 
we have combated, many physicians prescribe 
coition as a method of treatment. In our 
opinion there is danger in this. Doubtless the 
man of art should only occupy himself with 
the cure of his patients. He has no sacrifices 
of theory to consider. But we deny most 
absolutely that he should ever permit himself 
to go contrary to the general laws of morality 
upon which society is founded, even were it 
to snatch a patient from death. 
“ Fortunately the antagonism between the 
laws of nature and of mortality is only im- 
aginary, and the physician is rarely called 
upon to do violence to his feelings or to fail in 
his duty. 
“ ‘ Whatever price a man may attach to a thing 
so precious as health, it is not permitted for a 
physician to assure him its pleasures by re- 
course to means which morality condemns. 
That principle which commands man to re- 
nounce life rather than violate the laws of duty, 
still more imperatively orders the physician 
not to yield his science to the service of bad 
passions . . . yielding only to the impulse of 52 
IS CONTINENCE 
his instinct, perhaps the individual might stop 
on the edge of the precipice, but strengthened 
by the advice of the physician who guides 
him in the wrong direction, he will pursue it 
to the bitter end; passion seeks but pretexts 
to silence the bitter reproaches of conscience. 
Where can he find them easier than in the 
advice of a physician who makes the seduc- 
tions of pleasure a therapeutical mean ? It is 
something worse than vice to the man, it is an 
anaesthetic which prevents him from feeling 
the stings of remorse.’ * 
“ The forced continence of woman is claimed 
to result in nymphomania, hysteria and certain 
forms of chlorosis, etc. Mr, Briquet does not 
share this opinion. 
“ ‘ From the most remote periods,’ says he, 
‘ philosophy and medicine have regarded con- 
tinence as the principal and even the only 
cause of hysteria.’ If we did not know to 
what point prejudices are powerful to fascinate 
even the most elevated minds, we should with 
difficulty comprehend how such an error had 
birth, how it could pass from age to age as 
* Max Simon, Dfiontologie Medicale, p. 288. PHYSICALLY INJURIOUS ? 
53 
current coin, and preserve itself intact to our 
days and should be astonished that we find it 
now actually necessary to combat an opinion 
which has no real basis, and which has never 
been submitted to a truthful test.’ * 
“ We must go back even to Plato, to find the 
origin of the belief, in virtue of which, ‘ the 
womb of woman is an animal which has an 
intense desire to conceive, and which is a fury 
if it does not conceive.’ Hippocrates and 
Galen repeat this same error, based upon the 
presumed existence of a seminal fluid in 
woman. Valescus (de Tarente), Forestus 
and many nearer our day, Fernal Riviere, 
Hoffmann and many others, attribute hysteria 
to the repletion of these seminal vessels, which 
they admit on the authority of the masters. 
In vain did observation show then that infants 
and old women were alike subject to this 
neurosis; they preferred, rather than renounce 
traditional theory, to invent new hypotheses 
to conform the exceptional facts to the doc- 
trine which recognizes feminine sperm. 
* Briquet, Traitg clinique et therapeutique de I’hysterie. 
p. iz6. Paris, 1859. 54 
IS CONTINENCE 
a But see how a mixed theory between the 
ancient and the modern ideas sprung up to- 
ward the close of the eighteenth century. It 
belongs to Chambon, one of the last of the 
humorists. ‘ The womb,’ he assures us, ‘ con- 
tains within its walls sinuses, through which 
filter a mucous excremental fluid, which is 
easily changed, and which, by this means, be- 
comes irritant. It appears that this humor, in 
its greatest purity, has an odor and savor 
marked. It is a very active stimu- 
lant, and excites the womb, the more power- 
fully as this humor is more abundant and less 
evacuated the pleasure of love ; then it 
gorges the vessels that secrete it, which esta- 
blishes a sort of plethora, whose effects trouble 
the uterus and provoke hysterical crises. ’ * 
“ Finally, when the anatomy of the ovaries 
was better known, physicians, with unanimity, 
rejected the belief of a seminal fluid in woman, 
and recognized as a cause of hysteria, some 
a super-excitation of the uterus and its an- 
nexes, and others dynamic or organic lesions 
* Encyclopedia Methodique. Diet, de Med. Art. 
Hysteric. 1798. PHYSICALLY INJURIOUS ? 
55 
secreted entirely outside of the genital appa- 
ratus. After that, it would seem as if conti- 
nence would no longer figure as a cause of 
hysteria. Well, it is not so; and this opinion 
is far from being fully sustained by those 
who still maintain it, so I will cite H. Lan- 
dousy of Rheims. 
“ ‘ The partizans of the injurious consequen- 
ces of continence, all very justly select, as ex- 
amples for demonstration, widows, who, after 
having tasted the delights of love, are sud- 
denly and violently deprived of them. In 
three hundred and seventy-five cases of hys- 
teria which Landousy has given from other 
authors, or has observed himself, thirteen cases 
are found in widows. In four hundred and 
thirty cases observed by M. Briquet, fourteen 
only were found in widows—a total of one 
widow in thirty cases of hysteria. It will be 
conceded that this is small, and that this al- 
ready small proportion would be further di- 
minished if we should seek carefully for causes 
aside from widowhood, which, in some of 
these women, might have brought on the 
hysteric attack; as chagrin at the loss of a 56 
IS CONTINENCE 
husband, the misery in which the loss might 
have plunged them, and many like causes, 
sufficient to account for the invasion of an 
essentially nervous disease. Finally, it must 
be determined if these hysterical widows were 
not so anteriorly to the death of their hus- 
bands and even before their marriage. These, 
however, are no longer uncertainties but 
truths, about the demonstration of which a 
long discussion has sprung up, into which M. 
Briquet has entered to prove : 
“ i. ‘That widows are exposed to hysteria 
no more than other women; that with them 
this condition results rather from the moral 
affections to which they are subject than to 
anything else. 
“ 2. ‘ That this disease is no more common in 
those whose condition is one of continence 
than in others ; that it can, on the contrary, 
be very frequent among those who are at 
all continent.’ ” * 
“ According to Burdach,f entire abstinence 
* Briquet. Work quoted, p. 141. 
f Burdach. Traito de physiologic. PHYSICALLY INJURIOUS? 
57 
from sensual pleasures does more injury to the 
entire female organism than to that of men, and 
unmarried women are frequently attacked by 
disturbances of the courses, chlorosis and leu- 
corrhoea; they have a great propensity to 
melancholy and are subject to attacks of vari- 
ous grave maladies ; but, adds this celebrated 
physiologist, their health is preserved, when 
their thoughts are occupied and when they are 
gratified with a sphere of action in harmony 
with their faculties. 
“In such circumstances, many physicians or- 
der marriage as they prescribe the most simple 
medicine. We do not mean to find fault with 
their intention, it is assuredly good, and fur- 
ther, it springs from ideas current in science 
for ages, which no one has ventured to inves- 
tigate. Here at least, good morals are regarded, 
and few of our brothers perceive the responsi- 
bility which they assume in proposing unions 
secundum artem. It is, however, only necessary 
to inspire them with a greater reserve to make 
them comprehend : 
“ ist. That an unseasonable or premature 
marriage relatively to the social economy, is a 53 
IS CONTINENCE 
cause of disorder, misery and despair which 
increases without cessation, and multiplies as 
the new family increases. 
“ 2nd. That in the great majority of cases, 
either marriage does not fulfil the proposed 
indications, or it is not the only curative 
means to which recourse might have been 
had. 
“ The first of these two propositions appears 
to be sufficiently demonstrated by what we 
have already said. As to the second, it re- 
mains for us to prove, and to that we now 
apply ourselves. 
“It is a question which has already been often 
agitated, whether in certain circumstances 
marriage can be recommended to woman as a 
curative means. 
“ A physician of Berlin, Doctor Caspers, fur- 
nishes for this purpose a method of observation 
which may be of use for men of the medical 
art.* 
“ ‘ How often do we hear,’ he cries, ‘ from 
* De I’inflaence du manage sur la duree de la vie 
humaine (annales d’hygiene publique et de med. legale,) Ist 
Serie I. xiv, p. 237. PHYSICALLY INJURIOUS? 
59 
physicians or from those not of the healing art, 
that a young woman, or young widow, a prey 
to nervous disease, has no other cure to expect 
except from marriage, that is to say, from the 
constant and regulated satisfaction of the 
instincts of generation, and how often have 
we also lost our seriousness in hearing re- 
peated the phrase of Mephistopheles. Ce riest 
que par un point qit on pent guerir leurs eternels 
soupirs.’ ” 
“ But is the opinion founded upon experience ? 
In truth, every physician may have seen cases 
where hysteric spasms have disappeared in 
woman as an effect of marriage; but it is also 
as true, that not one can be found who has not 
sometimes seen this means not only useless 
but injurious, of which we have found convinc- 
ing proofs in a great number of well observed 
cases. We are far from pretending, however, 
that these facts can suffice to entirely resolve 
the question which we now enter upon, for the 
first time, from this point of view. It is only 
impossible not to admit, as everything indi- 
cates, that marriage, resulting in the satisfac- 
tion of venereal desires, exerts a favorable 6o 
IS CONTINENCE 
influence upon the health of women and serves 
to prolong their lives. How otherwise can we 
explain the notable difference of mortality 
which exists between married and unmarried 
women, during the time when they ordinarily 
become mothers, say between 20 and 45, a dif- 
ference which from late statistics amounts to 
29 percent, in favor of marriage? This differ- 
ence of mortality seems to us to be so considera- 
ble, that all the physiological reasons which 
we have enumerated do not suffice to explain 
it. It is more rational to consider at the same 
time the position occupied by married women, 
who find a more assured position in society of 
sweet interior satisfaction, and are forced to 
exert an activity favorable to health, while 
the women remaining in celibacy generally 
live in less ease, especially to-day, when in- 
terest is the moving principle, and when the 
want of money prevents so many from finding 
husbands. Annoyed by the consciousness 
that they are retained in an inferior position, 
and lead a life without an object, the girls 
waste in chagrin, and in the lower classes, aban- 
don themselves to libertinage and expose them- PHYSICALLY INJURIOUS? 
61 
selves to all the evils that might result to their 
honor or their health. 
“ As for man, in his ordinary state, and when 
he has arrived at the age of puberty, the secre- 
tion of sperm takes place more or less abun- 
dantly, according to his temperament in the 
first place, and then according to his habitual 
occupation. The brain, in fact, possesses a 
very powerful influence upon the functional 
activity of the testicles, and the salacity de- 
pends often more upon the want of mental oc- 
cupation than on the fullness of the pocket. 
In consequence, he who encourages lubricity, 
who pleases himself by the contemplation 
of images capable of exciting the genital 
sense, will secrete the seminal liquid in greater 
quantities. 
“ On the contrary, he whose mind is turned 
toward serious matters, who, for example, con- 
centrates his intellectual faculties upon ab- 
stract studies, will, in a given period, fur- 
nish a much less quantity of sperm than the 
former. The latter will be free also from all 
suggestions from his genital organs, while the 
former will be besieged, tyrannized by them. 62 
IS CONTINENCE 
“ In the former case, nature will excite noc- 
turnal and even diurnal pollutions, which are 
causes of rapid decay. 
“ In the latter case, the rare nocturnal pol- 
lutions, as the result of a too full condition 
of the vesicules seminales, will be followed by 
a good state of general health, and a remarka- 
ble -clearness of mind. 
“ These nocturnal emissions are, as is well 
known, a means by which the organism clears 
itself of superfluous material and maintains it- 
self in freedom. It is not a disease till it be- 
comes immoderate. 
“At the outset, the sexual necessities are 
not so uncontrolled as is generally supposed, 
and they can be put down by the intervention 
of a little energetic will. There is, therefore, as 
it appears to us, as much injustice in accusing 
nature of disorders which are dependent upon 
the genital senses, badly directed, as there 
would be in attributing to it a sprain or a frac- 
ture, accidentally produced. 
“ It is only exceptionally, that we remark in 
the human species—in individuals in whom a 
norbid state has so exalted the sexual instinct PHYSICALLY INJURIOUS? 
63 
that continence creates in man—redness, tume- 
faction, pains in the scrotum, continual erections 
and a painful tension in the spermatic cord 
and the vesicules seminales, without consider- 
ing those of an especial lively imagination in 
whom the most extraordinary novel phenome- 
non, and finally the rage of satyriasis may be 
produced. So Burdach reports of a young 
ecclesiastic, a rigid observer of his vows, whose 
ascetic studies had finished by disturbing his 
intellect, that he fell into melancholy, abhorring 
both mankind and himself, and that he was more 
than once seized with attacks of frenzy ; after 
having an intermission of his nocturnal pollu- 
tions, he had visions of women surrounded by 
an electric aureola; soon he imagined himself 
possessed with a devil, believed himself to be 
Achilles, Alexander, Henry IV., and did not 
recover his health until after the accomplish- 
ment of the venereal act. 
“ We have quoted this instance to show that 
in certain exceedingly rare cases, it is neces- 
sary to do violence to the precepts laid down, 
but we cannot insist too much upon the cir- 
cumstance, as the observations of the sort 64 
IS CONTINENCE 
which we have recounted are habitually due to 
a veritable morbid state, which it is necessary 
to combat by all possible means, before pre- 
scribing coitus. 
“We repeat for woman what we have already 
said for man. With her there is no peculiar 
secretion, the retention of which may become 
a cause of disease, but a vital organism, which 
at the epoch of puberty reveals to her a new 
sense. If, then, she abandons herself to volup- 
tuous reveries, and feeds her imagination with 
reading in harmony with the direction of these 
ideas, especially if vicious habits add their ex- 
citements of the genital apparatus to the so- 
licitations which the brain has already sent 
thither, it is very much to be feared that the 
sexual approach will become an imperious ne- 
cessity ; and one will run great risk— seek- 
ing, under such circumstances, to restrain this 
need—of seeing the disorders arise of which 
we have previously spoken. For it is still 
more common with women than with men, 
to see melancholy and fury come on under 
the influence of these violent unsatisfied de- 
sires. PHYSICALLY INJ URIOUS ? 
65 
“ Esquirol,* among others, reports the histo- 
ry of a girl of nineteen affected with hysteric 
spasms, who fled from her father’s house, lived 
for ten months as a public woman, had two 
miscarriages during the period, and finally re- 
turned to her parents. Being afterwards mar- 
ried, she lived becomingly. But once again, 
should we seriously make nature responsible 
for evils which it is possible, in conformity 
with the teachings of morality, by regular 
habits to prevent; that morality which is not 
a science, but whose precepts are written in 
the depths of every conscience, and the proof 
of which is the remorse which follows every 
bad action? No, we cannot impute to nature 
the unhappy results of continence, any more 
than the indigestion of the glutton, who un- 
reasonably overloads his stomach. 
“ The methods by which man, considered in 
both sexes, can diminish his venereal needs, 
consist in the diversion which he gives to his 
fancies, by devoting himself to manual labor 
or the culture of .the sciences—in the priva- 
tion which he imposes upon himself—when his 
* Esquirol, Des maladies mentales. 1838. 66 
IS CONTINENCE 
sensual exigencies are especially pressing—in 
all that would tend to increase the tone of his 
organs or the excitability of the nervous sys- 
tem, as animal food, condiments, alcoholic 
drinks, coffee, etc. Sleep on the back is to 
be avoided ; long rest in bed, especially a bed 
too soft. Finally, the use of tepid baths, and 
cooling drinks of all sorts, will, as adjuvants, 
be found of unquestionable utility. 
“ A medical casuist, well known by his scien- 
tific works (Debreyne),* proposes the follow- 
ing means as opposed to dishonest thoughts : 
“‘lf thoughts of this kind, becoming too 
importunate, are the product of a light and 
unsettled imagination, when certain souvenirs 
livingly retrace themselves in the memory, we 
should endeavor to divert the mind by forcing 
the thoughts into some intellectual, serious 
labor, requiring application, or by a difficult 
and complicated calculation requiring all the 
attention, etc.f If the bad thoughts proceed 
* Mcechialogue, Traite des Peches centre les Sixieme 
et Neuvieme Commandements du £)ecalogue, p. 160. 
f We should adopt these means with circumspection, 
for we often note that too severe mental contentions bring 
on pollution. PHYSICALLY INJURIOUS? 
6/ 
from an erotic temperament or a spermatic 
plethora, the best methods will be those taken 
from general, physical and moral hygiene; 
the practice of temperance, or exact sobriety, 
manual labor, corporeal exercise, an incessant 
material or mechanical occupation, fatigue, 
sometimes even the chase, which, in certain 
cases, produce the best and even the most 
astonishing results. Diana, as we know, is 
the natural born enemy of Venus. Violent 
exercise destroys the erotic sentiment, giv- 
ing birth to sentiments still more imperious, 
as excessive hunger and an irresistible pro- 
pensity to physical repose.’ ” 
“We have now to ask ourselves if chastity, 
this so much-vaunted virtue in celibacy, pre- 
serves its character and its rights in marriage, 
where it receives the name of moral restraint; 
and what is to be thought of the wide-spread 
opinion which, in this case, in a religious point 
of view, condemns it as a fault. 
“We are not able to enter into any discus- 
sion upon this point; but we consider our- 
selves instructed upon this subject from min- 
isters of various sects, whose imanimous 68 
IS CONTINENCE PHYSICALLY INJURIOUS ? 
opinion is that morality, which is the same 
in all religions, demands that man should 
only bring into the world beings that can be 
happy—physically capable of enjoying life and 
health. CHAPTER V. 
PERSONAL POLLUTION. 
I APPROACH this topic with great hesitation. 
It is a subject seemingly for personal con- 
verse rather than consideration in print. But 
my reluctance is diminished, yea, I am rather 
emboldened to point out the secret cause of 
much that is perverting the energies and de- 
moralizing the minds of many of our fairest 
and best, by recognizing the immense good 
that has been done to the male youth of this 
country by the kind and forcible statements 
of Rev. Dr. Todd in his Students' Manual. 
This work has done an incalculable good in 
moulding the minds of America’s youth ; and, 
more especially, his warning chapter upon 
Onanism. As a boy, I knew it, for it was the 
frequent subject of discussion among my aca- 
demic and collegiate associates. Although 
the propriety of its publication was doubted by 
many, the result has proven that the earnestly- 
(69) 70 
PERSONAL POLLUTION. 
sought decision was eminently sound, and 
thousands now live to thank this conscien- 
tious teacher for the first information they re- 
ceived of the ills arising from a habit more 
pernicious to the intellectual man, (setting aside 
the physical disabilities resulting therefrom,) 
than any other habit to which he is usually 
addicted. Tobacco and alcohol are not so 
potent to rob man of all the high prerogatives 
of manhood, as this humiliating, self-abasing 
vice. 
Far less common, indeed, is it among females 
than among the male youth of this country; 
perhaps, too, less disastrous in its results to 
the mental and physical economy ; yet much 
of the worthlessness, lassitude and physical 
and mental feebleness attributable to the mod- 
ern woman are to be ascribed to these habits 
as their initial cause. The natural nervous 
character of females is heightened and inten- 
sified, and local congestions and weakening 
discharges are the direct result of the excit- 
ing erethisms so thoughtlessly employed. 
Perhaps I have, in these vague allusions, 
said enough to excite the thought and minds PERSONAL POLLUTION. 
71 
of parents, more especially of those in charge 
of large seminaries of learning, and such-like 
green-houses, where, with the seeds of learn- 
ing and wisdom, some of the tares are sown, 
which are propagated with terrific rapidity 
when once introduced. 
Mayer and A'uber draw recognizable pic- 
tures, which are worthy of notice in this con- 
nection : 
“ In the most elevated regions of the social 
hierarchy woman becomes a curious study, 
because she becomes an artificial creation—a 
sort of variety of species. Idleness, which 
softens the unnatural world in which she 
moves ; the habit which she adopts of turning 
day into night; seclusion in apartments, where 
the air is saturated with perfumes, and whither 
comes but rarely the sun-light of heaven ; the 
custom of not going out of doors save in car- 
riages hermetically closed ; all these causes 
come to the same result—the impoverishing 
of the blood and the predominance of the 
nervous system. 
“ From this morbid super-excitability there 
is but one step, and this once taken we are 72 
PERSONAL POLLUTION. 
confronted by a well-marked disease, which 
is often beyond all medicine—a protean-formed 
neuropathy or nerve-ism.”* 
The unfortunate affected with this nervous 
super-excitation, and in whom the least im- 
pression is redoubled like the sound of a tam- 
tam, seeks for emotions still more violent and 
more varied. It is this necessity, which noth- 
ing can appease, which took the Roman 
women to the spectacles where men were 
devoured by ferocious beasts, and which now 
actually attracts them to bull-fights and capital 
executions. It is the emptiness of an unquiet 
and sombre soul seeking some activity, which 
clings to the slightest incident of life, to elicit 
from it some emotion which forever escapes; 
in short, it is the deception and disgust of 
existence. 
M. Ed. Auberf thus paints the physique of 
these women whose morale we have given: 
“ These nervous women are pale, wan and 
* See Bouchut’s work, “De I’etat nerveux aigu et chron- 
ique, ou nevroisme, appelo neuropathique aigue cerebro- 
pneumogastrique.” Paris: ißqo. • 
fM. Ed. Auber. “ Hygiene des femmes nerveuses.” PERSONAL POLLUTION. 
73 
languishing; the skin is dry and cold or 
burning; the eye is cast down or haggard, 
timid or caressing; the complexion cloudy; 
the physiognomy languishingly expressive and 
very mobile. It is rare that they have not 
some peculiar traits ; their walk is sometimes 
nonchalant, sometimes quick, dashing, preci- 
pitate ; they speak of everything with warmth, 
with enthusiasm, and even with a kind of ex- 
altation, with them akin to exaggeration of 
sentiment, which at times gives them an air 
of real inspiration.” 
Such is the sad state of health which mod- 
ern civilization has created for the greater 
number of the “ women of the world ” bj the 
incense offered to them and turning them from 
their proper direction. 
A veritable plague is to-day scourging the 
society of France, spreading ruin in its fam- 
ilies. It is, to use a consecrated expression, 
“ the unbridled luxury of women.” 
If M. Mayer can say this of industrious 
France, what shall we say of the modern lady 
of this country ? 
The sensuous intemperance is sufficiently to 74 
PERSONAL POLLUTION. 
be reprobated when its aliment is drawn from 
vigor of physical energy, the heightened im- 
agination, the mind pampered by the ordinary 
stimulation of the aesthetic as delineated in 
marble, spread out on the glowing canvas, 
where the great artist Guido portrays 10, with 
rapturous eye upturned, as if to meet half way 
the king of the gods; or by the perusal of 
the lubricious writings of the day, whose foul 
impurity is too often gilded by genius—or 
by the public exposure of the cheap charms of 
the modern meretricious stage. But when 
even these coarse excitants for depraved minds 
—dead to all ordinary sensations—when these 
fail and recourse is had to super-stimulation 
of a more gross, mediate and materialistic 
character, when nature is set aside and imagi- 
native bestialities are foully substituted—when 
woman degrades the nuptial couch by copy- 
ing the foulness of the bagnio then fare- 
well to female purity, to virtue, to any thing 
worthy! 
Mayer has not spoken too strongly when 
he says, “ In fact, is it not true that the public 
manners owe a great part of their degradation, PERSONAL POLLUTION. 
