With no knowledge of the terrible nature of her disease, it was difficult to induce her to persist through months for a period of at least two years in taking her medicines. At intervals during the years that followed she gave premature birth to children, which, whether born dead, or living for a day or two, were masses of disease and corruption. After four or five of such miscarriages she finally gave birth to a child that at the time of its coming into the world seemed healthy. Not long after the birth of this child the family removed from the community, and the physician was unable to note the effects of the inheritance which no child under such circumstances could possibly escape.
While this case was impressive, it was by no means exceptional. We have learned of instances where persons of unbounded wealth have communicated the syphilis to their wives, and all the skill which wealth could command has not been able to eradicate the disease or deliver the unhappy sufferers from the consequences of the criminal unfaithfulness of the guilty husband.
But there are consequences less manifest to the eye, but no less deadly and destructive in effect, which come to the innocent and unoffending wife as the result of the vice and unfaithfulness of her husband. One of the most eminent physicians of Philadelphia, in conversation with the author, assured us that the effects of gonorrhœa, or clap, which are suffered by the wives is something alarming. Even where the husband has not communicated the disease while it was active in himself, but where the intending husband may have supposed that he was entirely cured of gonorrhœa for a period of two years or more, he may yet communicate the lurking remnants of that disease to the vagina, the effects soon extending up into the womb, out through the Fallopian tubes, oftentimes reaching the ovaries and necessitating their removal, making it necessary to unsex the woman in order to save her from the wretchedness and misery which are inseparable from the death which they so often preface.
An eminent practitioner in New York, when addressing the last annual convention of the State Medical Society, called special attention to the prevalent effects which wives suffer as the result of gonorrhœa contracted by their husbands, and said that a few years ago it was his custom, when women with certain symptoms came to him for consultation, to request a private interview with the husbands in order that he might discover whether past unfaithfulness since marriage or a life of vice prior to marriage was not the cause of the trouble. He said that latterly, however, the best medical authorities were agreed that it was not necessary to subject the husband to this trying inquisition, for the symptoms and conditions which established the correctness of the diagnosis were a sufficient proof of the source of all the wife's troubles. Thousands of husbands who bemoan the fact that their wives are complete physical wrecks are themselves the authors of the ruin which has been wrought.
Nor is this all; fathers have often carried the disease home, and by the use of towels have communicated the virus of the disease to the eyes of their children or some member of the family, from which total blindness has come as the inevitable result. We learned of one instance in which the father communicated the disease to his entire family, including several small children, who took their bath in the same tub, but in different water, after the father had bathed.
For a fuller unfolding of the awful consequences of the diseases which accompany vice we must refer the reader to the book "What a Young Man Ought to Know," from page 93 to 153. All that has there been said in favor of a chaste and pure life can be enjoined with even greater emphasis on those who are married.
But what if a guilty husband and father could escape the dangers of disease, the detection by his wife, and could even escape the lashings of his own guilty conscience, which will smite with sevenfold force as the years advance, yet how terrible for him to remember that transmission is the law of heredity, and that a licentious father is the legitimate predecessor of a vicious child. Is it comforting for a father to anticipate with certainty that all the vices which have corrupted his life, blighted his home and debased his moral nature are to be transmitted to his offspring? How shall he, in the after years, when his own children go wrong, be comforted with the thought that what they are he was, and that what he desires them to be is what he himself should have been. Julia, the daughter of Augustus, was as bad as her father, and gave birth to a child of equally strong propensities. These are the influences which have not only destroyed the happiness of homes, but have wrecked the destinies of nations. By the love you bear your wife, by the love which you have for your children which are and which are to be, by the respect which you have for yourself and the fear that you should have for your God, by all that is sacred in marriage and in home, by all that is desired in this world and in the world to come, we plead with you, for your present, future and eternal good, that you maintain your marriage vow inviolate.
Part II