It has been seriously suggested that the poor should be systematically taught Neo-Malthusian methods for the limitation of their offspring.
The best among the poor might practise them, the worst certainly would not, and the limitation among the best would only stimulate the fertility of the worst. This is the most innocent and harmless of the numerous suggestions made by reformers for controlling the fecundity of the poor.
Of surgical methods, castration of males, Oophorectomy or the removal of the ovaries in women, and vasectomy, or the section of the cords of the testicles, have all been suggested.
Annual castration of a certain number of the children of the popular classes was not long ago seriously proposed by Weinhold.
Boies, in his "Prisoners and Paupers," declares that surgical interference is the only method of dealing with the criminal, and preventing him from reproducing his kind. He says:—"These organs have no function in the human organism except the creation and gratification of desire and the reproduction of the species. Their loss has no effect upon the health, longevity, or abilities of the individual of adult years. The removal of them therefore by destroying desire would actually diminish the wants of nature and increase the enjoyments of life for paupers. A want removed is equivalent to a want supplied. In other words, such removal would be a positive benefit to the abnormal rather than a deprivation, rather a kindness than an injury. This operation bestowed upon the abnormal inmates of our prisons, reformatories, jails, asylums, and public institutions, would entirely eradicate those unspeakable evil practices which are so terribly prevalent, debasing, destructive, and uncontrolled in them. It would confer upon the inmates health and strength, for weakness and impotence, satisfaction and comfort for discontent and insatiable desire."
Anæsthetics have ensured that these operations may be performed without the slightest suspicion of pain, and with careful sympathetic surgery, pain may be absent throughout the whole of convalescence. Antiseptics have made it possible to perform these operations with practically no risk to life.
Though castration and Oophorectomy can be performed with safety and without pain, they are absolutely unjustifiable operations, if done to produce sterility.
Every incision and every stitch in surgery, beyond the necessities of the case, are objectionable, and to remove an organ, when the section of its duct is sufficient is to say the least of it, bad surgery.
Vasectomy is the resection of a portion of the duct of the testicles, followed by ligature of the ends. No doubt ligature alone would be sufficient for the purpose, but up to the present, a piece of the duct has been removed, when this operation has been found necessary in the treatment of disease.
This duct is the secretory tube of the testicle, so that when it is occluded, the secretion is dammed back, and degeneration and atrophy of the organ are induced. It soon wastes, and becomes as functionless as though it were removed.