75 
and families their disorder, to the scandalous 
scenes of the alcove, often transformed into an 
actual brothel ? The immorality of the hus- 
band teaches the young spouse the ingenious 
stratagems invented by debauch. Revolting 
at first in her modesty, till then respected— 
secretly warned by her conscience of the out- 
rage to morality, of which she is made the in- 
nocent accomplice—the woman will remem- 
ber, if ever virtue succumbs, the lessons which 
she has received, for deceiving nature and as- 
suring herself impunity while odiously violat- 
ing her conjugal faith, the palladium of the 
family. Whose is the fault? if not his who 
has not known how to preserve most pre- 
ciously in his companion, chastity, that safe- 
guard which God has placed in the heart of 
woman to preserve her feebleness, and to warn 
her of danger; for the woman who no longer 
blushes is delivered without defence to the 
suggestions of vice; and if then the honor 
of her husband remains safe, it is because cir- 
cumstances rather than his sagacity has pro- 
tected it.” CHAPTER VI. 
THE INJURIOUS RESULTS OF PHYSICAL 
EXCESS. 
In the order of sequence, the first deviation 
from the laws of life and health after the pre- 
mature marriages already alluded to, is that 
of excess in the genesaic act. In fact, perma- 
nent and often serious disease dates from the 
excessive energy of the first connections. Bru- 
tality would be the proper term to appty, did 
not this carry with it an idea of intended in- 
jury, far from being present in the mind of 
the principal individual concerned. Indeed, 
very often the natural tendencies of disposi- 
tion and repugnance at giving pain are over- 
ruled by ideas of duty, of vindicating one’s 
manhood, and a supposed necessity of over- 
coming every obstacle and effecting an entire 
consummation of the marriage rites, the object 
of so much hope, so full of results in the future, 
(76) INJURIOUS RESULTS OF PHYSICAL EXCESS. 
7/ 
so promising in present happiness. Patience 
and temperance are virtues that need never 
be lost sight of in any relation of life, and this 
recognition in the circumstance which we are 
now considering is especially to be noted. 
So serious was the haemorrhage resulting 
from these forcible lacerations in one case that 
came to my knowledge, that the services of 
several of the most eminent surgeons of this 
city were requisite, and the life of the bloom- 
ing bride was for several days most seriously 
jeoparded. 
It would scarcely seem necessary to coun- 
sel husbands to be guided somewhat by rea- 
son instead of yielding themselves entirely to 
the control of their passions. And yet such ad- 
vice is requisite, and to none more so than to 
those who have been always distinguished for 
their correctness of conduct. Indeed, those 
who during early manhood have not been 
strict Josephs in their morality, whose pas- 
sions have been somewhat calmed by indul- 
gence, are usualty less rash and extravagant in 
their demands. But he who has been hitherto 
restrained by his fears, or by high religious prin- 78 
THE INJURIOUS RESULTS OF 
ciple from sexual indulgence, often thinks that 
now he is free morally and religiously to 
gratify his natural desires to their utmost, and 
forgets the limitations of the physical nature. 
Excess in lawful desire is subject to the same 
corporeal laws as in unlawful, and its penalty 
is disease and debility. I have seen no more 
marked instances of physical and nervous de- 
bility and disorganization than I have noted 
in young clergymen and in their virtuous 
wives. These imaginative men, of highly 
nervous temperaments, thoughtlessly antici- 
pate a repayment for all past restraints, in un- 
limited physical gratification, forgetting that 
under no circumstances can the body be left 
without the guidance of the intellect. 
Dr. Todd makes a suggestive corroboration 
of this statement. “ You sometimes hear peo- 
ple laugh at the large families of clergymen. 
You see the reason why they are large. They 
have too much conscience to violate the known 
laws of God.” * 
With the husband, rest and the usual treat- 
ment of exhaustion, result usually in over- 
* John Todd, D.D. Serpents in the Dove’s Nest. PHYSICAL EXCESS. 
79 
coming the temporary consequences of such 
excess; but in the female, not unfrequently 
more permanent disorganizations have been 
effected. The integrity of her more delicate 
apparatus has been marred. The consequence 
is uterine weakness with its whole train of 
nervous sympathies, and these too, perhaps, 
early aggravated by the irritable womb pre- 
maturely expelling its immature contents. 
The same laws hold good here that are re- 
cognised in every other action of life. The 
pedestrian undertaking a journey is moder- 
ate in the walk of the first days. The wood- 
chopper in the forest, as well as the girl who 
sweeps the parlor, finds the instrument blisters 
the unaccustomed hand, and works gently till 
time has gradually hardened the palm for the 
occupation. 
And some of my readers will recognise this 
simple truth, and wonder that they had not 
thought of it before. 
But even when the physical ills, incident to 
early matrimonial life, are passed by, the more 
serious nervous prostrations, the direct result 
of excess in cohabitation may still be present. 8o 
THE INJURIOUS RESULTS OF 
But it may be said that the demands af nature 
are, in the married state, not only legal, but 
should be physically right. So they are when 
our physical life is right; but it must not be for- 
gotten that few live in a truly physical recti- 
tude. We are living in a hot-house, where 
our nervous energies are developed at the ex- 
pense of our physique. Life in a city, with 
its imperfect aeration, where the air that we 
breathe has been breathed before, and thus 
deprived of its proper oxygen, where we live 
in the shadow of great houses and behind cur- 
tains deprived of the revivifying influences of 
the sunbeam, the great source of life and 
energy, where we have the exercise of but 
parts of our frame, where our food is stimula- 
ting and our daily life exciting, where we read 
little from the calm book of nature, but much 
from the sensuous and feverish one-sided por- 
trayals of dramatic painters of love and pas- 
sion—this life is not nature, nor are the mad 
feelings which possess us nature either. The 
lustful cravings of our pampered selves is no 
more nature, than is the call for brandy a 
natural appetite! PHYSICAL EXCESS. 
81 
Lallemand* says “ vanity is perhaps the most 
common cause of venereal excesses. Man 
covets the esteem of his race, and especially 
that of women, of whom he is the natural pro- 
tector. It is when in the presence of woman 
that he is proud of his intellectual and plrysi- 
cal superiority, and of his social position ; but 
it is of his virile power of which he is es- 
pecially proud and which he endeavors to 
prove; those who are least strong in this 
respect, most fear to allow their weakness 
to appear. Hence excesses arise, which are 
not caused by real necessities and which do 
not spring from a violent passion. Young 
men who, soon after their marriage, had given 
themselves up to the ardor of their passion, 
endeavor to sustain the excesses with which 
they commenced, they dread causing a sus- 
picion of coolness, or of infidelity, though 
they very soon repent their first imprudence, 
their irritated organs being no longer in the 
ph}'siological condition which at first permitted 
* M. Lallemand. A practical treatise on the causes, 
symptoms and treatment of Spermatorrhoea. Philadel- 
phia, 1853. 82 
THE INJURIOUS RESULTS OF 
them to support such excesses. If I may 
judge from the facts I have learned from my 
patients, their venereal excesses have been 
caused more frequently by unfortunate vanity 
than by ardent attachments. . . . The sen- 
sations are more lively in proportion as the 
semen is better formed and has remained 
(within certain limits) longer in its reservoirs ; 
the excitement caused by its continued pre- 
sence may even proceed so far as to bring on 
a state of erotic fury, almost resembling mania. 
. . . The diminution of pleasure, is therefore, 
the first sign that the individual has exceeded 
the limits of his real wants. 
To the man there is the limitation of a 
physical capability which no stimulants from 
within or without can goad to further ex- 
cess. The erethism of the woman has no 
boundary. The unnatural irritation some- 
times cannot be appeased, and these manifesta- 
tions of disease may proceed from the compli- 
city of simple nervous local irritation with 
some general sympathies, until it reaches the 
grand ganglion and the throne of reason 
itself trembles and is shattered.” PHYSICAL EXCESS. 
33 
Hysteria, regarding which Mayer and others 
have spoken so fully, disproving the idea of its 
being caused by continence, is unquestionably 
the result, in my opinion, of uterine irritation, 
be it produced as it may. More often is it 
found as the result of excess in venery than as 
connected with its entire absence. 
A quaint writer* of considerable force when 
he is not riding a hobby, says in a chapter 
on “ Exhaustion of Vital Power or Debility 
caused by Excessive Seminal Indulgence 
“ The records of the profession are loaded 
down with the history of cases of men and 
women who have brought upon themselves 
severe and destructive diseases by means of 
excessive sexual indulgence, and who have 
transmitted these diseases to their children in 
the form of constitutions or habits of body 
predisposing them to take on, from their very 
earliest stages of childhood, chronic or organic 
diseases. . . . 
“ The causes of all this must be, that in the 
* Consumption. How to prevent it, and how to cure 
it. James. C. Jackson, M.D. Boston, H. L. Emerson, 
1862. 84 
THE INJURIOUS RESULTS OF 
father, at the time of begetment of these child- 
ren, the germs of his own life must be very 
much weakened, while excessive sexual in- 
dulgence on the part of the mother impairs her 
nutrient abilities,” etc. 
Louis XII. of France died in 1514, three 
months after marrying a second wife, much 
younger than himself, and his death was attri- 
buted to this change in his habits of life. 
As opportunity is often the origin of sin, 
propinquity, in these cases, is very frequently 
the cause of excess. If the European custom, 
occasionally adopted in this country, of sleep- 
ing in single beds, were more generally in 
vogue, the necessity of this chapter would be 
much lessened. 
What is Excess ? 
Excess is too much. Too much for one may 
not be enough for another. A marriage may 
have been physically improper. It was, perhaps, 
a marriage de convenance. We cannot regulate 
this, but we do know that excess is prema- 
ture death! CHAPTER VII. 
METHODS USED TO PREVENT CONCEPTION, 
AND TPIEIR CONSEQUENCES. 
Excess, however, is of rare occurrence com- 
pared with some other habits of modern 
matrimonial unions. Excess is a product of 
leisure and ease, which is an infrequent ele- 
ment in American life. There are few whose 
minds are sufficiently freed from the cares and 
anxieties of life, from the necessity of earning 
a livelihood, with the consequent employment 
of time and the fatigues of body and brain. 
The physical energies are too completely used 
up by these necessities to allow for much ex- 
cess in pleasure, save at such infrequent inter- 
vals as to be comparatively harmless. 
The means used for preventing conception, 
more affecting women, together 
with the more bodily injurious, more nerv- 
ously exhausting and more s'nfully demoral- 
(85) 86 
METHODS USED TO 
izing procedures, for the purpose of destroy- 
ing and making away with the results of con 
ception—these are the crying evils of the age 
and of the world. 
We quote again from Mayer, who treats 
very fully on this too frequent sin: “ The 
numerous stratagems invented by debauch to 
annihilate the natural consequences of coition 
have all the same end in view. It is not ex- 
pected that we shall give a description of all 
the methods employed to accomplish this pur- 
pose. It would but soil our pen, without 
any advantage to the science that we aim to 
serve. All that we have in view is to mark 
these grave infractions against the laws of 
nature, which cannot be violated with im- 
punity. When one reflects for an instant, it 
will be seen that the grand functions upon 
which the life of the individual depends, are 
placed under the empire of the instinct, which 
watches without relaxation for their accom- 
plishment. So, in the same manner, nutrition 
demands alimentation. When we attempt to 
deceive hunger, a sensation is aroused, so dis- 
agreeable, that it is capable of awaking even PREVENT CONCEPTION. 
8/ 
the most apathetic, if indolence could allow 
such an one to neglect the care of his own 
preservation. When one fills the stomach 
with non-edible substances, there results atro- 
phy, the loss of strength, and finally death. 
Is it permitted us to think—when the re- 
production of the species is concerned, a func- 
tion for which nature has reserved its most 
varied resources, throughout the whole range 
of being—that man can with impunity disturb 
the laws which rule the universe, by substitut- 
ing his industry for the magnificent combina- 
tions by which all is maintained and pro- 
duced ? 
“We reply, a priori, this cannot be ; and ob- 
servation fully confirms the views of inductive 
philosophy; for it proves to us that coitus, 
exercised otherwise than under the inspira- 
tions of honest instinct, is a cause of disease 
in both sexes, and of danger to the social 
order. 
“ The soiling of the conjugal bed by the 
shameful manoeuvres to which we have made 
allusion, is mentioned for the first time in 
Genesis xxxviii. 6 and following verses: ‘ And 88 
METHODS USED TO 
it came to pass 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.’ 
“ One cannot tell to what great extent this 
vice is practiced except by observing its con- 
sequences, 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 weaz- 
ened, are not the fruit of these in themselves 
incomplete procreations, and disturbed by pre- 
occupations foreign to the genesaic act ? Is 
it not reasonable to suppose that the creative 
power, not meeting in its disturbed functions 
“ Hence the name of conjugal onanism. PREVENT CONCEPTION. 
89 
tne conditions requisite 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 terato- 
logy ? 
“ May we be permitted a suggestion to jus- 
tify this hypothesis? We admit, with most 
nosologists, that long and deep grief can 
trouble nutrition to such an extent as to give 
rise to heteromorphous tissues having no 
analogy in the human economy—as cancer, in 
its numerous varieties. Why, then, may not 
disturbance in conception bring on identical 
deviations in the proper constitution of the 
human egg ? 
“ Let us see now what are the consequences 
to those given to this practice of conjugal 
onanism. 
“ In man the genesaic act, accomplished nor- 
mally and completely, leaves at its close a con- 
dition of well-being comparable to that which 
results from the satisfaction of an imperious 
necessity. To the most formidable nervous 
disturbance soon succeeds a perfect calm, and 90 
METHODS USED TO 
from the most troubled disposition of mind a 
tendency to gaiety and warmth of heart. On 
the contrary, when the function has been in- 
terrupted by a previous calculation, the ere- 
thism persists, accompanied by prostration 
and fatigue, and particularly a tinge of sad- 
ness, in which we are tempted to see a phe- 
nomenon of conscience akin to remorse—the 
first chastisement for a fault committed. 
“We have many times had confidences con- 
firmatory of the opinion that we have here ad- 
vanced, from individuals who have consulted 
us for nervous affections of all sorts. From 
many instances, we select but one or two: 
“ Case I. A man thirty-three years old, of a 
marked sanguine temperament and athletic 
frame; eight }mars married and the father of 
six children; a cooper, whose pay did not suf- 
fice for the necessities of so numerous a family, 
except by the utmost economy. His measure 
was full, and a new-comer was undesirable, 
so the unfortunate fellow took every precau- 
tion to ward off so formidable an eventuality, 
at the same time continuing with the same as- 
siduity his relationships with his wife. He PREVENT CONCEPTION. 
9* 
assured us that the preservative means, to 
which he had recourse, differed in no respect 
from that which in our time is in general usage, 
and was of a sort to give him every security. 
This manoeuvering lasted scarcely six months, 
and there had been no other change in the 
general habits of this man. 
“ His general condition had undergone no 
change. His appetite was preserved, and his 
digestion was as usual in the past. Neverthe- 
less, he grew thin; a slight trembling agitated 
his frame when in the vertical position, and he 
was often obliged to stop his work. ‘ Besides,’ 
he said, ‘ I perceived myself giddy, and often 
in the middle of the street I saw the houses 
turn around me.’ Nothing in the organic 
condition of this patient, notwithstanding a 
very careful examination, being able to en- 
lighten us as to the cause of these grave symp- 
toms, for a moment we thought it might be 
spermatorrhoea. But after a new examination, 
we were compelled to reject this diagnosis. 
We then definitely stopped at an idea which 
had, we should avow, seduced us, because it 
was a new opportunity to verify an opinion 92 
METHODS USED TO 
which had greatly pre-occupied us—that is to 
say, that the pathologic condition under ob- 
servation was owing to a nervous perturba- 
tion, caused by abnormal sexual relations. 
We had further but to remember the classic 
axiom, sublata causa tollitur effecUis; and our 
whole prescription was limited to the recom- 
mendation—not to restore the rights to nature 
—he might then have demanded of us that 
we should undertake to support a seventh 
child, and, as he could not himself raise it, he 
might have been right —we advised him to 
observe continence, representing to him the 
danger to which his present culpable conduct 
was leading him, and we undertook to indicate 
to him the resources which hygiene afforded, 
to diminish the sacrifice which we demanded 
of his firmness. The advice was faithfully fol- 
lowed ; for, hardly two months afterward, wTe 
had the satisfaction of seeing the patient, who 
came to thank us, and we scarcely recognized 
him, so great was the change of his external 
appearance. He had regained his embonpoint, 
and he felt no trace of his former troubles. 
“Observation II.—M. M. is a young man of PREVENT CONCEPTION. 
93 
25 years, and of a marked nervo-sanguine 
temperament. He was book-keeper in a large 
commercial house. All his life he had enjoyed 
irreproachable health, until the date of the ac- 
cident which brought him to consult us. M. 
stated that he had always moderately indulged 
in the pleasures of love ; that, for the last five 
years, from the first time he accomplished 
the genesaic act, he had never bound himself to 
a rigorous continence. He had never had any 
venereal disease. 
“ However, for two years, he noticed when he 
was urinating and much hurried and desirous 
of finishing quickly, he felt pruritus near the 
urinary passage, and following it a pollution 
without any voluptuous sensation. Remark 
that this occurred without any excitation, and 
even in the absence of any erotic thought. 
This accident was frequentty repeated, and 
soon not a day passed without its appearing. 
His general health was not thereby much 
affected, and about that time the erections lost 
their energy somewhat, without the solicita- 
tions of the senses being any less lively than 
before. 94 
METHODS USED TO 
“ While matters were going on thus, he 
contracted amorous relations with a young 
girl who worked beside him and in the same 
bureau, and who from her condition and for- 
tune appeared never destined to become his 
wife. 
“As he felt for this person a true affection, 
and as he especially objected above all things 
to a revelation of their misconduct, there 
were no artifices or precautions of any kind 
that were not employed to deceive nature, 
while satisfying his ardent passion ; within, 
however, the limits of moderation. 
“ But soon he was seized with attacks of 
head-ache in the sinciputal regions and such 
a feebleness of intelligence that he could not 
unite his ideas and follow any slightly compli- 
cated reasoning. He was finally compelled to 
ask leave of absence from his employer, until 
his recovery. We have neglected to add that 
this young man was much emaciated, that his 
digestion had become laborious, and that the 
least muscular exercise quickly fatigued him. 
For six months we deluged him with anti- 
spasmodics in every form, iron, Charbon deßelloc, PREVENT CONCEPTION. 
95 
cold baths as the season allowed, and especially 
a strengthening regime. No change took 
place, in spite of the combinations of treat- 
ment which, however, seemed to be very ap- 
propriate, when the patient himself, in a 
moment of confidence, put us in the way of in- 
vestigations which we had before neglected. 
Once informed upon the habits of M., we did 
not hesitate to attach all the morbid symptoms 
with which he was affected to the abnormal 
performance of the genesaic act, and to advise 
him resolutely to abstain entirely from these 
culpable relations, leaving him the choice 
of absolute continence or a return to habits in 
conformity with the demands of nature, and 
under circumstances where delicacy and honor 
would not be implicated. 
“We endeavored to act with sufficient 
energy upon the mind of our patient to re- 
ceive his attention, and we succeeded fully, as 
will be seen. 
“ A full and frank avowal took place, fol- 
lowed by a touching scene between the two 
lovers. The young girl was inconsolable; she be- 
haved so well that she soon became Madame M. 9 6 
METHODS USED TO 
“ Three months had scarcely elapsed, when 
we met them one day accidentally. He inform- 
ed us of his happiness and his radical cure. 
He had willingly followed our counsel and 
found himself so well that he was not even 
tempted to infringe upon it.” 
“ Observation 111.—A man came to us one 
morning to consult us, saying that he felt him- 
self going day by day—it was his expression— 
and that his strength was wasting, in spite of 
his usual appetite; that he digested with ease, 
and was comfortably nourished. He im- 
mediately added, that he suffered nowhere 
and he did not know to what to attribute his 
condition. 
“ This is the circumstantial history of this 
patient. 
“ M. 8., 36 years of age, by profession a 
designer, of a nervous temperament, and ori- 
ginally of a robust constitution, but actually 
deteriorated, had been married seven years 
and was already the father of seven living child- 
ren. Our attention was immediately directed 
toward the probable cause of a nervous dis- 
order, the imprint of which this man bore PREVENT CONCEPTION. 
97 
upon his countenance. To our queries di- 
rected by this view, he replied, that his wife 
having found her health much shattered by an 
uninterrupted succession of pregnancies, and 
having run great risk of dying in her last con- 
finement, he had resolved to surround their re- 
lations with the most minute care, so as to pre- 
vent a new conception. He gave the details with 
a minuteness unnecessary to repeat here. It is 
sufficient to say that this man put into prac- 
tice, to calm the fears of his wife, otherwise 
very ardent, the best calculated refinements ot 
conjugal onanism. There resulted from these 
manoeuvres a collapse which held the husband 
in a state of demi-syncope, the duration of 
which extended sometimes for an entire hour, 
and the woman herself had been a prey, since 
that time, to nervous attacks and to a marked 
wasting away. Our prescription was to entirely 
renounce conjugal relations or to practice them 
normally, under the pain of the most serious 
consequences to both parties. However, we 
thought ourselves authorised, under the light 
of a simple precaution, to advise the husband 
not to approach his wife until after the twelfth 98 
METHODS USED TO 
day from the beginning of her menstrual 
period. We saw this patient six months after- 
wards and found him literally transformed. 
All the symptoms previously announced had 
entirely disappeared, his health was com- 
pletely restored under the influence of regular 
conduct. We will remark, in passing, that 
Madame B. did not become pregnant for a 
space of nearly two years, after which time 
we lost sight of her. We could report many 
similar cases, but with only unnecessary repeti- 
tions, etc., etc. 
“We have at our disposition numerous facts 
which rigorously prove the disastrous influ- 
ence of abnormal coitus to the woman, but we 
think it useless to publish them. All practi- 
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 con- 
ceive,’ says Dr. Francis Devay, ‘ the degree of 
perturbation that a like practice should exert 
upon the genital system of woman by provok- 
ing desires which are not gratified; a pro- 
found stimulation felt throughout the entire PREVENT CONCEPTION. 
99 
apparatus; the uterus, fallopian tubes and 
ovaries enter into a state of orgasm, a storm 
which is not appeased by the natural crisis; a 
nervous super-excitation persists. There oc- 
curs then what would take'place, if, present- 
ing food to a famished man, one should snatch 
it from his mouth, after having thus violently 
excited his appetite. 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 wom- 
an. Our conviction respecting them is based 
upon a great number of observations. Fur- 
thermore, the moral relations existing be- 
tween the married couple undergo unfortunate 
changes; this affection, founded upon recipro- 
cal esteem, is little by little, effaced by the re- 
petition of an act which pollutes the marriage 
bed; from thence proceed certain hard feel- 
ings, certain deep impressions which gradually 
growing, eventuate in the scandalous ruptures 
of which the community rarely know the real 
motive.’* 
* Traitg speciale d’hygienc des families, p. 180. 100 
METHODS USED TO 
“ In fact, very many women are the victims 
of the most cruel injustice on the part of their 
husbands, who frustrate their incontestable 
rights ; rights which they are bound alike with 
them to allay in their relationships, the ardors 
and emotions which they cannot prevent. We 
have known more than one of these unfortu- 
nates, who having as mothers several times 
paid their tribute to nature, were still ignorant 
what could be the physical attraction of their 
conjugal relations, although they bitterly per- 
ceived that some serious wrong was done 
them. 
