Chapter 14

"Some go so far as to believe that indulgence may increase these powers, just as gymnastic exercises augment the force of the muscles. This is a popular error; and requires correction. Such patients should be told that the shock on the system each time connection is indulged in, is very powerful, and that the expenditure of seminal fluid must be particularly injurious to organs previously debilitated. It is by this and similar excesses that premature old age and complaints of the generative organs are brought on."

"The length to which married people carry excesses is perfectly astonishing."

"Since my attention has been particularly called to this class of ailments, I feel confident that many of the forms of indigestion, general ill health, hypochondriasis, etc., so often met with in adults, depend upon sexual excesses.... That this cause of illness is not more generally acknowledged and acted on, arises from the natural delicacy which medical men must feel in putting such questions to their patients as are necessary to elicit the facts."

"It is not the body alone which suffers from excesses committed in married life. Experience every day convinces me that much of the languor of mind, confusion of ideas, and inability to control the thoughts, of which some married men complain, arise from this cause."[18]

[Footnote 18: Acton.]

The debilitating effects of excessive sexual indulgence arise from two causes; viz., the loss of the seminal fluid, and the nervous excitement. With reference to the value of the spermatic fluid, Dr. Gardner remarks:--

"The sperm is the purest extract of the blood.... Nature, in creating it, has intended it not only to communicate life, but also to nourish the individual life. In fact, the re-absorption of the fecundating liquid impresses upon the entire economy new energy, and a virility which contributes to the prolongation of life."

Testimony of a French Physician.--A French author of considerable note,[19] remarks on the same subject:--

"Nothing costs the economy so much as the production of semen and its forced ejaculation. It has been calculated that an ounce of semen was equivalent to forty ounces of blood.... Semen is the essence of the whole individual. Hence, Fernel has said, 'Totus homo semen est.' It is the balm of life.... That which gives life is intended for its preservation."

[Footnote 19: Parise.]

It may be questioned, perhaps, whether physiology will sustain to the fullest extent all the statements made in the last quotation; but perhaps physiology does not appreciate so fully as does pathology the worth of the most vital of all fluids, and the fearful results which follow its useless expenditure.

Continence of Trainers.--"The moderns who are training are well aware that sexual indulgence wholly unfits them for great feats of strength, and the captain of a boat strictly forbids his crew anything of the sort just previous to a match. Some trainers have gone so far as to assure me that they can discover by a man's style of pulling whether he has committed such a breach of discipline over night, and have not scrupled to attribute the occasional loss of matches to this cause."[20]

[Footnote 20: Acton.]

A Cause of Throat Disease.--The disease known as "_clergyman's sore throat_" is believed by many eminent physicians to have its chief origin in excessive venery. It is well known that sexual abuse is a very potent cause of throat diseases. This view is supported by the following from the pen of the learned Dr. X. Bourgeois:--

"We ought not, then, to be surprised that the physiological act, requiring so great an expenditure of vitality, must be injurious in the highest degree, when it is reiterated abusively. To engender is to give a portion of one's life. Does not he who is prodigal of himself precipitate his own ruin? A peculiar character of the diseases which have their origin in venereal excesses and masturbation is chronicity."

"Individual predispositions, acquired or hereditary, engender for each a series of peculiar ills. In some, the debility bears upon the pulmonary organs. Hence results the dry cough, prolonged hoarseness, stitch in the side, spitting of blood, and finally phthisis. How many examples are there of young debauchees who have been devoured by this cruel disease!... It is, of all the grave maladies, the one which venereal abuses provoke the most frequently. Portal, Bayle, Louis, say this distinctly."

A Cause of Consumption.--This fatal disease finds a large share of its victims among those addicted to sexual excesses, either of an illicit nature or within the marriage pale, for the physical effects are essentially identical. This cause is especially active and fatal with sedentary persons, but is sufficiently powerful to undermine the constitution under the most favorable circumstances, as the following case illustrates:--

The patient was a young man of twenty-two, large, muscular, and well developed, having uncommonly broad shoulders and a full chest. His occupation had been healthful, that of a laborer. Had had cough for several months, and was spitting blood. Examination of lungs showed that they were hopelessly diseased. There was no trace of consumption in the family, and the only cause to which the disease could be attributed was excessive sexual indulgence, which he confessed to have practiced for several years.

Effects on Wives.--If husbands are great sufferers, as we have seen, wives suffer still more terribly, being of feebler constitution, and hence less able to bear the frequent shock which is suffered by the nervous system. Dr. Gardner places this evil prominent among the causes "the result of which we see deplored in the public press of the day, which warns us that the American race is fast dying out, and that its place is being filled by emigrants of different lineage, religion, political ideas, and education."

