THE NATURAL LAWS OF MARRIAGE, AND OF THE TEMPERAMENTS.
It is well known that marriages between near relatives produce unhealthy and imperfect children, but the causes of such a result are not generally understood. These causes extend far beyond the circle of a family, for it is quite as improper for two persons of the same temperament to marry, as it would be for a brother and a sister. The laws of the Temperaments of the human family may be enumerated as follows:
1st. When both parties to a marriage are constitutionally the same, there will probably be no children.
2d. The vital elements are incompatible with each other, and if children are born to parents who are alike in this respect, they will probably be idiotic, or rachitic.[1]
3d. When parties who marry are nearly alike—if their temperaments differ only in part—they will have children who may live to adult age, but who will then probably die of tubercular phthisis (consumption). In illustration of this, I have known whole families of children to be taken off by consumption between the ages of twenty-two and twenty-seven years, where this disease had not previously existed in the families of the parents or their progenitors.
4th. If the constitutions of a married couple assimilate to the extent of one-half, their children will be apt to die before the first seven years. The diseases of such children are tubercles in the glands of the intestines, or in the membranes of the brain.
5th. When persons marry who are alike in temperament, and whose constitutions materially differ, a majority of their children will be still-born, and none will probably live to be two years old.
6th. When one of the parties to a marriage is exclusively vital, and the other similar, but of a nervous and melancholy turn, the children will generally be promising.
7th. To produce smart and healthy children, one of the parties should be of sanguine-bilious temperament, with good vitality, and the other of a quiet, lymphatic turn.
Scrofulous forms of disease result exclusively from marriages illustrated by the first five laws above given. More than half the children that die are those of constitutionally incompatible parents. People who live in health to a good old age, owe more to their parents giving them a sound constitution than to any efforts of their own to preserve health. So many diseases are traced by skillful physicians to improper marriages, that the study of Physiology, and of the human temperaments, seems to be as necessary to young people as the most common branches of education.
Fortunately for the human race, marriages are oftener contracted from instinct than from motives of policy; and individuals of opposite temperaments are apt to experience that natural attraction towards each other that results in marriage. But marriages of interest are still occurring sufficiently frequent to fill our lunatic, idiot, and deaf-and-dumb asylums, and we are glad to notice that the subject is attracting attention, and that new laws are proposed to prevent the marriage of blood relatives.
It is also proper to state that there should not be an extreme disproportion in stature between a married pair. A delicate, slightly formed, small woman, whose pelvis is small, should not marry a large robust man. If she does, her offspring will be too large for her to bring into the world without much suffering, and sometimes mutilation, and destruction of health. This is also the fate of many girls of small stature who become mothers at too early an age, and before the hip and other bones, which form the cavity through which the infant comes into the world, is sufficiently developed.
Early marriages (if not too early) are better than late ones, for the natural state of mankind, after puberty, is a rational association of the two sexes. Woman was adorned by Providence with her graces and charms to delight the opposite sex, and she possesses those graces in full perfection only while she is young. At that period she is indued with power to give and to inherit a sort of terrestrial paradise, to multiply her species, and to become matron, queen, and mother. Her early ripeness proves that it was the intention of Providence that mankind, while young, should settle in matrimony, and exercise those gifts which reproduce their equals. In many young people the marriage state, when properly enjoyed, augments the energies of the sanguineous system; the distended arteries carry warmth and animation through the body; the muscles become vigorous; the walk is more free; the voice firmer—in short, both men and women by this means improve their health, strength and beauty, and assist the development of their intellectual faculties.
[1] Softening and distortion of the bones.