“ If the good harmony of families, and the 
reciprocal relations are seriously menaced by 
the invasion of these detestable practices, the 
health of women, as we have already inti- 
mated, is fearfully injured. A great number 
of neuralgias appear to us to have no other 
cause. Many women that we have interro- 
gated on this matter, have fortified this opin- 
ion, But that which to us has passed to the 
condition of incontestable truth, is the preva- 
lence of uterine troubles of enervation among 
the married, hysterical symptoms which are 
met with in the conjugal relation as often as PREVENT CONCEPTION. 
101 
among young virgins, arising from the vicious 
habits of the husbands in their conjugal inter- 
course. We recommend this etiological point 
to the investigations and meditations of physi- 
cians. Still more, there is a graver affection, 
which is daily increasing, and which if noth- 
ing arrests its invasion, will soon have attained 
the proportions of a scourge ; we speak of the 
degeneration of the womb. We do not hesi- 
tate to place in the foremost rank, among the 
causes of this redoubtable disease, the refine- 
ments of civilization, and especially the arti- 
fices introduced in our day in the genesaic 
act. When there is no procreation, although 
the procreative faculties are excited, we see 
these pseudo-morphoses arise. Thus it is 
noted that polypi and schirrus of the womb 
are common among prostitutes.* And it is 
easy to account for the manner of action of this 
pathogenetic cause, if we consider how prob- 
able it is that the ejaculation and contact of 
the sperm with the uterine neck, constitutes for 
the woman, the crisis of the genital function, 
by appeasing the venereal orgasm and calm- 
* Burdach, loc. cit. t. v. p. 17. 102 
METHODS USED TO 
ing the voluptuous emotions, under the action 
of which the entire economy is convulsed. 
And finally, who can demonstrate that there 
does not exist in the fecundatory liquid some 
special property sui generis which makes its 
projection upon the mouth of the womb, and 
its contact with this part, an indispensable con- 
dition to the innocuousness of the coitus ? 
“ This opinion, which we have not found stat- 
ed in any work, one of our most distinguished 
practitioners, (Prof. Villars, of Besangon,) en- 
tirely partakes in, and for many years has not 
ceased in his Course of lectures to teach and 
to defend on every necessary occasion. 
“ But we have just said that it was easy to 
explain one of the modes of action of the pa- 
thogenetic cause now under consideration, and 
we will explain. The uterine neck, the same 
as the penis, is congested during copulation. 
But while with man the congestion is dissi- 
pated with the stimulus that has provoked it, 
in the woman it persists for a greater or less 
degree, when the genital function is not physio- 
logically completed, and new congestions com- 
ing to be successively added to the preceding, PREVENT CONCEPTION. 
103 
under the same circumstances, there results, 
first, inflammatory or atonic engorgements, 
then ulcerations, and finally—particularly if 
there be some predisposition—encephaloid 
degenerations, to which so many poor crea- 
tures owe a premature death. 
“ The peremptory demonstration of the opin- 
ion we advance is found in statistics, by the 
great disproportion recognized in the degree 
of relative frequency of uterine affections in 
the city and in the country. Assuredly, we 
do not pretend to attribute the superior health 
which women living far from the city enjoy, 
in this respect, exclusively to the purity of 
their morals ; but we place this cause in the 
front rank, among those which give a kind of 
immunity against the greater number of the 
lesions of the womb. 
“ Let us pass now to considerations of anoth- 
er kind. In a moral point of view, these con- 
jugal frauds are culpable, for the reason that 
they frustrate nature in the guarantees upon 
which are based the perpetuity of our species, 
and render illusory the most important of all 
the functions. In effect, comparative anatomy 104 
METHODS USED TO 
reveals to us all the solicitude of w hich this 
function has been the object, for the accom- 
plishment of the end for which it was created, 
by the wealth of precaution with which the 
Creator has surrounded it in every series of 
beings. All the acts which concur to this 
grand end are irresistibly bound to the ani- 
mal, and are easily executed in circumstances 
apparently the most unfavorable, thanks to the 
admirable disposition of the organs employed. 
Let us look at an example. It is necessary 
for the dog, which only ejaculates his seed 
drop by drop, to have a prolonged coitus to 
be fecundating. That this duration should be 
sufficient, it was not abandoned to the chance 
of the animal’s determination. In conse- 
quence, his penis acquires, after its introduc- 
tion into the vagina, a considerable volume, 
and its erection is not effected until after its 
intromission, by reason of a bone which gives 
solidity to it. But, it is a remarkable thing, 
that toward the base of this bone the verge 
swells, in such a manner that its dimensions 
markedly exceed that of the vulva, which it 
had just passed through without obstacle—a PREVENT CONCEPTION. 
105 
Providential procedure, thanks to which, the 
animal, against his will, terminates, sometimes 
with pain, an act which he at first sought for 
guided by instinct, and commenced under the 
impulse of pleasure. 
“ There are some species in which but a single 
copulation can be accomplished by the same 
couple, the male dying immediately, and the 
female living only till after laying the eggs. 
“ ‘ It is from the general exhaustion, that in- 
sects and the arachnidan must find their death 
in copulation. Most, on the other hand, if 
they do not die, give signs of a profound col- 
lapse and a kind of syncope, either in the male 
or female, during rapid coitions, and sometimes 
even during those which are prolonged or 
frequently repeated within a certain time, as 
is seen in the male of the cock-chafer, the 
female of various spiders,’ etc.* 
“ We have, in other places, said why man, in 
his quality of reasonable and moral being, 
should be free in the act of reproduction, as 
he is in his functions which relate to the life 
* Duges. Traite de physiologic comparee de I’homme 
et de animaux. T, 111. p. 285. io 6 
METHODS USED TO 
of the individual. We shall not, therefore, 
renew this subject. A certain motive, how- 
ever, is necessary, which should solicit him to 
obey the law, by virtue of which the race is 
perpetuated. 
“ i. The attraction of pleasure. 
“ 2. The sentiment of paternity. 
“ If the latter may be wanting, the first will 
still be efficacious. But if he should cheat, and 
no further security should exist, the race will 
run the risk of becoming extinct. Then this 
element, so powerful in the order of the uni- 
verse, would be found abandoned to the hazards 
of a free will, and would produce a dangerous 
conflict between the interests of the individual 
and that of his species. 
“We may, we trust, be pardoned for remark- 
ing, upon the artifices imagined to prevent 
fecundation, that there is in them an immense 
danger, of incalculable limits. We do not fear 
to be contradicted or taxed with exaggera- 
tion in elevating them into the proportions of 
a true calamity.” 
This chapter I had supposed to be complet- PREVENT CONCEPTION. 
107 
ed at this point, but the judgment of a friend 
to whom I gave the manuscript of the entire 
work for his critical opinion, has induced me 
to add what follows. 
The opinion expressed was to the effect that 
this was the most important chapter of the 
volume, for if any marked benefit was to arise 
from the publication, it would originate mainly 
from the picture held up to public scrutiny in 
this chapter, and therefore it was eminently 
desirable that it should be as perspicuous and 
complete as possible; that it had been left 
vague, superficial, and unsatisfactory. My 
article already alluded to, on the “ Causes of 
the Physical Decline of American Women,” 
in part supplies the alleged want. 
It is undeniable that all the methods em- 
ployed to prevent pregnancy are physically 
injurious. Some of these have been character- 
ized with sufficient explicitness, and the injury 
resulting from incomplete coitus to both par- 
ties has been made evident to all who are willing 
to be convinced. It should require but a mo- 
ment’s consideration to convince any one of 
the harmfulness of the common use of cold io8 
METHODS USED TO 
ablutions and astringent infusions and vari- 
ously medicated washes. Simple and often 
wonderfully salutary and grateful as is cold 
water to a diseased limb, festering with in- 
flammation, yet few are rash enough to cover 
a gouty toe, rheumatic knee, or an erysipela- 
tous head with cold water. Nor would any 
mother dare to plunge her child into a bath- 
tub when rosy with measles or scarlet fever; 
nor even, in summer, when sweating with the 
simple heat of the sun, would she allow him to 
bathe himself. Yet, when in the general state 
of nervous and physical excitement attendant 
upon coitus, when the organs principally en- 
gaged in this act, are congested and turgid 
with blood, do you think you can with impun- 
ity throw a flood of cold, or even luke-warm 
water far into the vitals in a continual stream ? 
Often too, women add strong medicinal agents, 
intended to destroy by dissolution, the sper- 
matic germs, ere they have time to fulfil their 
natural destiny. These powerful astringents 
suddenly corrugate and close the glandular 
structure of the parts, and this is followed 
necessarily by a corresponding reaction, and PREVENT CONCEPTION. 
109 
the final result is debility and exhaustion, sig- 
nalized by leucorrhoea, prolapsus and other 
diseases. 
Finally, of the use of intermediate tegument- 
ary coverings, made of thin rubber or gold- 
beater’s skin, and so often relied upon as abso- 
lute preventives, Madame de Stael is reputed to 
have said : “ They are cobwebs for protection, 
and bulwarks against love.” Their employment 
certainly must produce a feeling of shame 
and disgust utterly destructive of the true 
delight of pure hearts and refined sensibilities. 
They are suggestive of licentiousness and the 
brothel, and their employment degrades to 
beastiality the true feelings of manhood and 
the holy state of matrimony. Neither do they 
give, except in a very limited degree, the pro- 
tection desired. Furthermore, they produce 
(as alleged by the best modern French writers, 
who are more familiar with the effects of their 
use than we in the United States) certain 
physical lesions from their irritating presence 
as foreign bodies, and also from the chemicals 
employed in their fabrication and other effects 
inseparable from their employment, ofttimes 
of a really serious nature. IIO 
METHODS TO PREVENT CONCEPTION. 
I will not further enlarge upon these instru- 
mentalities. Sufficient has been said to con- 
vince any one that to trifle with the grand func- 
tions of our organism, to attempt to deceive and 
thwart nature in her highly ordained preroga- 
tives,—no matter how simple seem to be the 
means employed—is to incur a heavy respon- 
sibility and run a fearful risk. It matters little 
whether a railroad train is thrown from the 
track by a frozen drop of rain or a huge 
boulder lying in the way, the result is the same, 
the injuries as great. Moral degradation, physi- 
cal disability, premature exhaustion and de- 
crepitude are the result of these physical frauds, 
and force upon our convictions the adage 
which the history of every day confirms, that 
‘ Honesty is the best policy.” CHAPTER VIII. 
INFANTICIDE. 
Of all the sins, physical and moral, against 
man and God, I know of none so utterly to 
be condemned as the very common one of the 
destruction of the child while yet in the womb 
of the mother. So utterly repugnant is it, 
that I can scarcely express the loathing with 
which I approach the subject. Murder! 
Murder in cold blood, without cause, of an 
unknown child; one’s nearest relative; in 
fact, part of one’s very being; actually hav- 
ing, not only one’s own blood in its being, but 
that blood momentarily interchanging! Good 
God ! Does it seem possible that such de- 
pravity can exist in a parent’s breast—in a 
mother’s heart! 
’T is for no wrong that it has committed 
that its sweet life is so cruelly taken away. 
Its coming is no disgrace; its creation was 
not in sin, but—its mother “don’t want to 
(m) 112 
INFANTICIDE. 
be bothered with any more brats; can hardly 
take care of what she has got; is going to 
Europe in the spring.” 
We can forgive the poor, deluded girl,— 
seduced, betrayed, abandoned,— who, in her 
wild frenzy, destroys the mute evidence of her 
guilt. We have only sympathy and sorrow 
for her. But for the married shirk, who dis- 
regards her divinely-ordained duty, we have 
nothing but contempt, even if she be the lordly 
woman of fashion, clothed in purple and fine 
linen. If glittering gems adorn her person, 
within there is foulness and squalor. 
“ Infanticide is no new crime. Savages have 
existed in all times, and abortions and destruc- 
tion of children at and subsequent to birth 
have been practiced among all the barbarous 
nations of antiquity. The most cultivated 
and right-minded had some good reason for 
so doing, and acted in conformity with a sup- 
posed duty. When the child was of feeble 
physique, or malformed, it was, among cer- 
tain nations, thought to be right to destroy 
it. Acting thus according to their conscience, 
they did rightly—the fault was in their igno- INFANTICIDE. 
113 
ranee of right and wrong. Sometimes from a 
religious superstition they sacrificed their 
children, perhaps with tears of regret, and 
this unknown sin was doubtless forgiven to 
the benighted mother. 
But most commonly the savages of past 
ages were no better than the women who 
commit such infamous murders to-day, to 
avoid the cares, the expense or the duty of 
nursing and tending a child. 
“ Infanticide was permitted among the 
greater part of the people of antiquity, and 
it is still, in most of the countries where civil- 
ization has not penetrated. The newborn 
are put to death, or exposed in such a manner 
that they must needs perish, unless chance or 
compassion preserve them. Among most of 
the people of Greece the newborn was laid at 
the feet of the father until he decided upon 
his lot. This custom was in vogue among the 
Athenians; the Thebans alone held it in re- 
probation. Romulus, who desired popula- 
tion, prohibited the exposure of male children 
and of the eldest girls, and allowed only that 
of the other girls after three years had passed. 114 
INFANTICIDE. 
However, in the corruption of manners which 
soon prevailed, no account was kept of these 
restrictions, and the Romans adopted the cus- 
tom of the Greeks, by drowning their chil- 
dren and abandoning them in public places, 
that they might be devoured by animals, or 
else they placed them at the doors of bache- 
lors, who were at liberty to make slaves of 
them. 
“ Infanticide and exposure were also the cus- 
tom among the Romans, Medes, Canaanites, 
Babylonians and other eastern nations, with 
the exception of the Israelites and Egyptians. 
The Scandinavians killed their offspring from 
pure fantasy. The Norwegians, after having 
carefully swaddled their children, put some 
food into their mouths, placed them under the 
roots of trees or under the rocks to preserve 
them from ferocious beasts. Infanticide was 
also permitted among the Chinese, and we 
saw, during the last century, vehicles going 
round the streets of Pekin daily to collect the 
bodies of the dead infants. To-day there ex- 
ists foundling hospitals to receive children 
abandoned by their parents. The same cus- INFANTICIDE. 
H5 
tom is also observed in Japan, in the isles of 
the Southern Ocean, at Otaheite, and among 
several savage people of North America. It 
is related of the Jaggars of Guinea, that they 
devour their own children.”* We have given 
the motives which cause the infanticide. 
“ The Greeks, in cases of deformity which 
did not affect the duration of life, sacrificed 
the children because their existence would be 
onerous to their family and without utility to 
the State. 
“ In some cases, however, they had a sem- 
blance of legality, and it was exacted before 
destroying their monsters, that they should 
be seen by five neighbors; but the law of the 
Twelve Tables relieved the father from this 
single formality, and gave to him the right to 
have his deformed children destroyed. The 
savages of North America and the Peruvians 
pitilessly sacrificed all deformed children. 
“ In Sparta, as is known, individuality disap- 
peared before the exigencies of State. So the 
laws of Lycurgus left it to the magistrate to 
* Bardach. TraitG de physiologic. T. V. p. 85, et 
suivant. n6 
INFANTICIDE. 
decide if the father ought or not to raise his 
child, and if he considered it weakly or mal- 
formed, it was cast into the ditch. Plato and 
Aristotle in their Institutes condemned to ex- 
posure infants judged to be feeble and unable 
to serve the country. 
“At Athens it was particularly girls and 
those of the inferior classes that were con- 
demned to death. The ancient Norwegians 
followed the same custom with regard to fe- 
males when there were too many in the same 
family. 
“On the coast of Guinea, in Peru, and among 
the Hottentots, in the case of twin pregnancy, 
the feeblest was put to death, and in prefer- 
ence, the girl, when the sexes were different. 
“In Madagascar and New Granada and 
Greenland, when the mother died during or 
after confinement, her living child was buried 
with her. 
“ In case of famine or misery in China, New 
Holland, Kamtchatka, they killed their chil- 
dren, as they formerly did in Athens. 
“ Superstitious ideas sometimes ruled infan- 
ticide. In Canada certain classes destroyed INFANTICIDE. 
ii 7 
their first-born. In Madagascar they exposed 
children born on supposed unlucky days. In 
the East Indies they destroyed children to 
whom the astrologers predicted ill luck. 
“ The ancient Celts put their new-born upon 
a buckler, which they placed on the surface 
of a river, and regarded as the fruit of adul- 
tery those borne away by the stream. The 
Hottentots killed one of twins because they 
were convinced that but one could be begot- 
ten by one man. 
“Abortions were means frequently employed 
in antiquity, and still in our day among certain 
barbarous people. It was the women who 
performed this sacrifice ; sometimes not to be 
separated from their husbands during the time 
of nursing, when they were esteemed impure ; 
sometimes to avoid the trouble of nursing 
their children. 
“The practice of abortion has nothing in it to 
astonish one who does not know that the em- 
bryo is endowed with life, because this life is 
not yet observable. So in the latter days of 
Rome, women made no scruple of getting rid 
of an inconvenient pregnancy, and which espe- 118 
INFANTICIDE. 
ciall}1 interfered with their taste for debauch 
This custom lasted until the epoch of Ulpian, 
A. D. 205, who repressed it by severe penalties. 
“There are even systems of philosophy which 
have called for infanticide, with the avowed 
end of preventing a too great increase of pop- 
ulation. Plato and Aristotle were advocates 
of this opinion, and these Stoics justified this 
monstrous practice by alleging that the child 
only acquired a soul at the moment when it 
ceased to have uterine life and commenced to 
respire. From whence it resulted, that the 
child, not being animated, its destruction was 
not murder. Nothing can ever authorize in civ- 
ilized countries such practices for the purpose 
of maintaining population within proper limits. 
“ The attempts against the life of the child 
which are committed at the present day, are 
almost always by seduced girls, and the mo- 
tive is not one of systematic calculation, but 
the shame and misefy which follow their 
abandonment. It is unfortunately true that 
abortion and infanticide are common, not only 
in Paris but in all the great capitals of Eu- 
rope, as well as localities of less importance. INFANTICIDE. 
119 
‘ Let us hear the authoritative testimony of 
Prof. Ambrose Jarclien, to whom the science 
of medical law owes so many remarkable 
works: 
“‘ It is not only in Paris,’ he says, ‘ that the 
crime of abortion is multiplied in so deplor- 
able a manner. In a single session, in Septem- 
ber, 1856, the Court of Assizes, de la Drome, 
gave a decision in a case in which fifty-two 
accused appeared as authors or accomplices 
of numerous abortions, committed in some 
neighboring community of the department. 
We know that in certain countries abortion is 
practiced in a manner almost public, without 
speaking of the East, where it has, so to speak, 
entered into the manners of the country. We 
see it, in America, in a great city like New 
York, constituting a regular business and not 
prevented, where it has enriched more than 
one midwife. The number of children born 
dead or expelled before their natural time, 
which has considerably increased during the 
last fifty years, is a proof of this. For a popu- 
lation of 76,770 persons in 1805, there were but 
forty-seven still-born children; in 1849, in a 120 
INFANTICIDE. 
population of 450,000, the number of still- 
born children amounted to 1,320; that is to 
say, in a population which has sextupled, the 
still-born and premature births have increased 
thirty-sevenfold.’* 
‘ The same author, speaking of infanticide, 
gives the following resume of the actual sit- 
uation : 
“ ‘ England does not yield to Germany or 
France in the frequency of the crime of infan- 
ticide. Taylor for two years nearly correspon- 
ding, gives the following figures, which can 
leave no doubt upon this point: In 1862, in 
20,591 criminal inquests which took place in 
England and Wales, 3,239 were of children 
under one year, and in 124 verdicts of voluntary 
murders, more than a half were infanticide. In 
1863, in 22,757 inquests, 3,664 were of infants, 
and of these 166 of them were verdicts of mur- 
der. As in France the majority were of women 
in service.f 
* Ambrose Jardien, Etude Medico legale sur I’avort- 
ment etc., p. 18. Paris, 1865. Chas. Balliere & Fils. 
j* Ambrose Jardien, Etude Medico legale sur I’infanti- 
cide. Paris, 1868. INFANTICIDE. 
121 
“At Berlin, according to Caspar,* the autop- 
sies of the new-born form of themselves a 
quarter of the legal autopsies. In Paris this 
proportion is considerably surpassed. 
“ There is finally, at the present time, a kind 
of infanticide, which, although it is not so well 
known, is even more dangerous, because done 
with impunity. There are parents who recoil 
with horror at the idea of destroying their off- 
spring, although they would greatly desire to 
be disembarrassed of them, who yet place 
them without remorse with nurses, who enjoy 
the sinister reputation of never returning the 
children to those who have entrusted them to 
their care. These unfortunate little beings are 
condemned to perish from inanition and bad 
treatment. 
“ The number of these innocent victims is 
greater than would be imagined, and very 
certainly exceeds that of the marked infanti- 
cides sent by the public prosecutor to the 
Court of the Assizes. 
“We may now close this chapter by saying 
* Caspar, Traite pratique de medicine legale, t. 11, p. 
3. Paris, 1862. 122 
INFANTICIDE. 
that the only lawful obstacles to the excessive 
development of the population are, moral 
restraint, the introduction into laws of new re- 
strictions upon marriage, a prolonged maternal 
nursing, the choice for conjugal relations of 
the intermenstrual epoch, when conception, 
if not impossible, is very improbable, and 
finally organic changes in the life of the 
women, by the amelioration of the lot of the 
poorer classes.” 
I have here quoted the somewhat exag- 
gerated statistics of the still-born in New 
York in order that we here may see what is 
said of us abroad. These figures give some- 
what erroneous ideas, because the increase of 
still-born children is owing to other causes 
than those to which they are ascribed. 
First, we have had during the last half 
century an immense emigration. Many of 
these deaths are owing to the severity of the 
passage, ship fever, etc. en route, and the misera- 
ble condition and want of many of the persons 
who have composed this emigration. 
Second, the increase of poverty and misery, 
and consequent malformations and osseous INFANTICIDE. 
123 
distortions of the mothers. I have myself 
delivered many hundred women with instru- 
ments in this city during the last twenty-five 
years, and they have almost universally been of 
foreign birth. 
Third, the statistics are now kept with far 
greater accuracy than ever before, so that no 
burials are now permitted without a physi- 
cian’s certificate, which is required by the 
Board of Health from every sexton. 
Fourth, the above quoted authors have 
barely touched upon the real matter in their 
writings on “ the destructive methods ” of re- 
moving the effects of pregnancy. Infanticide, 
as it is generally considered, (destroying a 
child after quickening,) is of very rare occur- 
rence in New York, whereas abortions (des- 
troying the embryo before quickening), are of 
daily habit, in the families of the best informed 
and most religious; among those abounding 
in wealth, as well as among the poor and needy. 
The young girl, seduced and destined to oblo- 
quy and shame, be she rich or poor, will seek 
any means, even known sinful ones, to hide 
her sad fault; to her we give our tearful sym- 124 
INFANTICIDE. 
pathy, and society hesitatingly condemns her 
seemingly necessitated conduct. Could she 
secretly enter some private retreat, and after 
giving birth to her child then and there at a full 
time, and leave it for the charitable to bring 
up properly—as is done in the great cities 
of Europe—the consequences of the sin might 
be lessened. 
