IS IT I?

A BOOK FOR EVERY MAN.

A COMPANION TO

WHY NOT?

A Book for Every Woman.

BY

Prof. HORATIO ROBINSON STORER, M.D.,

OF BOSTON,

Vice-President of the American Medical Association.

Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto. Terence.

BOSTON:

LEE AND SHEPARD.

1868.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1867, by
LEE AND SHEPARD,
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.
Stereotyped at the Boston Stereotype Foundry,
4 Spring Lane.

TO
DR. THOMAS ADDIS EMMET,
OF NEW YORK,
Surgeon to the State Woman’s Hospital;
ONE OF THE ONLY TWO PURELY UTERINE SPECIALISTS
AS YET PRACTISING IN AMERICA;[1]
The Pupil and Successor of Marion Sims,
AND HIMSELF, AS AN OPERATOR, HIS GREAT MASTER’S
MORE THAN EQUAL.

My dear Dr. Emmet:

The little “Why Not?” of the American Medical Association is having so large a sale that my publishers have besought me to write a book for men, to cover ground that I had left untouched, relating to the causation and prevention of various forms of uterine disease. Many physicians and many lady patients have desired me to do the same thing, and I have yielded to their advice. Our friend Dr. Brown-Séquard permitted me to dedicate the second edition of the former book to himself, kindly saying that he deemed it something more than a compliment. At the outset I was uncertain of success, and so the first edition went without sponsor.

In allowing me, in the case of the book now in press, thus to manifest my personal esteem for yourself, and my appreciation of your many contributions to the advancement of our science, you will become my coadjutor in this attempt to preserve women from bodily and mental anguish, from disease and from crime.

Yours, ever sincerely,

Horatio R. Storer.

Boston, June 3, 1867.

CONTENTS.

PUBLISHERS’ NOTE.

Since the first edition of “Why Not?” was published, we have received many letters of approval, and of inquiry relative to its author. In issuing this new treatise, which we believe destined like the first to become a standard book, and to have even a greater circulation than that, we have thought that a few lines of information on our part would not be considered inappropriate.

Professor Storer’s writings are no inapt index to his own character. He is thoroughly alive to his duties; sagacious to discern the truth, fearless in asserting it. Progressive, without being too radical, he is still sufficiently conservative to respect the opinions of others, even though at variance with his own. Perhaps no American physician of his own age, holds at the present time a more prominent position in his profession. He has already been quoted as authority by European writers; and in this country he seems everywhere to have received the most flattering acknowledgment of his scientific labors, save here in his own city, where for many years he has met with uninterrupted opposition, and even personal abuse, from a professional clique—the result, doubtless, of jealousy upon their part, envy, and that spirit of antagonism which has long rendered the disagreements of physicians a by-word.

Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes has happily described the present instance in the last chapter yet published of his “Guardian Angel,” where he says, “There is no possible success without some opposition as a fulcrum; force is always aggressive, and crowds something or other, if it does not hit or trample on it.”

There is one other reason which has undoubtedly gone far to render Prof. Storer no exception to the rule that a leader is seldom appreciated by those in his own immediate vicinity, until—as is rapidly occurring in the present instance—he has conquered renown. Resident for a long time at Edinburgh, in very intimate relations with the celebrated Sir James Y. Simpson, the discoverer of chloroform as an anæsthetic, Prof. Storer is peculiarly a representative of the Scotch school of obstetrics, and has zealously and successfully upheld its peculiar tenets, in opposition to the many disciples of the French and Viennese schools among his contemporaries.

It has been asserted of Dr. Storer that, when engaged in professional controversy, he is pitiless and unsparing. These statements seem traceable to opponents who have been worsted, and speak from bitter experience. There may, however, be some reason to believe, that, like his teacher, Dr. Simpson, he has profited by the advice of Polonius:—

“Beware

Of entrance to a quarrel; but, being in,

Bear it that the opposer may beware of thee.”

The character of the weapons that have been used against our author may be judged by an extract from a personal attack contained—without a word of palliation or excuse from the editors—in one of the latest numbers of the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal.

In attempting to save a poor invalid—sure otherwise soon to perish—Dr. Storer had performed one of the most tedious and difficult operations in surgery, hitherto successful in a most notable instance at his hands, namely, the removal of the womb by incision through the abdomen: an operation with which his name will be forever identified. In commenting upon it, the would-be critic used the following language: “Allow me publicly to protest, most solemnly, against such practice, and earnestly to beg of my professional brethren, everywhere, to use their utmost influence to prevent their patients and friends from employing or consulting such practitioners.”

Abuse like this is sure, of course, to react upon those who employ it, and to gain for its object the sympathy and active interest of all lovers of fair play and justice. By a happy coincidence, the article referred to chanced to be followed, on the same page, by another, which we also quote:—

“At a meeting of the Physicians and Surgeons in attendance upon Prof. H. R. Storer’s course of Lectures on the Surgical Diseases of Women, just delivered at Hotel Pelham, in Boston, the following preamble and resolutions were adopted:—

“Whereas, We, the attendants upon Prof. Storer’s first private course of Lectures on the Surgical Diseases of Women, being regular practising physicians and surgeons, have long experienced the disadvantages arising from the very imperfect manner in which these subjects have been treated in our text books, and by the professors in our colleges; many of the most important diseases and operations being entirely ignored by men who think deeply and reason candidly in all other matters pertaining to medicine and surgery; and, whereas, we cannot but feel that this class of diseases is the most important, believing it to be the cause of more suffering than any other, therefore—

“Resolved, That we tender to Dr. Storer our sincere gratitude for taking the advance step which he has, thereby giving us, as we hope he will hereafter give others, the opportunity of hearing these subjects discussed thoroughly and impartially.

“Resolved, That a copy of these resolutions be presented to Prof. Storer, and sent to The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, and The New York Medical Record, for publication.

These resolutions derive their significance from the fact that the signers are neither students nor recent graduates, but practitioners, chiefly of many years standing, who have become alive to the importance of the special diseases of women.

It will be perceived, by our title page, that Dr. Storer, although as yet hardly forty years of age, has already attained the highest medical honor, save one, that can be conferred in this country—the exception being the Presidency of the National Medical Association, a position lately occupied by his distinguished father. The success of the son will not be wondered at, when the extent and variety of the contributions that he has made to medical science are taken into consideration. In reply to several requests that have been made of us, we append a list of the various professional works and monographs of Dr. Storer, so far as we have been able to collect them. This list is probably not entirely complete, in consequence of the author’s disinclination to give us all the aid we could have wished in its compilation, partly we suppose from a lack of leisure, and partly from a desire, as we have reason to believe, to avoid any imputation of courting publicity.

We are ourselves satisfied that the book that we now present to the community will in nowise lessen his wellearned reputation.

I.

The Obstetric Memoirs and Contributions of Sir James Y. Simpson, Professor of Midwifery in the University of Edinburgh. Edited by his assistants, Drs. W. O. Priestley (now Professor in King’s College, London), and H. R. Storer (now Professor in Berkshire Medical College). Two large volumes. Edinburgh: Adam & Charles Black. 1855.

Also, The Above. American edition. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1856.

II.

A Word in Defence of an American Surgeon. (Dr. J. Mason Warren, of Boston.)

Controversy with Dr. Gillespie, of Edinburgh.

Letter I. London Medical Times and Gazette, May, 1855.

Letter II. American Journal of the Medical Sciences. Philadelphia: October, 1855.

III.

Boston Lying-In Hospital Reports. Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, 1855, 1856, &c.

IV.

Elm Tents for the Dilatation of the Cervix Uteri.

Read before the Medico-Chirurgical Society of Edinburgh, May 1855.

Article I. Association Medical Journal of London, May, 1855.

Article II. Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, November, 1855.

V.

Cases Illustrative of Obstetric Disease.

Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, 1856 to 1865.

VI.

New Form of Intra-Uterine Pessary.

Read before the Suffolk District Medical Society.

Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, November, 1856.

VII.

Review of Clay’s “Complete Handbook of Obstetric Surgery.”

Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, November, 1856.

VIII.

Caustic Potash as an Application to the Interior of the Uterus. Its first suggestion.

Article I. Read before the Suffolk District Medical Society. Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, October, 1856.

Article II. Ibid., October, 1858.

