The girl had been a teacher for about twelve years, and she was so sick at heart of the work, was so anxious for a home of her own, that she decided to take the risk. And they got married. The marriage remained childless. The man developed general paresis (softening of the brain) three years later and died about a year afterward. The woman, now a widow, I understand, is not sorry for the step she had taken. This shows what things our social-economic conditions and our moral code are responsible for.
Chapter Thirty-one[ToC]
WHO MAY AND WHO MAY NOT MARRY
The Physician Often Consulted as to Advisability of Marriage—Venereal Disease the Most Common Question—Tuberculosis—Sexual Appetite of Tubercular Patients—Effect of Pregnancy Contraceptive Knowledge for Tubercular Wife—Heart Disease—Serious Bar to Marriage—Influence of Sexual Intercourse—Cancer—Fear of Hereditary Transmission—Exophthalmic Goiter—Most Frequent in Women—Simple Goiter—Exceptions to Rule—Obesity—Family History—Obesity and Stoutness Not Synonymous—Arteriosclerosis—Danger in Sexual Act—Gout—Real Causes of Gout—Mumps—Parotid Glands and Sex Organs—Mumps and Sterility—Oöphoritis Due to Mumps—Hemophilia—Hemophilic Sons May Marry—Hemophilic Daughters May Not Marry—Anemia—Chlorosis—Epilepsy—Hysteria—Symptoms of Hysteria—Marriage of Hysterical Women—Alcoholism—Effect on Offspring—Alcoholics and Impotence—Feeblemindedness—Evil Effects on Offspring—Sterilization of Feebleminded Only Preventive—Insanity—Functional Insanity—Organic Insanity—Hereditary Transmissibility of Insanity—Fear Resulting in Insanity—Environment versus Heredity in Insanity—Neurosis—Neurasthenia—Psychasthenia—Neuropathy—Psychopathy—Nervous Conditions and Genius—Sexual Impotence and Genius—Drug Addiction—External Causes—Consanguineous Marriages—When Consanguineous Marriages are Advisable—Offspring of Consanguineous Marriages—Homosexuality—Homosexuals Often Ignorant of Their Condition—Sexual Repression and Homosexuality—Sadism and Divorce—Masochism—Sexual Impotence and Marriage—Effect Upon the Wife—Frigidity—Marital Relations and Frigid Woman—Excessive Libido and Marriage—Excessive Demands Upon Wife—Satyriasis—The Excessively Libidinous Wife—Nymphomania—Treatment—Harelip—Myopia—Astigmatism—Premature Baldness—Criminality—Crime as Result of Environment—Legal and Moral Crime—Ancestral Criminality and Marriage—Rules of Heredity—Pauperism—Difference Between Pauperism and Poverty.
In former years, nobody thought of asking a physician for permission to get married. He was not consulted in the matter at all. The parents would investigate the young man's social standing, his ability to make a living, his habits perhaps, whether he was a drinking man or not, but to ask the physician's expert advice—why, as said, nobody thought of it. And how much sorrow and unhappiness, how many tragedies the doctor could have averted, if he had been asked in time! Fortunately, in the last few years, a great change has taken place in this respect. It is now a very common occurrence for the intelligent layman and laywoman, imbued with a sense of responsibility for the welfare of their presumptive future offspring and actuated, perhaps, also by some fear of infection, to consult a physician as to the advisability of the marriage, leaving it to him to make the decision and they abiding by that decision.
As a matter of fact, as often is the case, the pendulum now is in danger of swinging to the other extreme; for, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and the tendency of the layman is to exaggerate matters and to take things in an absolute instead of in a relative manner. As a result, many laymen and laywomen nowadays insist upon a thorough examination of their own person and the person of their future partner, when there is nothing the matter with either. Still, this is a minor evil, and it is better to be too careful than not careful enough.
I am frequently consulted as to the advisability or nonadvisability of a certain marriage taking place. I, therefore, thought it desirable to discuss in a separate chapter the various factors, physical and mental, personal and ancestral, likely to exert an influence upon the marital partner and on the expected offspring, and to state as briefly as possible and so far as our present state of knowledge permits which factors may be considered eugenic, or favorable to the offspring, and dysgenic, or unfavorable to the offspring.