Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners Part 34

7. CONCEPTION IN THE FIRST HALF of the time between the menstrual periods produces females, and males is the latter.--_London Lancet._

8. INTERCOURSE in from two to six days after cessation of the menses produces girls, in from nine to twelve, boys.--_Medical Reporter._

9. THE MOST MALE POWER and pa.s.sion creates boys; female girls. This law probably causes those agricultural facts just cited thus: Conception right after menstruation give girls, because the female is then the most impa.s.sioned; later, boys, because her wanting s.e.xual warmth leaves him the most vigorous. Mere s.e.xual excitement, a wild, fierce, furious rush of pa.s.sion, is not only not s.e.xual vigor, but in its inverse ratio; and a genuine insane fervor caused by weakness; just as a like nervous excitability indicates weak nerves instead of strong. s.e.xual power is deliberate, not wild; cool, not impetuous; while all false excitement diminishes effectiveness.--_Fowler._

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ABORTION OR MISCARRIAGE.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HEALTHY CHILDREN.]

1. ABORTION OR MISCARRIAGE is the expulsion of the child from the womb previous to six months; after that it is called premature birth.

2. CAUSES.--It may be due to a criminal act of taking medicine for the express purpose of producing miscarriage or it may be caused by certain medicines, severe sickness or nervousness, syphilis, imperfect s.e.m.e.n, lack of room in the pelvis and abdomen, lifting, straining, violent cold, sudden mental excitement, excessive s.e.xual intercourse, dancing, tight lacing, the use of strong purgative medicines, bodily fatigue, late suppers, and fas.h.i.+onable amus.e.m.e.nts.

3. SYMPTOMS.--A falling or weakness and uneasiness in the region of the loins, thighs and womb, pain in the small {254} of the back, vomiting and sickness of the stomach, chilliness with a discharge of blood accompanied with pain in the lower portions of the abdomen. These may take place in a single hour, or it may continue for several days. If before the fourth month, there is not so much danger, but the flow of blood is generally greater. If miscarriage is the result of an accident, it generally takes place without much warning, and the service of a physician should at once be secured.

4. HOME TREATMENT.--A simple application of cold water externally applied will produce relief, or cold cloths of ice, if convenient, applied to the lower portions of the abdomen. Perfect quiet, however, is the most essential thing for the patient. She should lie on her back and take internally a teaspoonful of paregoric every two hours; drink freely of lemonade or other cooling drinks, and for nourishment subsist chiefly on chicken broth, toast, water gruel, fresh fruits, etc. The princ.i.p.al homeopathic remedies for this disease are ergot and cimicifuga, given in drop-doses of the tinctures.

5. INJURIOUS EFFECTS.--Miscarriage is a very serious difficulty, and the health and the const.i.tution may be permanently impaired. Any one p.r.o.ne to miscarriage should adopt every measure possible to strengthen and build up the system; avoid going up stairs or doing much heavy lifting or hard work.

6. PREVENTION.--Practice the laws of s.e.xual abstinence, take frequent sitz-baths, live on oatmeal, graham bread, and other nouris.h.i.+ng diet. Avoid highly seasoned food, rich gravies, late suppers and the like.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

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The Murder of the Innocents.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AN INDIAN FAMILY. The Savage Indian Teaches Us Lessons of Civilization.]

1. MANY CAUSES.--Many causes have operated to produce a corruption of the public morals so deplorable; prominent among which may be mentioned the facility with which divorces may be obtained in some of the States, the constant promulgation of false ideas of marriage and its duties by means of books, lectures, etc., and the distribution through the mails of impure publications. But an influence not less powerful than any of these is the growing devotion of fas.h.i.+on and luxury of this age, and the idea which practically obtains to so great an extent that pleasure, instead of the health or morals, is the great object of life.

2. A MONSTROUS CRIME.--The abiding interest we feel in the preservation of the morals of our country, constrains us to raise our voice against the daily increasing practice of {256} infanticide, especially before birth.

The notoriety this monstrous crime has obtained of late, and the hecatombs of infants that are annually sacrificed to Moloch, to gratify an unlawful pa.s.sion, are a sufficient justification for our alluding to a painful and delicate subject, which should "not even be named," only to correct and admonish the wrong-doers.