Article III. Ibid., July, 1859.

IX.

Cases of Nymphomania.

Read before the Boston Society for Medical Observation, July, 1856.

American Journal of the Medical Sciences, October, 1856.

X.

Report of the Committee appointed by the Suffolk District Medical Society, “to consider whether any future legislation is necessary on the subject of Criminal Abortion; and to report to the Society such other means as may seem necessary for the suppression of this abominable, unnatural, yet common crime.”

Read before the Society, May, 1857.

XI.

Cupping the Interior of the Uterus.

Read before the Boston Society for Medical Observation, February, 1857.

American Journal of the Medical Sciences, January, 1859.

XII.

The Use and Abuse of Uterine Tents.

American Journal of the Medical Sciences, January, 1859.

XIII.

Cases Illustrative of Criminal Abortion.

American Journal of the Medical Sciences, April, 1859.

XIV.

The Uterine Dilator; a New Method of reaching the Uterine Cavity, and of inducing Premature Labor.

American Journal of the Medical Sciences, July, 1859.

XV.

Report of the Committee of the American Medical Association, “to investigate the subject of Criminal Abortion, with a view to its general suppression.”

Drs. H. R. Storer, of Mass., Chairman.

T. W. Blatchford, of New York.

Hugh L. Hodge, of Pennsylvania.

E. H. Barton, of South Carolina.

A. Lopez, of Alabama.

W. H. Brisbane, of Wisconsin.

A. J. Semmes, of District Columbia.

Rendered at Louisville, May, 1859.

Transactions of the Association, 1860.

XVI.

Is Abortion ever a Crime?

North American Medico-Chirurgical Review, January, 1859.

XVII.

Its Frequency, and the Causes thereof.

North American Medico-Chirurgical Review, March, 1859.

XVIII.

Its Victims.

Ibid., May, 1859.

XIX.

Its Proofs.

Ibid.

XX.

Its Perpetrators.

Ibid.

XXI.

Its Innocent Abettors.

Ibid., July, 1859.

XXII.

Its Obstacles to Conviction.

Ibid., September, 1859.

XXIII.

Can it be at all controlled by Law?

Ibid., November, 1859.

Also the above, from XVI. to XXIII., in a collective form, under the title of Criminal Abortion in America. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1860.

XXIV.

A Medico-Legal Study of Rape.

New York Medical Journal, November, 1865.

XXV.

The Abetment of Criminal Abortion by Medical Men.

Read before the Massachusetts Medical Society, May 30, 1866.

New York Medical Journal, September, 1866.

XXVI.

Subcutaneous Injection as a Cure for the Toothache of Pregnancy.

Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, October, 1859.

XXVII.

Studies of Abortion.

Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, February, 1863.

XXVIII.

Artificial Dilatation of the Os and Cervix Uteri by Fluid Pressure from above; a reply to Drs. Keiller, of Edinburgh, and Arnott and Barnes, of London.

Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, July, 1863.

XXIX.

On Chloroform Inhalation during Labor. A reply to Dr. Robert Johns, of Dublin.

Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, August, 1863.

XXX.

Report of the State Commission on Insanity.

Hon. Josiah Quincy, Jr.
Drs. Alfred Hitchcock,
and H. R. Storer.

Mass. Legislative Document, (Senate 72.) Feb., 1864.

XXXI.

The Employment of Anæsthetics in Childbirth.

Read before the Massachusetts Medical Society, at Pittsfield, June, 1863.

Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, October, 1863.

The above was republished, under the name of Eutokia; a Word to Physicians and to Women. Boston: A. Williams & Co. 1863.

XXXII.

The Medical Management of Insane Women.

Article I. Read before the Suffolk District Medical Society, December, 1863; and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, February, 1864.

Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, April, 1864.

Article II. Ibid., October, 1864.

Article III. Ibid., November, 1864.

XXXIII.

The Relations of Female Patients to Hospitals for the Insane.

Transactions of the American Medical Association. 1864.

XXXIV.

The Surgical Treatment of Amenorrhœa.

American Journal of the Medical Sciences, January, 1864.

XXXV.

Report to the American Medical Association of its Delegate to the Association of Superintendents of Asylums for the Insane.

Transactions of the American Medical Association. 1866.

XXXVI.

A new Operation for Umbilical Hernia, with Remarks upon Exploratory Incisions of the Abdomen.

Article I. New York Medical Record, April, 1866.

Article II. Ibid., July, 1866.

XXXVII.

Successful Removal of the Uterus and both Ovaries by Abdominal Section.

Read before the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, November 14, 1865.

American Journal of the Medical Sciences, January, 1866.

XXXVIII.

The Clamp Shield; an Instrument designed to lessen certain Surgical Dangers, more particularly those of extirpation of the Uterus by Abdominal Section.

Article I. Transactions of the American Medical Association. Vol. XVII. 1866.

Article II. Read before the Berkshire District Medical Society, July 25, 1866.

New York Medical Record, October, 1866.

XXXIX.

Vesico-Vaginal Fistula, and the Operations therefor. A Review.

American Journal of the Medical Sciences, October, 1857.

XL.

The Causation, Course, and Rational Treatment of Insanity in Women.

Transactions of the American Medical Association. 1865.

XLI.

The Unfitness of Women for Medical Practitioners.

Letter of Resignation as Surgeon to the New England Hospital for Women and Children.

Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, September, 1866.

XLII.

Inebriety in Women; an Appendix to the Treatise on Methomania, or Alcoholic Poisoning, by Dr. Albert Day, now Superintendent of the New York State Asylum for Inebriates, at Binghamton. Boston: James Campbell. 1867.

XLIII.

On the Decrease of the Rate of Increase of Population now obtaining in Europe and America.

Read before the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, December 14, 1858.

American Journal of Science and Art, New Haven, March, 1867.

We are happy to be able to add that Prof. Storer has half promised to prepare for us a book upon the Causation and Rational Treatment of Insanity in Women, his report to the American Medical Association having never been reprinted from the Transactions of that body, although permission has been given him to do so. For this work it is already well known that Dr. Storer is preëminently fitted. His opportunities both for private and official observation have been unusual, and his views are scientific, reasonable, and in great measure at variance with the antiquated ones hitherto generally entertained. The subject is one of intense interest to every member of the community, and we are sure that the appearance of the book will be eagerly looked forward to by thousands, alike of men and of women, and that it will do a great deal of good.

LEE & SHEPARD.

Boston, August 1, 1867.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] As contradistinguished from especialists, of whom there are many.

PREFATORY REMARKS.

By its action in 1864, in offering a prize for the best “short and comprehensive tract for circulation among females, for the purpose of enlightening them upon the criminality and physical evils of forced abortions,” and again in 1865, in authorizing the general circulation of the successful essay, the American Medical Association initiated a system, or rather method, of general professional influence hitherto entirely unknown. The experiment was a hazardous one. There were many who viewed it with extreme anxiety, lest it should result in the destruction of “the barrier which, for the mutual protection, both of science and the community, had always been allowed to stand,” there were those who, from having given no observation whatever to the subject, were inclined to think that its importance had been overrated; and others still, who, admitting the facts, thought their discussion indelicate, unwise, or positively dangerous. The event, however, has shown the propriety of the course pursued by the Association. The demand for the little essay has been so great as to astonish even booksellers themselves. Every medical journal throughout the country, I am told, without exception, has given it a kindly notice. The secular press has everywhere praised the profession for its united effort thus to enlighten the so general ignorance upon a professional topic; and even the pulpit has, in many places, joined itself hand in hand with our own body in the good work,[2] so that the times of old, when the clergyman was to the physician an aid and a support, rather than as is now so frequently the case, an adversary and a stumbling-block, have seemed almost to be restored.

