To show upon what slight constitutional differences infertility often depends, it is merely necessary to allude to the fact, known to every one, that women who have not had children with one husband often have them with another. This condition of physiological incompatibility is evidently not altogether one of the emotional nature, for it is observed in animals, among whom it is by no means rare to find certain males and females who will not breed together, although both are known to be perfectly fruitful with other females and males. The ancients, believing that sterility was more common with couples of the same temperament and condition, advised, with Hippocrates, that blonde women should unite with dark men, thin women with stout men, and vice versâ.
Barren women should not despair. They sometimes become fecund after a long lapse of years. In other words, they are sterile only during a certain period of their lives, and then, a change occurring in their temperament with age, they become fruitful. History affords a striking example of this eccentricity of generation, in the birth of Louis xiv., whom Anne of Austria, Queen of France brought into the world after a sterility of twenty-two years. Catherine de Medicis, wife of Henry ii., became the mother of ten children after a sterility of ten years. Dr. Tilt, of London, mentions the case of a woman who was married at eighteen, but although both herself and her husband enjoyed habitual good health, conception did not take place until she was forty-eight, when she bore a child. Another case is reported where a well-formed female married at nineteen, and did not bear a child until she had reached her fiftieth year.
Families often suffer from the effects of sterility. Civilised nations never do. Recent researches have been carefully instituted in several countries to determine the exact power of the human race to preserve its numbers against the ravages of death. It has been ascertained that during periods of peace the population can be maintained to the same point by the additions made to it through the procreating capacity of only one-half of the women in the community. Nature, therefore, has made ample provision for preventing a decrease of population through failure of reproduction.
She has also instituted laws to prevent its undue increase. It would seem as if the extension of material mental and social comfort and culture has a tendency to render marriage less prolific, and population stationary or nearly so. So evident is this tendency, that it has been laid down as a maxim in sociology by Sismondi, that 'where the number of marriages is proportionally the greatest, where the greatest number of persons participate in the duties and the virtues and the happiness of marriage, the smaller number of children does each marriage produce.' Thus, to a certain extent, does nature endorse the opinions of those political economists who assert that increase of population beyond certain limits is an evil happily averted by wars, famines, and pestilences, which hence become national blessings in disguise. She, however, points to the extension of mental and moral education and refinement as gentler and surer means of reducing plethoric population than those suggested by Malthus and Mill.
Many causes of sterility, it will therefore be seen, are beyond the power of man to control. They operate on a large scale for the good of the whole. With these we have little concern. But there are others which may be influenced by intelligent endeavor. Some have been already alluded to, and the remedy suggested; but we will proceed to give more specific
ADVICE TO WIVES WHO DESIRE TO HAVE CHILDREN.
It has long been known that menstruation presents a group of phenomena closely allied to fecundity. The first eruption of the menses is an unequivocal sign of the awakening of the faculty of reproduction. The cessation of the menstrual epochs is a sign equally certain of the loss of the faculty of reproduction. When conception has taken place, the periodical flow is interrupted. Labor occurs at about the time in which the menses would have appeared. In short, it is a fact, now completely established, that the time immediately before, and particularly that after the monthly sickness, is the period the most favorable to fecundation. It is said that, by following the counsel to this effect given him by the celebrated Fernel, Henry ii., the King of France, secured to himself offspring after the long sterility of his wife before referred to. Professor Bedford, of New York, says that he can point to more than one instance in which, by this advice, he has succeeded in adding to the happiness of parties who for years had been vainly hoping for the accomplishment of their wishes.
Repose of the woman, and, above all, sojourn on the bed after the act of generation, also facilitates conception. Hippocrates, the great father of medicine, was aware of this, and laid stress upon it in his advice to sterile wives.
The womb and the breasts are bound together by very strong sympathies: that which excites the one will stimulate the other. Dr. Charles Loudon mentions that four out of seven patients, by acting on this hint, became mothers. A similar idea occurred to the illustrious Marshall Hall, who advised the application of a strong infant to the breast. Fomentations of warm milk to the breasts and the corresponding portion of the spinal column, and the use of the breast-pump two or three times a day, just before the menstrual period, have also been recommended by good medical authorities. Horseback exercise, carried to fatigue, seems occasionally to have conduced to pregnancy.
The greatest hope of success against sterility is to change the dominant state of the constitution. But this can only be effected under suitable medical advice. The treatment of sterility—thanks to the recent researches of Dr. Marion Sims—is much more certain than formerly; and the intelligent physician is now able to ascertain the cause, and point out the remedy, where before all was conjecture and experiment. The sterile wife should, herefore, be slow in abandoning all hope of ever becoming a mother.