3. LOCALITIES IN WHICH IT IS MOST PREVALENT.--We may observe that the crying sin of infanticide is most prevalent in those localities where the system of moral education has been longest neglected. This inhuman crime might be compared to the murder of the innocents, except that the criminals, in this case, exceed in enormity the cruelty of Herod.

4. SHEDDING INNOCENT BLOOD.--If it is a sin to take away the life even of an enemy; if the crime of shedding innocent blood cries to heaven for vengeance; in what language can we characterize the double guilt of those whose souls are stained with the innocent blood of their own unborn, unregenerated offspring?

5. THE GREATNESS OF THE CRIME.--The murder of an infant before its birth, is, in the sight of G.o.d and the law, as great a crime as the killing of a child after birth.

6. LEGAL RESPONSIBILITY.--Every State of the Union has made this offense one of the most serious crimes. The law has no mercy for the offenders that violate the sacred law of human life. It is murder of the most cowardly character and woe to him who brings this curse upon his head, to haunt him all the days of his or her life, and to curse him at the day of his death.

7. THE PRODUCT OF l.u.s.t.--l.u.s.t pure and simple. The only difference between a marriage of this character and prost.i.tution is, that society, rotten to its heart, pulpits afraid to cry aloud against crime and vice, and the church conformed to the world, have made such a profanation of marriage respectable. To put it in other words, when two people determine to live together as husband and wife, and evade the consequences and responsibilities of marriage, they are simply engaged in prost.i.tution without the infamy which attaches to that vice and crime.

8. OUTRAGEOUS VIOLATION OF ALL LAW.--The violation of all law, both natural and revealed, is the cool and villainous contract by which people entering into the marital relation engage in defiance of the laws of G.o.d and the laws of the commonwealth, that they shall be uninc.u.mbered with a family of children. "Disguise the matter as you will," says Dr. Pomeroy, "yet the fact remains that the first and {257} specific object of marriage is the rearing of a family." "Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth,"

is G.o.d's first word to Adam after his creation.

9. THE NATIONAL SIN.--The prevention of offspring is preeminently the sin of America. It is fast becoming the national sin of America, and if it is not checked, it will sooner or later be an irremediable calamity. The sin has its roots in a low and perverted idea of marriage, and is fostered by false standards of modesty.

10. THE SIN OF HEROD.--Do these same white-walled sepulchres of h.e.l.l know that they are committing the d.a.m.ning sin of Herod in the slaughter of the innocents, and are accessories before the fact to the crime of murder? Do women in all circles of society, when practicing these terrible crimes realize the real danger? Do they understand that it is undermining their health, and their const.i.tution, and that their destiny, if persisted in, is a premature grave just as sure as the sun rises in the heavens? Let all beware, and let the first and only purpose be, to live a life guiltless before G.o.d and man.

11. THE CRIME OF ABORTION.--From the moment of conception a new life commences; a new individual exists; another child is added to the family.

The mother who deliberately sets about to destroy this life, either by want of care, or by taking drugs, or using instruments, commits as great a crime, and is just as guilty as if she strangled her new-born infant or as if she s.n.a.t.c.hed from her own breast her six months' darling and dashed out its brains against the wall. Its blood is upon her head, and as sure as there is a G.o.d and a judgment, that blood will be required of her. The crime she commits is murder, child murder--the slaughter of a speechless, helpless being, whom it is her duty, beyond all things else, to cherish and preserve.

12. DANGEROUS DISEASES.--We appeal to all such with earnest and with threatening words. If they have no feeling for the fruit of their womb, if maternal sentiment is so callous in their b.r.e.a.s.t.s, let them know that such produced abortions are the constant cause of violent and dangerous womb diseases, and frequently of early death; that they bring on mental weakness, and often insanity; that they are the most certain means to destroy domestic happiness which can be adopted. Better, far better, to bear a child every year for twenty years than to resort to such a wicked and injurious step; better to die, if need be, in the pangs of child-birth, than to live with such a weight of sin on the conscience.

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The Unwelcome Child.[2]

1. TOO OFTEN THE HUSBAND thinks only of his personal gratification; he insists upon what he calls his rights (?); forces on his wife an _unwelcome child_, and thereby often alienates her affections, if he does not drive her to abortion.