Upon carefully considering the whole subject, I am satisfied that though much has thus been accomplished by the Association towards enhancing the general weal, there is still further work to be done ere all that is necessary can be effected. In the prize essay referred to, I portrayed, and endeavored to do it with fidelity, the criminality of wilfully tampering with the life of the unborn child, and the physical injury sure, sooner or later, to result therefrom to the mother, ordinarily causing her, far sooner than would pregnancies naturally completed, to lose the bloom of her youth, and with it one of the securities of her husband’s love, predisposing her to a wide range of disease otherwise escaped, and in fact rapidly breaking her down in health and in hope, alike of things earthly and of things spiritual; for to most fœticidal women, after the climacteric, of so-called “turn of life,” has passed, there comes a realizing sense of the home they have lost through their own folly, their own sin. To stem the tide of fashion,—for it was fast becoming the way of the world to bear no children,—and to show matters in their true light by holding the mirror up to nature, was thus attempted by the Association. The nail upon which society is to hang its faith has been driven; to clinch it, and so to render its hold secure, another blow is needed. The necessity I proceed to show, and the stroke to give, only regretting that my feeble arm is not that of some one of the Association’s stronger men, and my pen tipped with the flame which should cause these words to burn their way to the very hearts of those to whom they are addressed.

It may, perhaps, be alleged that the topics of which this book must treat are such as cannot possibly be discussed without offending good taste or transcending propriety. This opinion, like many that are merely preconceived, may be found an erroneous one. It may also, perhaps, be said that the field of inquiry is one that has been given over, by tacit consent, to a class of writers who are theorists only, without previous opportunities of extended observation, or self-constituted moralists, who argue from abstract speculations rather than from the facts that nature daily furnishes to the physician in active practice. This has undoubtedly been the case. I have been astonished at the mass of material of the description referred to, that my publishers have sent me from their shelves for inspection since the manuscript of this book was placed in their hands. Essays of the most incoherent character, some of them utterly unintelligible even, have vied for circulation with others, which, under the guise of a rational physiology, or philosophy, or religion, inculcate doctrines the most pernicious alike to body, mind, and soul. It is my aim to avoid being confounded in any way whatever with this class of writers. The views that I present are those accepted as true by the physicians of our time most competent to judge, and it will be seen that they are consistent with sound common sense. The result of many years of study, under very unusual opportunities for observing disease, I have not the slightest doubt as to the verdict that will be passed upon them by the grand jury to whom they are now submitted.

I have said that the Prize Essay upon Abortions has elicited extended and very favorable comments. Among those that have been brought to my notice there have been two of a very striking and very peculiar character, both of them apparently made in the most perfectly good faith, and from the most diametrically opposite quarters. As to the personal identity of their authors, I know nothing. One of these criticisms is offered by a woman, “the wife,” she is styled, “of a Christian physician;” her plea is evidently the result of extended observation, in no way, I trust, from personal experience, though it must have been the unlocking of a warm, and brave, and sympathetic heart. Its arguments are so weighty, and they are so well put, that I copy the letter entire in an Appendix to this essay, and trust, with the editors of the journal in which it appeared, “that it may find its way, in some more popular form than their pages afforded, to the eyes of every husband in the land.”[3]

The other article to which I refer is of a later date,[4] and this is written by one of our own sex, who comments upon the preceding, or “A Woman’s View,” stating that he is upon the eve of marriage, “and though not a whit more sensual than most men, cannot be too grateful for having thus forcibly brought to his mind a view which he for one had doubtless scarce otherwise considered.” “I would to God,” he continues, “that it might meet and claim the serious consideration of every man born of woman’s agony.” The first of these articles, to again quote from the editorial remarks concerning it, “certainly expresses, with exceeding delicacy and truthfulness, the universal feeling of her sex upon a subject which deserves more attention from our profession than it has hitherto received.” The gentlemen making this assertion, Drs. Abbot and White, of the Medical School of Harvard University, are generally considered men of a conservative cast of mind, very conservative indeed for Massachusetts, and not in the least prone towards recognition of any “woman’s rights” that are at all of a doubtful character. What, however, they do refer to will probably make itself evident in the following pages. It is, indeed, the fact, that besides our appeal to women upon these matters, so pertinent to her physical and moral health, and to the well being of society, we must pillory the man, who, under the guise of affection, steals from the maid her pearl of great price; who, under the plea of a husband’s prerogative, enforced, perchance, by scriptural texts, makes of his wife, disappointed, suffering, perhaps despairing, but the constant object of his savage lust, and makes of himself what is worse than the savage, a brute;—or who, charged with the sacred duty, alike a grateful privilege, of guarding the public health, and of fathoming the mysteries both of sanitary and of social science, yet under the dread of being thought a visionary, or what so many consider as identical with this, a reformer or a philanthropist, folds his hands demurely, and closes his eyes upon what he else must see. Must these evils still endure, or ought we not all of us, whether in or out of the professional ranks, when the man is thus placed face to face with his victim, to inquire of ourselves, soberly and in all sincerity, “Is it I?”

In one of the papers referred to, that by the lady, it is stated that “if Dr. Storer will perform as noble service for our brothers and husbands as for ourselves, and send the two books out hand in hand, they will bring him back a rich harvest of gratitude and amendment in morals.” To attempt to do this is, I am well aware, a dangerous task. There are undoubtedly those who will deny its necessity, find fault with its execution, and perhaps impugn the motives of the writer. Such, however, was the case, in each of these respects, with my former essay, and as that met with so hearty and so general approval on the part of the profession, I am emboldened again to enter the arena, trusting again to disarm mistaken or unfriendly criticism. Be this as it may, I, for my own part, have become deeply impressed with the need of addressing a word to men; and believing in this as a duty, I wait not for others to decide the question for me.

Accepting the labor in this light, I do not hesitate to repeat the language of my previous essay, and state that “the writer presents the accompanying paper neither for fame nor for reward. It has been prepared solely for the good of the community. If it be considered worthy its end, their approbation and that of the profession at large would be more grateful to the writer than any tangible and therefore trivial recompense.”

Encouraged by the action of the Association, both at the sessions of 1864 and 1865, by which it showed most unmistakably its belief that researches like the present are for the advancement of science, and their publication for the welfare of the race, I intrust this book to the wheel of fate. Its manuscript has already passed through one trying ordeal with a certain measure of success. Submitted to the touchstone of the Prize Committee of the Association for the present year, it was distanced by the essays of Drs. Black of Ohio, upon the Cause of Intermittent and Remittent Fevers, and Pallen of Missouri, upon the Treatment of certain Abnormities of the Uterus, treating as these did of subjects of more direct and especial interest to the medical profession; but it elicited the following letter from the distinguished professor in the University of Maryland, who represented the committee as its chairman, and was, of course, unaware of the identity of the author, which had been carefully disguised till I wrote to reclaim the manuscript.

“Baltimore, 21st May, 1867.

“Dear Doctor:

“I have read your essay with very great interest, and hope that you will publish it. It certainly will do good. The subject, although one of great delicacy, is handled with marked ability. The whole profession ought to feel grateful to you for your efforts to check the fearful amount of crime in relation to abortions. Your essay will, I have no doubt, meet with the general approval of the Association.

“Very respectfully,

“F. Donaldson.

“Dr. H. R. Stoker, Boston.”

Such is the character and such the source of the above indorsement, which was wholly unsolicited, that I consider my object in submitting the essay to the Committee as fully gained.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] I refer more particularly to articles in the North Western Christian Advocate, by Rev. Dr. Eddy, of Chicago, and in the Congregationalist, by Rev. Dr. Todd, of Pittsfield, the latter having been republished by Messrs. Lee & Shepard of Boston, under the title of “Serpents in the Doves’ Nest.”

[3] Boston Med. and Surg. Journal, Nov. 1866, p. 274.

[4] Ibid., Jan. 1867, p. 490.

IS IT I?

A BOOK FOR EVERY MAN.

I.—It is not Good to be Alone.

As stated in the prefatory remarks, the present essay is written, and is intended for, the perusal of men. It is not impossible, however, that copies of it may fall into the hands of, or be shown to, individuals of the other sex. The subject upon which I shall speak, itself a very delicate one, is thus rendered still more difficult to treat. Inasmuch, however, as in my work upon the physical evils of forced abortions,[5] published for the edification of women, under the authority and with the sanction of the American Medical Association, I seem to have so far succeeded in the duty intrusted to me as to win the encomiums of many of the sterner sex, I make bold to strike out for myself a similar path, let me hope, to the conviction and betterment of all my readers. If in doing this, I am found roughly to hew down certain old branches of custom, and to root up summarily certain privileges and alleged rights, usurped rather than legitimately granted, it is that I may let in light where it has long been needed, that I may remove causes of offence from the road of life’s pilgrims, and widen that way, now too generally trodden in single file, even where wedlock exists, to its intended dimensions, sufficient for two to pass, side by side and hand in hand; and this work, for humanity’s sake, I shall endeavor to do without fear or favor.

