George Washington Flowers 
 Memorial Collection 
 
 DUKE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 
 i ! A HUSHED BY THE 
 
 FAMILY OF 
 
 COLONEL FLOWERS 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2011 with funding from 
 Duke University Libraries 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/physiologyofmarrOOalco 
 
PHYSIOLOGY 
 
 MARRIAGE. 
 
 BY AN OLD PHYSICIAN. 
 
 FIFTEENTH THOUSAND. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 PUBLISHED BY JOHN P. JEWETT & CO. 
 
 CLEVELAND, OHIO: JEWETT, TROCTOR & WORTHINGTON, 
 NEW YORK: SHELDON, LAM TORT & BLAKEMAN. 
 
 1856. 
 
in i!;. \. .u 18 
 
 .mux p. JEWE1 i 8 
 in the C • the District of] 
 
 a M j. .» v i R : w . i . i» i: \ p i: u 
 BfWOTIPJU AND l'lMNiu;. 
 
ftSff 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Preface 5 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 The True Relation of tiie- Sexes. ....... 7 
 
 CHAPTER U. 
 
 Premature Marriage, and its Consequences 20 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 Errors of Education 82 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 Errors of Courtship 48 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 Individual Transgression and its Penalties 61 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 Social Errors and their Punishment 97 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 The Physical Laws of Marriage Ill 
 
IV 
 
 ( HAPTEB \ III. 
 AI'i 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 Tin Laws oi Pregravci 
 
 CHAPTEB X. 
 Crimes withoui a Kami 1 78 
 
 CHAPTEB XI. 
 
 The Laws of Lactation ids 
 
 CHAPTEB XII. 
 
 Crimes thai deserts ro Name 200 
 
 CHAPTEB XIII. 
 
 I>n:i< nORS 'in PaRERTS and QUARBIARS. . . 
 
 CHAPTEB XIV. 
 
 ; SAL DlR] « 1 [ORB • 246 
 
 Ai'iKNDJX A 25G 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 In presenting to the public a new work on an old 
 subject, I trust I am not so self-inflated as to suppose, 
 for one moment, that everything it contains will be 
 regarded as original. With a few of the ideas, no 
 doubt, some of my readers will be found already famil- 
 iar. Still there are portions of the work which claim 
 and deserve, the merit of originality. 
 
 To the publication of such a work I know of but 
 one general objection which the wise will be likely to 
 urge. It is that one or two of its chapters are not so 
 well adapted to the wants of mere boys, as to those of 
 youth and young men ; while the former will be most 
 eager to read them. The proper reply to such an 
 objection — specious as it seems to be — is that the 
 field is pre-occupied. If it were desirable to keep boys, 
 for a few years, in ignorance on the subjects alluded 
 to, it could not be done. Satan already has his emis- 
 saries abroad, in various shapes ; and they are as ac- 
 tive as if they were employed in a more worthy cause. 
 What is left to the friends of God and humanity, as it 
 appears to me, is to counteract his plans, by extend- 
 ing the domain of conscience over that part of the 
 Divine Temple which has too often been supposed 
 not to be under law, but to be the creature of blind 
 instinct, in which we are only on a par with the beasts 
 that perish. 
 
vi PB1 i 
 
 Till wiilnn a \<vy short time it bai been BIJ 
 
 loo t.» exclude boj i who were onder BJ 
 
 • ..in m J instruction* on thifl Subject 1 » u t SUCfa 
 
 testimoniali u the Following, whiefa is pari of ■ l< 
 
 rthy clergyman of New England, here led 
 me to review my former decisions, and to chanj 
 Borne measure both my views and my practi 
 
 •• ( ;<• on, my «1< ar Sir.*' says be, •• in the good work, 
 in which you are engaged, but do not exclude boyi 
 onder fifteen yean from your instructions, I am wire 
 that at the age of ten, or at least of twelve, I could 
 nave understood and appreciated a hook or a lecture 
 on this subject" 
 
 The writer would present few claims, however, to 
 public favor ; nor would he indulge in many expecta- 
 tions. If he has aught of which to boast, or which 
 should obligate the world to give heed to his words, 
 it is his long and abundant experience among the 
 young. H«' has probably attempted to guides greater 
 number of erring young men during the last half cen- 
 tury than any living individual in this country. And 
 this work to young men may he regarded as a fare- 
 v.. 11. it' net as a dying legacy. 
 
 Go forth, then, little book, and fulfil thy mission. A 
 more important post of honor, whatever some may 
 think, could scarcely be assigned the. May th\ rac- 
 es - 1>«' - qua! to the world's necessities! 
 
 'I'm-: Autiiok. 
 September^ 1855. 
 
THE 
 
 PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE, 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE TRUE RELATION OF THE SEXES. 
 
 Man, by the Divine constitution, is a social being. It 
 might have been ordered otherwise. Instead of being a 
 mere individual, in a family numbering a thousand mil- 
 lions, he might have been made " sole monarch," of all 
 his eye could survey. The earth we inhabit, though 
 small among the brotherhood of worlds, bearing the Di- 
 vine imprint, is yet large enough to give to each of its 
 existing inhabitants a dividend of one hundred acres or 
 more. How easy it would have been for Him who 
 formed this ponderous orb of ours, to have rolled it in- 
 to a thousand millions of smaller orbs ! Then, after 
 placing on each its man or woman, how easily could he 
 have set them to revolving in infinite space, leaving the 
 occupant of each, whether man, woman or child, to be 
 emperor, king, president, prince, or priest of his little 
 domain, not seventy or eighty years merely, the com- 
 mon age of man, but, had he willed it so, seventy or 
 eighty million of years ! And there, enthroned in all 
 his miniature majesty, though without the pleasures 
 
X PHTf 
 
 iltmg 
 ling of husband, w ife, parent, 
 
 ried ami in. 
 i mid have be< d do i 
 
 ■ Dtiguooj to bis, to • 
 
 chfl- 
 onoy him. 
 
 OOld lli< n i! any wai 
 
 tic — wai ; or of d< fence — in b \ 
 
 led by only i d, and h<- al the 
 
 time czar, sultan, king emp ror, lord, tenant, mi 
 
 and BUbject 
 
 Thu .1 7, it might have 1 b — such a stal 
 
 abl . But I tad has ordered it other- 
 
 . We are constituted essentially, one family ; with 
 
 on-- common interest. We arc .-<> far dependent on one 
 
 anoth r, that what is for the good of an individual, en 
 
 the whole, and in tl for the g L of each and 
 
 all. Th< : dashing or discordant u 
 
 !• ace that 
 
 makes us think othcrwi . When I wrong my neigh- 
 bor — ami my fellow being, everywhere, i- a neigh- 
 I / myself Ami when I do net accom- 
 
 plish all the good I have it in my i owi r to accomplish 
 for my neighbor — whether that neighbor is one mile 
 i thousand miles distant — 1 leave, unattamed, a 
 portion of that happiness which ( tad, in his pvoi id< nee, 
 1j;i«1 designed for my enjoyment 
 
 mutual relation, ami common or family interest, 
 
rnrsiOLOGr of marriage. 9 
 
 will we but open our eyes, is more and more clearly- 
 perceived every day we live. The progress of the 
 sciences — geography, history, astronomy, geology, che- 
 mistry, physiology — make it manifest. It is seen in 
 the progress of the arts — in mechanism, railroads, 
 steamboats and the electro-magnetic telegraph. But 
 Revelation has always taught it. In the fullest, 
 boldest relief, it stands, as it were, on every page of 
 the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation. The good 
 Samaritan was no more the brother of the wounded 
 Jew, nor under greater obligation to love his neighbor 
 as himself, than was Cain to love and succor and be 
 the keeper of Abel. 
 
 But if we are to love and even to keep our neigh- 
 bor, in general — if all our interests as a race, are 
 bound up together — it is so, in particular. The 
 greater must include the less — the collective, the in- 
 dividual. If, in wronging my brother — nay, if in not 
 keeping him to the full extent of my power — though 
 he be African, Indian, or Malay — I am inevitably and 
 always blameworthy, how much greater must be the 
 crime of not keeping, and even of not developing, in 
 the highest possible degree, all the excellences of my 
 nearest relatives, especially the children of my own 
 father and mother ! 
 
 By the constitution of the human family, Divine 
 providence has laid a solid and substantial foundation 
 or basis for the social edifice. This constitution of 
 things, if not as old as the world, is almost so. It was 
 one of the first decrees of the great Creator. And 
 
10 FHTI I i M mm:: I 
 
 nut until the individual and the .-mailer family 
 what theyoughf to I" 1 — not until of twain is mi 
 
 -ii — i< the Divine intention fulfilled or 
 
 ted. lil 
 i- the smaller family, bo, i be the 
 
 church : and the .-till largi 
 world. 
 
 In a true Christian family — arranged on th< Di 
 plan — ei . like Cain, constituted h 
 
 <.t' all " To the "' said Jehovah to Cain, 
 
 4> -hall be hifl | '. . and thoa Bhall rule 
 
 him." To him, from day to day, and perhaps from 
 hour to hour, d be made known ; and by 
 
 him, authority was to he < \< rcis< d. More than 
 this is true of the divine brotherhood, that 1 
 in Cain ami AbeL Each member of the family i 
 
 other, or should do so. Especially do the elder 
 and stronger rule the younger and weaker. This ml- 
 
 : with a rod of ii"ii, nor even with 
 Usual mandate- of authority, hut in the same 
 
 spirit which Adam was required to manifest, in ruling 
 i .11 as over other ami inferior beings, 
 inguage, in both instanc tctly tin- same ; 
 
 and thus the Bible is in this respect, as in a thousand 
 oth< : . : commentator. -Ml, whether as hus- 
 
 band and wife, parent and child, brethren and sisters, 
 are to do all they can for one another; and, if 
 be, to di.- for one another. They an', in all the cir- 
 
 tances of life, to seek each other's holiness, useful- 
 
 and liappii 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 11 
 
 It is affecting to behold — for the scene has occa- 
 sionally been witnessed — a true family ; one establish- 
 ed and conducted on the Divine basis. No one seeks 
 his own, to the exclusion of another's good ; but on 
 the contrary, in lowliness of mind, each esteems the 
 others better than himself. Is there a privation to be 
 undergone ? Each prefers to bear the burden, if, by 
 so doing, the rest can be excused or exempted. Is a 
 favor to be received of such a nature that it can be 
 accepted or enjoyed by one person only ? Every true 
 brother prefers that another should receive it, rather 
 than himself. The amount is this ; they love one an- 
 other, and, so i'ar as it goes, they are based on the 
 gospel or Christian plan. They may or may not love 
 God, in compliance with the requirements of the first 
 table of the decalogue ; but they love their neighbor, 
 according to the second ; at least within the precincts 
 of the family circle. 
 
 In this truly Christian state of things — where 
 there are no Jews, Greeks, Barbarians, Scythians, 
 bond, free, male or female — brothers and sisters, of 
 course, exercise a very marked, and withal very pecu- 
 liar influence on each other. And the influence of 
 each on the other in the formation of character — in 
 what might be called their education, respectively — is 
 of unspeakable value. It is, of course, different from 
 that of the parents, and yet, scarcely if at all less 
 important — some, indeed, think it more so. 
 
 Boys, mere boys, and even young men, uninfluenced 
 by the other sex, are coarse and sensual ; girls, and 
 
1 _' FBI UOLOOl 01 M LKB1 \«.i . 
 
 omen, ire delicate Bad seasitire, bat 
 social. Jt i< i. to saj on which sex the iu- 
 
 ioem most Deeded, in ■ case wh. re 
 
 [procal influence is indispensable. Th- 
 hardly more necessary to the brother, than the brother 
 to the list r. 
 
 Did these sacred, hallowed, family iafloeneei con- 
 tinue, the Divine plan with regard to i single genera- 
 tion, considered as indi pendent of i very other, might 
 end here* The family would prepare ita members for 
 
 the church or the higher family ; as that due- for the 
 
 world, present and future. " There is no school like 
 the family schooL" There is no place, below the 
 sun, which, like it, educates us — the church itself not 
 excepted. 
 
 In the usual course of things, however, a time ar- 
 rives when the education of the family almost 
 
 , if not girls, in their fancied wisdom and strength, 
 grow impatient of parental restraint, and ai 
 
 ungovernable* The passions become Btrong, or 
 at least active; and bo do the appetites. Just, too, at 
 this very period — this stormy period — this Terra del 
 Faego of human life, the young in the usual course of 
 things are to be scattered abroad. One goes here; 
 another goes there. This separation of the 
 curring at the time when it does, what shall prevent a 
 most inevitable and fatal shipwreck? 
 
 Tin- ways and plans of God, most happily, are all 
 r. Ai this critical period — though net equally 
 
 rhaps, to both sexes — it u wisely ordered that a 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 13 
 
 new passion shall spring up, unfelt or almost unfelt 
 before. It is the love of the opposite sex. It is not 
 exactly the love of brothers and sisters for brethren 
 and sisters, though it includes the latter. It is much 
 more. It is a revival or renewal of the family love, 
 with something superadded. It is stronger than the 
 former, and seems, in many instances, to be stronger 
 than death itself. * Its leading design is to secure a 
 brother or sister as a help-meet — an educator — not 
 for a few years, merely, but for life, be that life 
 longer or shorter ; be it fifty years, a hundred years, 
 or a thousand. 
 
 Out of this attachment, as its grand consummation, 
 comes marriage ; and hence, I again say, one of the 
 great ends to be secured, by this most blessed institu- 
 tion. Or to express the idea, in as few words as pos- 
 sible, it is designed to complete the education of the 
 parties — to form a brotherhood or sisterhood for life. 
 
 How wise, how benevolent the intention ! If God 
 is the author of good to the human race, in any respect 
 — and most certainly he is so, in every particular — it 
 is in ordaining matrimony, or a school for the final 
 
 * This statement may seem a little extravagant ; but we have 
 ample proof that it is literally and unqualifiedly true. Madame 
 de Ossoli, in the hour of distress from shipwreck, preferred 
 death to a separation from her husband and child ; and had her 
 choice. And I have heard many an individual express a de- 
 termination — and in all sincerity too — to pursue a similar 
 course, in similar circumstances. I do not say it is right ; my ob- 
 ject is simply to announce an important fact in the study of 
 human character. 
 
 2 
 
11 
 
 I 
 Marriage ia social and intellectual, pbj 
 !. Borne have oonfixn 
 i al — love with lost — bat tl 
 
 do not iln i our 
 
 : : 1 1 1 « 1 in a normal state of tliii <>thcr 
 
 Physical malrin 
 ed and frequently ool of the 
 
 : 
 
 to be but an liter thought. 
 
 It is, in tliis aspect of (hinge, more particularly, 
 that marriage becom luty and a i 
 
 Bad a- tl;<' world DOW is, how ninch WOTSe wonM it 
 
 it for matrimony ? It is, so to sneak of it, the 
 
 golden chain that binds society together, lvemove it, 
 
 and yon sot the world ajar, if you do not drive it back 
 
 inal chaos. Remove it, and a thousand j 
 of pan* riment would not be Bufficient to find a 
 
 titute lor it.* 
 Marriage, regarded as a duty, should be aimed at, 
 
 in all our education, both of tin- family ami elsewhere. 
 
 young, of both sexes, should be taught t" look for- 
 ward to it, not | plaything, but as one of life's 
 osibilities. To marry, should be, 1 .-ay, the • 
 
 ral rule — to which, as to I ral rides, there 
 
 may be a few except ions. 
 
 • Do not those who, in modern times would loosen tho 
 bonds of matrimony, make ■ most fatal mistake ! It i- : 
 
 they may yet live and retrace their Iteps. 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 1.3 
 
 So indispensable has marriage been regarded by some 
 Christian sects, as my readers well know, that it has 
 been exalted to a religious ordinance. It is, no doubt, 
 a religious duty, as much as any other ; but I see no 
 need of making it a religious ordinance. 
 
 It is unnecessary to stop, here, to say at what age, 
 and under what circumstances, external and internal, 
 this union of the sexes should be consummated. My ob- 
 ject, in these paragraphs, is to proclaim it as a part of 
 human duty — as a law that cannot righteously be 
 evaded — and to show that, being regarded as a part of 
 our duty, and as a known law, is has, attached to its 
 violation, like other laws, its pains and penalties. 
 
 To secure almost anything valuable on earth — 
 health, knowledge or moral excellence, — requires per- 
 severing and sometimes self-denying effort. It even 
 requires occasionally, the overthrow of serious obsta- 
 cles, or the surmounting of apparently insurmountable 
 difficulties. It is so, with regard to matrimony ; espe- 
 cially in an old country, and in a luxurious state of 
 society. 
 
 Once; he who became the head of a family, secured 
 as a general rule, a help-meet, according to the Di- 
 vine intention. In the progress, not of true refinement, 
 but of a refinement, rather, which is both unnatural 
 and injurious, it has come to pass, as a well known 
 fact, that in many instances he who marries and has a 
 family, must not only subject himself to an enormous 
 " outfit," and then be obliged to sustain himself and 
 
16 m "i" HASH I 
 
 \ildrvn. but mu-t maintain a <1« li«ato, feeM 
 
 sickly wife into the bargain. 
 
 f if all our ;. D had fin 
 
 Band) this need not be m t down as a serim;- 
 to marriage. Bol to him who begini life by himself, 
 
 at twenty-on<\ with DO belp but his own 1 
 
 work- for one or two ■ day, it ii a difficult; 
 
 lerable magnitode. How Ki it possible lor ■ 
 in, in these circamstaiices, to many eady, 
 and rapport a family, wife and all, by the mere labor 
 
 of lii> own hand- ? 
 
