[247]. “De contracti matrimonii valore, per Sobolis necessariam judicatur.”—Hebenstreit Anthropolog: Forens. p. 618.
[248]. Old Parr, who lived to the age of 152, did penance at 105, for lying with Katharine Milton, and getting her with child. He married his second wife in his 122d year.
[249]. The Romans interdicted marriages of extreme inequality in respect of age, upon public policy; their law likewise restrained it between men above 60 and women turned 50, because at these ages procreation was improbable.
The Athenian laws are said once to have decreed that Males should not marry till they were past 35 years of age. Aristotle (Polit. lib. vii. c. xvi.) thought 37 the proper age; Plato fixes 30, in which opinion Hesiod coincides. With respect to Females, the old Athenian laws allowed them to marry at 26; Aristotle at 18, and Hesiod at 15. Lycurgus approved a marriage between men of 37, and women of 17; the principal object of which was, says Zenophon (De Republ. Lacedæm.) to insure that perfect maturity, and complete sexual vigour which he considered so eminently essential for the propagation of the human species. Aristotle wished the husband to be always 20 years older than his wife, in order that they might both arrive, at the same time, to the period when fertility ceases; and we learn from Cæsar & Tacitus that the ancient Germans maintained a similar sentiment.
[250]. In a celebrated German case, an affianced officer, by the misfortune of war, was rendered incapable of performing his contract; the marriage however took place, uxore sciente et consentiente, to the great scandal of the more bigoted ecclesiastic authorities who sought to annul it.
[251]. Capuron relates several instances of women of sixty and upwards who have borne children. Pliny says that Cornelia, of the family of the Scipios, bore a child at sixty, who was called Volusius Saturninus. Marsa, a physician of Venice, records a similar instance; De la Mothe, another at sixty-one; and there is in the third volume of the Memoirs of the Academy, an account of a litigation on the presumption that a woman of sixty-eight could not bear a child. We shall treat this subject very fully under the head of Physiological Illustrations.
[252]. To those who are anxious to pursue the subtleties of this curious question, the following references may be acceptable—Mercatus De Morbis Hereditariis, a treatise published in the beginning of the 17th century; Stahl’s Theoria Medica Vera, published at Halle, in 1737, p. 377. There are besides in the collection of Dissertations published by Stahl in 1707, several passages which refer to the subject of Hereditary Diseases, and an Inaugural Dissertation, “De Hereditaria Dispositione ad varios Affectus,” by Burchart; Haller’s Elementa, vol. 7, article Similitudo Parentum; M. Portal, “Sur la nature et traitement de quelques maladies hereditaires ou de famille,” published in the Memoirs of the French National Institute, and a translation of which may be found in the 21st volume of the London Medical & Physical Journal; it is principally valuable on account of the number of facts and references which it contains; M. Forester, De Morbis aut Noxis puerorum in vitiatis depravatis que parentibus. M. Portal mentions this work as one of great merit—certain opinions of Mr. John Hunter, upon the subject are contained in the report of Donellan’s trial, See Appendix.—The most important work which has been produced in our own times, is that by Dr. Adams; entitled “A Treatise on the supposed Hereditary Properties of Diseases, containing Remarks on the unfounded Terrors and ill-judged Cautions consequent on such Opinions.”
[253]. See the ancient doctrine of disparagement, Co. Litt. 80, 81.
[254]. We are acquainted with but one instance of Legislative interference, relative to hereditary diseases, and that is to be found in the earlier history of our sister kingdom. The following quotation will explain its nature: “Morbo comitiali, amentia, mania, aut simili tabe, quæ facile in prolem transfunditur, laborantes, intereos ingenti facta indagine inventos, ne genus fæda contagione ab iis qui ex illis prognati, forent læderetur, castraverunt; mulieres hujusmodi morborum quavis tabe leprave infectas procul a virorum consortio ablegaverunt. Quod si harum aliqua concepisse inveniebatur, simul cum fætu nondum edito defodiebatur viva—Voraces, manducones supra quam erat humanum, helluonesque, et perpetuæ ebrietati indulgentes aut addictos, netam fæda monstrain patriæ dedecus supressent flumine mergentes, prius quantum libuit et cibi et potus vorare ac ingurgitare eis præbentes, miti supplicio exterminarunt.”
Scotorum Historiæ a prima Gentis Origine, cum aliarum et rerum et gentium illustratione non vulgari, Libri xix—Hectore Boethio Deidonano auctore—Parisiis 1574, lib. 1, p. 12.