XVI
THE NEW MALADY
In every age there is a new disease—there is a new malady—a strange sickness. The whole army of medical science goes out to meet it and there is pitched a battle wherein lives are sacrificed, honour made and lost. But in the end the glorious banner of medical skill is generally carried triumphant from the field. Some old foes truly there are who are not conquered yet, with whom a guerilla warfare is continuously being waged. Never can they be brought into the open field; never can they be come upon at close quarters. Sometimes in a skirmish they are routed and put to flight; yet ever they return, lessened in numbers, no doubt, weakened in strength, but still a marauding enemy to mankind.
Then apart from these, there is that new malady, which, with its stern inevitability, the age always brings amidst its retinue of civilisation.
It would seem, notwithstanding the dictum of the Bab Ballad-maker, that they are not always blessings which follow in Civilisation’s train. One disease after another has come amongst us from out the ranks of civilisation. And now appears the latest of all, seizing upon its victims under the very walls of that fortress of medical science.
It is the disease of bearing children, the disease of making life.
We all know how science with its anæsthetics, with its deftly made instruments and its consummate skill, is attacking the enemy from every quarter. Yet the fatality of the sickness is steadily growing. More women die in childbirth now than ever fell its victims in the days when the services of a common mid-wife were all that were at their disposal.
It is terrible sometimes to think how rapidly this most natural of all functions—since upon it hangs the existence of all people in the world—it is terrible to think how rapidly it is shaping into the awesome features of a disease. Women are as ashamed of its conditions now as they would be if smallpox had pitted their delicate skins. They speak of it as of some dreadful operation—which indeed it has become—and, instead of glorying over a possession which they alone command, they will talk of it as a curse which, suffering alone, they should be given compensation for. They ask for the vote! Great God! As if the vote could compensate them for the loss of bearing children as the God of nature meant they should be borne! As if any form of compensation could ease such a loss as that!
Success and civilisation—these are the two subtle poisons from the effects of which we are all suffering. Nothing fails like success! Nothing degrades so much as civilisation!