To all men I speak—the young, middle aged, and the old; to the rich and to the poor; to the gentle and the unrefined; to the single, the married, and the widower; to the happy and to the miserable; to the ardent and to the cold; to the religious and to the blasphemer. The subject is one that concerns all, for it lies at the foundation of society,—sexual health and disease, the need or advantage of marriage, the need or advantage of divorce, the chance of home being such or an empty name, an earthly heaven, or a worse than purgatory,—these are topics that affect each man, however careless or unconcerned he may think himself, or may appear to be. Therefore is it that I am sure of the attention of the continent, that he may gain still greater reason for self-control; of the prurient, for the very title of my essay will serve to arrest his attention; and of the brutish man, impelled by curiosity to learn upon what grounds I shall condemn him.

Is it asked, if the disclosures that I shall make are not by their very publication subversive of good morals, and the calling attention to the true relation of the sexes suggestive to bad men of, and conducive towards, their false relations? I answer,—

First, that to ignore the existence of sin, error, misery, is in reality to encourage and to increase them. It is like walking upon thinly-crusted lava, or upon breaking ice, certain to prevent our saving others, ready indeed to ingulf even ourselves. We varnish over or seek to conceal vice, and it loses half its grossness—it becomes attractive perhaps, or fashionable; but if we strip it of its veil, any soul, not wholly smirched, will recoil with horror.

Again, all of us learn the lessons of life by experience—sad experience, indeed, it too often is. Many a man would give even his own soul could his past life be restored to him, and its follies, its sins be effaced. Too often his soul is no longer his own to give: inextricably entangled in passion’s web, wound about and about with its myriad threads, there remains but the dead and worthless semblance of himself, that can be restored by nought save the boundless grace of God. Who would not gladly escape such risk, and welcome every premonition of danger?

Still again, many, claiming to be immaculate themselves, will ask, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” And yet, living together in communities, as we do, it must be confessed that we are responsible, every one of us, and to a very great extent, for the shortcomings and evil deeds of all the rest, and it must also be confessed that there does not exist, that there probably never existed, a perfectly immaculate man, who never once has erred in the very matter we are now considering, either in deed, or in word, or in thought. Consoling indeed for those of us who humbly confess our infirmities is this very fact. Take the very basest of us, and he at times is conscious of vain regrets of his own misdeeds, and a fond desire that those whom he loves, for every man has such, may be better than he. Take the very best of us, and he sees a height beyond any he has yet attained, that he prays he may yet reach and pass.

And further: not merely are researches, such as this essay is founded upon, publications for the general weal, such as it claims to be, perfectly legitimate and advisable in themselves; they have been sanctioned by precedents that have already been established. I do not refer to the attempts of unprincipled empirics to terrify the masses by overdrawn pictures of disease, nor of holy and well-meaning men to turn them to better ways by fervent descriptions of the wrath to come. We shall take neither the fear of things present nor future as our standard in this discussion, but appeal solely to each man’s reason—and such appeals have been made before. They have been made in France by Ricord, by Lallemand, and others of the great medical philosophers of the day; by Parent-Duchatelet and by Diday. In England, there are men like Acton, who dare to sound the trumpet of alarm, bringing forward their facts from private practice, from the hospital, and from the dead-house, and drawing from these indisputable conclusions. In our own country there are men like those brave souls, now one of them at least translated to a better country, Blatchford,[6] and Hodge, and Pope, and Barton, and Lopez, and Brisbane, physicians of the very highest rank in their profession, who were not ashamed, in the question of the frequency and the ill results of criminal abortion, to take stand beside me upon the platform of our personal knowledge, and knowing they dared maintain. I will cite but one instance more. It is that of a good man now gone to his rest, and a very rock he was to the swelling tide of moral as well as physical evil—the late Professor John Ware, of Massachusetts. His little work on a portion only of the topic we are now considering,[7] has stayed many a headlong step and saved many a soul alive. The book to which I refer has, however, probably obtained but a limited circulation compared with that at which I now aim, and its author, so good himself, used only the gentle, persuasive eloquence of a tongue attuned by Nature to peaceful themes. For myself, accustomed as I have been in the practice of my profession in the especial department most bearing upon this subject, to probe humanity to its lowest depths, I shall not hesitate to speak plainly the truth as it is, to pile argument upon argument, to resort to invective if need be, ay, and to apply the lash, till every man who reads me stammers, conscience-stricken or indignant, “Is it I?” For, one of themselves, both by birth and by nature, I know my ground, and my answer shall be, “Thou hast said.”

I shall try, I have stated, while speaking cogently, to keep my language within the bounds of the strictest decorum. Treating of similar topics with Michelet and Jean Jacques Rousseau, I would fain, while discussing the sphere, the charms, and the complaints of woman, the force and the claims of the passion of love, whether pure or illicit, and the unalloyed, unredeemable evils of purely selfish gratification, escape all semblance alike of approving sensuality and of condemning a rational yielding to natural laws—which last, as I shall be found to define it, must be considered a far different thing from the lustful appetite of a satyr or the nightly phantom of the ascetic, who is such from cowardice alone. Composed as we are, in this fleshly tabernacle, of many a member, and many an adaptation of these to use, combined as one, there is the old, old combat described by St. Paul,—our instincts warring with our better selves, our will and our reason, for mastery. To govern a slave, and govern him well, one need not crucify him. To govern one’s self, it may be necessary severely to discipline, but not always to kill, the body in which we have been placed for so many useful ends. To use, as not abusing ourselves or others, is but collateral to the rule called “golden”—together they form for us the safest of creeds.

All men, old or young, seek companionship. This is necessary for their very self-possession, both in body and in mind; and the companionship which they instinctively seek, as truly and as unvaryingly as the loadstar seeks its pole, is that of the opposite sex. Where this special yearning is absent or has never existed, there is to be found, always, the effect of disappointment or of disease. The disease, if such is present, may, it is true, have been self-occasioned, but the vessel itself was either improperly built for the voyage of life or was stopped in its course by some hidden shoal: it has foundered or been wrecked, and we shall find that in by far the majority of cases this was from neglect in obtaining the necessary sailing charts or from non-adjustment of the compass.

And here let me answer in advance one question that would undoubtedly be put to me by every one of my readers, Do I believe in fairweather sailing alone? in hugging the shore, and never daring to put to sea? Do I expect that each craft should be so stanch as to defy every wave and every blast of danger? I do neither. It is not the zephyr that calls into being the sturdiness of the oak, nor the mere heat of the sun that separates from the dross its fine gold. It is the burning that causes a child to dread the fire, and the philosophy that learns these things tentatively, and not from chance, is not of necessity sheer wickedness. I am no apologist for vice. A habit of evil doing is one thing, and a slip, or even a momentary plunge into the mire, is a very different thing. The last, by its very taste of earth, may engender a longing, else unknown, for heaven. For myself I have little faith in passive goodness; that is, in us men. Those who have never been exposed to temptation, from staying quietly at home or through accident alone, are the soonest to yield if the tempter comes. Having never tested their strength, they find it but weakness. As with eagles reared in a cage, there is no power of wing. It is the fall to the ground from the eyry, and the often disappointment when too fully self-relying, that gives the force of pinion to soar to the highest ether, face to face with nought but the sun. That I may be rightly understood upon this very threshold of our inquiry, let me quote a few lines from one of the most thoughtful, most chaste, and most accepted writers of the present day, the late Rev. Mr. Robertson, of England. “The first use,” he says, “a man makes of every power and talent given to him is a bad use. The first time a man ever uses a flail, it is to the injury of his own head and of those who stand around him. The first time a child has a sharp-edged tool in his hand, he cuts his fingers. But this is no reason why he should not be ever taught to use a knife. The first use a man makes of his affections is to sensualize his spirit. Yet he cannot be ennobled except through those very affections. The first time a kingdom is put in possession of liberty, the result is anarchy. The first time a man is put in possession of intellectual knowledge, he is conscious of the approaches of sceptical feeling. But that is no proof that liberty is bad, or that instruction should not be given. It is a law of our humanity that man must know both good and evil; he must know good through evil. There never was a principle but what triumphed through much evil; no man ever progressed to greatness and goodness but through great mistakes.”[8]

These remarks apply more particularly to the young man, just becoming conscious of his newly-awakened emotions and physical powers. Should he be viewed and treated as a child, or allowed to go out from home to the dangers of the world? In acquiescing, as a general rule, in the latter course, I know that I shall shock the sensibilities and prejudices of many superficial observers. Yet Sydney Smith did not hesitate to avow a similar opinion. “Very few young men,” acknowledges the reverend gentleman, “have the power of negation in any great degree at first. Every young man must be exposed to temptation; he cannot learn the ways of men without being witness to their vices. If you attempt to preserve him from danger by keeping him out of the way of it, you render him quite unfit for any style of life in which he may be placed. The great point is, not to turn him out too soon, and to give him a pilot.” He must be taught purity.