Dr Stockham reports the following case: "A woman once consulted me who was the mother of five children, all born within ten years. These were puny, scrofulous, nervous and irritable. She herself was a fit subject for doctors and drugs. Every organ in her body seemed diseased, and every function perverted. She was dragging out a miserable existence. Like other physicians, I had prescribed in vain for her many maladies. One day she chanced to inquire how she could safely prevent conception. This led me to ask how great was the danger. She said: 'Unless my husband is absent from home, few nights have been exempt since we were married, except it may be three or four immediately after confinement.'

"'And yet your husband loves you?'

"'O, yes, he is kind and provides for his family. Perhaps I might love him but for this. While now--(will G.o.d forgive me?)--_I detest, I loathe him_, and if I knew how to support myself and children, I would leave him.'

"'Can you talk with him upon this subject?'

"'I think I can.'

"' Then there is hope, for many women cannot do that. Tell him I will give you treatment to improve your health, and if he will wait until you can respond, _take time for the act, have it entirely mutual from first to last_, the demand will not come so frequent.'

"'Do you think so?'

"'The experience of many proves the truth of this statement.'

"Hopefully she went home, and in six months I had the satisfaction of knowing my patient was restored to health, and a single coition in a month gave the husband more satisfaction than the many had done previously, that the creative power was under control, and that my lady could proudly say 'I love,' where previously she said 'I hate.'

"If husbands will listen, a few simple instructions will {259} appeal to their _common sense_, and none can imagine the gain to themselves, to their wives and children, and their children's children. Then it may not be said of the babes that the 'Death borders on their birth, and their cradle stands in the grave.'"

2. WIVES! BE FRANK AND TRUE to your husbands on the subject of maternity, and the relation that leads to it. Interchange thoughts and feelings with them as to what nature allows or demands in regard to these. Can maternity be natural when it is undesigned by the father or undesired by the mother?

Can a maternity be natural, healthful, enn.o.bling to the mother, to the child, to the father, and to the home, when no loving, tender, anxious forethought presides over the relation in which it originated?--when the mother's nature loathed and repelled it, and the father's only thought was his own selfish gratification; the feelings and conditions of the mother, and the health, character and destiny of the child that may result being ignored by him. Wives! let there be a perfect and loving understanding between you and your husbands on these matters, and great will be your reward.

3. A WOMAN WRITES:--"There are few, very few, wives and mothers who could not reveal a sad, dark picture in their own experience in their relations to their husbands and their children. Maternity, and the relation in which it originates, are thrust upon them by their husbands, often without regard to their spiritual or physical conditions, and often in contempt of their earnest and urgent entreaties. No joy comes to their heart at the conception and birth of their children, except that which arises from the consciousness that they have survived the sufferings wantonly and selfishly inflicted upon them."

4. HUSBAND, WHEN MATERNITY is imposed on your wife without her consent, and contrary to her appeal, how will her mind necessarily be affected towards her child? It was conceived in dread and in bitterness of spirit. Every stage of its foetal development is watched with feeling of settled repugnance. In every step of its ante-natal progress the child meets only with grief and indignation in the mother. She would crush out its life, if she could. She loathed its conception; she loathed it in every stage of its ante-natal development. Instead of fixing her mind on devising ways and means for the healthful and happy organization and {260} development of her child before it is born, and for its postnatal comfort and support, her soul may be intent on its destruction, and her thoughts devise plans to kill it. In this, how often is she aided by others! There are those, and they are called men and women, whose profession is to devise ways to kill children before they are born. Those who do this would not hesitate (but for the consequences) to kill them after they are born, for the state of mind that would justify and instigate _ante-natal_ child-murder would justify and instigate _post-natal_ child-murder. Yet, public sentiment consigns the murderer of post-natal children to the dungeon or the gallows, while the murderers of ante-natal children are often allowed to pa.s.s in society as honest and honorable men and women.

5. THE FOLLOWING IS AN EXTRACT from a letter written by one who has proudly and n.o.bly filled the station of a wife and mother, and whose children and grandchildren surround her and crown her life with tenderest love and respect: