It is well for young husbands and wives to know that by incautiousness in their relations during this period miscarriage is often easily and actually produced, and unsuspecting parents have oftentimes been the authors, not only of the death of their own child, but the consequences have entailed permanent injuries upon the young wife, and oftentimes resulted in death itself.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE CHANGES WHICH PRECEDE, ATTEND AND FOLLOW CONCEPTION AND CHILDBIRTH.
From the moment of conception, during the months of gestation, at the time of childbirth and after, changes of great interest take place in the germ of human life and in the body of the mother. Her body is marvelously fitted for the reception and development of the ovum, the embryo and the fetus through the various stages of fertilization, germination, development, maturity, to the time of the eventual exit of the child into the outer world to begin its own independent life.
Something of the adaptation of the body of the mother to its marvelous purpose may the better appear if we think of some of the greatest mechanical achievements of man.
A watch is one of the best products of human ingenuity. It has taken nearly six thousand years to produce it. It is a wonderful piece of mechanism, yet it is, after all, not a complex product like the human body. If a watch could be constructed that could oil and renew its own parts, so as not to stop or break, or need repairing or oiling or cleaning, such a product would be more complex. But if, in addition to running on uninterruptedly for a long series of years, or almost an entire century, suppose it could be so constructed and constituted that, without interrupting the orderly movement of its works or its accuracy and correctness, it should, at intervals, produce other watches like itself. Truly such a watch would be a marvelous complexity. Yet just such a complexity is found in all the forms of vegetable and animal life about us. Interesting as is the study of life at any stage, it is specially interesting and impressive during the periods which preface, accomplish and follow the wonderful period of gestation; and it is specially important that the individual who stands so closely related to this profound and awe-inspiring mystery as does a young husband should have such knowledge of what this condition has to teach as comes within the realm of human understanding—both because of its importance to his own happiness, the happiness, safety and well-being of the mother and her offspring, and because such knowledge will tend to purify the mind of those gross and debasing thoughts which too frequently cluster about the most important and most sacred relations of married life and the endearments of home.
Something of what these changes are which precede, attend and follow reproduction in the human family may be beautifully seen in a conservatory or garden, or even learned from the frail flower that blooms by the roadside.
When, in the springtime or summer days, the plant has reached its maturity, as instinctively as if it foresaw in the coming days of autumn and in the ice and snow of winter the possibility not only of death but of total extinction, its entire nature centres in one grand struggle to escape pending extermination and live, if not in its own body, yet in the life and beauty that shall be reproduced in the plants that are already begotten in the longing for the perpetuity of its own life. The dual parent-nature is quickened. Forgetting the present, and longing for a place and a part when the warm and quickening breath of spring shall again usher in a new day of life and beauty upon the earth the plant henceforth lives, not for the present, but for the future; not for itself, but for those that are to be. The buds begin to form. The plant has learned the purpose of being and throbs with the mystery of life. In the thought of death it has learned to live. In fear of extinction it has learned to perpetuate and multiply itself a hundredfold. The flower unfolds. The dual parent-nature of the plant lives with intensity in their common effort. The flower is in a passion of beauty, in an agony of splendor, perfuming the nuptial hour with a sweetness that distills upon the air, arresting the hurrying steps of all who pass by. Who shall dare to interrupt that ceremonial, whose ruthless hand shall dare defeat that high and holy purpose? The fragrance invites the bees and insects to the nuptial feast. For them there is pollen and nectar in abundance. They bear gifts of quickening pollen from other plants, or swing the anther censers that waited the coming of expected guests. The corolla of beauty screens the enchanted participants. The ceremonial is over, the hour is ended. The ovules have felt the thrill of life, the beauty fades, the fragrance is gone, the wedding-garments are laid aside, and henceforth the father-nature and the mother-nature of the plant live not for themselves, but for the life they have begotten, and the plants that shall be. Their joy abides, and they live in the glad hope of participation, in the succeeding resurrection of the life and beauty and fragrance that is to await the coming of another springtime.