There is no doubt that in very many children an improper tone of thought is established even before the period of puberty, unnatural as this must be allowed to be, and that oftentimes this sexual precocity is induced very directly by causes within our control. For a boy in our cities, or even our villages, to reach his teens without learning from his associates or by observation something of these matters, is simply impossible. It is for us to see to it that he does not receive the idea that they constitute the whole or the best part of life. “Remember,” says Herbert Spencer, “that the aim of your discipline should be to produce a self-governing being, not to produce a being to be governed by others. As your children are by and bye to be free men, with no one to control their daily conduct, you cannot too much accustom them to self-control while they are still under your eye. Aim, therefore, to diminish the parental government as fast as you can substitute for it in your child’s mind that self-government arising from a foresight of results. All transitions are dangerous, and the most dangerous is the transition from the restraint of the family circle to the non-restraint of the world. Hence the policy of cultivating a boy’s faculty of self-restraint by continually increasing the degree in which he is left to his self-restraint, and so bringing him, step by step, to a state of unaided self-restraint, obliterates the ordinary sudden and hazardous change from externally governed youth to internally governed maturity.”[9]

With reference to this point, who of us does not agree with the strictures of Acton upon the carelessness or prejudice which subjects a boy to unnecessary and too early temptations, sanctioning perhaps by parental advice his exposure to the wiliest and most dangerous of foes, his own unbridled imagination? Humphrey Clinker and Roderick Random are no longer to be found upon the family book-shelf. Griffith Gaunt, and the exciting issues of the modern French press, have taken their place. Lempriere, Ovid, and the other such meat for strong men, are put into the boy’s hands with an expurgated text. What lad, however, who has not been tempted to ransack his father’s library, and every other collection of books within his reach, in the hope of finding an original edition, just precisely as at a certain time of his youth, longer or shorter as this may have been, he has found himself turning to the coarsely translated and sometimes flagrant pages of the Old Testament, rather than to the chaste and ennobling language of the Gospels? “It has often surprised me,” writes Acton,[10] “that the filthy stories of the loves of the heathen mythology should have been so generally placed in the hands of lads. In such works the youth gloats over the pleasures which the heathen deities are supposed to have indulged in, while his imagination runs riot amid the most lascivious passages. The doctrine laid down in these volumes seems to be, that lust went on unchecked, that it was attended with no evil results, either physically or morally, to the individual, or to the society in which such scenes are supposed to have existed. To enable him to live as these gods of old are supposed to have done, with what companions must he not associate? He reads in them of the pleasures, nothing of the penalties, of sexual indulgence, and it is at a later period that the poor schoolboy is first to learn that sexual pleasure is not to be indulged in with impunity. He is not intuitively aware that, if the sexual desires are excited, it will require greater power of will to master them than falls to the lot of most lads; that if indulged in, the man will and must pay the penalty for the errors of the boy; that for one that escapes ten will suffer; that an awful risk attends abnormal substitutes for sexual intercourse; and that self-indulgence, long pursued, tends ultimately to early death or self-destruction.”

Thus educated, and thus vainly imagining, a large proportion of our boys pass from childhood into youth, with the preconceived idea they soon find apparently confirmed by their own sensations, that it is not good to be alone. Let Kingsley tell us what is but too often the very reasonable result. Lancelot had discovered “a new natural object, including in itself all—more than all yet found beauties and wonders—Woman. What was to be expected? Pleasant things were pleasant, there was no doubt of that, whatever else might be doubtful. He had read Byron by stealth; he had been flogged into reading Ovid and Tibullus, and commanded by his private tutor to read Martial and Juvenal for the improvement of his style. All conversation on the subject of love had been prudishly avoided, as usual, by his parents and teacher. The parts of the Bible which spoke of it had been kept out of his sight. Love had been to him, practically, ground tabooed and carnal. What was to be expected? Just what happened. If woman’s beauty had nothing holy in it, why should his fondness for it? Just what happens every day—that he had to sow his wild oats for himself, and eat the fruit thereof, and the dirt thereof also.”[11]

“Here, then,” says Acton, “is our problem: A natural instinct, a great longing, has arisen in a boy’s heart, together with the appearance of the powers requisite to gratify it. Everything, the habits of the world, the keen appetite of youth for all that is new, the example of companions, the pride of health and strength, opportunity, all combine to urge him to give the rein to what seems a natural propensity. The boy does not know that to his immature frame every sexual indulgence is unmitigated evil. He does not think that to his inexperienced mind and heart every illicit pleasure is a degradation, to be bitterly regretted hereafter; a link in a chain that does not need many to be too strong to break.”[12] The only answer to this problem is for the boy to learn to possess his soul in patience, and through example and advice, and earnest, prayerful effort, to compel his own self-control, till he attains that full and complete development of all his powers that distinguishes the man. How small the proportion of all my readers who can lay their hands upon their hearts and say, with perfect truthfulness, that up to the time of reaching their majority they had never, for the sake of selfish or illicit gratification, been guilty of any offence against purity!

With these reflections, which are not of a character to make us particularly self-confident or vainglorious, I approach the second chapter of my task.

FOOTNOTES:

[5] Why Not? A Book for Every Woman. Lee & Shepard, Boston.

[6] Dr. Thomas W. Blatchford, of Troy, N. Y., died on the 7th of January, 1866. One of the oldest and most influential members of the American Medical Association, he was beloved by all who knew him.

[7] Hints to Young Men on the True Relation of the Sexes. Boston, 1850.

[8] Discourses, &c., pp. 87, 88.

[9] Moral Education, p. 140.

[10] Functions and Disorders of the Reproductive Organs, p. 38.

[11] Yeast, p. 3.

[12] Loc. cit., p. 46.

II.—Marriage as a Sanitary Measure.

Having now shown that while it is natural for young men to be impelled towards women by an instinctive yearning, this is not unfrequently prematurely excited, I proceed briefly to call attention to its evil effects, in many instances, both upon the individual and upon society. I cannot do better, in commencing my remarks upon this subject, than to quote a few words from Dr. Ware. “Unhappily for the young, a just and elevated view of the relation of man to woman is forestalled by impressions of a totally different sort, early made and deeply rooted. Among the first lessons which boys learn of their fellows are impurities of language, and these are soon followed by impurities of thought. Foul words are in use among them before they can actually comprehend their origin, or attach to them any definite meaning.

“Most men who, when young, have been in the habit of unreserved communication with others of their own sex, will recognize the truth of this statement. Happy is he who can look back upon no such recollections; happy is he, the surface of whose mind does not bear upon it, through life, stains which were impressed thereon by the corrupt associations and the corrupt habits of youth; happy indeed is he if the evil have not eaten into the soul itself, and left behind it such marks of its corrosion as neither time nor even repentance can ever obliterate. When this is the training of boyhood, it is not strange that the predominating ideas among young men, in relation to the other sex, are too often those of impurity and sensuality. Nor is this evil confined to large cities, though it there manifests itself more distinctly in open and undisguised licentiousness, and in the illicit commerce of the sexes. It equally exists in the most secluded villages in the corruption of the thoughts and language, and in modes of indulgence, which, if less obvious and remarked, are not, therefore, the less dangerous to moral purity.

