Private Sex Advice to Women: For Young Wives and those who Expect to be Married

by Robert B. Armitage

The Eugenists also have called the attention of the thinking public to the danger of deaf-and-dumb persons transmitting their condition to their offspring. Of this Dr. Saleeby says: "The condition known as deaf-mutism is congenital or due to innate defect in about one-half of all the cases in Great Britain." Dr. Love says: "In every institution, examples may be found of deaf-mute children who have had one or two deaf parents or grandparents, and of two or more deaf-mute children belonging to one family." A case is noted in England where a deaf-and-dumb man having been killed by an accident, his relatives could not identify the body, as the wife and sister were blind, deaf-and-dumb, and the four children were deaf-and-dumb. The man and his wife were both deaf-and-dumb when they were married, the wife being also blind.

Perhaps no subject has aroused the active Eugenists to a greater pitch of indignation than the ascertained results of the effect upon offspring of parents addicted to the over-indulgence in alcohol. It is known by the records that a large number of cases of feeble-mindedness and actual insanity are due to inebriety of parents, and often of grandparents, or ancestors for several generations. Epilepsy, idiocy, and criminality are also traceable in many cases to drunkenness of parents. Dr. Saleeby, moved by indignation by the ascertained results of the investigations of the Eugenists, has said: "Parenthood must be forbidden to the dipsomaniac, the chronic inebriate, or the drunkard, whether male or female."

Professor Grenier, writing on the subject of alcoholic degeneration, has said: "Alcohol is one of the most active agents in the degeneracy of the race. The indelible effects produced by heredity are not to be remedied. Alcoholic descendants are often inferior beings, a notable proportion coming under the categories of idiots, imbeciles, and the debilitated. The morbid influence of parents is maximum when conception has taken place at the time of drunkenness of one or both parties. Those with hereditary alcoholism show a tendency to excess; half of them become alcoholics; a large number of cases of neurosis have their principal cause in alcoholic antecedents. The larger portion of the sons of alcoholics have convulsions in early infancy. Epilepsy is almost characteristic of the alcoholism of parents, when it is not an index of a nervous disposition of the whole family. The alcoholic delirium is more frequent in the descendants of alcoholics than in their parents, which indicates their intellectual degeneration."

What has been said of alcoholism of course applies to the use of narcotics and other drugs. Galton cites a case in which "a man who had had two healthy children acquired the cocaine habit, and while suffering from the symptoms of chronic poisoning engendered two idiots." And yet had anyone publicly instructed the wife of this man regarding the use of contraceptives, such person would have been liable to imprisonment!

Another subject engaging the active attention of the Eugenists, and which is discussed to considerable extent in the privacy of their meetings, but which must be voiced only very carefully in the public prints owing to the "murderous silence" which society prefers to maintain on the subject, is of the influence of venereal diseases as racial poisons transmissible to offspring. Dr. Saleeby has well said: "No other disease can rival syphilis in its hideous influence upon parenthood and the future. But it is no crime for a man to marry, infect his innocent bride and their children; no crime against the laws of our lawgivers, but a heinous outrage against nature's decrees. When at last our laws are based on nature's laws, criminal marriages of this kind may be put an end to."

The above stated facts are not pleasant reading for most persons, and many pass over them hurriedly, thereby hoping to escape the mental discomfort which the hearing and learning of unpleasant truths so often produce. But the subject will not down—it is forcing itself to the attention of the thinking members of society today in a manner which will admit of no escape. These facts must be faced, and steps must be taken by society to protect the race from degeneration and actual Race Suicide. And the Science of Eugenics is pointing the way.

Dr. Saleeby says of this phase of Eugenics: "Negative Eugenics will seek to define the diseases and defects which are really hereditary; to name those the transmission of which is already known to occur, and to raise the average of the race by interfering as far as may be with the parenthood of persons suffering from these transmissible disorders. Only thus can certain of the gravest evils of society, as, for instance, feeble-mindedness, insanity, and crime due to inherited degeneracy, be suppressed; and if Race-Culture were absolutely incapable of effecting anything whatever in the way of increasing the fertility of the worthiest classes and individuals, its services in the negative direction here briefly outlined would be of incalculable value. To this policy we shall most certainly come; but here, as in other cases, I trust far more to the influence of an educated public opinion than in legislation; though there are certain forms of transmissible disease, interfering in no way with the responsibility of the individual, the transmission of which should be visited with the utmost rigor of the law, and regarded as utterly criminal, no less than sheer murder."

But the Science of Eugenics is concerned not only with telling society what "not to do"—it is equally concerned with telling it "what to do." It has its Positive as well as its Negative side. After pointing out the evils of procreation on the part of the unfit, it then proceeds to tell the fit how to best serve the interests of the unborn. Eugenics is not satisfied with merely plucking out the foul weeds which have encumbered the fair garden of life—it seeks also to furnish to the real flowers better soil, and improved conditions, and to give them the benefit of the best selection, breeding and conditions, that they may evolve and improve into still more glorious products of nature's power.

The Eugenists earnestly advocate laws and public opinion tending to protect mothers and expectant mothers. They recognize the supremacy of motherhood, and aim to encourage and protect it. They decry the common indifference toward this function which is all important in the preservation and evolution of the race, and which neglect is well expressed in the complaint of Bouchacourt, who said: "The dregs of the human species—the blind, the deaf-mute, the degenerate, the imbecile, the epileptic—are better protected than are pregnant women."

The Eugenists believe in educating women for motherhood, and in protecting them from conditions which interfere with that important function of their life. They are not fully agreed upon the methods to be pursued in cases of expectant mothers whose lack of proper support prevents them from obtaining the proper nourishment, etc., but in a general way it may be said that they agree in holding that the expectant mother should be looked upon as the honored ward of the State, and should be properly provided for from the public funds.