Is it I? A book for every man.

by Horatio Robinson Storer

To this argument will be opposed the statements, that like other male mammalia, every man is physically competent to conjugally care for an almost indefinite number of women, and that the normal proportion of the sexes is already disturbed by the large number of both who voluntarily remain single, and of both who, released from an earlier bond by divorce or death, marry for a second, a third, or even a fourth time, and by the comparatively earlier death or decrepitude, on the large scale, of females. Upon the other hand, a man’s possible uxorious ability is and should be, no gauge of what it is advisable for him to undertake or to perform. Even in wedlock it is too often the case that men liken themselves in practice to the most bestial of the lower animals, and to their wives are the most exacting and cruel of tyrants. The plea of merely yielding to the impulses of a pure affection is used but too often to sanction the vilest debauchery, for a man, if he choose, may make a brothel of his own nuptial bed. As to plural marriages, confining that term to instances where the unions are successive and legally solemnized, there is a doubt whether as many, if not more, women are not married a second time than men; and as to the comparative mortality of the sexes, it is gradually becoming the way of physicians to study invalid women more closely and more accurately than was formerly the custom, and as a very natural consequence, much oftener to cure them, so that the comparative death rates are gradually assuming a relation more favorable to women than to men, especially if we allow for the greater liability of the latter to accident and other exposure. It will be noticed that the death rate, comparative or positive, of a country is a very different thing from its birth rate, and this again from the fecundity of its population,—that is to say, the rate of its annual increase,—subjects all of them of great interest, both to professional and to non-professional men; the latter of them particularly so to us in our present inquiry, as will hereafter be seen. I may mention, in this connection, that results of two elaborate series of observations in our own country, made from different points of view, but very coincident in their conclusions, have been published by two of the members of the American Medical Association, namely, Dr. Nathan Allen, of Lowell,[14] and myself.[15] Not satisfied with bringing the subject before my own profession, I have endeavored to fix the attention of the scientific world upon the statistics that have been presented, more especially by an article upon the subject in the March number of the leading scientific journal of this country.[16]

To return. Other answers than those yet indicated have been made to the main question that I have propounded. Prostitution, even to the extent of a public and legal license, just as obtains in many of the large cities of Europe, has even in our own country its avowed and honest advocates, and by this I mean far other advocates than lewd and licentious men. An engineer may study and direct systems of sewerage, and yet neither desire, nor allow himself to attend to the details of their management. I do not mean, however, to open the very interesting and important problem here involved, although it is one to which I have given much personal attention, both abroad and at home. Suffice it merely to say, that as a safety valve to the latent brutality and vice always heaving and raging beneath the surface in great crowds of men, and to prevent, by frequent and authoritative inspection of the unfortunates, led by circumstances far oftener than by inclination to pander to the unbridled instincts of man’s lower nature, the so frequent importation of the lecher’s contagion into his household, setting its mark upon his innocent partner, if not also upon her offspring, there is much to be said in favor of the restricted license referred to.[17] Upon the other hand, what more horrid thought to man’s pure companion, or to him with reference to all others than himself! I do not here say that any restricted license like that alluded to has my own approval, although I am not sure but that of two evils it may prove the least. My question was, How can natural instincts reasonably be gratified without infringing upon the rights and happiness of others? By prostitution, even taking so plausible an exception as that of the French grisette, the woman’s happiness, certainly her highest happiness, is endangered, if not assuredly wrecked; and I here take into account, that in France, so peculiar are certain phases of society there, the public woman, after years of shameless sale of herself, often retires upon a competency, to marry and to lead a blameless life, and that in England, the common drabs from the gutter, transported to distant colonies, and sent into the bush, find themselves at a premium, marry, and have fanned into a flame the spark of virtue that may still have lurked in their bosoms. The same is true, to a more limited extent, of some of our own outlying territories and states.

That I have referred to such a topic as the above, was requisite in order that I might approach properly certain matters we have still to discuss together. When sanctioned, as it has been by the study and outspoken convictions of no less a person than Florence Nightingale, who, stainless herself, is yet said to acknowledge certain necessities in the conduct of armies and the care of camps, no further apology upon my part is required.

And such I take it is the case also with the last of the answers to which I shall at present refer, the still more terrible and destructive custom of self-indulgence, that solitary sin that has hurried so many men to the madhouse and to the grave. To this I need but allude, for hardly the person exists who does not know, from experience or from observation, its blighting effects. With the prudery which prevents the parent from cautioning his son, or the physician his patient, from this violation of every natural instinct and every physiological law, I have not the slightest patience. Enfeebling to the body, enfeebling to the mind, the incarnation of selfishness, it effaces from its victim his fondness for the other sex, unfits him for true love, and likens him in very fact to that embodied concentration of all man’s frailties, devoid of all the apparent virtues of animals still lower in the scale, the ape. And yet, it must be acknowledged, that this baleful habit, like the kindred self-indulgence, inebriety,[18] is in many instances the result not of vice, but of disease. The congestion of hæmorrhoids, the presence of ascarides in the rectum, the existence of constipation, are all of them agencies, which, by their reflex irritation, determining an abnormal excess of blood to the parts, and inducing a state of hyperæsthesia, or undue nervous excitability, may give rise to procedures which, in the same individual, at other and more healthful seasons, would cause for him but the most revolting disgust.

Such being the case, and I may consider it as frankly acknowledged by my readers to be true, we are prepared to look more calmly at Marriage as a sanitary measure, and to see whether or no it is for this reason to be resorted to or advised.

Every man knows that when the sexual passion has once been aroused and gratified, it can never afterwards be put entirely at rest, even by the hermit in his cell. It is asserted by certain writers, rather, however, upon theoretical than practical grounds, that such passion may always, with comparative ease, be conquered, by sheer force of will. To insure a peaceful life, it should undoubtedly be vanquished; but few feel at first this necessity, and fewer still have the required mental or moral strength. The confessions that are made to every physician prove this. “The incontinent man,” says Acton, “is indulging a servant, who, if he becomes a master, will be what Cicero called him, a furious taskmaster. The slave of his passions has no easy life. Nay, life itself may be in danger. Often the patient falls a victim to sexual misery. The sexual feeling has caused many a suicide; it has made many a misanthrope; many are the cells now peopled by single men, who, unable to control their feelings, have sought the monastery as an alleviation of their sufferings, and there found it in fasting, penance, and prayer.”[19]

And again. “If a man wished to undergo the acutest sexual suffering, he could adopt no more certain method than to be incontinent with the intention of becoming continent again ‘when he had sown his wild oats.’ The agony of breaking off a habit which so rapidly entwines itself with every fibre of the human frame, is such that it would not be too much to say to any young man commencing a career of vice, ‘You are going a road on which you will never turn back. You had better stop now.’”[20]

The Catholic Church has always recognized the tortures so often accompanying a single life, when, exposed to temptation, as every man occasionally is, he endeavors to preserve himself therefrom. “Our strength is like the strength of tow thrown into the fire; it is instantly burned and consumed. Would it not be a miracle if tow cast into the fire did not burn? It would also be a miracle if we exposed ourselves to the occasion and did not fall.” According to St. Bernardine of Sienna, “It is a greater miracle not to fall in the occasion of sin than to raise a dead man to life.” And thus quaintly and forcibly concludes the learned translator of Bishop Liguori, “Do not allow your daughters to be taught letters by a man, though he be a St. Paul or St. Francis of Assissium. The saints are in heaven.”[21] Moreover, it is a rule of that church that applicants for the priesthood should be fully formed and virile; for although priests are required to observe a moral eunuchism, still they must have the merit of resistance to the thorn in the flesh to obtain the palm of recompense.[22]

I do not, of course, imply, nor do I believe, that the great majority of unmarried men are habitually addicted to immoral practices, but that a very great proportion of them, in curbing their desires and keeping themselves under due subjection, undergo a frequent and severe, however unsuspected, martyrdom, is a fact that cannot be gainsaid.

In speaking, as I have done, of certain alternatives that are extensively adopted instead of marriage, namely, the resorting to houses of ill-fame and self-abuse, I have merely mentioned the fact. I have not dwelt upon the risks, and frightful risks they are, accompanying both these measures. The lurid halo surrounding the strange woman, attracting men, as it were, by its very dangers, like moths fluttering about the candle that is to prove their destruction, has been commented upon through the centuries by writers sacred and profane. It has remained, however, for modern science to prove, what had long been suspected, that the venereal lues resulting from unclean intercourse, is, in one of its forms at least, a disease at times wholly ineradicable from the system, and transmissible in all its virulence to children’s children.[23] Were physicians to reveal to the unsuspecting victims of man’s treachery or early backslidings, whom they are called upon to treat in the upper walks of life, the actual character and history of many of their diseases, there would indeed be weepings and wailings and gnashing of teeth. In the absence of supervision, medical inspection, and the license of public women, the chances are greatly in favor of the existence in those poor fallen ones of contagious disease, which, remaining latent in man’s system, or directly transplanted to his home, may wreck all his hopes of future happiness. “Nothing tends more certainly to wither the energies of youth and blast the hopes of manhood. It is not merely that the mind is polluted; the body is enervated. A thousand forms of disease may hang round the victim, embitter his existence, or destroy his hopes in life, which he never imagines to have had such an origin. But even farther than this: Providence seems to have stamped this vice with more than its ordinary token of displeasure, by rendering its votaries liable to that terrible disease from which so few of them ultimately escape. The effects of this disease, as is well known, are not always to be eradicated. They are not confined to present suffering. They may set a mark upon a man as indelible as that of Cain. They may cling to him through life, may destroy his health, undermine his constitution, hasten his death,—may even terminate in disfigurement and mutilation. Nay, they may even so taint his blood as to descend to his very offspring, and inflict upon another generation the fearful consequences of his transgression.”[24]