“We cannot be surprised, then, that the history of most young men is, that they yield to temptation in a greater or less degree and in different ways. With many, no doubt, the indulgence is transient, accidental, and does not become habitual. It does not get to be regarded as venial. It is never yielded to without remorse. The wish and the purpose is to resist, but the animal nature bears down the moral; still transgression is always followed by grief and repentance. With too many, however, it is to be feared, it is not so. The mind has become debauched by the dwelling of the imagination on licentious images, and by indulgence in licentious conversation. There is no wish to resist. They are not overtaken by temptation, for they seek it. With them the transgression becomes habitual, and the stain on the character is deep and lasting. The prevailing sentiment of the mind, the prevailing tendency of the will, is to sensual vices; and there are no vices which so deeply contaminate the soul of man, so degrade, so brutalize it, as these. The degree of debasement has in some men, even in some communities, reached so low as to suggest modes of indulging this appetite from which the common sensualist shrinks with horror, and which cannot be even named without loathing.”[13]

These statements must be acknowledged by every honest man to be true, and it is therefore needless to adduce probatory evidence. Viewing the matter, as I do, from a professional standpoint, it becomes necessary for me to discuss methods of preventing habits as shameful as they are injurious to physical and mental and moral health, and sorrows that are but too often irremediable. Foremost among these methods,—I shall speak of it more particularly as a sanitary measure,—will be found Marriage.

In thus summarily, perhaps even roughly, referring to the most important of all human relations, I shall, I doubt not, again shock certain sensitive minds. In these delicate matters, however, it is best to be frank and plain. At one time of his life or another, every man, selfish or generous-hearted as he may be, delicate or brutal his nature, looks forward to marriage: not as a spiritual blending of two souls in one merely, not as a self-sacrificing means of making some woman supremely happy, nor in fulfilment of a supposed duty to leave children behind him, the latter being very generally considered too old-fashioned doctrine for these days, but as the means of gratifying certain instinctive, and therefore natural, although so often condemned as carnal, bodily desires, and thereby, as many will not hesitate to acknowledge, was their own purpose in marrying, of keeping himself in the better physical health. I would not be thought to believe that such selfish motives, low ones they may very properly be called, actuate the majority of mankind. Many are governed by sordid considerations, others by platonic, and still others by very romance. Through almost every marriage, however, there runs this thread of instinct, more or less strongly marked, more or less distinctly recognized, at times indeed deliberately woven in, and according as one or the other of these conditions obtains, so is it generally that the after and relative life of the parties is decided.

Let us grant, to save time, what I have already assumed, that it is natural for man to long for woman, and thus yearning, to seek her; and that, constituted as they both are, the one reciprocally for the other, not for the world’s purposes of population alone, but for imparting to and receiving from each other the most exquisite of physical sensations, it was intended by the Creator that, like every other function, those pertaining to this most intimate acquaintance should also occasionally be allowed gratification. The question now confronts us, How is this possible? How can men lead manly lives, fulfilling all the purposes for which they were constructed and for which they were born, and yet avoid infringing upon the rights or the happiness of others?

To this question a variety of answers have been given. Of late years, many have advocated the so-called doctrine of Free-love, in accordance with which, by some alleged process of elective affinity, every positive would seek its negative, every male its female, and this whether or no each of the parties were already legally the property of some other person. Subversive as such views, if allowed, would prove of all domestic unions, and therefore of the peace of society, their interested advocates have found many proselytes. Many more still carry into constant practice what they would be ashamed, or would not dare openly to acknowledge.

The views now referred to are as repulsive to the best sense of mankind as are those by which Mormonism is supported. In the one instance, a man professes to satisfy himself with one mistress, though he may possibly be conducting amours, at the same time, secretly, with a dozen; in the other, he openly surrounds himself with concubines, much as in the Eastern seraglio, save that with the Latter Day Saints, the comparatively better education and intelligence of the women, however deficient these may practically be, render it advisable to invest the sealing with a semblance of religious authority, at once to prevent rapine by other men and quarrels among the women, however impossible this last may be to accomplish. In both cases, the Mormon and the amative socialist take to themselves a lion’s share; like some of the carnivora, who seem to kill for the mere pleasure of destruction, or who slake their thirst by a mere draught of their victim’s blood and then discard the disfigured carcass, so useless to them, these men play with their toys for a while and then throw them aside, heart-broken, dishonored. So nearly are the sexes balanced in number, nominally, that were it not for disturbances of the equipoise by emigration, the prevention of pregnancy, its criminal subversion and the like, by the time men and women have reached a suitable age they would stand very nearly one woman to one man. At birth, in almost every country, the males very slightly predominate, being usually some five or six in excess to each hundred children born living. There are greater dangers to the infant in male than in female births, the boy averaging a little the larger, and therefore its body, and more particularly its brain, being subjected to a greater and more prolonged pressure. Thus it is that more boys than girls are born dead, and that more boys than girls die during infancy and early childhood, their nervous system not having entirely recovered from the comparatively greater shock to which it had been exposed. If then but one woman actually belongs to each man in a properly balanced community, what right has he to a second or more?

To this argument will be opposed the statements, that like other male mammalia, every man is physically competent to conjugally care for an almost indefinite number of women, and that the normal proportion of the sexes is already disturbed by the large number of both who voluntarily remain single, and of both who, released from an earlier bond by divorce or death, marry for a second, a third, or even a fourth time, and by the comparatively earlier death or decrepitude, on the large scale, of females. Upon the other hand, a man’s possible uxorious ability is and should be, no gauge of what it is advisable for him to undertake or to perform. Even in wedlock it is too often the case that men liken themselves in practice to the most bestial of the lower animals, and to their wives are the most exacting and cruel of tyrants. The plea of merely yielding to the impulses of a pure affection is used but too often to sanction the vilest debauchery, for a man, if he choose, may make a brothel of his own nuptial bed. As to plural marriages, confining that term to instances where the unions are successive and legally solemnized, there is a doubt whether as many, if not more, women are not married a second time than men; and as to the comparative mortality of the sexes, it is gradually becoming the way of physicians to study invalid women more closely and more accurately than was formerly the custom, and as a very natural consequence, much oftener to cure them, so that the comparative death rates are gradually assuming a relation more favorable to women than to men, especially if we allow for the greater liability of the latter to accident and other exposure. It will be noticed that the death rate, comparative or positive, of a country is a very different thing from its birth rate, and this again from the fecundity of its population,—that is to say, the rate of its annual increase,—subjects all of them of great interest, both to professional and to non-professional men; the latter of them particularly so to us in our present inquiry, as will hereafter be seen. I may mention, in this connection, that results of two elaborate series of observations in our own country, made from different points of view, but very coincident in their conclusions, have been published by two of the members of the American Medical Association, namely, Dr. Nathan Allen, of Lowell,[14] and myself.[15] Not satisfied with bringing the subject before my own profession, I have endeavored to fix the attention of the scientific world upon the statistics that have been presented, more especially by an article upon the subject in the March number of the leading scientific journal of this country.[16]

To return. Other answers than those yet indicated have been made to the main question that I have propounded. Prostitution, even to the extent of a public and legal license, just as obtains in many of the large cities of Europe, has even in our own country its avowed and honest advocates, and by this I mean far other advocates than lewd and licentious men. An engineer may study and direct systems of sewerage, and yet neither desire, nor allow himself to attend to the details of their management. I do not mean, however, to open the very interesting and important problem here involved, although it is one to which I have given much personal attention, both abroad and at home. Suffice it merely to say, that as a safety valve to the latent brutality and vice always heaving and raging beneath the surface in great crowds of men, and to prevent, by frequent and authoritative inspection of the unfortunates, led by circumstances far oftener than by inclination to pander to the unbridled instincts of man’s lower nature, the so frequent importation of the lecher’s contagion into his household, setting its mark upon his innocent partner, if not also upon her offspring, there is much to be said in favor of the restricted license referred to.[17] Upon the other hand, what more horrid thought to man’s pure companion, or to him with reference to all others than himself! I do not here say that any restricted license like that alluded to has my own approval, although I am not sure but that of two evils it may prove the least. My question was, How can natural instincts reasonably be gratified without infringing upon the rights and happiness of others? By prostitution, even taking so plausible an exception as that of the French grisette, the woman’s happiness, certainly her highest happiness, is endangered, if not assuredly wrecked; and I here take into account, that in France, so peculiar are certain phases of society there, the public woman, after years of shameless sale of herself, often retires upon a competency, to marry and to lead a blameless life, and that in England, the common drabs from the gutter, transported to distant colonies, and sent into the bush, find themselves at a premium, marry, and have fanned into a flame the spark of virtue that may still have lurked in their bosoms. The same is true, to a more limited extent, of some of our own outlying territories and states.