The same author remarks further on the results of this with other causes which largely grow out of it:--

"It has been a matter of common observation that the physical status of the women of Christendom has been gradually deteriorating; that their mental energies were uncertain and spasmodic; that they were prematurely care-worn, wrinkled, and enervated; that they became subject to a host of diseases scarcely ever known to the professional men of past times, but now familiar to, and the common talk of, the matrons, and often, indeed, of the youngest females in the community."

So prevalent are these maladies that Michelet says with truth that the present is the "age of womb diseases."

Every physician of observation and experience has met many cases illustrative of the serious effects of the evil named. Some years ago, when acting as assistant physician in a large dispensary in an Eastern city, a young woman applied for examination and treatment. She presented a great variety of nervous symptoms, prominent among which were those of mild hysteria and nervous exhaustion, together with impaired digestion and violent palpitation of the heart. In our inquiries respecting the cause of these difficulties, we learned that she had been married but about six months. A little careful questioning elicited the fact that sexual indulgence was invariably practiced every night, and often two or three times, occasionally as many as four times a night. We had the key to her troubles at once, and ordered entire continence for a month. From her subsequent reports I learned that her husband would not allow her to comply with the request, but that indulgence was much less frequent than before. The result was not all that could be desired, but there was marked improvement. If the husband had been willing to "do right," entire recovery would have taken place with rapidity.

Another case came under our observation in which the patient, a man, confessed to having indulged every night for twenty years. We did not wonder that at forty he was a complete physical wreck.

The Greatest Cause of Uterine Disease.--Dr. J. R. Black remarks as follows on this subject:--

"Medical writers agree that one of the most common causes of the many forms of derangement to which woman is subject consists in excessive cohabitation. The diseases known as menorrhagia, dysmenorrhoea, leucorrhoea, amenorrhoea, abortions, prolapsus, chronic inflammations and ulcerations of the womb, with a yet greater variety of sympathetic nervous disorders, are some of the distressing forms of these derangements. The popular way of accounting for many of these ills is that they come from colds or from straining lifts. But if colds and great strain upon the parts in question develop such diseases, why are they not seen among the inferior animals? The climatic alternations they endure, the severe labor some of them are obliged to perform, ought to cause their ruin; or else in popular phrase, 'make them catch their deaths from cold.'"

Legalized Murder.--A medical writer of considerable ability presents the following picture, the counterpart of which almost any one can recall as having occurred within the circle of his acquaintance; perhaps numerous cases will be recalled by one who has been especially observing:--

"A man of great vital force is united to a woman of evenly-balanced organization. The husband, in the exercise of what he is pleased to term his 'marital rights,' places his wife, in a short time, on the nervous, delicate, sickly list. In the blindness and ignorance of his animal nature, he requires prompt obedience to his desires; and, ignorant of the law of right in this direction, thinking that it is her duty to accede to his wishes, though fulfilling them with a sore and troubled heart, she allows him passively, never lovingly, to exercise daily and weekly, month in and month out, the low and beastly of his nature, and eventually, slowly but surely, to kill her. And this man, who has as surely committed murder as has the convicted assassin, lures to his net and takes unto him another wife, to repeat the same programme of legalized prostitution on his part, and sickness and premature death on her part."

Prof. Gerrish, in a little work from which we take the liberty to quote, speaks as follows on this subject:--

"One man reckless of his duty to the community, marries young, with means and prospects inadequate to support the family which is so sure to come ere long. His ostensible excuse is love; his real reason the gratification of his carnal instincts. Another man, in exactly similar circumstances, but too conscientious to assume responsibilities which he cannot carry, and in which failure must compromise the comfort and tax the purses of people from whom he has no right to extort luxuries, forbears to marry; but, feeling the passions of his sex, and being imbued with the prevalent errors on such matters, resorts for relief to unlawful coition. At the wedding of the former, pious friends assemble with their presents and congratulations, and bid the legalized prostitution Godspeed. Love shields the crime, all the more easily because so many of the rejoicing guests have sinned in precisely the same way. The other man has no festival gathering.... Society applauds the first and frowns on the second; but, to my mind, the difference between them is not markedly in favor of the former."

"We hear a good deal said about certain crimes against nature, such as pederasty and sodomy, and they meet with the indignant condemnation of all right-minded persons. The statutes are especially severe on offenders of this class, the penalty being imprisonment between one and ten years, whereas fornication is punished by imprisonment for not more than sixty days and a fine of less than one hundred dollars. But the query very pertinently arises just here as to whether the use of the condom and defertilizing injections is not equally a crime against nature, and quite as worthy of our detestation and contempt. And, further, when we consider the brute creation, and see that they, guided by instinct, copulate only when the female is in proper physiological condition and yields a willing consent, it may be suggested that congress between men and women may, in certain circumstances, be a crime against nature, and one far worse in its results than any other. Is it probable that a child born of a connection to which the woman objects will possess that felicitous organization which every parent should earnestly desire and endeavor to bestow on his offspring? Can the unwelcome fruit of a rape be considered, what every child has a right to be, a pledge of affection? Poor little Pip, in 'Great Expectations,' spoke as the representative of a numerous class when he said, 'I was always treated as if I had insisted on being born, in opposition to the dictates of reason, religion and morality, and against the dissuading arguments of my best friends.' We enjoin the young to honor father and mother, never thinking how undeserving of respect are those whose children suffer from inherited ills, the result of the selfishness and carelessness of their parents in begetting them.

"These accidental pregnancies are the great immediate cause of the enormously common crime of abortion, concerning which the morals of the people are amazingly blunted. The extent of the practice may be roughly estimated by the number of standing advertisements in the family newspapers, in which feticide is warranted safe and secret. It is not the poor only who take advantage of such nefarious opportunities; but the rich shamelessly patronize these professional and cowardly murderers of defenseless infancy. Madame Restell, who recently died by her own hand in New York, left a fortune of a million dollars, which she had accumulated by producing abortions."

A husband who has not sunk in his carnality too far below the brute creation will certainly pause a moment, in the face of such terrible facts, before he continues his sensual, selfish, murderous course.

Indulgence during Menstruation.--The following remarks which our own professional experience has several times confirmed, reveal a still more heinous violation of nature's laws:--

"To many it may seem that it is unnecessary to caution against contracting relationships at the period of the monthly flow, thinking that the instinctive laws of cleanliness and delicacy were sufficient to refrain the indulgence of the appetites; but they are little cognizant of the true condition of things in this world. Often have I had husbands inform me that they had not missed having sexual relations with their wives once or more times a day for several years; and scores of women with delicate frames and broken-down health have revealed to me similar facts, and I have been compelled to make personal appeals to the husbands."[21]

[Footnote 21: Gardner.]

The following is an important testimony by an eminent physician[22] upon the same point:--

"Females whose health is in a weak state ... become liable, in transgressing this law, to an infectious disorder, which, it is commonly supposed, can only originate or prevail among disreputable characters; but Dr. Bumstead and a number of other eminent authorities believe and teach that gonorrhoea may originate among women entirely virtuous in the ordinary sense of the term. That excessive venery is the chief cause that originates this peculiar form of inflammation, has long been the settled opinion of medical men."

[Footnote 22: Dr. J. R. Black.]

It seems scarcely possible that such enormity could be committed by any human being, at least by civilized men, and in the face of the injunctions of Moses to the Jews, to say nothing of the evident indecency of the act. The Jews still maintain their integrity to the observance of this command of their ancient lawgiver.

"Reason and experience both show that sexual relations at the menstrual period are very dangerous to both man and woman, and perhaps also for the offspring, should there chance to be conception."[23]

[Footnote 23: Mayer.]

The woman suffers from the congestion and nervous excitement which occur at the most inopportune moment possible. Man may suffer physical injury, though there are no grounds for the assertions of Pliny that the menstrual blood is so potent for evil that it will, by a mere touch, rust iron, render a tree sterile, make dogs mad, etc., or that of Paracelsus that "of it the devil makes spiders, fleas, caterpillars, and all the other insects that people the air."

Effects upon Offspring.--That those guilty of the transgression should suffer, seems only just; but that an innocent being who had no part in the sin--no voice in the time or manner of its advent into the world--that such a one should suffer equally, if not more bitterly, with the transgressors themselves, seems anything but just. But such is nature's inexorable law, that the iniquities of the parents shall be visited upon the children; and this fact should be a most powerful influence to prevent parental transgression, especially in this direction, in which the dire consequences fall so heavily and so immediately upon an innocent being.

Says Acton, "The ill effects of marital excesses are not confined to offending parties. No doubt can exist that many of the obscure cases of sickly children, born of apparently healthy parents, arise from this cause; and this is borne out by investigations amongst animals."

Breeders of stock who wish to secure sound progeny will not allow the most robust stallion to associate with mares as many times during the whole season as some of these salacious human males perform a similar act within a month. One reason why the offspring suffer is that the seminal fluid deteriorates very rapidly by repeated indulgence. The spermatozoa do not have time to become maturely developed. Progeny resulting from such immature elements will possess the same deficiency. Hence the hosts of deformed, scrofulous, weazen, and idiotic children which curse the race, and testify to the sensuality of their progenitors. Another reason is the physical and nervous exhaustion which the parents bring upon themselves, and which totally unfits them to beget sound, healthy offspring.

The effects of this evil may often be traced in a large family of children, nearly all of whom show traces of the excesses of their parents. It commonly happens, too, that such large families are on the hands of poor men who cannot earn enough to give them sufficient food and comfortable clothing, with nothing whatever to provide for their education. The overburdened mother has her strength totally exhausted by the excessive demands upon her system incident to child-bearing, so that she is unable to give her children that culture and training which all children need. More than as likely as not she feels that they were forced upon her, and hence she cannot hold for them all that tender sympathy and affection a mother should feel. The little ones grow up ignorant and often vicious; for want of home care drives them to the street. Thus does one evil create another.

It is certainly a question which deserves some attention, whether it is not a sin for parents to bring into the world more children than they can properly care for. If they can rear and educate three children properly, the same work would be only half done for six; and there are already in the world a sufficiency of half-raised people. From this class of society the ranks of thieves, drunkards, beggars, vagabonds, and prostitutes, are recruited. Why should it be considered an improper or immoral thing to limit the number of children according to the circumstances of the parents? Ought it not to be considered a crime against childhood and against the race to do otherwise? It is seriously maintained by a number of distinguished persons that man "is in duty bound to limit the number of his children as well as the sheep on his farm; the number of each to be according to the adequacy of his means for their support."

Indulgence during Pregnancy.--Transgressions of this sort are followed by the worst results of any form of marital excess. The mother suffers doubly, because laden with the burden of supporting two lives instead of one. But the results upon the child are especially disastrous. During the time when it is receiving its stock of vitality, while its plastic form is being molded, and its various organs acquiring that integrity of structure which makes up what is called constitutional vigor,--during this most critical of all periods in the life of the new being, its resources are exhausted and its structure depraved--and thus constitutional tendencies to disease produced--by the unnatural demands made upon the mother.

Effect upon the Character.--Still another terrible consequence results from this practice so contrary to nature. The delicate brain, which is being molded, with the other organs of the body, receives its cast largely from those mental and nervous sensations and actions of the mother which are the most intense. One of the most certain effects of sexual indulgence at this time is to develop abnormally the sexual instinct in the child. Here is the key to the origin of much of the sexual precocity and depravity which curse humanity. Sensuality is born in the souls of a large share of the rising generation. What wonder that prostitution flourishes in spite of Christianity and civil law?

It is scarcely necessary to say that all medical testimony concurs in forbidding indulgence during gestation. The same reasons require its interdiction during the nursing period. The fact that fecundation would be impossible during pregnancy, and that during this period the female, normally, has no sexual desire, are other powerful arguments in favor of perfect continence at this time.

We quote the following from a work on health by Dr. J. R. Black:--

"Coition during pregnancy is one of the ways in which the predisposition is laid for that terrible disease in children, epilepsy. The unnatural excitement of the nervous system in the mother by such a cause cannot operate otherwise than by inflicting injury upon the tender germ in her womb. This germ, it must be remembered, derives every quality it possesses from the parents, as well as every particle of matter of which it is composed. The old notion of anything like spontaneity in the development of the qualities of a new being is at variance with all the latest facts and inductions concerning reproduction. And so is that of a creative fiat. The smallest organic cell, as well as the most complicated organism, in form and quality, is wholly dependent upon the laws of derivation.

"These laws are competent to explain, however subtle the ultimate process may be, the great diversities of human organization and character. Impressions from without, the emotions, conduct, and play of the organic processes within, are never alike from day to day, or from hour to hour; and it is from the aggregate of these in the parents, but especially of those in the mother immediately before and after conception, that the quality of the offspring is determined. Suppose, then, that there is every now and then an unnatural, excited, and exhausted state of the nervous system produced in the mother by excessive cohabitation, is it any wonder that the child's nervous system, which derives its qualities from those of its parents, should take its peculiar stamp from that of the parent in whom it lives, moves, and has its being?

"In the adult, epilepsy is frequently developed by excessive venery; and the child born with such a predisposition will be exceedingly liable to the disease during its early years when the nervous system is notoriously prone to deranged action from very slight disturbing causes.