But the married and well-to-do, who by 
means of medicines and operations produce 
abortion at early periods of pregnancy, have 
no excuse except the pretense that they do 
not consider it murder till the child quick- 
ens. I will not here repeat what I have 
already said as fully as may be necessary in 
another place.* 
A knowledge of the great danger and fre- 
quent death which so generally accompanies 
this nefarious procedure will do more to stop 
the practice than any argument that I can 
offer. If the statistics of the mortality be 
attentively considered, few will willingly run 
the risk of life which this record of “ figures 
* See Appendix, “ Causes of the Physical Decline of 
American Women.” INFANTICIDE. 
125 
which do not lie ” will tell them. And yet, 
any statistics attainable are very incomplete. 
False certificates are daily given by attending 
physicians. Men, if they are only rich enough, 
die of “ congestion of the brain,” not “ deli- 
rium tremens,” and women similarly situated 
do not die from the effects of abortion, but 
of “ inflammation of the bowels,” etc. 
One lady, to whom I was called in consul- 
tation six hours before her death, confessed to 
me that she had produced abortion upon her- 
self twenty-one times previously ! The certi- 
ficate given, I afterwards learned, was “ dysen 
tery.” Statistics therefore are unreliable; so, 
while it is safe to say that we may trust im 
plicitly to all the deaths given, we may mentally, 
perhaps double the number. How many are 
the deaths confessedly resulting from abortion ? 
Jardien* reports that in thirty-four cases of 
criminal abortion, where their history was 
known, twenty-two were followed, as a conse- 
quence, by death. In fifteen cases, necessarily 
produced by physicians, not one was fatal. 
* Ambroise Jardien, Etude M6dico legale sur 1* infanti- 
cide. Paris, 1868. 126 
INFANTICIDE. 
This mortality is evidently, however, greater 
than would occur when the patient had the 
care of a family, and when attended by proper 
nurses, skilful physicians, etc. It refers to 
those cases where concealment is the great 
aim, and vrhere everything is sacrificed to 
that. Still under all cases, forced abortions 
are necessarily operations of great danger as 
well as suffering, and death under the best 
possible contingencies will be not infrequent. 
But death is not the only result. A lady 
who one November came to me “ to get rid 
of a baby, because her husband was going to 
Europe in the spring, and she wanted to go 
with him and couldn’t be bothered by a young 
one,” failing to enlist me in this nefarious 
scheme, finally found a— I was going to say, 
physician a somebody, who effected the 
object, and, perhaps, as carefully as it could 
be done. But inflammation ensued —asit so 
frequently does and was not easily arrested. 
I was called to her some weeks afterwards, 
and she was almost exhausted with cellulitis 
and pyaemia. Her husband sailed for Liver- 
pool in June without her, as she had not been INFANTICIDE. 
127 
able to sit up for nearly six months! It is 
now five years since, and if there is a woman 
to be pitied in this city, it is she. Physically 
she is a miserable invalid, with no disease ex- 
cept the consequence of that utter exhaustion 
resulting from the forced abortion. She had 
then three children ; her oldest son was acci- 
dentally drowned, and her two daughters died 
of scarlet fever while the family were spend- 
ing a winter in Matanzas for the mother’s 
health. She now lives in her magnificent 
palace, with hundreds of thousands of dollars 
at her disposal; but her home is desolate and 
her heart lonely, for the result of that disas- 
trous inflammation is the disorganization of 
both ovaries, and she is inevitably childless, 
and bitterly does she mourn her past follies. 
I can enlarge upon this point with numerous 
like illustrations—so can your next door phy- 
sician—but it is useless. 
The death and illness of the mother, pro- 
longed, as it often is, is bad enough; but 
there are results of this crime which possibly 
may be considered more deplorable. I think 
any mother might so admit it. 128 
INFANTICIDE. 
A lady determined not to have any more 
children went to a professed abortionist, and 
he attempted to effect the desired end by 
violence. With a pointed instrument the at- 
tempt was again and again made, but without 
the looked-for result. So vigorously was the 
effort made, that, astonished at no result being 
obtained, the individual stated that there must 
be some mistake, that the lady could not be 
pregnant, and refused to perform any further 
operations. Partially from doubt and partially 
from fear, nothing further was attempted ; and 
in due process of time the woman was delivered 
of an infant, shockingly mutilated, with one 
eye entirely put out, and the brain so injured 
that this otherwise robust child was entirely 
wanting in ordinary sense. This poor mother, 
it would seem, needs no future punishment 
for her sin. Ten years, face to face with this 
poor idiot, whose imbecility was her direct 
work—has it not punished her sufficiently ? 
Yet, with such facts before us, brown stone 
palaces will continue to be built in the Fifth 
Avenue, and the business of abortion will 
thrive, and the rich occupants will snap their INFANTICIDE. 
129 
fingers at the laws ; for have they not the re- 
putations of the wives and daughters of law- 
yers, juries, aye, even of the judges themselves 
in their hands ? Lucky, indeed, if they cannot, 
for like reasons, control him who alone has 
the power to pardon, if, by chance, found 
guilty! 
The heinousness of the sin ; the possibility 
of death immediate and painful; the likeli- 
hood of prolonged illness and future debility; 
the chance of a blighted being constantly be- 
fore the sight—these are all insufficient to pre- 
vent this horrible iniquity which is so com- 
mon to-day ! I went into a fashionable board- 
ing-house yesterday, in which were four wives 
of several years’ standing, from twenty-two to 
thirty-five years of age. There was not a 
baby there, nor had there been; nor was there 
among them one healthy woman either ! 
A popular clergyman of Brooklyn said in 
the course of a late sermon : “ Why send mis- 
sionaries to India when child-murder is here 
of daily, almost hourly occurrence ; aye, when 
the hand that puts money into the contribu- 
tion-box to-day, yesterday or a month ago, or 130 
INFANTICIDE. 
to-morrow, will murder her own unborn off- 
spring ? 
“ The Hindoo mother when she abandons her 
babe upon the sacred Ganges, is, contrary to 
her heart, obeying a supposed religious law, 
and you desire to convert her to your own 
worship of the Moloch of Fashion and Lazi- 
ness and love of Greed. Out upon such 
hypocrisy !” 
I see no resort left, no staying this tide of 
sin, unless it be in the power of the church. 
There should be no queazy sensibilities, no 
mawkish delicacy ; the sin should be grap- 
pled with and crushed out. The pulpit of 
every denomination should make common 
cause and fulminate its anathemas against 
every abettor of this enormity. I know not 
why there should be such tenderness of speech 
on the part of the clergy, for there is no such 
modesty on the part of the actors concerned. 
Arrayed in gorgeous silks, satins and velvets, 
covered with flashing gems—mine is but the 
common story of every physician—l have had 
unknown women walk into my office, and in- 
quire, “Are you the doctor?” and upon an INFANTICIDE. 
131 
affirmative reply, without further preface, say, 
“ I want you to produce an abortion for me,” 
as coolly as if ordering a piece of beef for 
dinner. 
Do the clergy consider this less a sin than 
lying, blaspheming or stealing? Do they 
sympathize with it ? It is impossible for them 
to ignore it, for it is everywhere. Do they 
think it enough to publish, once a year, reso- 
lutions against it, which few men and no 
women ever see ? Rev. John Todd* has come 
out boldly and eloquently. Should not it be 
the subject of, at least, one sermon yearly by 
every clergyman in America and the world ? 
I have dedicated this volume to the clergy 
of America, because they are the great moral 
lever-power of the country. They can make 
this vice disgraceful; they can compel it to 
be kept dark; they can prevent its being the 
common boast of the women, “that they 
know too much to have babies.” 
I have endeavored to put therphysical argu- 
ment in their hands ; I have striven to enlist 
their hearty co-operation in the cause, and 
* Todd. “ Serpents in the Dove’s Nest.” i32 
INFANTICIDE. 
now I leave it with the confidence that He 
who founded this great nation, carried it 
through such great vicissitudes, will not leave 
it to self-destruction and moral degradation. CHAPTER IX. 
CONJUGAL RELATIONS DURING THE PERIOD 
OF MENSTRUATION. 
Tpie principal object I had in view, in writing 
this work, has been accomplished with the 
closing of the last chapter, yet the common 
mind is so imperfectly informed respecting 
one of the great natural functions of woman- 
hood, and so little aware of any law of duty in 
reference to it, that I have not hesitated, even 
at the expense of materially adding to the size 
of this volume, to draw still further from May- 
er’s carefully prepared statement. 
To many it may seem that it is unneces- 
sary to caution against contracting relation- 
ships at the period of the monthly flow, think- 
ing that the instinctive laws of cleanliness and 
delicacy were sufficient to restrain the indul- 
gence of the appetites, but they are little cog- 
nizant of the true condition of things in this 
world. 
Often have I had husbands inform me that 
(J 33) 134 
CONJUGAL RELATIONS DURING 
they had not missed having sexual relations 
with their wives once or more times a day for 
several years; and scores, 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 to re- 
frain from indulgence during this period. 
It is unnecessary for our present purpose 
to give any account of the object, character or 
other particulars respecting the menstruation 
of women. The different theories of past days 
respecting it, and the present received opin- 
ions are to be found in all works on physiol- 
ogy, and popular and professional medical 
works now easily accessible to every one. 
Our only aim at present is to determine if this 
flow should be considered as any obstacle to 
the generative act, and if we should prohibit 
sexual relations during the continuance of thisflow. 
The earliest authority is that of Moses, 
who rigorously ordained entire abstinence, not 
only during the actual flowing, but for such a 
number of days as to entirely surpass any or- 
dinary duration of the periods. 
But at the present day Moses is considered THE PERIOD OF MENSTRUATION. 
135 
by some to have been exceedingly dictatorial, 
or to have ordained laws for warm climates, 
for an ardent people, from prejudice, for the 
sake of causing the Jews to do something dis- 
tinctive from the habits of other people around, 
as he is said to have ordained circumcision, 
and forbidden the use of pork, etc., etc.,—rites 
and customs mainly intended to separate his 
chosen people from the Gentiles adjacent. 
We will look at what he did order, and then 
review the science of the subject and finally 
judge whether his ordinations were in con- 
formity therewith. 
“ The woman also with whom man shall lie with seed of 
copulation, they shall both bathe themselves in water, and 
be unclean until the even. 
“ And if a woman have an issue, and her issue in her flesh 
be blood, she shall be put apart seven days; and whoso- 
ever toucheth her shall be unclean until the even. And 
every thing that she lieth upon in her separation shall be 
unclean; every thing also that she sitteth upon shall be 
unclean. * And whosoever toucheth her bed shall wash his 
clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until 
the even. And whosoever toucheth any thing that she 
sat upon shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in wa- 136 
CONJUGAL RELATIONS DURING 
ter, and be unclean until the even. And if it be on her 
bed, or on any thing whereon she sitteth, when he touch- 
eth it, he shall be unclean till the even. And if any man 
lie with her at all, and her flowers be upon him, he shall 
be unclean seven days; and all the bed whereon he lieth 
shall be unclean. And if a woman have an issue of her 
blood many days out of the time of her separation, or if it 
run beyond.the time of her separation, all the days of the 
issue of her uncleanness shall be as the days of her separa- 
tion ; she shall be unclean. Every bed whereon she lieth 
all the days of her issue shall be unto her as the bed of 
her separation; and whatsoever she sitteth upon shall be 
unclean, as the uncleanness of her separation. And who- 
soever toucheth those things shall be unclean, and shall 
wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be un- 
clean until the even. But if she be cleansed of her issue, 
then she shall number to herself seven days, and after that 
she shall be clean.”—Leviticus xv. 19-28. 
“ In the law of Manou, as in the law of Mo- 
ses, the woman is reputed impure at the date of 
her periods, as is shewn by this passage. What- 
soever desire he may feel, he (the man) should 
not approach a woman, when her periods com- 
mence to appear, nor even lie upon the same 
bed* 
* Laws of Manou. THE PERIOD OF MENSTRUATION. 
137 
“The Talmud still increasing- the rigor of 
these ordinances, ordains: ‘lf a woman co- 
habit with her husband the evening of the ap- 
pearance of her menses, whatever may be their 
duration, she can only commence to count 
the days of her uncleanness, from the date of 
the fifth day which follows the cohabitation,’ 
which will make the day of her purification 
the twelfth. 
“We note in one of the verses of Leviticus, 
above quoted, that there is a question made 
respecting a flow out of the ordinary time, or not 
ceasing when they ought to cease. 
“ Commentators are exercised to distinguish 
between these flows, those which actually pro- 
ceed from the same source as the menstrual 
flow, from those due to some other cause, and 
to this end they have sought for specific char- 
acteristics in the color of the blood which es- 
capes from the uterus. 
“ Five sorts of blood have been reputed im- 
pure, the red, black, saffron-shaded, or*of wa- 
ter mixed with clayey earth, or finally, that 
of water mixed half with wine. 
“ It is unnecessary to say how indeterminate 138 
CONJUGAL RELATIONS DURING 
are these characteristics. In our day and with 
the present state of science, such a confusion 
can no longer exist, unless there be a metror- 
hagia, coming on immediately after the menses, 
without leaving sufficient time for them to run 
through the usual phases; for if the blood was 
altogether colorless, and had taken very nearly 
the appearance of vaginal mucus, no error 
would be permitted, and the new flow would 
be considered as an accidental occurrence. 
Still more surely would a hemorrhage between 
the periods be recognized as the symptom of 
some pathological lesion. 
“Furthermore, the distinction is unimpor- 
tant in relation to the question at issue, for if 
sexual relations ought to be avoided during 
the periods, for a still more urgent reason they 
should be suspended during a hemorrhage of 
whatever sort, originating in the sexual or- 
gans. 
“ The laws prescribed by Moses are observed 
still, by the greater number of Jewesses. In 
the great capitals, indeed, there is some prob- 
able laxity, and it is noted that there too the 
primitive Jewish types are gradually becom- THE PERIOD OF MENSTRUATION. 
139 
mg effaced, which is perhaps owing in part to 
this very circumstance. 
“ These institutions may be regarded, to a 
certain point, as rules of medical police, in- 
spired by certain mystical ideas of hygiene, 
spread throughout the Orient, with a gener- 
ally accepted religious character. If, in this 
respect, we compare the Hebraic legisla- 
tion with that of the Egyptians and Hindoos, 
we shall be struck with the fact that Moses 
greatly simplified the practices of purification, 
suppressing all founded on superstition and 
maintaining only that which was really useful 
to hygiene and favorable to morals. But the 
purity of the body conduced to another end 
of an infinitely superior order. It was the 
symbol of interior purity, and was put by the 
legislator into an intimate relation with the 
worship of Jehovah and with the holiness de- 
manded by this worship. 
“R. P. Debreyne, the celebrated Catholic 
Casuist, says, ‘ It is known that many theolo- 
gians, upon the authority of Saint Thomas, re- 
gard as a mortal sin, the exercise of the 
marriage rite during the period of menstrua- 140 
CONJUGAL RELATIONS DURING 
tion, because, according to them, this circum- 
stance exposes them to the serious peril of 
begetting children either leprous or mon- 
strous.’ 
“ Sanchez and a great number of theological 
writers affirm that that Levitical Law, ‘ If 
a man shall lie with a woman having her sick- 
ness, . . . both of them shall be cut off.’ 
(xx. 18.) is a prohibition purely ceremonial, 
to which one is not bound under the evan- 
gelical law. 
“We are convinced that this precept is as 
much moral as ceremonial, because the conju- 
gal act exercised during the catamenial period, 
carries with it a theological wrong, in the 
sense that it is more or less injurious, or un- 
favorable to its principal end—generation ; 
not because, as theologians say, it engen- 
ders infants that are lepers or monsters, 
which we do not all believe, but because there 
is generally nothing produced, either normal 
or abnormal. Why not ? Because menstrua- 
tion is but a preparatory function, and the 
discharge, a depletive and expulsive excretion, 
not fitted for generation, and it is found that THE PERIOD OF MENSTRUATION. 
141 
the time immediately following is more favor- 
able to conception, and this is a fact which the 
experience of every day proves. 
“You see then, that we have no need to 
depend upon the passage of Ezekiel—‘ If a man 
be just and do that which is lawful and right, 
. . . neither hath defiled his neighbour’s wife, 
neither hath come near to a menstruous wo- 
man.’ xviii. 5, 6;—where cohabitation during 
the menstrual period is ranked with adultery. 
“ The same author concludes,* ‘ the wife is 
not held to conjugal duty during the epoch of 
the menstrual flow.’* 
“It results from the preceding, that in a 
religious point of view, the marriage act 
should be proscribed during the menstrual 
period, at least, according to the Jewish and 
Christian laws, with this difference, however, 
that the first add to the interdiction a cer- 
tain number of days after the cessation of the 
flow, while the second limit the prohibition 
only to its actual duration. 
“ A book which has recently appeared and 
which is generally circulated among women, re- 
* Debreyne, loc.cit., p. 313. 142 
CONJUGAL RELATIONS DURING 
presents the menstrual functions under a strange 
aspect. Not content with re-establishing the 
true signification of this essentially physiolo- 
gical act, and of avenging the most beautiful 
half of the human race for the degradation 
which has weighed upon it for antiquity; 
the author of this work, without any com- 
petence, furthermore, for treating such a sub- 
ject, considers woman as a sort of divinity, 
precisely on account of the special tribute 
this sex pays to nature.* ‘We know,’ cries 
he, in an excess of cynical enthusiasm, ‘this 
sacred being, who, on that account, the mid- 
dle ages charged with impurity, is found, in 
reality, to be in nature the saint of saints.’ 
“We would not have quoted such shocking 
exaggerations, if it were not to say how pain- 
ful it is to see a writer justly esteemed for his 
historical works, commit the fault of usurping 
a field to which he is entirely a stranger, and 
giving the prestige of his name to the propa- 
gation of opinions both false and prejudicial to 
society. 
“In fact, if we believe Michelet, woman 
f Michelet, L’amour, introduction, p. 8. THE PERIOD OF MENSTRUATION. 
M3 
should be an invalid, ‘ afflicted with a con- 
stantly bleeding wound,’* and the duty of the 
husband is a perpetual adoration of the fetish. 
Such doctrines are subversive of all ideas 
received into the bosom of families. 
“ Reason and experience both show that 
sexual relations at the menstrual period are 
very dangerous for both man and woman, and 
perhaps also for the offspring, should there 
chance to be conception. 
“ There is no doubt, that for a woman, all 
undue excitement is injurious at this period. 
Our daily experience shows us that suppressed 
courses are the result of great emotion, as 
anger, fear, etc., and sometimes from the same 
causes also the contrary effect of haemorrhage 
occurs. Is it not evident that such nervous 
disturbance as coitus might cause many simi- 
lar results, and by preference excite the flow- 
ings ? But it is no question of the reason, we 
have the observation of every medical man, 
and daily proofs that such are the results. 
“ And nervous influences are not all. The 
mechanical action itself plays an important 
* Michelet, L’amour, introd,, p. 19. 144 
CONJUGAL RELATIONS DURING 
part in producing the numerous accidents 
which we observe. It augments the turges- 
cence of the parts, and increases the normal 
flux until it attains the proportions of a real 
haemorrhagic molimen, which results in an im- 
mediate flow and a serious loss of blood. 
“ Finally, the peril which we note here is 
not only observable in regard to the cata- 
menial flow, but is inherent to the genesaic 
act itself, whenever there exists a flow of 
blood from the vulva, from whatever' source 
it emanates. Whatever may be the origin of 
these flows of blood from the female genitals, 
the repose of these organs is imperiously de- 
manded. 
“As for the man, the danger he runs is 
not from any virulent properties appertain- 
ing to the menstrual blood, as the ancients 
thought, and as some, perhaps, of the present 
day believe. No, the blood of the menses has 
not the malignity ascribed to it by certain 
naturalists. Authors have maintained, entirely 
unsupported by facts, however, that women, 
at the time of this flow, have the power to 
kill by their touch a young vine ; that they THE PERIOD OF MENSTRUATION. 
145 
render a tree sterile; that they turn sauces ; 
sour wine and milk ; rust iron and steel; that 
they cause a pregnant woman to abort, and 
render another sterile; that they make dogs 
mad and even fowls, etc. 
“ Paracelsus regarded the menstrual blood 
as the most subtile of poisons. He asserts 
that of it the devil makes spiders, fleas, cater- 
pillars and all the other insects that people 
the air. 
“ The blood of the regies differs in no respect 
from ordinary blood ; has no bad qualities, 
when coming from healthy women ; but, in 
another condition, it might have some influ- 
ence upon external objects, the same as the 
other secretions from a person affected with 
any disease. 
“ But if the menstrual blood is ordinarily 
exempt from the injurious qualities which 
have been attributed to it, it is indeed true 
that it may contract them, by being too long 
delayed in the utero-vaginal canal through 
which it flows; that it may become corrupt 
and acquire all the characteristics of decom- 
posed animal liquids, or an acidity and vir- 146 
CONJUGAL RELATIONS DURING 
ulence proportioned to the length of its dura- 
tion and stagnation in the parts and at the 
temperature of the locality ; or it may par- 
ticipate in the other idiosyncracies and con- 
ditions of the woman, the exact amount of 
which it is impossible to appreciate. The con- 
tact of this vitiated fluid with the gland and 
urethra of the male organ may, and frequently 
does, cause superficial excoriations which re- 
semble chancres without having their gravity; 
blenorrhagias which resemble specific gonor- 
rhoeas and which would deceive us, if they 
did not speedily yield to appropriate treat- 
ment. We will not dwell further upon these 
facts of daily experience. 
“As for the progeny resulting from this 
impure connection, we will say but little: 
First, because we think conceptions are very 
rare during the season of the periods from the 
processus of the ovule, if the theory of Pouchet 
is true ; and secondly, because rigorous and 
scientific observation is mute on this point. 
We shall have to invoke old prejudices and 
popular beliefs if we desire to say anything 
more than a presumption in regard to the THE PERIOD OF MENSTRUATION, 
147 
unfortunate eventualities which weigh so 
heavily on the child procreated during the 
menstrual period. Tradition claims that they 
are born cachectic, affected with scrofula or 
rickets, and are of dull mind. We repeat, 
facts are wanting to sustain this belief, which, 
however, numbers many partisans. 
“ It is of little consequence whether there 
is danger or not for the offspring, it is un- 
doubted that it exists for the parents. 
“ Besides the hygienic question, there are 
other interests, not less respectable, engaged 
in this matter. They are those of morals. 
“ In fact, the woman when she has her periods 
takes the greatest care to conceal it from all 
eyes. She is affected instinctively, we will 
not say willingly, in her dignity. She con- 
siders her condition as a blot or an infirmity ; 
and although her modest}^—the most incen- 
diary of the female virtues—has been spared 
by the omnipotence of her husband, she 
blushes to herself at the tribute which she is 
compelled to pay to nature. To constrain 
her in this condition, to submit to conjugal 
caresses, is evidently to do violence to what 148 
CONJUGAL RELATIONS DURING 
is most respectable in her nature ; it is to cast 
her down from her pedestal; it is to rob her 
of the prestige which the graces of her sex 
assure to her. Love has need of poetry, and 
accommodates itself illy to the gross realities 
of the animal life. Do not seek to contradict 
such legitimate repugnance. The first step 
in this path infallibly leads to ruptures the 
most to be regretted. 
