CONDITIONS WHEN MARITAL RELATIONS ARE PAINFUL.
Nature has not designed that a function of great moment to the human race—one involving its very existence—should be attended with pain. The presence of pleasure is indicative of health, its absence of disease. But to a woman who has systematically displaced her womb by years of imprudence in conduct or dress, this act, which should be a physiological one, and free from any hurtful tendencies becomes a source of distress and even of illness. The diseases of the womb which sometimes follow matrimony are not to be traced to excessive indulgence in many cases, but to indulgence to any extent by those who have altered the natural relation of the parts before marriage. A prominent physician, Prof. T. Gaillard Thomas, of New York, has said that 'upon a woman who has enfeebled her system by habits of indulgence and luxury, pressed her uterus entirely out of its normal place, and who perhaps comes to the nuptial bed with some marked uterine disorder, the result of imprudence at menstrual epochs, sexual intercourse has a poisonous influence. The taking of food into the stomach exerts no hurtful influence on the digestive system; but the taking of food by a dyspeptic, who has abused and injured that organ, does so.'
When excessive pain exists, and every attempt occasions nervous trepidation and apprehension, it is absolutely certain that there is some diseased condition present, for which proper advice should be secured at once. Delay in doing so will not remove the necessity for medical interference in the end, while it will assuredly aggravate the trouble. Prompt intelligent aid, on the contrary, is usually followed by the happiest results in such cases.
STERILITY.
Wives who never become mothers are said to be sterile or barren. This condition is frequently a cause of much unhappiness. Fortune may favor the married couple in every other respect, yet if she refuse to accord the boon of even a single heir to heart and home, her smiles will bear the aspect of frowns. It is then of some interest to inquire into the causes of this condition, and how to prevent or remedy their operation.
Dr. Duncan, of Edinburgh, has shown, by elaborate research, that in those wives who are destined to have children, there intervenes, on the average, about seventeen months between the marriage ceremony and the birth of the first child, and that the question whether a woman will be sterile is decided in the first three years of married life. If she have no children in that time, the chances are thirteen to one against her ever having any. In those cases, therefore, in which the first three years of married life are fruitless, it is highly desirable for those wishing a family to ascertain whether or not the barrenness is dependent upon any defective condition capable of relief.
The age of a wife at the time of marriage has much to do with the expectation of children. As the age increases over twenty-five years, the interval between the marriage and the birth of the first child is lengthened. For it has been ascertained that not only are women most fecund from twenty to twenty-four, but that they begin their career of child-bearing sooner after marriage than their younger or elder sisters. Early marriages (those before the age of twenty) are sometimes more fruitful than late ones (those after twenty-four). The interesting result has further been arrived at in England, that about one in fourteen of all marriages of women between fifteen and nineteen are without offspring; that wives married at ages from twenty to twenty-four inclusive, are almost all fertile; and that after that age the chances of having no children gradually increases with the greater age at the time of marriage.
There are two kinds of sterility which are physiological, natural to all women,—that of young girls before puberty, and that of women who are past the epoch of the cessation of the menses. In some very rare cases, conception takes place after cessation. In one published case, it occurred nine months afterwards, and in another eighteen months. In some very rare cases, also, conception has taken place before the first menstruation.
The older a woman is at the time of her marriage, the longer deferred is the age at which she naturally becomes sterile. She bears children later in life, in order to compensate, as it were, for her late commencement. But although she continues to have children until a more advanced age than the earlier married, yet her actual child-bearing period is shorter. Nature does not entirely make up at the end of life for the time lost from the duties of maternity in early womanhood; for the younger married have really a longer era of fertility than the older, though it terminates at an earlier age.
A wife who, having had children, has ceased for three years to conceive, will probably bear no more, and the probability increases as time elapses. After the first, births take place with an average interval, in those who continue to be fertile, of about twenty months.