We have seen from the preceding pages, that in addition to what may be termed diseases ordinarily attendant upon a state of pregnancy, there are others in which to become pregnant is to hazard the health, and often the life of the woman, involving a peremptory necessity either for instrumental or Cæsarean operation, premature delivery or miscarriage. Apart from its agonizing torture, the danger of the Cæsarean operation is imminent to a frightful extent. Premature delivery is often attended with success, but the offspring being prematurely born, if they survive, rarely attain maturity, and even then mostly during their short existence very sickly. Miscarriage, although attended with but little danger when skilfully effected and properly conducted, can only be considered as an alternative; only a choice of evils. But thanks to the indefatigable researches of the learned and humane M.M. Desomeaux for his great discovery by which pregnancy can be prevented. By this discovery every woman can have in her own power the means of prevention.
The imperative, and self-evident necessity that, in some cases, pregnancy should not take place, cannot, for a moment, be doubted, in view that it is within the knowledge of every medical man, who makes his profession subserve the amelioration of the suffering to which the female is subject—knowledge, too, acquired within the sphere of his daily practice—that there are women who should not become pregnant, for with them pregnancy is peril to life. And even when life is spared, the birth of every child snatches many years from the life of the mother, hurrying her, with a constitution shattered, and health destroyed, to a premature grave.
Some women are so constituted that they cannot give birth, not to say to healthy, but not to living children. Others again cannot give birth at all, except through the instrumental mangling and cutting of the Cæsarean operation—of a piece-meal extraction of the infant from the mother’s womb—happy, indeed, if the woman’s life fall not a sacrifice to the butchery. Truly, such spectacles are too horrid to contemplate. And yet such women are permitted to become pregnant, in total ignorance that pregnancy ought and can be prevented, by safe, simple, invariably healthy, and infallibly certain means.
Some women, again, although not in immediate danger from becoming too frequently pregnant, yet during seven or eight of the nine months of pregnancy, experience the utmost agony of mind and body, making existence a continuous state of misery and suffering, destructive alike of their health, beauty, vigor, and spirits; who, after confinement and recovery, live in constant and perpetual fear and dread of again becoming pregnant, again to undergo the series of intense sufferings from which they have but just emerged. Life, under such circumstances, to the fond and affectionate wife, is but a constant suffering. Can it be otherwise to the kind husband? Can he behold the partner of his joys and sorrows—his bosom companion—the mother of his children—his solace in sickness or difficulty, thus dragging out her days of wretchedness and anguish, emaciated, disheartened, broken in body and spirits; and that, too, in the meridian of her life, in the hey-day of her existence, perceptibly sinking into an early grave, to leave her offspring motherless, or entrust them to the cold and sordid care of the world! Can a husband, possessing the feelings of a man, behold this with indifference; nay, will he not shudder at the possibility of such consequences arising from too frequent pregnancy! Will he not pause and reflect ere he becomes the cause from which such dreadful effects would flow? Surely, if he is a thinking, reflecting, rational, humane man, he must reflect—he must pause, and permit the adoption of the mode pointed out in these pages, by which pregnancy can be prevented, and that, too, without the least sacrifice of those pleasurable sensations experienced in the connubial embrace.
The happiness as well of husband, of wife, and children, will be enhanced by the preservation of her health, by lengthening the intervals between the periods of pregnancy, making the interval between the births three, four, or more years (as in France), depending upon the health of the wife. Thereby it will, under ordinary circumstances, be preserved to rear, guard, and educate her children,—to soothe and comfort the declining years of the father when age and decrepitude are upon him. When, perchance, his own sufferings can be assuaged by only her hand, who alone knows and anticipates his every wish—whose affectionate attention, having accompanied him through the rugged path of life, alone knows how to impart content and happiness.
Surely, then, circumstances do arise where it is folly, madness, wickedness, to permit pregnancy to take place.
Where, for example, the health of the wife evidently sinks under a too frequent state of pregnancy or a too rapid increase of family; or the births taking place in too close succession.
Where the female cannot be in a state of pregnancy without the most intense and excruciating suffering during such period, endangering her own future health, and perhaps that of her offspring.
Where an incapacity exists to give birth to living children, either in consequence of malformation of the pelvis, or other deformity; and where, from the same, or other causes, recourse is necessarily had to the Cæsarean operation. All which causes have either the health or the life of the female in view.
But there are still other reasons scarcely less urgent why pregnancy should be sometimes prevented, which have the welfare of the offspring in view.
It is but too lamentable a fact that the sins or misfortunes of the parent are visited upon their offspring. It is indisputable that diseases which carry off their thousands, are, many of them, hereditary,—transmissible from parent to child. Such as confirmed consumption, King’s Evil, or Scrofula, Gout, Venereal Disease, Hypochondria, Insanity, and other diseases, and even drunkenness.
In view, then, of the transmission of disease and suffering to our offspring, should they even survive a brief existence, every reflecting being should hesitate whether it were not better to prevent pregnancy than to thrust human beings into the world, and blighting their brief existence with entailed disease and wretchedness—for such offspring are seldom reared to maturity. This fact accounts for the great mortality of children, especially in cities. Those, however, that do pass through a sickly childhood, becoming necessarily endeared to their parents, are cut off in their early years—sometimes in the bloom of youth—blasting the fond hopes just springing into existence in the breasts of their parents. Thus, in some families, five or six, one after another, are apparently prematurely cut off.
