“The procreation of children must be kept within bounds, if mankind wishes to free itself from the cruel condition by which, in irrational nature, the balance is maintained—death in the mass side by side with procreation in the mass!”
L. Löwenfeld[718] also sees in the recommendation of such measures for the prevention of pregnancy “nothing either improper or immoral”; he sees in these measures “means for diminishing the poverty of the lower classes, and for abolishing, to a great extent, the high infantile mortality of these classes, although neo-malthusianism is in no way a panacea for all the social evils of our time”; and he writes very strongly against the condemnation of preventive measures by a “perverse medical zealotry”; in fact, he assigns to preventive measures an immense hygienic importance. Many other physicians also, such as Mensinga[719] (the discoverer of the occlusive pessary, the first medical man in Germany to assert with energy the justification of employing means for the prevention of pregnancy, and the first to establish with precision the indications for the use of these measures, especially in relation to the disadvantageous consequences to women’s health of bearing a large number of children), Fürbringer,[720] Spener,[721] and others, have drawn attention to the eminent hygienic and social importance of measures for the prevention of pregnancy; whereas, on the other hand, in France, in view of the alarming decline in the population of that country, scientific medicine has adopted a more hostile attitude; no longer, however, so bitterly hostile as in the work (now somewhat out of date, but nevertheless containing interesting details) of Bergeret.[722] A layman also, Hans Ferdy (A. Meyerhof),[723] has published a number of interesting works on practical neo-malthusianism.
We shall now proceed to give a brief account of the means commonly employed for the prevention of pregnancy.
l. The Restriction of Intercourse to Particular Periods.—It is clear that by means of relative asceticism, and by restriction of the number of individual acts of sexual intercourse, the possibilities of fertilization can be limited to a considerable extent. Thus, Capellmann, in a work published in 1883, entitled “Facultative Sterility, without Offence to Moral Laws,” recommended abstinence from intercourse for fourteen days after the cessation of menstruation and for three or four days before the commencement of the flow, in the belief that fertilization occurs principally during the days immediately before and after menstruation. Capellmann thus revived the prescription of Soranos, a gynecologist of the days of antiquity. According to the researches of the physiologist Victor Hensen, it is true that the greatest number of fertilizations take place during the first few days after the menstrual period; but conception may also occur on any other day of the menstrual cycle, although the probability of conception at other periods than those named is a diminishing one. Feskstitow has based upon statistical data an interesting “conception curve,” according to which the frequency of fertilization on the last day of menstruation, on the first, ninth, eleventh, and twenty-third days after the end of the flow, varies respectively according to the ratios 48, 62, 13, 9, 1; between these points the course of the curve is almost straight. On the twenty-third day after menstruation the probability of conception is thus one-sixty-second of the maximum. Thus, though the probability of fertilization following intercourse on the twenty-third day after the cessation of the flow is much less than the probability of fertilization as a result of intercourse shortly after menstruation, still, the possibility of conception in the former case cannot be absolutely excluded.
It has also been recommended that in certain seasons of the year, to which a peculiar influence upon fertility has been ascribed, more especially the months of May and June, abstinence from intercourse should be observed. But this is naturally quite untrustworthy, since the same mother can conceive in all months of the year, as is sufficiently proved by the ordinary variations in the birthdays of children.
Somewhat more trustworthy, but still not absolutely to be depended upon, is the practice, after the birth of a child, of artificially prolonging the period of lactation, since it is well known that during lactation the menstrual periods often fail to occur, and that fertilization is exceptional. Upon the recognition of this causal sequence, notwithstanding the fact that it does not possess any absolute validity, there has recently been founded a very remarkable method of practical malthusianism, which the two discoverers, Karl Buttenstedt[724] and Richard E. Funcke,[725] have announced to their astonished contemporaries as a “new revelation,” and as the realization of “happiness in marriage.” These remarkable apostles have combined another observation with the one mentioned above of the relative infertility of women during lactation, the new observation being that sometimes by the mammary glands of women who are not pregnant, and even by those of virgins, milk is secreted, especially during menstruation. This fact was known to earlier gynecologists, as, for example, to Dietrich Wilhelm Busch.[726]
Buttenstedt, to whom the “priority” of the new doctrine of happiness unquestionably belongs, an advocate of the extremely optimistic theory of the possibility of an everlasting life for humanity and of the cessation of death (!), also conceived the idea of evoking lactation artificially in all women by means of the sucking of their breasts by men! In this way he believed that artificial sterility and amenorrhœa might be produced.
Naturally, also, woman’s milk is regarded as an elixir of life for old men, a true panacea for the elongation of life ad infinitum; and this “happy marriage” in itself is to be a means by which all the possible ills of degenerate humanity are to be cured. In this pæan he is joined by Funcke, who regards woman’s milk as “the best, most natural, and most valuable drug,” and on p. 70 of his book preaches to girls and women the “new categorical imperative” (sic).
“Thou shalt not leave thy vital force unutilized; thou shalt not menstruate unless thou hast the firm will and desire to become pregnant; thou shalt allow thy vital force in the form of milk to flow from thy breasts for the benefit and enjoyment of other human beings.”
Buttenstedt, who possesses some historical knowledge, wishes also to make the breasts of men lactiferous (p. 24), so that the sexes can exchange their “blood through the breasts,” thus become more and more alike one another, and ultimately become urnings!