That I have referred to such a topic as the above, was requisite in order that I might approach properly certain matters we have still to discuss together. When sanctioned, as it has been by the study and outspoken convictions of no less a person than Florence Nightingale, who, stainless herself, is yet said to acknowledge certain necessities in the conduct of armies and the care of camps, no further apology upon my part is required.

And such I take it is the case also with the last of the answers to which I shall at present refer, the still more terrible and destructive custom of self-indulgence, that solitary sin that has hurried so many men to the madhouse and to the grave. To this I need but allude, for hardly the person exists who does not know, from experience or from observation, its blighting effects. With the prudery which prevents the parent from cautioning his son, or the physician his patient, from this violation of every natural instinct and every physiological law, I have not the slightest patience. Enfeebling to the body, enfeebling to the mind, the incarnation of selfishness, it effaces from its victim his fondness for the other sex, unfits him for true love, and likens him in very fact to that embodied concentration of all man’s frailties, devoid of all the apparent virtues of animals still lower in the scale, the ape. And yet, it must be acknowledged, that this baleful habit, like the kindred self-indulgence, inebriety,[18] is in many instances the result not of vice, but of disease. The congestion of hæmorrhoids, the presence of ascarides in the rectum, the existence of constipation, are all of them agencies, which, by their reflex irritation, determining an abnormal excess of blood to the parts, and inducing a state of hyperæsthesia, or undue nervous excitability, may give rise to procedures which, in the same individual, at other and more healthful seasons, would cause for him but the most revolting disgust.

Such being the case, and I may consider it as frankly acknowledged by my readers to be true, we are prepared to look more calmly at Marriage as a sanitary measure, and to see whether or no it is for this reason to be resorted to or advised.

Every man knows that when the sexual passion has once been aroused and gratified, it can never afterwards be put entirely at rest, even by the hermit in his cell. It is asserted by certain writers, rather, however, upon theoretical than practical grounds, that such passion may always, with comparative ease, be conquered, by sheer force of will. To insure a peaceful life, it should undoubtedly be vanquished; but few feel at first this necessity, and fewer still have the required mental or moral strength. The confessions that are made to every physician prove this. “The incontinent man,” says Acton, “is indulging a servant, who, if he becomes a master, will be what Cicero called him, a furious taskmaster. The slave of his passions has no easy life. Nay, life itself may be in danger. Often the patient falls a victim to sexual misery. The sexual feeling has caused many a suicide; it has made many a misanthrope; many are the cells now peopled by single men, who, unable to control their feelings, have sought the monastery as an alleviation of their sufferings, and there found it in fasting, penance, and prayer.”[19]

And again. “If a man wished to undergo the acutest sexual suffering, he could adopt no more certain method than to be incontinent with the intention of becoming continent again ‘when he had sown his wild oats.’ The agony of breaking off a habit which so rapidly entwines itself with every fibre of the human frame, is such that it would not be too much to say to any young man commencing a career of vice, ‘You are going a road on which you will never turn back. You had better stop now.’”[20]

The Catholic Church has always recognized the tortures so often accompanying a single life, when, exposed to temptation, as every man occasionally is, he endeavors to preserve himself therefrom. “Our strength is like the strength of tow thrown into the fire; it is instantly burned and consumed. Would it not be a miracle if tow cast into the fire did not burn? It would also be a miracle if we exposed ourselves to the occasion and did not fall.” According to St. Bernardine of Sienna, “It is a greater miracle not to fall in the occasion of sin than to raise a dead man to life.” And thus quaintly and forcibly concludes the learned translator of Bishop Liguori, “Do not allow your daughters to be taught letters by a man, though he be a St. Paul or St. Francis of Assissium. The saints are in heaven.”[21] Moreover, it is a rule of that church that applicants for the priesthood should be fully formed and virile; for although priests are required to observe a moral eunuchism, still they must have the merit of resistance to the thorn in the flesh to obtain the palm of recompense.[22]

I do not, of course, imply, nor do I believe, that the great majority of unmarried men are habitually addicted to immoral practices, but that a very great proportion of them, in curbing their desires and keeping themselves under due subjection, undergo a frequent and severe, however unsuspected, martyrdom, is a fact that cannot be gainsaid.

In speaking, as I have done, of certain alternatives that are extensively adopted instead of marriage, namely, the resorting to houses of ill-fame and self-abuse, I have merely mentioned the fact. I have not dwelt upon the risks, and frightful risks they are, accompanying both these measures. The lurid halo surrounding the strange woman, attracting men, as it were, by its very dangers, like moths fluttering about the candle that is to prove their destruction, has been commented upon through the centuries by writers sacred and profane. It has remained, however, for modern science to prove, what had long been suspected, that the venereal lues resulting from unclean intercourse, is, in one of its forms at least, a disease at times wholly ineradicable from the system, and transmissible in all its virulence to children’s children.[23] Were physicians to reveal to the unsuspecting victims of man’s treachery or early backslidings, whom they are called upon to treat in the upper walks of life, the actual character and history of many of their diseases, there would indeed be weepings and wailings and gnashing of teeth. In the absence of supervision, medical inspection, and the license of public women, the chances are greatly in favor of the existence in those poor fallen ones of contagious disease, which, remaining latent in man’s system, or directly transplanted to his home, may wreck all his hopes of future happiness. “Nothing tends more certainly to wither the energies of youth and blast the hopes of manhood. It is not merely that the mind is polluted; the body is enervated. A thousand forms of disease may hang round the victim, embitter his existence, or destroy his hopes in life, which he never imagines to have had such an origin. But even farther than this: Providence seems to have stamped this vice with more than its ordinary token of displeasure, by rendering its votaries liable to that terrible disease from which so few of them ultimately escape. The effects of this disease, as is well known, are not always to be eradicated. They are not confined to present suffering. They may set a mark upon a man as indelible as that of Cain. They may cling to him through life, may destroy his health, undermine his constitution, hasten his death,—may even terminate in disfigurement and mutilation. Nay, they may even so taint his blood as to descend to his very offspring, and inflict upon another generation the fearful consequences of his transgression.”[24]

The dangers environing those accustomed to consort with harlots exist to almost the same degree where a single private mistress is employed. To say nothing of the expense of supporting such, usually much greater than that of honestly building a family, there must always exist the fact that the woman who permits one man to unlawfully use her will be very likely to grant similar favors to his friend or any one else who may please her fancy or offer her her price; and then comes the chance of her receiving and imparting disease.

Many men think that all such risk is avoided in the case of deliberate seduction. Such, however, is by no means always the case. The popular spread of physiological knowledge has been productive of many unforeseen results. Many women, as well as many men, imagine that by the observance of certain precautions they can do as they please with a friend without possible chance of discovery; the result of all which is, that, in many instances of intercourse with supposed virgins, the biter is sorely bitten, and repents him at his leisure. Where true seduction is effected, not only is the offender oppressed by a life-long sense of the wrong he has done, but he must also feel that the prize thus unfairly gained is liable at any moment to slip from his grasp, or to prove to him the veriest apple of Sodom.

Thus disappointed, or thus fearing, many, even of adult age, resort to what is physiologically a worse crime against nature—self-excitation. This yielded to in boyhood sometimes makes of the young man a woman pursuer, but probably more often a woman hater; while, on the other hand, it is often the last and final resort of the old and broken-down debauchee. In either event the effect upon the constitution is detrimental in the extreme. It is customary, but still a grave error, to preserve silence upon this subject. “But,” to apply to it the brave words of my friend Dr. Shrady, of New York, when discussing prostitution, “notwithstanding our prejudices of education, agitation will here, as in the kindred question of pre-natal infanticide, finally culminate in reform.”[25] If the subject is decided, as I believe will be the case, to be of the importance that is claimed by every philosophical physician who has looked into the matter, a voice will go out into every corner of the land, caught up and re-echoed by all the medical men thereof, that will cause those who care either for their souls or their bodies, to pause and tremble.