The causes, doubtless, to a superficial observer, looking only upon effects, appear inexplicable: not so to those who look beyond mere effects. To such the present is but the child of the past, and the parent of the future.
In discussing, therefore, the propriety, the morality, nay, the inevitable necessity, in some cases, of preventing pregnancy, it has an important bearing.
In presenting these considerations, however, we must bear in mind that they are not applicable where the female is capable of enduring the ordinary inconveniences arising from a state of pregnancy, or where her health is not thereby injuriously affected, because the reasons for prevention do not, in such case, exist. Indeed, it is not unusual, that the health of the female, so far from being injured, is often improved, in consequence of the existence of pregnancy, and others, again, who enjoy perfect health without reference to their condition in this respect.
And, again, it is unquestionable that children are often a source of domestic happiness—the binding link—the pledge of affection and love—the delight and joy of parents, upon whose growth and development they look with pride mingled with fond anticipations of the future. The paths of life are made less rugged, the charms of home more pleasant, toil itself becomes less irksome by their influence.
When, therefore, neither the life nor health of the mother is jeopardized, and the offspring free from hereditary or constitutional taint, it is, of course, unnecessary that preventive measures should be used. Neither is it, under such circumstances, recommended.
In regard, however, to the prevention of pregnancy, there are still other views, taking still other grounds, treating the subject in a moral and social point of view, which, although not strictly belonging to its consideration in a medical and physiological character, are yet of sufficient interest to be embraced in this work.
The following remarks are from a celebrated physiological writer, and are certainly worthy of consideration, whether we coincide with the author or not. He thus eloquently introduces the subject:
“Libertines and debauchees! these pages are not for you. You have nothing to do with the subject of which they treat. Bringing to its discussion, as you do, a distrust or contempt of the human race—accustomed as you are to confound liberty with license, and pleasure with debauchery, it is not for your palled feelings and brutalized senses to distinguish moral truth in its purity and simplicity. I never discuss this subject with such as you.
“It has been remarked, that nothing is so suspicious in a woman, as vehement pretensions to especial chastity; it is no less true, that the most obtrusive and sensitive stickler for the etiquette of orthodox morality is the heartless rake. The little intercourse I have had with men of your stamp, warns me to avoid the serious discussion of any species of moral heresy with you. You approach the subject in a tone and spirit revolting alike to good taste and good feeling. You seem to pre-suppose—from your own experience, perhaps—that the hearts of all men and more especially of all women, are deceitful above all things and desperately wicked; that violence and vice are inherent in human nature, and that nothing but laws and ceremonies prevent the world from becoming a vast slaughter-house, or an universal brothel. You judge your own sex and the other by the specimens you have met with in wretched haunts of mercenary profligacy; and, with such a standard in your minds, I marvel not that you remain incorrigible unbelievers in any virtue, but that which is forced on the prudish hot-bed of ceremonious orthodoxy. I wonder not that you will not trust the natural soil, watered from the free skies and warmed by the life-bringing sun. How should you? you have never seen it produce but weeds and poisons. Libertines and debauchees! cast these pages aside! You will find in them nothing to gratify a licentious curiosity; and, if you read them, you will probably only give me credit for motives and impulses like your own.
“And you, prudes and hypocrites! you who strain at a gnat and swallow a camel; you whom Jesus likened to whited sepulchres, which without indeed are beautiful, but within are full of all uncleanness; you who affect to blush if the ankle is incidentally mentioned in conversation, or displayed in crossing a stile, but will read indecencies enough, without scruple, in your closets; you who, at dinner, ask to be helped to the bosom of a duck, lest by mention of the word breast, you call up improper associations; you who have nothing but a head and feet and fingers; you who look demure by daylight, and make appointments only in the dark—you, prudes and hypocrites! I do not address. Even if honest in your prudery, your ideas of right and wrong are too artificial and confused to profit by the present discussion; if dishonest, I desire to have no communication with you.
“Reader! if you belong to the class of prudes or of libertines, I pray you, follow my argument no further. Stop here, and believe that my heresies will not suit you. As a prude, you would find them too honest; as a libertine, too temperate. In the former case, you might call me a very shocking person; in the latter, a quiz or a bore.
“But if you be honest, upright, pure-minded—if you be unconscious of unworthy motive or selfish passion—if truth be your ambition, and the welfare of our race your object—then approach with me a subject the most important to man’s well-being; and approach it as I do, in a spirit of dispassionate, disinterested free inquiry. Approach it, resolving to prove all things, and hold fast that which is good. The discussion is one to which it is every man’s and every woman’s duty (and ought to be every one’s business) to attend. The welfare of the present generation, and—yet far more—of the next, requires it. Common sense sanctions it. And the national motto of my former country, ‘Honi soit qui mal y pense,’[28] may explain the spirit in which it is undertaken, and in which it ought to be received.”