"Menstruation in woman indicates an aptitude for impregnation, and this condition remains for a period of six or eight days after the entire completion of the flow. During this time only can most women conceive. Allow twelve days for the onset of the menses to pass by, and the probabilities of impregnation are very slight. This act of continence is healthful, moral, and irreproachable."[28]
28 Gardner.
It should be added to the above that the plan suggested is not absolutely certain to secure immunity from conception. The period of abstinence should certainly extend from the beginning of menstruation to the fourteenth day. To secure even reasonable safety, it is necessary to practice further abstinence for three or four days previous to the beginning of the flow.
Many writers make another suggestion which would certainly be beneficial to individual health; viz., that the husband and wife should habitually occupy separate beds. Such a practice would undoubtedly serve to keep the sexual instincts in abeyance. Separate apartments, or at least the separation of the beds by a curtain, are recommended by some estimable physicians, who suggest that such a plan would enable both parties to conduct their morning ablutions with proper thoroughness and without sacrificing that natural modesty which operates so powerfully as a check upon the excessive indulgence of the passions. Many will think the suggestion a good one and will make a practical application of it. Sleeping in single beds is reputed to be a European custom of long standing among the higher classes.
This subject cannot be concluded better than by the following quotations from an excellent and able work entitled, "The Ten Laws of Health"[29]:—
"The obvious design of the sexual desire is the reproduction of the species.... The gratification of this passion, or indeed of any other, beyond its legitimate end, is an undoubted violation of natural law, as may be determined by the light of nature, and by the resulting moral and physical evils."
"Those creatures not gifted with erring reason, but with unerring instinct, and that have not the liberty of choice between good and evil, cohabit only at stated periods, when pleasure and reproduction are alike possible. It is so ordered among them that the means and the end are never separated; and as it was the all-wise Being who endowed them with this instinct, without the responsibility resulting from the power to act otherwise, it follows that it is HIS LAW, and must, therefore, be the true copy for all beings to follow having the same functions to perform, and for the same end. The mere fact that men and women have the power and liberty of conforming or not conforming to this copy does not set them free from obedience to a right course, nor from the consequences of disobedience."
"The end of sexual pleasure being to reproduce the species, it follows, from the considerations just advanced, that when the sexual function is diverted from its end, reproduction, or if the means be used when the end is impossible, harm or injury should ensue."
"Perhaps the number is not small of those who think there is nothing wrong in an unlimited indulgence of the sexual propensity during married life. The marriage vow seems to be taken as equivalent to the freest license, about which there need be no restraint. Yet, if there is any truth in the law in reference to the enjoyment of the means only when the end is possible, the necessity of the limitation of this indulgence during married life is clearly as great as for that of any other sensual pleasure.