I would not exaggerate this matter—I would not indorse that empiricism in medicine which seeks to obtain gain through awakening ungrounded fears, or imply that I believe that those who have occasionally gone astray are necessarily incurably diseased, or their souls irretrievably lost. On the contrary, it is my opinion, already stated, that just as there is more joy in heaven over the repentant sinner than over those who wandered not, so those who have learned by bitter experience often make, here below, the better men. I have more than once in this essay drawn from the language of Dr. Ware, an old man, of widely-extended experience, close habits of observation, a thoughtful mind, and of abounding charity for those who had erred. There is no one among the wide circle of medical men who were on terms of personal acquaintance with this distinguished member of our profession who will not acknowledge that the following sketch is far from being overdrawn:—

“There is another form of sensuality, far more common among the young, it is to be feared, than that of which we have been speaking, and equally demanding notice—solitary indulgence. This is resorted to from different motives. With many there is no opportunity for the natural gratification of their appetites; some are deterred from such gratification by the fear of discovery, regard for character, or a dread of disease; others there are whose consciences revolt at the idea of licentious intercourse, who yet addict themselves to this practice with the idea that there is in it less of criminality. It is to be apprehended, however, that its commencement can usually be traced to a period of life when no such causes can have been in operation. It is begun from imitation, and taught by example, long before the thoughts are likely to have been exercised, with regard either to its dangers or its criminality.

“The prevalence of this vice among boys, there is great reason to believe, has very much to do with the great amount of illicit indulgence which exists among young men. The one bears the same relation to the other, in a certain sense, that moderate drinking does to intemperance. It prepares the way, it excites the appetite, it debauches the imagination. There is little doubt that it is often, if not commonly, begun at a period of life when the natural appetite does not, and should not, exist. It is solicited, prematurely developed; it is almost created. On every account, then, this practice in the young demands especial notice. It is the great corrupter of the morals of our youth, as well as a frequent destroyer of their health and constitution. Could it be arrested, the task of preventing the more open form of licentiousness would be comparatively easy; for it creates and establishes, at a very early age, a strong physical propensity, an animal want, of the most imperious nature, which, like the longing of the intemperate man, it is almost beyond human power to overcome. The brute impulse becomes a habit of nearly irresistible force before the reason is instructed as to its injurious influence on the health, or the conscience awakened as to its true character as a sin.

“The deleterious, the sometimes appalling consequences of this vice upon the health, the constitution, the mind itself, are some of the common matters of medical observation. The victims of it should know what these consequences are; for to be acquainted with the tremendous evils it entails may assist them in the work of resistance. These consequences are various in degree and in permanency according to the extent to which the indulgence is carried, and also according to the constitution of different individuals. But there is probably no extent which is not in some degree injurious.

“Among the effects of this habit, in ordinary cases, we notice an impaired nutrition of the body; a diminution of the rotundity which belongs to childhood and youth; a general lassitude and languor, with weakness of the limbs and back; indisposition and incapacity for study or labor; dulness of apprehension; a deficient power of attention; dizziness; headaches; pains in the sides, back, and limbs; affections of the eyes. In cases of extreme indulgence, these symptoms become more strongly marked, and are followed by others. The emaciation becomes excessive; the bodily powers become more completely prostrated; the memory and the whole mind partake in the ruin; and idiocy or insanity, in their most intractable forms, close the train of evils. It not unfrequently happens that, from the consequences of this vice, when carried to an extreme, not even repentance and reformation liberate the unhappy victim.

“Let no one say that we overstate the extent of this evil, or exaggerate its importance to the health and morals of the young. It is in vain that we attempt to stay the licentiousness of youth, when we leave, unchecked in their growth, those seeds of the vice which are sown in the bosom of the child. If there is impurity in the fountain, there will be impurity in the stream which flows from it. To what purpose is it that we make and execute laws against open licentiousness; that we arm ourselves with policemen and spies; that we prosecute the keepers of brothels; that we hunt the wretched prostitute from the dram shop to the cellar, from the cellar to the jail, from the jail to her grave? This does not purify society: it stops merely one external development of a corruption which still lurks, and cankers, and festers within. The licentiousness of the brothel is clear and open in its character; nobody defends it; every one is aware of its seductions and its dangers; the young man who enters the house of shame knows that he does it at the peril of reputation, and under the dread of disease. But the other form of licentiousness is secret from its very nature. It may be practised without suspicion; there is little fear of discovery or of shame. It lurks in the school, the academy, the college, the workshop, ay, even in the nursery. No age and no profession are without examples of the dreadful ruin it can accomplish. Begun in childhood, and sometimes even in infancy, it is indulged without a thought of its nature or its effects. Gradually it winds around its unhappy victim a chain which he finds it impossible to break. Continued for years, he may wake at last to a sense of his degradation, but perhaps too late; for it has often happened that neither the pressure of disease, the stings of conscience, a strong sense of religious obligation, nor even the fear of death, have been sufficient to enable the unhappy sufferer to break from the habit which inthralls him.

“None but those who go behind the scenes of life, and are permitted to enter the prison-house of the human heart, can know how many are the terrible secrets which lie hid beneath the fair and even face of society, as we see it in the common intercourse of the world. With how many are their early days a struggle for life and death between principle and passion, the spirit and the flesh! With how many are those days spent in yielding and repenting, in reluctant indulgences, followed by agonies of remorse and shame! With how many does the conscience become callous, and vice a second nature! How often has it happened that natures, really fair and pure, have gradually become tarnished and dim, and the highest hopes of youth been defeated! How often has it happened that young men of rare promise, of whose success great expectations have been entertained, have suddenly failed by the way; have seemed prematurely worn down by study, and been forced to relinquish the career on which they were entering with the brightest prospects! Little is it suspected by anxious friends, or a sympathizing public, in such cases, that it is not too exclusive devotion to study; that it is not midnight toil; that it is not errors of diet, or want of air or exercise, that have withered their energies and unnerved their frame. There may be a nearer and a more inevitable destroyer than these.

“This is a subject most painful to dwell upon; one upon which it is hard to think, to speak, or to write, without seeming to partake in some measure of its pollution. Still, attention to it is vital to any successful effort to arrest the vices of impurity. The evils which are directly inflicted upon the health, the physical development, the constitution, by these secret practices, are enough in themselves to command our interest. It sometimes happens that the habit is acquired by accident, or persons of a peculiar temperament are led to it by a spontaneous impulse. More frequently, however, it is taught by one generation to that which follows; and so general is this education of evil, that it is rare to find those who have been fortunate enough to escape wholly from its contamination. Unhappily the physical pollution is not all; for, as a matter almost of course, there are associated with it loose conversations, licentious imaginings, and low ideas of the relations of the sexes. It leads to the reading of obscene, or at least voluptuous books, gazing upon pictures of the same description, and to general licentiousness of thought and of language. It is not strange, when the mind is thus filled with such images, and taught to dwell upon and brood over them in the immature period of youth, that this part of our nature should be prematurely and unnaturally developed, and that the opportunities of more advanced years should lead to that state of morals among young men which is so notorious, and so much to be deplored.

“Is it not obvious then, where the remedy is to be applied, if indeed a remedy be possible? Is it not obvious that our success must be small indeed if we confine ourselves to means intended to check the overt indulgences of maturity in licentiousness in one generation, whilst those who are to constitute the next are left to the same fearful development of their animal passions, which must lead them on, by steps as certain as the grave, in the same career of indulgence?”[26]

Such being the case, and seeking what is for the good of men alone, without regard as yet for the interests of women, we are compelled to indorse marriage as a most important sanitary measure, alike for enabling a reasonable gratification of the sexual instinct, for the avoidance of disease, and for restraining men from alternatives alike disastrous to themselves, their descendants, and to society.

I proceed now to discuss the time in a young man’s life at which marriage becomes advisable.

FOOTNOTES:

[13] Hints to Young Men, &c., p. 36.

[14] Report of the Massachusetts Board of State Charities, 1867, p. 19.

[15] Criminal Abortion in America. Philadelphia, 1860, p. 14; North Am. Med. Chir. Review, Mar. 1859, p. 260.

[16] American Journal of Science and Art. New Haven, March, 1867, p. 141.

[17] For remarks pertinent to the above, see editorials in the New York Medical Record, February, 1867, p. 550, and in the Philadelphia Medical and Surgical Reporter, for the same month, p. 137.