Moral Principles and Medical Practice: The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence

by Charles Coppens

In the opening lecture of this course, I remarked to you, gentlemen, that the scope of Medical Jurisprudence is much wider than that of Medical Law. It embraces many subjects of which human laws take no cognizance, and in particular such vicious actions as do not violate the rights of others, but are injurious to those only who practise them. They undermine the health and shorten the lives of the guilty parties, and bring in their train diseases the most destructive and often the most incurable. It is the physician’s beneficent task to lessen the weaknesses and sufferings of the body, and to prolong human life in well-preserved vigor to a green old age. It is not the least important part of his valuable services to provide for the sound and vigorous propagation of the human race to future generations. Of this propagation of our race, of the laws which govern it, and of the criminal abuses by which these laws are violated, I am to treat in this present lecture. My subject is “Venereal Excesses.”

I. If a physician’s purpose were only to make money, his task would then be to multiply diseases and infirmities; he would then be as great a curse to mankind as he is really intended to be a blessing; and an immense blessing he will be to his fellow-men if he studies to remove even the remote causes of diseases and untimely deaths. He can do so in a variety of ways and not the least by providing against sexual excesses and abuses. These are a copious fountain of ill to humanity. A host of diseases, such as tuberculosis, diabetes, cardial and nervous affections, epilepsy, hysteria, general debility, weaknesses of sight, languor and general worthlessness, hypochondria, weakness and total loss of reason, and, in married life, impotence and sterility are some of the effects of venereal excesses. Any excitement of the sexual passion before the body has received its full development is more or less injurious to its welfare; and all excesses or unnatural indulgence of it at any period of life is pregnant with deplorable consequences. Now, such evil practices are too much overlooked by many physicians; yet it is certain that thousands of patients might, by timely warning on these matters, be saved from unspeakable mental and physical sufferings. To give sensible and intelligible directions on a subject as delicate as it is important in medical practice, it will be necessary to enter into some scientific details.

The passion which prompts to sexual intercourse is altogether natural in itself, and, as such, intended by the Creator to be indulged in at the right time and in the proper manner. It is the stimulus which He has provided for the propagation of the human race. If the stimulus is strong at times, this too is a special effect of His wisdom; because without a powerful prompting of this kind, most men would shirk the burden of married life, just as very many would not care to toil if they had no hunger and thirst and other bodily wants to satisfy.

But though all these cravings are useful and even indispensable to mankind, all of them need the regulation of reason. When they are indulged immoderately or in unnatural ways, they become most copious sources of bodily diseases, of mental disorders, and moral degradation. Every one knows how the passion of drink, when abused, proves the ruination of millions; excessive eating, too, injures the systems of countless people. But no animal passion is more liable to become disorderly, none needs more firm control and habitual watchfulness, than the passion of lust. Reason dictates that it should be indulged for no other purpose than that for which the Creator has made it, namely, marital intercourse. I say marital and not merely sexual intercourse; for outside of married life all nations have always condemned its indulgence.

Besides, it is only in the married state that the children, which are the fruit of such intercourse, can be properly educated. To generate a race of young barbarians is certainly not the purpose of the sexual relations. Children must not be begotten unless they can be properly raised, in a manner worthy of their noble destiny. Now, it is only in the married state, in the family or domestic society, that they can be thus educated. They need the tender hand of a mother to supply their material wants; they need the manly care of a devoted father to provide the necessaries of life, his firm hand to break their wanton wills, and his wise direction to set them well on the road to temporal and eternal happiness. Therefore, no one has the right to beget or to bear children except in marital life. Now, the sexual passion is to be exercised only in connection with its proper object, the procreation of children and the fostering of such mutual love between husband and wife as is conducive to domestic happiness. Therefore this passion is to be kept under careful and rational constraint. This the law of morality requires; all nations have ever exacted that this passion shall be subject to established rules; no free-love has ever been tolerated where there was the least pretence to civilization, and I do not know that it was ever permitted even among barbarians.

Even the distant approach that Mormonism made towards free-love has been absolutely condemned and repressed by the common-sense of the American people, as incompatible with civilization. In fact, all history testifies that the true civilization of any race or country rises or falls with the restraints imposed on the passion of lust; no polygamous nation has ever been more than half-civilized. The greatness of Rome and Greece decayed when the laws of social purity declined; and in our own day the immorality of what is called “the social evil” is the darkest stain on modern civilization.

And what we say of civilization or social soundness, the soundness of the body politic, applies in a great measure to individual soundness, the health of every person’s mind and body. Personal purity promotes health and vigor, it lends beauty to form, gives a keen edge to the intellect, adds energy and brings success to manhood, and prepares for enduring and honored old age. Venereal excesses, on the contrary, undermine the vigor of the constitution, bring on a host of bodily infirmities, exhaust the system before the proper time, debauch and degrade the mind and will, and prepare their victims for an early grave or a decrepit old age.

II. But how can a passion so ardent be properly restrained? In particular, what can a physician do to prevent the manifold injuries which, if not properly controlled, it will bring to his patients? These are practical questions directly to our purpose.

The first requisite for all effective action is to have correct knowledge and strong convictions on a subject. No one will check a passion with firmness if he have a lingering doubt as to whether, after all, he is strictly bound to restrain it. As a man’s mind matures, at least if his mind be upright and not distorted by the strain of a ruling passion, he understands more and more thoroughly that his perfection consists and his highest interests lie in obeying at all times the law of reason, in maintaining his specific dignity of a rational being, and not allowing himself to be controlled by passion, the ruling power of brute animals. Besides, he becomes aware in various ways of the evil results of immoral practices, and he sees many reasons to keep his passions in check. But young people have neither such experience nor such information, and they are not always wise enough to understand the imperative dictates of self-restraint. And yet it is often in early years, while body and mind are in the period of development, that the most serious injury is done to the constitution and to the character by the indulgence of carnal pleasures. Habits are then engendered which become a real slavery; so that later in life when there arises a sincere desire to stop such disgraceful practices, there is a feeling of impotence to resist temptations which by one’s own fault have become a second nature.

What then can be done with the young? They must early and authoritatively be told of the wrong, the sin of base self-indulgence, and of every practice that leads to it. If a beginning of immorality is discovered in a child, it must be plainly told and emphatically warned of the serious consequences involved. The child’s mother is, as a rule, the best guide and director in infancy. Later on, the Doctor has frequent chances to do so; it comes from him with better grace than from others; and his warning is likely to be minded, because it is clear that he knows and ought to know what he is talking about with regard to bodily consequences. Yet it is always a matter of delicacy; and great care should be taken lest, while pointing out the evil, there be also a stimulus added to a prurient curiosity.