“ But it is not only at the menstrual epoch 
that the wife should conceal from the husband 
the details of the lower necessities to which 
she, as well as he, is subject; we would de- 
sire that she should endeavor never entirely 
to lay aside her natural charms of modesty 
and delicacy even in the intimacy of the bed- 
chamber. She will gain more than she can 
think in constancy and love—the most cruel 
enemies of which come from the destruction 
of the illusions and from satiety. 
“ More than one married woman will find in 
these lines, if she discovers all their meaning, 
an explanation of the inexplicable weariness 
of her husband, and the solution of an unsolv- 
able enigma to her amoiir propre ; that is to THE PERIOD OF MENSTRUATION. 
149 
say, the reason of the triumph of some rival, 
(perhaps less endowed in both body and mind), 
in the affections of her husband. CHAPTER X. 
CONJUGAL RELATIONS BETWEEN THE OLD. 
It appears necessary before entering- upon 
precepts, to determine the state which age 
impresses upon either sex, relative to the 
genital functions and the passions associated 
with them. This exposition, furthermore, 
seems entirely indispensable for the better 
understanding of what we have to say in the 
continuation of this chapter. 
The faculty of procreation is extinguished 
in woman with menstruation. About the age 
of forty-five to fifty years the menstrual flux 
is suppressed, the breasts lose their fulness 
A 
and the uterus loses its organic activity. The 
body itself does not long delay entering into 
decrepitude, and soon we see the woman—once 
so favored by nature when she was charged 
with the duty of reproducing her species— 
degraded to the level of a being who has no 
further duty to perform in the world. How- CONJUGAL RELATIONS. 
151 
ever, her family and society recompense her 
for the loss of her physical charms, by sur- 
rounding her with respect and heart-felt care, 
which are in remuneration for services which 
she has rendered to one and another in the 
past, by devoting herself to the cares of 
maternity. At this period of life, woman has 
eminently a need for the affection and pro- 
tection of a husband, whose existence she has 
embellished. Culpable, indeed, are they who 
push ingratitude to indifference or to abandon- 
ment. 
In woman, the transition from adult to old 
age is designated by the title of the “ critical 
period,” to designate the arrangements which 
coincide with this meno-pause. The organs of 
reproduction have no longer a special life, and 
departed, no longer excite the whole econ- 
omy. Notwithstanding that the wife, always 
desirous of pleasing, exerts herself by all 
imaginary artifices, to preserve the charms 
that nature has still left, until, convinced of 
their powerlessness, she seeks a consolation in 
giving to her sentiments of affection a new 
direction. 152 
CONJUGAL RELATIONS 
In man, the prolific power persists for an 
undetermined period, but are always relative 
to the general constitutional force and the in- 
tegrity of the general health. Generally a 
marked dimunition of the procreating power 
is observable about the fiftieth year, and this 
decrease continues to lessen until the age of 
seventy—the final period of the exercise of 
the genital sense—when it entirely disappears. 
But if nature affixes an almost constant 
limit to the procreating faculty in both sexes; 
has it furnished for man as for woman, a cer- 
tain sign to which one can recognise the des- 
truction of the faculty ? 
This question has been treated at length by 
many writers on impotence and sterility.* 
The opinions which are current in the 
science of to-day, seemed for a long time in 
contradiction with the most authentic facts 
till within a few years. M. Duplay, in a trea- 
tise just come to hand, has sapped to its foun- 
dation this accredited doctrine. 
* Felix Roulaud. Traite de Fimpuissance et de la 
Sterilite chez I’homme and chez la femme. Paris, 1855, 
A. K. Gardner. Causes and Curative Treatment of 
Sterility. New York :R.M. De Witt. BETWEEN THE OLD. 
153 
No one contests that, in the regular order 
of things, man arriving at a certain age 
loses the faculty of reproduction, from whence 
one might conclude that, since the fecundating 
property resides in the zoospermes, these 
ought to be wanting in old men; this is a 
logical deduction, but on the other hand, 
experience comes to confirm this opinion a 
priori, as is attested by the majority of modern 
physiologists, such as J. Muller, Kartzoeker, 
Longet, Geoffrey, etc. Still this doctrine and 
these experiences have, against theirs, an au- 
thority of great weight. “ The venereal ap- 
petite,” says Wagner, “ diminishes in man, 
but the faculty of engendering seems to last 
during the entire life of those who enjoy good 
health. I have found spermatozoa in the tes- 
ticles of very aged men, particularly in men of 
sixty or seventy years. Frequently there were 
none in the vas deferens, but in general the 
vesicuke seminales contained them.”* 
In the face of such contradictory assertions, 
M. Duplay brings the fruit of his researches, 
* Wagner. Histoire de la generation, French trans- 
lation, p. 14 and 31. 154 
CONJUGAL RELATIONS 
with the purpose of elucidating this ques. 
tion. 
But as M. Rowland very judiciously re- 
marks, “ for superficial readers, the light 
brought by M. Duplay, far from clearing up 
this difficult problem, has only plunged it into 
deeper darkness; for, one may say, if the sper- 
matic secretion is effected as normally in the old 
man as in the adult, and if the former has not 
any longer the power of procreating, this apti- 
tude evidently does not reside in the composi- 
tion of the sperm, or, more simply, in the pre- 
sence of spermatozoa, and we must return to the 
opinion of Burdach, who considers these ani- 
malcules as an accessory fact, and as a con- 
comitant phenomenon of this faculty, and not 
as the essential cause.” 
In fact, M. Duplay has found, as Wagner 
did, zoospermes in the semen of old men even 
to the age of eighty-six years. 
We will now cite the conclusions from the 
labors of Duplay: 
“ Contrary to the opinion generally admit- 
ted by physiologists, the spermatozoa are 
found in the semen of old men. The opposite BETWEEN THE OLD. 
155 
opinion, far from being the rule, ought to be 
considered, from our researches, as the excep- 
tion. If in certain cases, the spermatozoa are 
less numerous than in the adult, or less uni- 
formly distributed than in the latter, through- 
out all the extent of the spermatic passages ; 
if in certain cases they present a less perfect 
formation,, in others also, and sometimes in 
very aged subjects, they are found with all the 
characteristics which are present during the 
middle period of life. 
“ If old men are not more apt to reproduce 
themselves, which is most generally observed, 
and if, on the other hand, the presence of 
spermatozoa constitutes the fecundating qual- 
ity of the seminal fluid, it is due less to the 
composition of their sperm than to other con- 
ditions of the reproductive act, to which must 
be attributed the unfruitfulness of the old.* 
But what are the other conditions which 
account for the sterility of old men ? Roubaud 
thinks that he has discovered that the infecun- 
dity of advanced age belongs rather, in the 
* Duplay, Archives generalesde Medicine. Dec. 
p. 403. 156 
CONJUGAL RELATIONS 
majority of cases, especially among those who 
possess normal spermatic animalcules to a no- 
table diminution in the force with which the 
general fluid is emitted; and he reasons thus 
from the analogy with that which occurs in 
the worn-out adult, who becomes sterile from 
the same cause. 
If we should now declare our opinion, as 
regards the entirely mechanical theory, we 
should say that we were in nowise satisfied, 
and that we prefer to admit some yet unknown 
modification in the sperm of the aged, which 
will some day clear up the reason of their in- 
aptitude for reproduction. 
Furthermore, we have before us many ob- 
servations of women fecundated by individu- 
als, who either from calculation or impotence 
had not projected their sperm very far or in 
large quantities; we believe, in a word, that in 
the mysterious act of the venereal impregna- 
tion, the elements of quality and force of pro- 
jection play but a very secondary part, and 
that it is in another order of facts, otherwise 
raised, that we should seek for the conditions 
so capricious in appearance. BETWEEN THE OLD. 
157 
It may be asked if love survives in the man 
from that fortunate age when the fury of the 
passions finds a willing auxiliary in a young 
and robust organism. Evidently, yes. But it 
is no longer that tormenting love, that anguish, 
that despair, or that supreme happiness which 
make of life a heaven or a hell. The love of the 
old man is more calm, more reflective, and in 
consequence more tenacious. In youth, love 
betrayed may lead to the exaltation of deli- 
rium, and sometimes push on to suicide. In 
an advanced age, the victim allows himself to 
be slowly immolated, without complaint, but 
the deep emptiness which is suddenly made in 
a heart incapable of reaction, may sometimes 
bring on melancholy (lypemania) and even 
death by the gradual debilitation of the prin- 
cipal functions. 
It is not the same in woman, with whom the 
faculty of love preserves all its empire, and 
sometimes its violence, even to a very ad- 
vanced period of life. Let us listen on this 
subject to Reveille Parise, the most charming 
writer of cotemporaneous medicine. “ With 
women,” he says, “this passion is equally modi- i58 
CONJUGAL RELATIONS 
fied by age, but not to the same extent as with 
men. That is why to love deeply is the key to 
woman. She loves as she lives, as she breathes. 
It seems as if nature gave her one necessity, 
love; one business, love; one duty, love ; one 
recompense, love; and she remains faithful to 
this powerful instinct. In general, the life of 
a woman may be divided into three periods. 
In the first, she dreams of love ; in the second, 
she makes it; in the third, she regrets it. Love 
occupies so much place in her life—absorbs 
so much of her time and her faculties—the 
charming ideal surrounding it is so powerful— 
that when she arrives at the age when she is 
compelled to renounce it, she thinks that she 
is but awaking after a prolonged dream, to 
perceive for the first time the truths and mis- 
eries of life. However, this love but changes 
its form and manifestation at this period. If, 
at a certain age, as we know, some women 
carry into the exchange of friendships a grace, 
a delicacy unknown to man, we should not be 
astonished to find that it is the remnants of 
love. Such is the origin of those attachments, 
full of charm, which still refine the maturity BETWEEN THE OLD. 
159 
of age, and which are nevertheless gilded by 
the last reflections of their youth. This fac- 
ulty of loving, while it is preserved with time, 
changes its form and especially its object 
“ Conjugal love, carried to a certain degree 
of exaltation, is one of the particular features 
of this sentiment in women. It is equally re- 
marked in those endowed with imaginations 
of especial vivacity and extreme sensibility, 
who, at a certain age, fall into mystical love 
and religious melancholy. 
“ A last final remark upon this passion itself: 
It is that the influence of age is very much 
greater over the physiological love than over 
sentimental love, which has less necessity for 
physical force and juvenile exaltation. These 
love thoughts, this lava quenched by time, 
some one says, may preserve the remains of a 
heat revivifying to the mind. There are men 
always young in heart and imagination, who 
have a constant devotion for love, which, by 
prolongation, seem to re-illumine the vital 
principle instead of wasting it. Sometimes 
an attachment for women akin to love is re- 
marked in certain old men of lively brain i6o 
CONJUGAL RELATIONS 
Does not one, however, observe a striking dif- 
ference between the manner of living in the 
young and in those of advanced age ? It has 
been long known that great follies belong to 
first love and great weaknesses to the second.*” 
If love, sexual love, be it understood, can 
still torment the man, who, from his age, 
would seem to have a right, for the serenity of 
his latter days, to escape from its tortures, is 
it as common to see the virile power of the 
old man in a condition to respond to the soli- 
citations of the heart ? Unfortunately no ; 
and the Ephemerides of science registers as 
rare exceptions the names of privileged ones 
in whom the power of reproduction is pro- 
longed beyond the period indicated above as 
the normal term of that power. 
Among the examples of amorous reminis- 
cence in men aroused at the decline of life, 
there are some so authenticated by undoubted 
testimony that it is difficult to have any doubts 
regarding it. Here are some : 
Begon, physician in Puy-en-Velay, cites the 
* RcveillS-Parise. Traite de la vieillesse, hygienique, 
medical et philosophique. Paris, 1853, p. 137, et suiv. 161 
BETWEEN THE OLD. 
case of a gentleman of the robe, of his time 
and country, who married at 75 years of age, 
moved by a principle of conscience, and not able to 
resist the tardy but violent eruption of a tempera- 
ment which excited him to loved' 
An armorer of Montfaugon, aged 80 years, 
suddenly perceived his forces, which he had 
thought lost for ever, renewed within him, re- 
married, and created vigorous children.*}* 
We find in a large collection of curious 
facts, one taken from the Philosophical Trans- 
actionsf. of an Englishman named Thomas 
Parr, who died at 152 years of age, after hav- 
ing passed his entire life in great austerity. 
This man married at 120 years a widow, and 
for a long time after attended to his matrimo- 
nial duties with a punctuality which his com- 
panion was pleased to credit him with. 
From the relation of Valerius Maximus 
Masinissa, king of Numidia, engendered 
Methjnuate at 86 years of age. 
Felix Plater affirms that his grandfather be- 
got children until 100 years of age.§ 
* Memoires de Trevoux. Novembre, 1708. *}* Ibid. 
J Transactions Philosophiques. 1668. 
§ Anecdotes de Medicine. T. 11. 162 
CONJUGAL RELATIONS 
Here is a more rare observation which is 
found in the history of the Academy of 
Sciences.* It is of a man in the diocese of 
Seez, who married at 94 years a woman of 83, 
whom he had made pregnant. She was 
confined at full time with a boy. 
The authenticity of this fact is undeniable. 
Monseigneur the Bishop of Seez made it the 
subject of a communication to the Academy. 
The genital functions, at all ages, are the 
cause of diseases, from the little judgment 
which is generally exercised in their usage ; 
but what is remarkable, is that old men, who 
now, are no longer ruled by the storms of 
passion, do not, more than the young, know 
how to resist the attractions of the perilous 
joys of love. And what is still more deplor- 
able is, that it is the very ones who have 
abused their youth who continue the same ex- 
cesses in their old age. 
The dangers of sexual relations in advanced 
age proceed from two causes; from the loss 
of sperm and from the nervous excite- 
ment which accompanies coitus. For the 
* Memoires de I’Academic des Sciences. 1710. 163 
BETWEEN THE OLD. 
sperm is the purest extract of the blood, and, 
according to the expression of Fernel, totus 
homo semen est. Nature in creating it has in- 
tended it not only to communicate life, but also 
to nourish the individual life. In fact, the re- 
absorption of the fecundating liquid impresses 
upon the entire economy an entirely new 
energy and a virility which contributes to 
the prolongation of life. As to the enerva- 
tion which follows the cynical spasms, it is 
unnecessary to insist upon their disastrous 
consequences at a period when the vital ener- 
gies are more or less deficient. 
Reveille-Parise, in his Trait'e de la Vicillesse, 
enumerates at length the causes of the dis- 
orders which old men bring upon themselves 
to the great injury of their longevity. We 
cannot resist the temptation to reproduce 
some of the eloquent pages which the saga- 
cious observer has written upon this subject. 
“ One of the first causes of this infraction of 
the true principle of hygiene, is that the man, 
still in green old age, refuses for a long time to 
believe that he is so. His souvenirs, almost 
synonymous with regret, are always in his me- 164 
CONJUGAL RELATIONS 
mory and his heart to torment him. Without ces- 
sation he turns his eyes backwards to contem- 
plate in the distant horizon the promisedland of 
love and pleasure where it would be sweet 
to live, could he but remain there. With 
difficulty he becomes accustomed to the idea 
that the high prerogative of procreation is 
almost departed from him, and he does not 
wish to avow to himself, till as late as possible, 
the condition of decadence, with which nature 
has smitten him. This new existence seems 
an injury and shame, for there are few in- 
dividuals capable of accepting old age without 
weakness of mind and affection of the reason. 
Some whiten their heads without disenchant- 
ing their minds. Furthermore, a man, well 
constituted, one that age has not broken down, 
still feels perfidious and seducing reminiscen- 
ces ; everything appears young to him except 
the date of his birth. His years have fled, but 
not his strength. He, indeed, admits that the 
spurs of necessity are not so pressing as 
formerly, that he no longer feels that excess of 
life, that fire, that ardor, that formerly warmed 
his blood and heart, but he does not consider BETWEEN THE OLD. 
165 
himself an athlete entirely disarmed, so that 
he cannot renew his combat, and as Fenelon 
says, “ the young man is not yet dead in him.” 
Many old fools, crazy heads full of years, will 
here recognise themselves. I only ask them 
to be sincere. Are not the attempts of these 
superannuated dolts degrading, their failure 
in love contemptible ? Sometimes the evil 
is deeply rooted in their habits, and as a 
thinker of our day has said, the chastisement of 
those who have loved women too much, is to love 
them for ever. These are only reiterated 
defeats, formidable diseases, the halting and pre- 
cipitate walk of old age, which finally teach 
the imprudent, that which he ought long before 
to have learned; that well-being and health 
consist, especially in the latter part of life, 
in the proper accord of the remains of strength 
with tried judgment and a wise conduct. 
Still another motive equally urges some 
old men to dangerous excesses, and this is 
the example of certain men who really, or 
in appearance, preserve the faculties which 
age usually snatches away. So they refer to 
them, and cite these cases with complacency, 166 
CONJUGAL RELATIONS 
with a sort of interior satisfaction, always 
disposed to be self-considered as belonging 
to this category of the predestinated. 
Thus the Marshal d’ Estrce made his third 
wedding at the age of ninety-one, and married, 
as they said, very seriously. The Due de 
Lazun lived for a long time after having com- 
mitted excesses of every sort. The Marshal 
de Richelieu married a second time, to Madame 
de Roth, at the age of eighty-four years. 
Then how can we believe what Bacon says, 
that “ the debauches of youth are conspiracies 
against old age,” and that “ one pays dearly 
in the evening for the follies of the morning! ” 
We see that it was not always so, and the 
lively old man who thinks himself so rejuven- 
ated by some desires hidden under the ashes, 
is delighted to instance himself among such 
examples. However, what signifies such iso- 
lated and assuredly very rare facts! Is it 
necessary to guide himself by such examples, 
unless, indeed, he has received from nature one 
of these exceptional constitutions, whose erotic 
salacity does not finish but with life ? This, 
indeed, would be a fatal error. BETWEEN THE OLD. 
167 
Besides the numberless ills which the old 
man prepares for himself by inconsiderate indul- 
gence in his sexual pleasures, he should know 
that sudden death is sometimes the immediate 
consequence of the act of copulation, from 
cerebral haemorrhage or rupture of the large 
vessels. These catastrophes are here pro- 
duced, as in the course of all violent and 
disordered emotions which accelerate the 
contractions of the heart, or in the middle of 
a considerable effort, which cause a more or 
less complete suspension of the respiration. 
But if it is now asked of us, where is the 
exact limit at which it is important to abstain, 
we shall be unable to reply in a categorical 
manner. That which it is especially necessary 
in this case to take into consideration, is the 
peculiar constitution of each individual, and the 
preceding drain upon his forces from his rela- 
tions with the other sex. The Abbe Maury said 
of his friend Portal, “ I hold as certain, that 
after fifty years of age, a man of sense ought 
to renounce the pleasures of love. Each time 
that he allows himself this gratification, is a 
pellet of earth thrown upon his coffin 168 
CONJUGAL RELATIONS 
This is a maxim of the greatest wisdom 
and we recommend it to our readers, at the 
risk of not being heard. 
As we do not write here but for old men en- 
gaged in the bonds of marriage, we have not 
occupied ourselves with the voluptuous wan- 
derings to which, in large cities, these decayed 
Lovelaces, whom celibacy has long perverted, 
abandon themselves. 
The most dangerous of these manoeuvres 
is, without contradiction, the which 
they seek as the object of their immediate 
amours. It is, in fact, the surest method of 
awaking the worn-out senses. 
Confinement to the conjugal bed keeps 
dangerous excesses at a distance, and if we 
are obliged to preach moderation to spouses 
arrived at the decline of life, at least, we need 
not warn them against factitious excitements 
to which they are not already accustomed. 
In a moral point of view, continence in the 
old is perhaps still more imperiously de- 
manded. In this relation let us recall the 
judicious reflections of the author already 
cited: “ When you see an old man of ripe 169 
BETWEEN THE OLD 
judgment, endowed with strong reason, 
whose bright active mind is still able to direct 
his business, and to be useful to society, be con- 
vinced that this man is wise and continent, 
and that temperance—so justly among the 
ancients called Sophrosne, guardian of wis- 
dom—has, in him, a fervent worshipper.” 
By this, has he not acquired complete 
moral liberty ? Has he not thrown off a 
violent tyranny ? This was Cicero’s opinion. 
“ Behold, ” says he, “ a wise answer of 
Sophocles, from whom some one demanded, if 
being old, he still enjoyed the pleasures of love. 
“ May the gods preserve me,” said he ; “ I have 
qiutted them as willingly as P would have quitted 
a savage and furious master.” Truly a man 
who has accepted his lot with such a clear and 
firm manner, shows a very remarkable moral 
vigor. Furthermore, we must say, this man 
did but follow the indications of nature. 
However, it may be, the imitators of 
Sophocles will not be the less worthy of 
praise, so little in this respect are men gen- 
erally disposed to the least sacrifice. You must 
however reconcile yourself to it, you whom I/O 
CONJUGAL RELATIONS. 
old age presses upon, and by which you are 
already affected. You desire to live as long 
as possible and with the least possible pain ; 
difficult solution of the great problem of 
existence. Well, renounce that which does not 
comport with your age, with your tempera- 
ment, your strength ; accept from age, peace, 
repose, wisdom, in exchange for the transports 
and fires of love. Know, moreover, that to 
quit before absolute incapability, is in all re- 
spects an essential article in the Hygienic Code 
of the old.* 
* Reveille Parise, loc cit. p. 431. etc. CHAPTER XL 
MARRIAGE BETWEEN OLD MEN AND YOUNG 
GIRLS. 
Alliances of this sort have taken place in 
every epoch of humanity, from the time of the 
patriarchs to the present day—alliances which 
are repugnant to nature—between men bor- 
dering on decrepitude and poor young girls, 
who are sacrificed by their parents for posi- 
tion, or who sell themselves for gold. There 
is in these monstrous alliances something 
which we know not how to brand sufficiently 
energetically, in considering the reciprocal re- 
lations of the pair thus wrongfully united and 
the lot of the children which may result from 
them. Let us admit, for an instant, that the mar- 
riage has been concluded with the full consent 
of the young girl, and that no external pres- 
sure has been exerted upon her will—as is gen- 
erally the rule—it will none the less happen 
that reflection and experience will tardily 
bring regrets, and the sharper as the evil will 172 
MARRIAGE BETWEEN OLD MEN 
be without remedy; but if compulsion, or 
what is often the same thing, persuasion, had 
been employed to obtain the consent which 
the law demands, the result would have been 
more prompt and vehement. From this 
moment the common life becomes odious to 
the unhappy victim, and culpable hopes will 
arise in her desolate heart, so heavy will weigh 
the chain that she carries. In fact, the love 
of the old man becomes ridiculous and horrid 
to her, and we cannot sufficiently sympathize 
with the unfortunate person whose duty it is 
to submit to it. If we think of it an instant, 
we shall perceive a repulsion such as is only 
inspired by the idea of incest. In reality, every- 
thing is in contrast, physically and morally; and 
chastity is necessarily absent in intercourses 
where the brutality of the act is not blunted 
and poetized in some manner by the passion- 
ate overflowings of the heart. So what do we 
oftenest observe ? Either the woman violently 
breaks the cursed bonds, or she resigns her- 
self to them ; and then she seeks to fill up the 
void in her soul by adulterous amours. Such 
is the sombre perspective of the sacrilegious AND YOUNG GIRLS. 
173 
unions which set at defiance the most respect- 
able instincts, the most noble desires, and the 
most legitimate hopes. Such, too, are the ter- 
rible chastisements reserved for the thought- 
lessness or foolish pride of these dissolute 
grey-beards, who prodigalize the last breath 
of their life in search of depraved voluptuous- 
ness. 
Let us turn now from the dangers that we 
have sufficiently exposed in the preceding 
chapters, and which are inherent to the exer- 
cise of the genital sense in advanced age. 
These dangers exist only for the man, as is 
easy to imagine; but they are all the more 
dangerous as the young bride is more or less 
capable of over-exciting the sexual appetites 
by her graces, freshness and other attractions 
with which she may be endowed. Unfortu- 
nate is the imprudent man who dares to 
drink without care from this cup of delight. 
Nature knows how, in such a case, to punish 
cruelly any infraction of her laws. 
One of the kings of ancient Germany, ar- 
rived at advanced age, was counselled to 
marry again, and to a beautiful maiden, advice 174 
MARRIAGE BETWEEN OLD MEN 
which he firmly declined, saying that “ it was 
the pleasantest form of suicide.” 
A young smile for a grey beard is a proverb 
which reveals the corruption of manners and 
the infamous stupration which makes the nup- 
tial couch a den of debauch, a thousand times 
more despciable than the foulest brothel. 
The products of old age are generally caco- 
chynes, weakly and by predilection especially 
subject to attacks of every morbific agent. 
The cause of this fact is complex, and is 
found in the abnormal condition of the sperm 
at an advanced period of life; in the general 
prostration of the father, and doubtless also in 
the small part taken by the wife in the gene- 
saic act. Finally, the disproportion in the 
ages of the parties united, which we have seen 
to exert an incontestable influence upon pro- 
creation, finishes the explanation of the vitia- 
tion of the productions of old age. 
Whatever it may be, every one has been 
able to make the observation, a more or less 
considerable number of times, that children, 
the issue of old men, are habitually marked by 
a serious and sad air spread over their coun- AND YOUNG GIRLS. 
i;s 
tenances, which is manifestly very opposite 
to the infantile expression which so delights 
one in the little children of the same age, en- 
gendered under other conditions. As they 
grow up, their features take on more and more 
the senile character, so much so that every 
one remarks it, and the world regards it as a 
natural thing. The old mothers pretend that 
it is an old head on young shoulders. They 
predict an early death to these children, and 
the event frequently justifies the horoscope. 
Our attention has for many years been fixed 
upon this point, and we can affirm that the 
greater part of the offspring of this connection 
are weak, torpid, lymphatic, if not scrofulous, 
and do not promise a long career. To statis- 
tics, collected on a large scale, is reserved 
the task of throwing light upon this interest- 
ing problem. We strongly urge expert la- 
borers to engage in this research.* 
* In this study, the work of Dr. Morel may be con- 
sulted with great interest, entitled u Des degenerescences 
physiques, intellectuelles et morales de I’espece humaine. 
Paris, 1857. CHAPTER XII. 
WHAT MAY BE DONE, WITH HEALTH IN VIEW, 
AND THE FEAR OF GOD BEFORE US. 
In the foregoing chapters we have, as fully 
and as minutely as was judged necessary for 
the elucidation of the subject under consider- 
ation, considered the physical relations of the 
sexes. If some of my readers think that the 
explanations are not sufficiently explicit, or 
that some of the statements are made too 
vaguely and obscurely, they will please to re- 
member the circumstances under which the 
work has been written, and especially the deli- 
cacy necessary in treating subjects of this 
nature. Verbiage has been sometimes ex- 
pressly selected instead of distinct state- 
ments, and a round-about sentence has often 
been used as the substitute for an expression 
which might offend sensitive minds. Especial 
care, it will be observed, has been used not 
to admit anything which might minister to 
the depraved appetites of the prurient-mind- 
(i76) WHAT MAY BE DONE. 
177 
ed, and, above all, not to make any statements 
of facts, with such details, as might be per- 
verted from their intended purpose to serve 
unworthy or improper ends. 
We have shown that the females in the re- 
fined circles of the present day are brought 
up from the cradle in an improper manner; 
that they are hurried from childhood into 
womanhood ; from adolescence into maternity 
with no middle period, no halting term, where, 
during a season of quiet, the constitution 
might gather strength for the coming changes 
in her physical being and the new duties which 
there may devolve upon her. We have shown 
that, from a false idea of its innocuousness, 
after entering into the holy (?) bonds of mat- 
rimony, they are persistently and continually 
endeavoring, by every means in their power, 
to avoid the great object of married life 
an object which was the special design of 
Providence in creating the sexes—love, pa- 
rental feeling, and all the higher and no- 
bler emotions of the soul—the begetting 
of children; that the various means they 
have adopted are all mentally and mor- i;8 
WHAT MAY BE DONE. 
ally injurious to both the parties engaged ; 
that some of them are especially injurious to 
the physical natures of the two—yes, to the 
three persons whose welfare is implicated 
in the matter—and that much of the nervous, 
hysterical, worn-out and good -for-nothing 
character of the women of the higher classes 
to-day is owing to their practicing this thought- 
less, ignorant sin against the laws of life and 
health. 
We have shown that, if a deeper sin exists 
in the world than infanticide—infant murder, 
in plainer terms—that sin has yet to be made 
known to us. Murder in itself has no par- 
allel in the catalogue of crimes. The taking 
away of what we cannot restore ; the destruc- 
tion of what is beyond human power to atone 
for; the sacrifice of human life—God and na- 
ture and human laws have all punished with 
the greatest severity, and reprobated as the 
most heinous of sins. We find, too, the laws 
and human nature acknowledging even a 
higher crime—where the victim has some 
peculiar relationship to the guilty murderer 
■the killing of one whom it is our duty WHAT MAY BE DONE. 
1/9 
to honor and cherish, a parent or a near rela- 
tion. 
Under other circumstances, it could scarcely 
be credited that there might be a possible ag- 
gravation of this wickedness. Yet it is so. 
Some parents are so unlovely in their charac- 
ters, so harsh and cruel in their natures, that 
the natural feelings and affections become 
crushed out of their children’s bosoms, and 
the aggravated character of their murder may 
be but a matter of seeming. But she who 
murders the innocent consequence of an un- 
holy love, or the unconscious, legitimate re- 
sult of the God-ordained institution of mar- 
riage for no stronger reason than fashion, love 
of ease, the hope of retaining the fleeting 
charms of person a few years longer she 
who murders the tenant of an immortal soul 
against whom no greater crime than existence 
can be alleged—a child whose birth, perhaps, 
has been looked forward to for many genera- 
tions ; who has been prayed for to succeed to 
a long line of noble ancestry ; whose coming 
was the child’s dream of the once-innocent 
mother as she prattled o’er her playthings and i8o 
WHAT MAY BE DONE. 
hugged her toy-image to her bosom—she has 
found a deeper depth of sin. God grant that 
when upon her death-bed—robed in lace and 
covered with silken damask, with no child to 
wipe the death-sweat from her clammy brow 
—she may have no deeper sorrow than the 
thought that she had bartered away her nat- 
ural affection for worldly wealth, a child’s love 
for gems, a birthright for a mess of pottage ! 
Still we cannot but remember that we live 
in the world, in this nineteenth century of lux- 
ury, extravagance and necessities—that God 
has implanted in our breasts our natural appe- 
tites, which, in spite of ourselves, do become 
irresistible passions. The problem is to recon- 
cile these together. 
To do this, I think, has little difficulty at- 
tending it. Let that principle, which should 
be the guiding one of life, direct in this as in 
all other actions. 15© right. Put away all 
expediencies. Tamper not either with your 
consciences, with your bodies or your health ; 
perform the duties of life boldly and man- 
fully, and confidently and submissively accept 
the results. You have no right “to take WHAT MAY BE DONE. 
181 
precautions,” or, failing in this, to resort to 
murder. Are fashion and dress and luxury 
and ease better than the serenity of a quiet 
conscience ; better than the joys arising from 
the love of fond children ; better than the 
most delicious of all pleasures—that of toiling 
for those we love ? 
. How dearly the immunity sought for a 
scant family—is obtained? We have shown 
already that the attempts to thwart nature of 
her rights are full of peril to the physical na- 
ture of both sexes. Death is not uncommonly 
an immediate result. Decay and debility, fol- 
lowed by weary days and nights of languish- 
ing on beds of sickness, are the penalties which 
many pay for these transgressions against God’s 
holy laws. But who shall describe the sorrow 
of the heart which comes home to those who, 
having by violent means, limited the number 
of their children, when they find the two, 
which were “ all they wished for,” taken away 
from them, and it is too late to hope for more ? 
—Can it know any bounds ? 
We have shown that we can “ DO right” 
without prejudice to health by the exercise of 182 
WHAT MAY BE DONE. 
continence. Self-restraint, the ruling of the 
passions, is a virtue, and is within the power 
of all well-regulated minds. Nor is this ne- 
cessarily perpetual or absolute. The passions 
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. 
Menstruation in woman indicates an aptitude 
for impregnation, and this condition remains 
for a period of six or eight days after the en- 
tire completion of the flow. During this time 
only, can most women conceive. Allow twelve 
days for the onset of the menses to pass by 
and the probabilities of impregnation are very 
slight. This act of continence is healthy, 
moral and irreproachable. Then there need 
be no imperfection in the conjugal act, no fear, 
no shame, no disgust, no drawback to the joys 
which legitimately belong to a true married 
life. Thus excess is avoided, disease dimin- 
ished, and such a desirable limitation to the WHAT MAY BE DONE. 
183 
number of children, as is consistent with the 
peculiar nature of the individuals concerned, 
is effected. 
On this point Mayer makes the following 
statement resulting from the researches of the 
celebrated physiologist, Prof. Pouchet, of 
Rouen, a view generally received by the pro- 
fession of the present day. 
“ ist. Fecundation holds a permanent rela- 
tionship to menstruation, 
“ 2d. That in the human race, it is easy to 
mark distinctly the intermenstrual period, 
when conception is physically impossible, as 
well as the period when it is possible,* 
To establish this law, the author relies upon 
experimental data, which we will here relate. 
“ It is generally admitted that the ovules of 
mammals are emitted at fixed epochs, in rela- 
tionship with the super-excitation of the sex- 
ual apparatus, and that this super-excitation 
corresponds to the menstruation of women ; 
* Pouchet, Theorie positive de I’ovulation spontanee 
et de la fecondation des mammiferes et Pespece humaine 
basee sur I’observation de toute la s6rie animale, p. 270. 
Paris, 1847. 184 
WHAT MAY BE DONE. 
consequently, we must also recognize that ovu- 
lation in the human species is subordinate to 
the catamenial function, and that it is possible 
to carefully mark the period. 
“ On the other hand, it is incontestable, 
“ ist. That the Graafian vesicles in woman 
do not emit their eggs, except at the cessation 
of the menstrual flow, say immediately after, 
or one, two, three, or even four days later, and, 
“ 2d. That from two to six days are occu- 
pied in the passage through the fallopian tubes, 
from the ovary to the uterus. If this egg has 
met in its passage through these tubes with 
some molecules of seminal fluid; and if, in 
consequence, it is fecundated, it will remain in 
the womb and be there developed. In the 
contrary case, after having remained a certain 
time, it is finally expelled with the decidua (an 
ephemeral membrane exuded upon the inter- 
nal surface of the uterus toward the decline of 
the irritation which follows the catamenial pe- 
riod) ; this carries it away in its escape or it is 
again absorbed, which (imperceptibly) occurs 
ten or twelve days after the cessation of the 
menstrual flow. WHAT MAY BE DONE. 
i85 
But, as no eggs are produced at any other 
epoch, conception evidently cannot take place, 
except during the first days following men- 
struation, and before the escape of the decidua ; 
after this, fecundation is materially impossi- 
ble. The egg has disappeared. 
“ This phenomenon has been recognized 
from the most remote period, and physiologists, 
as well as accoucheurs, agreed in considering 
the first days following the menstrual period 
as particularly favorable for conception; the 
father of medicine created it into a precept for 
sterile women to seek to have connection dur- 
ing the days immediately following these pe- 
riods ; but it was reserved for our age to de- 
termine a fact vaguely suspected, and to estab- 
lish it upon scientific proofs. 
“ However, it may be objected that the im- 
pregnation of the ovule could be effected at 
some other moment than that of the union of 
the sexes; that it might suffice for this egg to 
meet, in its peregrinations through the organs, 
some portion of seminal fluid to be fecun- 
dated ; but let us inquire under what circum- 
stances this could be effected, and under what 186 
WHAT MAY BE DONE. 
conditions the phenomenon would be impos- 
sible. 
“ We will recur to the manner in which this 
phenomenon is effected. 
“ The Graafian vesicle which should emit 
the egg, is developed during the course of the 
menstrual epoch. Then either immediately, 
or in the course of from one to four days after 
its termination, this vesicle opens and allows 
the egg which it contains to escape. Then 
the egg, seized by its fimbriated extremity 
penetrates into the tube, through which it 
slowly passes, until it arrives in the womb, 
which occupies from two to six days. 
“ Arrived in the womb, the egg is there re- 
tained from two to six days by the decidua of 
whioh we have already spoken. If it is not 
then impregnated by the sperm, it does not 
become attached, and is carried away with the 
decidua, which falls from the tenth to the twelfth 
day from the cessation of the courses. Con- 
sequently, it is necessary that the impregna- 
tion of the ovule should result from molecules 
of sperm proceeding from a coitus one or two 
days anterior, for it is demonstrated that this WHAT MAY BE DONE. 
187 
liquid preserves its fecundating properties 
more than thirty hours, while a sexual relation, 
effected after the simultaneous escape of the 
decidua and the egg, and during any of the time 
which separates this escape from the com- 
mencement of a new menstrual period, is abso- 
lutely and necessarily unfruitful.” 
This statement of Mayer’s is a trifle too posi- 
tive. Within a month I have attended a lady 
in confinement, a pregnancy resulting from a 
sexual intercourse, the only one for several 
weeks. Menstruation appeared three days after 
the coitus, and lasted for several days, but with 
more irregularity than usual, showing that 
had already taken place. The 
child was born 283 days after the coitus, show- 
ing that the vitality of the seminal fluid in 
this case lived, for at least three days, and also 
showing that the period of positive impossi- 
bility of pregnancy is somewhat shorter than 
stated, and that a limit of some days is neces- 
sary before the time of expected pregnancy— 
in vigorous people—for positive immunity. 
“ It migfht also be added that it is likewise im- 
O 
possible during the continuance of the sanguine 188 . 
WHAT MAY BE DONE. 
flow, because the egg does not generally come 
into the uterus, as we have seen above, till 
some days after the cessation of the menstrual 
flow. There remains, therefore, eight days 
in the month—from the fourth to the twelfth 
• after the cessation of the flow, during 
which the sexual relations are liable to be 
fruitful. 
“ It is to the knowledge of this fact, that his- 
tory attributes the advice given by Fernel to 
Henry 11., who remaining childless after eleven 
years’ marriage, by confining himself to the 
recommendations of his plrysician, finally had 
connection with his wife, Catherine de Medicis, 
at the proper time, and she subsequently be- 
came a mother several times.” 
“ Booerhaave had already said, Feminae semper 
concipiunt post ultima menstrua ct vix ullo alio 
tempore. 
“ Haller, Burdach and many others have 
given the same opinion. 
“ Finally, the most recent experiments under- 
taken to solve this problem, so eminently inter- 
esting, agree in sanctioning the discovery of 
this inter-menstrual period, as propitious for WHAT MAY BE DONE. 
189 
fecundation in woman and the majority of fe- 
male mammals. 
“ It therefore naturally follows that moral re- 
straint may be limited to this period of time, 
which, moreover, will render it easier to ob- 
serve. 
“ Any exceptions that may be noted to this 
rule are few in number, and may perhaps be 
ascribed to some error or carelessness of the 
parties concerned.” 
The character, both physical and mental, of 
our children is also a matter of great impor- 
tance, and not a little under our control. To 
what extent we may affect the minds and 
constitutions of our offspring is not exactly 
known, but we do know, that children begot- 
ten by men of general good habits, who may 
be at this particular time much affected by 
intoxicating drink, do inherit marked evi- 
dences of its consequences in their dispositions. 
Curious and wonderful as it is, we do know 
that parents, much interested in some great 
excitement, do impregnate their children with 
decided evidences of this state of mind. The 
general enthusiasm attendant upon Jenny 190 
WHAT MAY BE DONE. 
Lind’s musical tour in this country, did, to 
my own knowledge, markedly affect the chil- 
dren generated by parents full of the musical 
fervor of that period, and these children are 
now all over our country, developing a musical 
taste very uncommon before in this land. 
Could we study the public mind and be 
enabled to trace its effects in families, we 
should doubtless find most wonderful cor- 
roborative proofs of this opinion. 
One practical result from this theory may 
be effected. Parents may exercise proper 
judgment in this as in other duties of life. They 
sedulously avoid connections at those pe- 
riods when procreation is a probable or even 
possible result, at times of physical debility, 
when recovering from disease, worn by busi- 
ness cares, gloomy and despondent, oppressed 
by grief, and especially when affected by any 
disease hereditary in its nature and entailing 
misery on its possessor. A writer, to whom 
we have before referred, goes still further; he 
says: “For the most part children of con- 
sumptive tendencies are begotten under cir- 
cumstances in which one of the strongest, most WHAT MAY BE DONE. 
J9I 
poAverful and most invigorating influences is 
absent. I mean sun-light. Most children are 
begotten when the parents are not only 
fatigued, but in the night-time, when the 
parties are in bed, covered up with clothing 
and so related to each other as to have 
about every abnormal condition in their frames 
in full or superabundant exercise. There can 
be no wider departure from the law of health 
in regard to the propagation of offspring, in 
respect to their constitutional relations to life, 
than to beget them when proper electrical 
conditions are wanting. . . . Under this view, 
benefit may be derived from analogy, if we 
are only observant, and brave enough to 
make use of it. Of all the domestic animals 
which rise to a rank to make them particularly 
valuable, there is not one whose habit it is to 
copulate at any other time than by day. If 
left to themselves, they are sure to have this 
function in active exercise when the sun is up 
in the heaven, so as to furnish electric states 
of body. Nature takes care of this instinct, 
and guards it with great vigilance; and for 
the double reason, that they may have the 192 
WHAT MAY BE DONE. 
largest measure of excitement in and for the 
occasion, and that they may be in the best 
possible vigor to perform this act, whenever 
it is needful for the propagation of their kind. 
What nature does by instinct for the lower 
animals, we ought to be able to see the fitness 
of, when, in addition to our own instincts, we 
have the aid of reason.”* 
We find some individuals, few indeed, we 
fear, using good judgment in entering upon 
marital relations. They select their wives 
from a healthy stock, from families of high 
mental endowments, or more frequently of 
superior physical excellence. They calculate 
in advance upon the probabilities of the 
character and appearance of the offspring to 
issue from such a combination of stocks, and 
then with strange folly they destroy all the 
possibility of a successful result of this well- 
planned scheme, by procreating children in 
improper states of mind or body. An artist 
refuses “ to make a palette ” when not in the 
mood for painting. The poet declares that 
* James C. Jackson, M. D. Consumption, how to 
prevent it. Boston, 1862. WHAT MAY BE DONE. 
193 
his verses depend upon inspiration. The mu- 
sician awaits a peculiar frame of mind re- 
quisite for those divine harmonies which are 
to touch the heart of future centuries. Yet 
these same individuals consider that they can 
impart a portion of their own vigorous con- 
stitutions to a future generation, when they are 
themselves weak and enervated, and wanting 
temporarily perhaps, in self-control, in both 
mental and physical vigor, from over stimula- 
tion by drink. If they should perpetuate 
a likeness of themselves as they appear at 
that very moment, would they be proud of 
the result ? 
Unfortunately strong drinks give great stim- 
ulus to the animal instincts, but the wife should, 
as a moral and responsible being, refuse to 
lend herself to the wishes of her drunken hus- 
band, when there is reasonable probability of a 
procreative result. 
Can either expect to impart a sunshiny, 
happy disposition to their future child, when 
this generative act is entered upon while des- 
pondent from business trials, or when in any 
grief at any affliction, or during one of those 194 
WHAT MAY BE DONE. 
matrimonial quarrels, sometimes seen even in 
the best regulated families. Mothers imagine 
that a sudden mental shock will so alter the 
quality of their milk as to affect their offspring; 
and we have many recorded instances of chil- 
dren being thrown into convulsions from nurs- 
ing from such perturbed bosoms. Is it unreason- 
able to think, then, that a child generated at 
such a time should inherit some of the moody, 
ungovernable tempers that have raged in the 
breasts of his immediate progenitors ? 
No, it may be that the external light of 
heaven, or the mild influence of the moon, or 
the sweet effluence of the stars, may little affect 
the natures of those born under their sway, 
but sure it is, that the sun-light in the heart of 
the parents at this time will brighten and ir- 
radiate the nature, and consequently beneficially 
influence the future of coming generations. 
Throughout all nature the great aim and 
object of life seems to be the perpetuation 
of itself, and the heart of all thinking life 
in its various forms of utterance asserts that 
“ there is something holy in maternity. ” WHAT MAY BE DONE. 
195 
Shall man, the great master of all, shirk this 
coequal and coexistent duty ? Shall the 
powers of intellect superadded to the highest 
attributes of animal life, be only employed in 
opposing the laws of God and the instincts of 
our divine natures ? Let us hope that our pres- 
ent high state of civilization will not repeat 
the iniquities perpetrated in the correspond- 
ing Golden Age of barbarism, of which we 
read in our school books, Roma fuit, lest we 
may have inscribed, upon our national ruin, 
for succeeding races to read in the obsolete 
tongue of a forgotten people, 
America was ! APPENDIX. APPENDIX. 
A. 
PHYSICAL DECLINE OF AMERICAN WOMEN. 
(From the Knickerbocker Magazine.) 
In the present article we shall depart from the 
beaten track worn by the measured feet of fer- 
vid orators never weary in praising the charms 
of lovely woman, her grace of form, her 
springing step, her glowing cheek, her spark- 
ling eye, her sweet smile irradiating every ac- 
tion. We shall leave poetry for fact, and shall 
forget woman as she was ; and in no sounding 
periods shall attempt to tell why woman, in- 
stead of being as above described, is a hag- 
gard creature, dull-eyed and sallow, pinched 
in form, an unfit mother, not a helpmeet, but a 
drag on the energy, spirits and resolution of 
her partner in life. We shall not attempt to 
consider woman as an angel, and to solve the 
great questio vexata, “ why she was born with- 
099) 200 
PHYSICAL DECLINE OF 
out wings.” We shall not even consider hei 
in her aesthetic and intellectual sphere, but in 
the most ungallant manner we shall class her 
among ichthyosauri and pachydermata, among 
bovine and feline, among milleped, polyped and 
quadruped, and proceed to hold her up for in- 
spection as a simple biped, an animal, and shall 
then leave the theme for individual reflection. 
Our theme, then, is the “ Causes of the 
Present Physical Decline of Woman.” We 
read in the Old Testament, in the fifth chap- 
ter of Genesis, “ In the days that God created 
man, in the likeness of God made He him— 
male and female created Pie them, and blessed 
them, and called their name Adam, in the day 
when they were created.” With the excep- 
tion of the biblical account of the construction 
of woman out of the rib of Adam, taken from 
him when asleep—certainly not easily to be 
comprehended in its full meaning—we have 
no statement respecting the early character 
of woman. “ Male and female created He 
them,” does not imply that any physical dif- 
ference existed between the sexes as regards 
strength, endurance or capacity, either bodily AMERICAN WOMEN. 
201 
or mentally. We surely cannot infer that any 
such difference should or does exist naturally. 
True, indeed, it is, that in man and many an- 
imals, birds, and perhaps other specimens of 
animated life, the male is larger than the fe- 
male, but in proportion to its size we do not 
recognize any diversity of physical force. In 
the want of any statement to that effect re- 
specting man, we have undoubtedly a just 
right to reason by analogy, and we can find 
no lack of comparative vigor in the sexes of 
any animals. The lioness, the tigress, the 
female bear, etc., are in no wise inferior in 
vigor to the male, save as they may or not 
be different in size. The cow is, in many 
lands, worked like the ox, with no marked 
contrast when of equal size and weight. The 
mare is not judged one whit less muscular or 
robust than the horse. Why, then, is it that 
the woman is physically inferior to the man ? 
To this we answer, she is not inferior, natu- 
rally. We will prove this by the females of 
past days, by the women of Jerusalem, Rome, 
Greece, concerning whom history gives us 
abundant details respecting their life, manners, 202 
PHYSICAL DECLINE OF 
dress and the like. Is it possible that where 
these matters are spoken of with so much 
minuteness, by so astute a sanitary lawgiver 
as Moses, by so thoroughly educated physi- 
cians as Hippocrates or Galen, such philoso- 
phers as Aristotle and Pliny, any such dif- 
ference would have been forgotten ? Is it 
probable that Sophocles, Euripides, Catullus, 
Juvenal, Ovid and other painters of the do- 
mestic manners of their times, should have 
neglected such great diversities in the physical 
capacities of the sexes, as we now observe, 
if they actually existed ? 
Neither do we find any such record of the 
physical inferiority of woman to her lord and 
master recorded in the writings of later days. 
Pope—who loved to have his fling at the pam- 
pered women of the court and the licentious 
women of the town, no more than the writers 
of any other stamp of the same period—makes 
no charges of a natural weakness of the an- 
imal woman. No record of this kind is made 
by the historians of the colonists of the va- 
rious settlements in America, whether Dutch, 
English, French or Spanish. AMERICAN WOMEN. 
203 
Finally, the Indian woman of this country, 
when unexposed to the damning influences of 
civilization upon the animal economy, is, 
pari passu, equal to the man, enduring cold, 
hardships and more labor than the man with 
equal results. Dr. Livingstone, in his travels 
in South Africa, while he recognizes the exist- 
ence of female diseases among the women, 
does not note any physical inferiority of the 
women to the men. lam also informed by 
gentlemen of extensive experience among the 
slaves of the South, that the muscular vigor 
of the men and women among the field-hands 
is not markedly different, unless when abused 
while carrying children, or being forced to 
hard work too speedily after their lying-in. 
Now, what is the recognizable difference in 
the lot of woman from the past to the present, 
between the savage and the civilized ? Her 
lot is said to be ameliorated. From being 
considered a pet and inferior to man, she is 
now considered a pet and equal to man. As 
a pet, she is carefully guarded and not allowed 
to do anything, so far as this is possible. The 
rich being able to effect this end, their women 204 
PHYSICAL DECLINE OF 
are all sick—the poor, comparatively so. The 
whole sex are being killed by kindness. 
Let us take the actual condition of the rich 
children of different sexes in this city of New 
York, and looking at them, let us see if there 
is any wonder that they are sickly, miserable, 
and inferior in physical force to what they 
should be, and why it is that the female is 
constantly, after she can walk alone, far below 
the male even in his imperfect physical de- 
velopment. 
So long as children are infants, wearing the 
same dress, their exposures are the same, but 
as soon as the boy leaves his cumbersome gar- 
ments, the swaddling-clothes, which must be 
kept “ fit to be seen,” the distinction begins. 
The right of woman tf to be free and equal” 
with man will come with a Declaration of In- 
dependence which shall strip off the fetters of 
petticoats and the gilded meshes of lace which 
have so long bound down the gentler sex. 
For a short period the rich boy is little 
benefited by the change of attire. The shape 
of his garments, does, indeed, give liberty to 
the limbs and play to the muscles, but the ex- AMERICAN WOMEN. 
205 
igencies of rich velvet jackets, silken trowsers 
and white shirts, with their lace “ fretwork ” 
of frills and furbelows, require him to be con- 
stantly guarded, and the natural ebullitions of 
his animal life are restrained by imported bog- 
trotters, educated to know what dirt is, or by 
a more fashionable bonne d’enfant, who unites 
to her duties instruction in the freedom of 
Parisian morals with the restraints of French 
manners. 
Soon the American boy is beyond the de- 
moralizing influences of Hyperion curls which 
have so long fed the sickly vanity of his en- 
ervated mother. His velvet cap, which he so 
recklessly offered to his friends to be “ pegged 
at ” with tops, has given place to one of meaner 
stuff, and in games of ball, tag and the like, he 
neither “ respects his cloth ” himself, nor ex- 
acts regard for it from others. Witness the 
impetuosity with which those boys, in yonder 
retired street, rush in friendly strife after the 
“ shinny ballhear their full-mouthed cry ! 
Does not the air permeate the lungs to their 
farthest cranny, leaving no portion of their 
tissue full of stagnant blood ? Are not the 206 
PHYSICAL DECLINE OF 
pores of their skins opened to the free out- 
pouring of the waste of the body ? No mat- 
ter if the foolish parents stuff their stomachs 
with improper food, if nature can thus have a 
full opportunity to get rid of it. 
We may speedily follow the boy in his 
career through life, and while we find him 
free from the bad effects of tobacco and alco- 
holic stimulants, engaged in out-of-door exer- 
cise, even while breathing the air of a city 
thronged by near a million souls, and most 
imperfectly attended to by the authorities in 
its sanitary matters, yet we find the man com- 
paratively vigorous. Debility and disease 
commence with the boy confined over his 
book in ill-ventilated school-rooms, neglecting 
healthy exercise for the ambition of literary 
superiority ; or, in our own city, most fre- 
quently bent over a ledger. It is worthy of 
note, that there is scarcely a single well-ven- 
tilated private counting-room in New York, 
and most of the bank-rooms are little better. 
The New York merchant changes his badly 
heated house for his worse heated counting- 
room, not by the healthy walk from one to AMERICAN WOMEN. 
207 
the other, but by the locomotion of a crowd- 
ed, shut-up omnibus or car. Is it strange 
that the health of the business-men of this 
city is deteriorating; that gout, dyspepsia 
and all chronic diseases, in addition to con- 
sumptions, erroneously supposed to be the 
only malady engendered by want of exercise 
and bad air, are greatly on the increase ? 
But although the physical stamina of the 
men is not what it might me, it is far superior 
to that of the women, to whom we will again 
turn. We will start with the girl who has 
kept pace with her brother until the date of 
his assumption of breeches and their inalien- 
able privileges. We feel that we are treating 
upon a delicate subject, and we beg our 
readers to attend to the general idea, rather 
than to any peculiar form of expression, or to 
any particular illustration, about which there 
may be more than one opinion. 
So soon as the sex of the child is made evi- 
dent by any outward manifestation or dress, 
so soon does the bodily degeneracy commence. 
The child is then considered as an ornament, 
in the present or the future. The respect- 208 
PHYSICAL DECLINE OF 
ability of the mother is dependent upon the 
immaculate purity of its worked pantalettes 
and under-clothing—no mud-pies for you, my 
dear, after this. “Julia, my dear, or Julia, 
you awful freckle-face, you must put on your 
flat, and be sure and keep out of the sun ” 
that is, go into the damp shade till you grow 
up like a potato-sprout in the cellar, white and 
semi-vitalized. “ But, Julia, I see the wind is 
blowing. Wind is horrible for freckles ; you 
can’t go out to-day.” To-morrow it is, “ Cle- 
mentina Angelica, it is too damp for you to 
go out.” “ But, mother, George is out play- 
ing !” “ Yes, George is a great boy.” 
Soon Julia and Clementina Angelica go to 
a fashionable boarding-school, where they 
learn to play a polka, or crochet and the like ; 
and for health, walk up and down Broadway 
twice a week in a procession, the principal use 
of which is its serving as an advertisement of 
Madame X- ’s school. 
Look at the dress of woman. Were man to 
so direct the fashion of woman’s dress, in or- 
der to enable him, by physical force, to over- 
come her and tyrannize over her, he could not AMERICAN WOMEN. 
209 
more completely fetter her than she shackles 
herself. Her sleeves are placed so low down 
upon the waist that she is unable to raise her 
hands to the top of her head, or use them 
freely in any direction ; her limbs are restrain- 
ed in their motions by a profusion of flowing 
skirts, and her breathing interrupted by la- 
cings or corsets, which displace the organs and 
slowly destroy life. It is in vain, however, to 
hope for any relief from the tyranny of fashion. 
Were these injuries caused by any edict of 
church or state, long ere this they would have 
been abrogated. Against the decrees of fash- 
ion there is no appeal. We must, therefore, 
seek for other evils more curable. 
Hudibras well said of men, what is espe- 
cially applicable to women of the present 
time, in their attention to matters of health ; 
they 
“ Compound for sins they are inclined to 
By damning those they have no mind to.” 
They say that the reason of their condition is, 
that they are the ills consequent upon mater- 
nity ; that it is the formation of the modern 
houses ; that they are compelled to go up too 210 
PHYSICAL DECLINE OF 
many flights of stairs; that they are heated 
with furnaces, etc. They say nothing of late 
hours, late suppers, improper clothing at par- 
ties and public places, of the bad results from 
the modern dances, or the want of vigorous 
out-of-door exercise, of ill-ventilated churches, 
lecture-rooms, ball-rooms, theatres. We will 
look at their reasons and those just given. 
The ills of maternity are great. The curse 
has come down to the present generation. 
But why is it magnified during the last half 
century ? Because woman has become a doll, 
to be decked and draped, and carried out, in- 
stead of an active, laborious, working help- 
meet to man. We have, within a year, had 
considerable experience among opera dancers, 
whose occupation, indeed, is unfortunately not 
so much in the open air as might be desired, 
but which, in its daily study and subsequent 
practice requires an amount of long-continued 
muscular energy of the severest character, 
little recognized or understood by the com- 
munity. Hard and protracted as this is, it 
was not intermitted by some, except two 
weeks before their lying-in, and the pains of AMERICAN WOMEN. 
211 
labor were, in every case, most notably di- 
minished in such a manner as could be attribut- 
ed solely to their peculiar labor, which gives 
great suppleness of limb, free play of muscle, 
and that happy union of power and pliability 
most to be desired. There is reason why the 
necessities of maternity in all its bearings 
should make woman less reliable than man 
for certain duties—but why exercise of these 
functions in the nineteenth century should be 
different from the same actions in the sixteenth 
or eighteenth century, is the question to be 
solved. 
Does it depend upon any peculiar feature in 
our domestic architecture ? Do all these 
maladies spring from the fact that our houses 
contain five or six flights of stairs, one above 
another ? 
As this reason is urged by many, in all 
seriousness, it behoves us to answer it without 
any of the feelings, which perhaps so pre- 
posterous a reason might excite. 
First, we are willing to allow that to fre- 
quently ascend a series of flights of stairs may 
very probably be inconvenient and painful, 212 
PHYSICAL DECLINE OF 
and, even impossible, to any one feeble or 
diseased in any serious manner; but it should 
be remembered that the old-fashioned houses 
had double flights of stairs, while the modern 
ones have the same number, but placed one 
above another. Then, owing to the modern 
conveniences for warming, lighting, watering, 
and the less necessities for cleaning in con- 
sequence, we do not believe that there is so 
much running over the house as formerly. 
Next, we do not imagine that any such ex- 
ercise could produce, without other ulterior 
causes, the local diseases complained of, for 
various reasons. The present women of Swit- 
zerland, who are engaged in tending sheep 
and goats, who follow them day after day, up 
one mountain-side and down another, jumping 
from rock to rock, running down the declivi- 
ties and up the opposite steeps, are not dis- 
tinguished for peculiar ills, but rather for their 
robustness. Neither are the German market 
women of Europe, who walk long distances 
over uneven ground, where no roads are laid 
out, with heavy burdens upon their heads or 
backs, alike when pregnant as otherwise. Nor AMERICAN WOMEN. 
213 
arc the servants in the very houses alluded to 
affected by the diseases of their mistresses, 
yet, they run over the same stairs many times 
to their mistress’ once. 
That the great blessing of furnaces is often 
abused, we are ready to admit; that when 
improperly used they do burn up the oxygen of 
the air to be breathed, we know. But when 
properly constructed and properly managed, 
we believe that in no manner can a house be 
so healthfully heated, to say nothing of cheap- 
ness, cleanliness, and convenience. This is 
not the place to argue the question as might 
be desired; but we must be allowed to say 
that, in general, the furnace furnished to a 
house is too small for the work it has to per- 
form, and in consequence it is liable to be 
pressed so hard as to be over-heated, or if 
large enough, it may, by neglect of those who 
have charge of it, become red-hot, and thus 
burn up the air. It is allowed to get out of 
repair, and leak out gas into the air-pipes. 
The house, too, guided by the uncertain 
feelings of the occupant instead of a reliable 
thermometer, may be over-heated generally. 214 
PHYSICAL DECLINE OF 
But it should not be forgotten that there is no 
ventilator more efficient, for it constantly 
brings into the house the pure air of the 
street, which must push out the already used 
air in the house, to make room for it. If the 
air is burned, and thus rendered impure or 
inefficient, it will undoubtedly aggravate any 
disease and destroy the general health, but it 
can scarcely be supposed to cause the local 
uterine diseases, alleged to spring from it, 
but rather the diseases of the lungs and heart, 
and the functions of nutrition, which are 
generally most affected by the impurities of 
the atmosphere. Neither are the servants as 
before said, affected like their enervated mis- 
tresses. 
The deterioration of the health of females 
is not general, it is local; and it is not only 
local, but it is confined, in a great degree, to 
classes even in that locality. Certain forms of 
the diseases peculiar to females are better un- 
derstood and more easily recognised now than 
formerly, but this merely gives a different 
name to the ill-health of the sex; and it is not 
that certain diseases exist now which did not AMERICAN WOMEN. 
215 
formerly, or are increased in proportion, but 
that now they are recognised whenever they 
exist, whereas formerly they were often mis- 
taken or disregarded. 
It is the females of the cities and large 
towns, imbued with city manners and customs, 
where these maladies are most rife, and found 
only in exceptional cases among our poorer 
classes, who are not exposed to fashionable 
follies. In cities, all of the better classes of 
the population live not so much for them- 
selves as for other people; more solicitous as 
to what Mrs. Grundy may say than for their 
own comfort and health. They are constantly 
going somewhere at improper times, and 
seasons, and hours. So delicate in health 
that they cannot go out to perform any duty 
if the sky be a little overcast; in fact, accus- 
tomed to spend the most of the time cooped 
up in the house, dressed, perhaps, too warmly, 
yet in the evening, no matter how stormy, 
freezing, or tempestuous, they can ride in a 
coach, with head and shoulders uncovered; 
or with clothes well tucked up under their 
arms, they can walk through slush and mire 216 
PHYSICAL DECLINE OF 
to sit for hours in a cold theater, an ill-ventila- 
ted vestry or lecture-room, or, worse still, in 
an over-heated, over-crowded ball-room. 
But this is not bad enough; no matter 
whether it is at the time of the periodic func- 
tions or not, the young girl whose constitution 
is yet in process ,of formation, or the young 
matron engaged in the great work for which 
the division into sexes was created, spends 
hours in the most outrageous muscular exer- 
tion, in dances which would seem to have 
been invented by some arch enemy of woman, 
so effectually do they, aided by a too great 
weight of clothing, shake up the whole frame 
and dislocate every internal organ pertaining 
to womanhood. We really think that the 
polka and its varieties which so jar the frame, 
have done more than any one single cause, to 
injure the health of our American women. 
We must be allowed to dwell upon this 
branch of the subject. Just think of the 
young woman who spends her days with a 
book or with her needle in the quiet of her 
own house, not even going out for a walk, 
save semi-occasionally, when she takes an AMERICAN WOMEN. 
21? 
omnibus at the end of the first block from 
fatigue. Think of this fragile creature, over- 
coming this chronic habit, and the languor 
which her periodic condition imparts, with 
organs excited, turgid, and enlarged, dancing 
these muscular dances (so different from the 
gliding graces of the mazy waltz), then stimu- 
lating and aggravating the difficulties by liba- 
tions of champagne. Think, too, of the cream, 
ices, oysters and jellies indulged in at this un- 
seasonable hour, and in what quantities ! 
And then, when every pore is streaming, when 
the pulse is beating wildly, half-clad, to seek 
her home through the sleet and frost. Per- 
haps our lady lives so near that a carriage is 
not deemed necessary, and what a chill strikes 
through the India-rubbers in the walk of half- 
a-dozen houses ; and then to bed in the small 
hours, perhaps to repeat the same thing every 
night or two for the season. 
This is no fancy picture. You know it, yet 
you ask me, why is it that this young creature 
has this and that malady ? All the women of 
New York, and of the United States (the 
only country in the world where young 2lS 
PHYSICAL DECLINE OF 
girls of sixteen are indulged in that way), 
are doing the same foolish thing the whole 
season through, and you say : “Is it not 
wonderful that all the women are complaining 
of this and that; and it must be the English 
basement houses.” 
What Fifth Avenue does, the girls who 
earn their living by dress-making, book-folding, 
shop-keeping, and the like—factory-girls in 
the country and the country aristocracy— 
imitate as far as they are able. But it is not 
night after night, and it alternates with more 
active and out-of-door daily life, and the dis- 
astrous results to health are not so noticeable. 
Is not this a suicidal epidemic ? 
But fashion, which has done so much for 
the injury of our women, has done some little 
lately to ameliorate their condition. The ex- 
pansive crinoline and modern hoops have re- 
duced the number and weight of the skirts 
which pressed so fearfully, and which still so in- 
juriously weigh upon the abdominal viscera. 
But although the words of eloquent warning 
so forcibly uttered by Miss Catherine Sedg- 
wick have had so little effect upon her country- AMERICAN WOMEN. 
219 
women in introducing the general wearing of 
skirts held up by the shoulders, we will 
reiterate the cry of “ Shoulder-straps, shoul- 
der-straps I” till it shall awaken every mother 
to the dangers hanging over her own child, 
every woman to the oppressive cincture 
hanging around her own waist, pressing upon 
vital organs till they are forced into unnatural 
situations, destroying the capillary circulation 
in the skin and external layers of vessels; 
creating deep-seated congestions, resulting in 
chronic if not life-long weaknesses, which make 
life wearisome and its duties impossible. 
But it is useless, perhaps, to reiterate the 
cry of “ Shoulder-straps,” unless we can show 
to those who are not sufficiently ingenious to 
make a simple waist with shoulder-straps upon 
which the skirts may all button, some easy 
and effectual manner by which all this may be 
accomplished. A corset manufactured by 
Douglas and Sherwood of this city, answers 
this end in a most complete manner; and so 
for the last time we will utter the warning 
implied in the watchword of “ Shoulder- 
straps ! ’ 220 
PHYSICAL DECLINE OF 
One other fruitful source of the many ner- 
vous and debilitating causes of woman’s present 
degeneracy cannot be passed by in silence, for 
it is so wide-spread over the land, so early 
developed, so insidious in its growth, so 
utterly incurable, that the disordered mind is 
less and less able to follow the promptings of 
its own better judgment, or even the threats 
and entreaties of friends. It is a delicate mat- 
ter to broach, yet when it is a subject which 
is of such vast importance, which is noted as 
fearfully prevalent in the American commu- 
nity, and to a far greater degree, probably, 
than among the women of any other country 
in the world, why should we shirk the sub- 
ject ? why hesitate to say plainly and without 
quibble that personal abuse lies at the root 
of much of the feebleness, nervousness, pale, 
waxen-facedness and general good-for-nothing- 
ness of the entire community ? It is, indeed, 
a convincing proof of the actual chastity of 
the American females, but its physical results 
are far worse than those which would pro- 
ceed from criminal immoralities. 
This is one of the greatest evils of our AMERICAN WOMEN. 
221 
boarding-school educational system, where 
the advent of one girl thus corrupted will 
introduce a moral epidemic into this large 
family of pubescent, hot-bed brought-up girls, 
worse for the ultimate well-being of this little 
community than the virulent scourge of scar- 
latina ; for while the latter takes its quota and 
at once consigns them to an early grave, the 
former but toys with its victims, destroying 
the mind and unnerving the body. Foreigners 
are especially struck with this fact as the 
cause of much of the physical disease of our 
young women. They recognize it in the 
physique, in the sodden, colorless counte- 
nance, the lack-luster eye, in the dreamy in- 
dolence, the general carriage, the constant 
demeanor indicative of distrust, mingled bold- 
ness and timidity, and a series of anomalous 
combinations which mark this genus of phys- 
ical and moral decay. 
This is not a matter within the scope of 
general investigation ; truth is not to be ex- 
pected from its habitues, parents are deceived 
respecting it, believing rather what they wish 
than what they fear. Even the physician can 222 
PHYSICAL DECLINE OF 
but suspect, till time develops more fully by 
hysterias, epilepsies, spinal irritations, and a 
train of symptoms unmistakable even if the 
finally extorted confession of the poor victim 
did not render the matter clear. Marriage 
does, indeed, often arrest this final catastro- 
phe, and thus apparently shifts the responsi- 
bility upon other shoulders, and to the “ in- 
jurious effects of early marriages,” to the 
“ ills of maternity,” are ascribed the results 
of previous personal abuse. 
For statistics and further information on 
this all-important subject, we must refer the 
reader to the opinions of physicians who have 
the charge of our retreats for the insane, lu- 
natic asylums and the like ; to the discriminat- 
ing physicians of the families of the upper 
classes—stimulated alike by food, drinks, scenes 
wdiere ease is predominant, where indolence 
is the habit and novel-reading is the occupa- 
tion—for further particulars on a subject here 
but barely alluded to. 
But now, having treated of venial errors, sins 
against one’s own self, for which self is pun- 
ished, and for which self may, perhaps, be al- AMERICAN WOMEN. 
223 
lowed to stand forgiven, if the suicide is to be 
forgiven, we must turn to sins of deeper dye; 
sins which admit of no palliation, sins not only 
against self, but sins against God, which no 
plea of ignorance can avail, for they are not 
the sins of the ignorant, the poor, and the 
starving, but the sins of the rich, and the lofty, 
and the educated. 
This is a theme from which we would gladly 
shrink, both from the delicacy of the subject 
and from conscious inability to treat it as it 
deserves ; to bring before you the most horrid 
social enormity of this age, this city, and this 
world, and to hold it up to you in such a light 
as to make you all feel it, in its craven cow- 
ardice, its consequent bodily, mental and moral 
degeneracy, its soul-destroying wickedness. 
We look with a shudder upon the poor igno- 
rant Hindoo woman, who from the love for her 
child which agonizes her mother’s heart when, 
in the fervor of her religious enthusiasm, she 
sacrifices her beloved offspring at the feet of 
Juggernaut or in the turbid waves of the sa- 
cred Ganges, yet we have not a pang, nor even 
a word of reprobation, for the human sacrifices 224 
PHYSICAL DECLINE OF 
of the unborn thousands annually immolated 
in the city of New York before the blood-wor- 
shiped Moloch of fashion. From no excess of 
religious faith in even a false, idolatrous god 
are such hecatombs of human beings slain, but 
our women, from a devotion to dress and vain 
pride of outward show, become murderesses 
of their own children, and do literally in their 
own bodies become whitened sepulchers, pal- 
lid with the diseases consequent upon such 
unrighteous acts, and sepulchral in thought 
and tone of voice from the remorse which 
always follows a guilty action. 
Infanticide is the great, glaring, and fearfully 
prevalent sin of the women of New York, as 
immorality, drunkenness, gaming, etc., are the 
prevailing sins of the female portion of the 
community of other cities and countries of the 
world. We take the liberty of speaking freely 
and plainly upon a topic which the pulpit 
shirks, and the community winks at. We shall 
speak plainly what we know, and strongly 
what we feel. The moral sense of the com- 
munity is at a fearful pass. Each individual 
claims to decide for herself whether or not to have AMERICAN WOMEN. 
225 
children., But if this right of option is grant- 
ed, does it permit the destruction of the child ? 
“ But,” says the apologetic parent, “ children 
are so expensive; the demands of society, the 
cost for food, clothing, education, is so great 
that we could not decently live with such a 
family.” Another, with means in abundance, 
sa}?s: “ That the care of children is such a 
slaverythis one is fond of show and com- 
pany, that one intends to go to Europe, and 
neither can be “ bothered with young ones.” 
These are the excuses for not procreating chil- 
dren, and the right not to do so we will not 
discuss now; but are these good reasons for 
murder ? Is it not arrant laziness, sheer, cra- 
ven, culpable cowardice, which is at the bot- 
tom of this base act? Are you not dastardly 
shirking your duty, the duty of your life ap- 
pointed by the Creator ? Have the 
right to choose an indolent, selfish life, neglect- 
ing the work God has appointed you to per- 
form? Are you the man who encourages your 
wife to such a villanous procedure? or are 
you the woman whose love for gewgaws and 
trinkets prompts to the outrage against the 226 
PHYSICAL DECLINE OF 
heavenly sanctity of a true woman’s nature ? 
Whichever you are, you are a pitiful, God-for- 
saken wretch, and all true humanity despises 
you and hoots at you. 
You have not even the unjustifiable but pos- 
sibly excusable desire of the poor girl, the 
prey of the vile seducer, who bears in her own 
breast the pitiable evidence of another’s crime. 
You voluntarily commit murder. 
No, not murder, you say, for “ there has not 
been any life in the child.” Do not attempt to 
evade even to man a crime which cannot be 
hidden from the All-seeing. The poor mother 
has not herself felt the life of the child perhaps, 
but that is a quibble only of the laws of man, 
founded indeed upon the view, now univer- 
sally recognized as incorrect, that the child’s 
life began when its movements were first 
strong enough to be perceptible. There is, in 
fact, no moment after conception when it can 
be said that the child has not life, and the 
crime of destroying human life is as heinous 
and as sure before the period of “ quickening” 
has been attained as afterward. But you still 
defend your horrible deed by saying: “Well, AMERICAN WOMEN. 
22/ 
if there be, as you say, this mere animal life, 
equivalent at the most to simple vitality, there 
is no mind, no soul destroyed, and that there- 
fore there is no crime committed.” Just so 
surely as one would destroy and root out of 
existence all the fowl in the world by destroy- 
ing all the eggs in existence, so certain is it 
that you do by your act destroy the animal 
man in the egg and the soul which animates 
it. When is the period that intelligence 
comes to the infant ? Are its feeble first strag- 
glings any evidence of its presence ? Has it 
any appreciable quantity at birth ? Has it any 
valuable, useful quantity even when a year old ? 
When, then, is it, that destruction is harm- 
less or comparatively sinless ? While awaiting 
your metaphysical answer, I will tell you when 
it is sinful. Murder is always sinful, and mur- 
der is the wilful destruction of a human being 
at any period of its existence, from its earliest 
germinal embryo to its final, simple, animal ex- 
istence in aged decrepitude and complete 
mental imbecility. 
We make these statements thus fully and 
plainly because of the frequency of this sin, 228 
PHYSICAL DECLINE OF 
often committed under the erroneous idea that 
no wrong deed is committed provided that 
“ life has not been felt,” by women who would 
not willingly do such a wrong. The amount 
of this crime can be testified to by observ- 
ing physician, and the half is probably con- 
cealed even from them. 
This subject is not foreign to the theme of 
this paper, for it is not only a moral evil, but a 
physical wrong. The health of the mother 
suffers materially from the violence done to 
her system, and from the shock to her nervous 
sense. Whether it is effected by powerful 
drugs or by mechanical and instrumental in- 
terference, the result is deleterious to the ani- 
mal economy. The organs are often seriously 
lacerated, punctured, irritated, or inflamed, 
producing temporary disease which threatens 
and not unfrequently destroys life, and also 
when apparently cured, leaves the organs cica- 
trized, contracted, maimed, in distorted shapes 
and unnatural positions, in a state of sub-acute 
inflammation or chronic congestion, for all 
after-years a source of pain and weakness, and 
a fruitful origin of neuralgies, debilities, and AMERICAN WOMEN. 
229 
miseries. Be assured this is not exaggerated, 
for we cannot recall to mind an individual who 
has been guilty of this crime (for it must be 
called a crime, under every aspect), who has 
not suffered for many years afterward in con- 
sequence. And when the health is finally re- 
stored, the freshness of life has gone, and the 
vigor of mind and energy of body have for- 
ever departed. Languor and listlessness have 
become a second nature by habit. 
Were the secrets committed to the sacred 
keeping of a physician allowed to be exposed 
to the world, we could convince you by a flood 
of witnessing cases which have come under 
our own observation, and which could be cor- 
roborated by thousands of medical men in this 
city and country, that we have barely broach- 
ed the subject, and that the facts are not even 
fully shadowed forth. 
An overweening desire for luxury, dress and 
fashion ; sometimes simple indolence ; some- 
times even the laudable determination not to 
produce children who will inherit constitu- 
tional diseases, induces many to take-various 
precautionary measures against conception. 230 
PHYSICAL DECLINE OF 
We have heard clergymen state “that a man 
should control the size of his family as well as 
a farmer his flocks; that he should not have a 
larger stock than he can house and feed ; that 
this was in the power of every one; that the 
ntind was given to control the appetites; that 
the lower classes were overrunning with chil- 
dren, and the poorer the parents the more 
prolific they became.” Yes, and the more 
healthy and vigorous. It is these women who 
do not pretend to guide the course of events, 
or make the laws of Nature conform to their 
wishes, who are in health and actually doing 
the work of the world, while the wise in their 
own conceit are sufferers, invalids, and useless. 
The laws of Nature, and the necessities of our 
existence implanted by an overruling Provi- 
dence, cannot be contravened without detri- 
ment to the system. Local congestions, ner- 
vous affections and debilities are the direct and 
indisputable results of the coitus imperfecti, 
tegument a ext aria, ablutiones gelidce, infusiones 
astringentcs, etcetera, so commonly employed 
by the community, who are so ignorant on all 
these matters, and who arc in fact substituting AMERICAN WOMEN. 
231 
for one imaginary difficulty in prospect, a host 
of ills that will leave no rest or comfort to be 
found. 
On this subject there is great ignorance and 
great ills resulting. Inquiry of any gynecolo- 
gist will convince the most skeptical that the 
general employment of any means for the pre- 
vention of conception is fraught with injury to 
the female certainly, if not to the other sex 
also. Exactly how these evils are effected is 
not perhaps of easy explanation, for all the 
physiological laws are not fully known, but of 
this fact there is no mistake, and reasonably 
enough, for sexual congress is thus rendered 
but a species of self-abuse. 
We must leave this question thus imperfectly 
touched upon, for your own reflections. It is 
one of vast importance to the physical well- 
being of the American woman, but it cannot 
be discussed advantageously in a single article. 
We could not in conscience have omitted so 
important a cause of the physical decline of 
the health of our women without alluding to 
it, and less could scarcely be said. In your 
reflections take one guide to correct deduc- PHYSICAL DECLINE OF 
232 
tions. Start with the firm belief that God’s 
laws cannot be discarded, superseded, or neg- 
lected with impunity. 
It may be remarked that we have not al- 
luded to either inherited or contracted consti- 
tutional diseases which result from immorali- 
ties either of ancestors or from the husband’s 
criminalities, or from woman’s personal de- 
basement. We have not alluded to them prin- 
cipally because they are far less common than 
some would fain make it appear. With all 
their follies, the American women are virtu- 
ous ; those to the contrary, we are confident, 
being rare exceptions. This is almost as true 
of the American husbands, the great majority 
of whom are true to their marriage-vows, and 
in proportion—even in the tainted cities, the 
hot-beds of vice—far greater than in any other 
land of Christendom. That many women do 
thus suffer is true; and where this suffering 
arises from the sins of either ancestors or hus- 
bands, she can only have our deepest sympa- 
thies, and surely none can more deservedly 
claim them ! But where moral sin has brought 
with it physical disease, we can add nothing AMERICAN WOMEN. 
233 
to the teachings of Holy Writ and of past cen- 
turies. “ The way of the transgressor is hard,” 
even in this nineteenth century, for the truths 
of time are the truths of eternity. Women can 
still do something. They have yet a work to 
perform. Strip off your follies, your profli- 
gacies. Live for something better than dress 
and fashion, and that ease and self-indulgence 
which like a coy maiden, when courted most, 
furthest retires. Accept your earthly mission 
to elevate man, to lift him above the perishing 
dross and sickly vanities of this world: 
“ Allure to brighter worlds, and lead the way” 
If the sins of the past can only be alleviated, 
in the future they may be prevented. Be a 
mother to your children; be a companion for 
your boys and girls. The follies of the young 
are too often only the manifestation of the sins 
of the mother, sins of omission, of neglect of 
the child’s thought, which instead of being 
trained, as the gardener inclines the twig, is 
allowed to be blown out by every passing 
breeze. Fill your child’s mind full; stuff 
it to repletion with the good, and there PHYSICAL DECLINE OF 
234 
will be no room for the bad to get in. You 
know how to satisfy the demands of his stom- 
ach, yet you do not attempt to cater for his 
nobler mental and moral nature. Be a com- 
panion for your children. Teach them that if 
weaned from your breast they are not put 
away from your heart, and from thence let 
them still draw their spirit as they before 
found their life’s blood ! Be a mother! 
“ My ear is pained. 
My soul is sick with every day’s report 
Of wrong and outrage with which each heart is filled.” 
A mother! The fashionable woman whom we 
once met dancing wantonly at a city ball when 
her only child lay at home sickening with 
scarlet fever, is not the type we urge you to 
copy. She was but an ostrich who leaves its 
young on the desert sands. No, be a true 
mother, instinct with all the holy attributes of 
maternity. There are many of you who can, 
like us, point to the mansions of the blest for 
the type of a mother not dead, for she yet 
lives in our hearts, stirring us up with a sweet, 
soft voice, yet ringing louder than clarion 
blasts through our inmost souls, to duty. AMERICAN WOMEN. 
235 
Ah! if you will but accept the noble office 
you are called upon to perform, if you will but 
occupy the heart of your husband, if you will 
but fold your children into your own selves, 
know their inmost thoughts, be their confi- 
dant, their life-spring, their guide, “ truant 
husbands,” as they are called, sons designated 
as “ only a little wild,” will be rare, and the 
world will be renovated. To these pure joys 
will the true woman say dress and fashion are 
preferable ? 
Like all good actions, these will rebound 
with blessings. In the exercise of these du- 
ties, in the cultivation of home joys and affec- 
tions, the exposures and consequent diseases 
will not be met with. Life will not be a state 
of constant invalidism. Will you think of 
these things ? 
We need not speak here of the habit of so 
many women of indiscriminate doctoring, tak- 
ing of medicines whose virtues are seen only 
in newspaper advertisements, or indeed in the 
constant use of any medicines. The evils 
of over-dosing have been sufficiently dilated 
upon, but we may be permitted to especially 236 
PHYSICAL DECLINE OF 
mention the evils arising from the profuse 
drinking of the waters of various mineral 
springs, without any regard to the character 
of the diseases of the individual. It is now so 
general a custom for the better portion of the 
community to frequent these summer resorts, 
and without professional adyice to drink inor- 
dinately of the waters, that a word of caution 
seems especially necessary. Much local as 
well as general injury is often the result. 
There are many other well-known indul- 
gences which vitiate the health, which have 
not even been mentioned, but as most of them 
are apparent to all, and as we can add nothing 
new to what others have repeatedly said, we 
shall leave them without any further allusion. 
The redemption of the sex from their al- 
leged degraded condition as dependent upon 
and inferior to man, is one of the great contro- 
versial topics of the day. If w'e place our- 
selves in opposition to this reform movement, 
it must be seen from the general tenor of these 
remarks that it is not from any skepticism re- 
specting her native capacity (for the quickness 
of woman’s intellect, the energy of woman’s AMERICAN WOMEN. 
237 
resolve, and the persistency of woman’s de- 
termination are facts generally admitted, and 
we have endeavored to prove, or at least have 
asserted our belief, in her natural physical 
strength). Any opposition must therefore 
arise from her own slavery to forms, and cus- 
toms and observances, from being tied down 
by fashion and folly. They should remember 
u who would be free. 
Themselves must strike the blow,” 
and not only assert their independence, but 
vindicate their claim to equality, not with 
chalk, powder, and balls, or blood-rouge-stain- 
ed cheeks, but by actual attainments and vic- 
tories over self-degeneracy. At the bottom 
of all superiority is physical vigor. An infe- 
rior mind, backed by robust health, can ac- 
complish all that it undertakes, but tortured 
by disease, and restrained by debility, the 
proudest intellect is futile to obtain results. 
The height of earthly desire can only be striven 
for with earnestness, to say nothing of attain- 
ment, with the mens sana in corpore sano, a 
healthy mind in a healthy body. 238 
PHYSICAL DECLINE OF 
Readers, we have written these pages not 
willingly, but after much thoughtful deliber- 
ation, and after frequent consultations with 
those whose advice one who can be so happy 
as to obtain it, is compelled to follow, and in 
accordance with an irresistible feeling of duty. 
Simple and well-known as what we have said 
may be to many, it has cost some resolution 
to say it. It may cost you more resolution to 
follow its instructions. We stand only as a 
guide-post, showing whither lead the two 
roads: it is for you to choose which to follow. 
B. 
Extract from the Minutes of the Proceedings of 
the Presbyterian Assembly (Old School), held in 
New York, May, 1869. 
“ This Assembly regards the destruc- 
tion by parents of their own offspring before 
birth with abhorrence; as a crime against God 
and against nature; and as the frequency of 
such imirders can be no longer concealed, we here- 
by warn those that are guilty of this crime, 
that except they repent, they cannot inherit 
eternal life.” AMERICAN WOMEN. 
239 
c. 
From the London Saturday Review—article, 
“ Modern Mothers.” 
“lt may seem a harsh thing to say, 
but it is none the less true, society has put 
maternity out of fashion, and the nursery is, 
nine times out of ten, a place of punishment, 
not of pleasure, to the modern mother. Two 
points connected with this subject are of grow- 
ing importance at the present time—the one 
is the increasing disinclination of married 
women to be mothers at all; the other, the 
large number of those who, being mothers, 
will not, or cannot nurse their own children.” 
D. 
Extract from Pastoral Letter of Bishop Coxe, of 
the Diocese of Western New York, dated Janu- 
ary 30, 1869. 
“I have warned my flock against the 
blood-guiltiness of infanticide. If any doubt 
existed heretofore as to the propriety of my 
warnings on the subject, they must now dis- 240 
DECLINE OF AMERICAN WOMEN. 
appear before the fact that the world itself is 
beginning to be terrified by the practical re- 
sults of the sacrifices to Moloch which defile 
our land. 
“ Again, I warn you that they who do such 
things cannot inherit eternal life. If there be 
a special damnation for those who ‘ shed inno- 
cent blood,’ what must be the portion of those 
who have no mercy upon their own flesh?” 
THE END. CONJUGAL SINS 
AGAINST THE 
Laws of Life and Health 
AKD 
THEIR EFFECTS UPON THE FATHER, MOTHER 
AND CHILD. 
BY 
AUGUSTUS K. GARDNER, A.M.., M.D 
LATE PROFESSOR OF DISEASES OF FEMALES AMD CLINICAL MIDWIFERY IN TUB 
NEW YORK MEDICAL COLLEGE 
J. S. It ED FIELD, PUBLISHED 
NEW YORK 
140 FULTON STREET 
1870 
Wholesale Agents—American News Co. 
PRICE ONE DOLLAR. Recently Published by J. S. RED FIELD, 
MODERN WOMEN 
What is Said of Them; 
AXD 
A Reprint of a Series of Articles in the Saturday Review, with 
an In trod action by Mrs. Lucia Gilbert Calhoun. 
CON T E N T S . 
The Gibe op the Period. 
Foolish Virgins. 
Little Women. 
Pinchbeck. 
Feminine Affectations. 
Ideal Women. 
Woman and the World 
Unequal Marriages. 
Husband Hunting. 
Perils op “Paying Attention.” 
Women’s Heroines. 
Interference. 
Plain Girls, 
A Word fob Female Vanity. 
The Abuse op Match-Making. 
Feminine Influence. 
Pigeons. 
Pretty Preachers. 
Ambitious Wives. 
Platonic Women. 
Man and his Master. 
The Goose and the Gander. 
Engagements. 
Woman in Orders. 
Woman and her Critics. 
Mistress and Maid, or Dress 
And Undress. 
ASsthetio Woman. 
What is Woman’s Work? 
Papal Woman. 
Modern Mothers. 
Priesthood op Woman. 
The Future op Woman. 
La Femme Passes. 
The Fading Flower. 
Spoilt Women. 
Costume and its Morals. 
In one Volume, 13mo, handsomely printed and bound in cloth, 
beveled boards, 
PRICE TWO DOLLARS. 
For Critical Notices, see third page of Cover. MODERN WOMEN-Notices of the Press. 
“ The series of articles from which this book is compiled is the ablest which 
has been given to this generation of readers. They are full of thought, origi- 
nality and vigor, and although at times unjustly severe in their tone, ana a 
little exaggerated in statement, they must be taken as a whole to be the most 
masterly, exhaustive and eloquent series of essays which the subject has yet 
elicited.”—iV. Y. Citizen. 
“ They possess all the characteristics which have made the Saturday Review 
a power in Literature, being as brilliant, in the main, as they are critical; and 
their satire strikes us as having a greater basis of truth to rest upon than is 
generally the case with the satirical papers in this Journal.”—N. Y. Albion. 
“ If these stinging and lashing diatribes do not have the effect of provoking 
many a fashionable and giddy woman to serious thinking, and a worthier course 
of life, we shall despair of reaching her conscience from below.”—Liberal 
Christian. 
“ Much that the reviewer has said, Is after all, but too just. Its severest 
strokes of criticism on the Modem Woman may be sanctified, in ancient pulpit 
parlance, to her spiritual and everlasting good Well persuaded 
that the book will do good, we certainly wish it a wide circulation,”— 
Revolution. 
“They are well written, epigrammatic, tersely pointed, and altogether the 
book is one of the most piquant and pleasant of the season.”—Charleston 
Courier. 
“It will be agreed that, in pointed satire, direct and hard hitting and an oc- 
casional vein of eloquence and pathos, they illustrate the best current newspa- 
per style.”—Brooklyn Eagle. 
“Even those who most radically disagree with the opinions promulgated 
in these articles will find them profitable as well as pleasant reading.”— 
Trenton Stale Gazette. 
They are written by a shrewd observer and sagacious judge of woman’s 
character, marked by the keenest touches of the satirist and lit up with flashes 
of humor and genial wit.”—Missour i Republican. 
“ Yet it is perhaps this extreme, often unjust, and stinging diatribe which 
is needed to awaken fashionable women to a sense of their duties, oppor- 
tunities and nobler uses as women.”—N. Y, Evening Post. 
“ ‘ The Girl of the Period’ made a sensation in England when it appeared and 
is sharp with all the sharpness of truth.”—Presbyterian. 
“ It is a book which should be read by every daughter approaching woman- 
hood, or who has reached it, and every parent of daughters.”—Po'keepsie 
Eagle. 
“ We are "lad that the Saturday Review Essays have been reprinted In this 
country. They will help to direct public attention to the woman question; a 
question which involves sc, many vitally important social interests, that discus- 
sion and action upon it cannot be much longer deferred.”—Hartford Courant, 
“ For every ridiculous young female at any of our fashionable watering places 
or in up-town drawing rooms, I will show you a corresponding young male 
who dresses and looks like a fool and behaves like a baboon—will that rather 
intelligent animal pardon the simile Y'—Lady Correspondent of the Spring- 
field Republican, 
“ They are all racily written, but justice and even truth are often sacrificed 
to the desire to point a sentence.”—Hours at Home. 
“To be read in railroad cars, or laid upon one’s library table to be taken up 
at idle moments, it is eminently suitable.”— Leader, Baltimore. 
“ So we have no objection to his savage diatribes, for the satirist’s whip is a 
weapon of reform.”—Buffalo Courier. 
“ A thorough discussion of the woman question, cannot fail to accomplish 
some good even if the caustic critic shall see fit to enlarge upon the foibles and 
frivolities of our wives, mothers and sisters; for, after all, these are the persona 
under discussion, not our particular wives and sisters, perhaps, but somebody 
olse's, for the women criticised are actual personages, and not creatures of the 
imagination.”—Army and Navy Chronicle. BOOKS PUBLISHED BY J. S. REDFIELD. 
TRIBUNE ESSAYS. 
LEADING ARTICLES 
CONTRIBUTED TO 
THE NEW YORK TRIBUNE 
BY CHARLES T. COX CD OR', 
FROM 1857 TO 1863. 
NYitli. an. Introduction, "by Horace Greeley. 
In one volume, 12ino, 432 pp., in cloth, beveled boards. Price $2. 
EXTRACTS FROM NOTICES OF THE PRESS. 
“ His lively wit, strong good sense, keen inventive, biting sar- 
casm, have always challenged the delighted attention of the 
Tribune readers, and still reward whoever will take the pains to 
lend an ear.”—Chicago Tribune. 
“ They are lively, sarcastic and amusing, full of apt illustra- 
tion, evincing a much broader range of thought and literary 
accomplishment than is common in American journalism, and we 
cannot doubt will be welcomed by multitudes of delighted read- 
ers.”—Sunday Courier, Boston. 
“It gives the lively, trenchant, satirical and witty leaders, 
penned by Mr. Congdon for the Tribune, during an eventful period 
of our history. We have found, as doubtless many others will 
find, much pleasure in perusing those editorial gems.”—-Phil. 
Keystone. 
“ The high moral purpose was always apparent, often uttered 
in serious, solemn, tear, bringing sentences. Seldom has a man 
laughed to so good a purpose.”—AT. W. Christian Advocate. 
“Nothing better of their kind ever appeared in America, 
unless it were the same writer’s editorials in the Boston Atlas, 
before he came to New York.”—lVew Yorker. 
“ Every essay is a wonder of humor and sarcasm, and was read 
and admired by multitudes. There were no ponderous blows of 
logic, but each was a Damascus blade, sharp, keen and glittering 
that cut through all sorts of armor into the vitals of slavery.”— 
Chambersburg Repository.