 In saying this, I intend no reproach of female deli- 
 cacy and debility; very far from it. It may possibly 
 appear, in the progress of the following chapters, that 
 this very delicacy and inefficiency are chargeable, in 
 no stinted degree, on our own sex. But as to fact?, I 
 mu-t state them just as they are. 
 
 There is nko an apparent difficulty which exists 
 
 in the case of young mothers who are really 
 
 healthy* Some of them are beginning to think a great 
 
 <L al of the proper education of their children, and a few 
 
 Of them actually expend BO much linn- in tbifl Work as 
 
 as them little opportunity or Btrengtb for anything 
 else. In these drcunietances, a young man who was 
 
 not well informed, might feel, at first, as though his 
 wife was a very unprofitable one. Indeed in measuring 
 everything by his own standard, thai standard being 
 allowed to be perfect, would she not be so? 
 
 What, then, is to be done ; and how is this difficulty to 
 be met and overcome? I know of no other way, ex- 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 17 
 
 cept by a compromise. If the cultivation of the mind 
 and heart are deemed of greater worth than luxuries, 
 by the wife, and if both cannot, be afforded, the hus- 
 band must be contented to deny himself that which is 
 admitted to be of inferior value, for the sake of what 
 is of greater worth. One fourth, one third, and in 
 some instances nearly one half the expenditures of a mo- 
 dern family are for things which, when compared with 
 the formation of good habits and character, in the 
 children, by the mother, sink almost to insignificance. 
 
 But I will not, now, extend the list of difficulties. 
 There can be very little doubt that if among the mo- 
 tives that impel our sex to marriage, appetite were not 
 included, celibacy would be vastly more common than 
 it now is. In all countries, as luxury advances, celiba- 
 cy keeps pace with it. For the general truth of this 
 statement we need not go farther than London or Pa- 
 ris ; or even than New York. 
 
 To prevent the world therefore, — I mean of course 
 the civilized world — from going into downright and 
 irrecoverable celibacy, despite of known duty and final 
 interest, that love of the female sex, to which I have 
 referred, is sustained by a new and most imperious ap- 
 petite ; one which, like fire and many other potent 
 agencies, though a good servant, often becomes a hard 
 master. 
 
 This appetite, like the other appetites, gives us effi- 
 ciency of character — impelling us forward in some di- 
 rection or other — just as the heavy mall, by its physi- 
 cal force, impels the wedge which is before it. But 
 2* 
 
18 PHI BIOLOOT 01 HABBIAGS. 
 
 the appetites ire as blind as the mall itself is, and, mv 
 pr op erly directed by reason and coo 
 to go wrong aa right It i< only in the I 
 
 to whom God i I reason and i and 
 
 science and the liglit of revelation, that appetite or in- 
 stinct, is a guide. And yet. tin 1 human appetites, if 
 
 rightly directed, are an occasion of adding greatlj to 
 our DsefulneM and happiness; and, in this point of 
 view, the stronger they are — not indeed the mot 
 
 citable, but the stronger — the better for us and for 
 the race to which we belong; while if not properly di- 
 rected, they serve but to accelerate our destruction, 
 
 Now I have not a doubt that this appetite, in all its 
 native strength, is absolutely needful to impel us on- 
 ward in the path of duty, and to make us avoid celiba- 
 cy. Nor is it possible for me to doubt that it has this 
 general effect, the world over. It prompts to those in- 
 dulgences, which, while under the control of reason 
 and conscience not only minister to human enjoyment, 
 but prove an occasion of perpetuating the species. 
 This reproduction of the species is the second great 
 design of marriage. 
 
 This third appetite, then) like the other two, is to be 
 regarded as a means rather than an md. And yet 
 nothing is more common than the assumption of a pre- 
 rogative, and the maintenance, for it, of a post, to 
 which it should never aspire. In too many instances, 
 it lills the mind of the young man, to the exclusion of 
 almost everything else. Mental, moral, and social 
 marriage pass, with him, as of little or no account. 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 19 
 
 Progress, the great law of our nature, as intelligent be- 
 ings, is nearly or wholly lost sight of. 
 
 This perversion, monstrous as it is, sometimes exists 
 at a very early period. But its influence as a whole 
 is always unhappy. The mind of the young should be 
 but little occupied with it before puberty. Better, 
 were it possible, if it could fall five or six years behind 
 it. It is designed, by the Creator, to come into activi- 
 ty at about the period of bodily maturity, and to last as 
 long as its owner. At the age of one hundred and 
 twenty the eye of Moses is said not to have been dim, 
 nor his natural force to have abated. 
 
 We shall see, then, in subsequent chapters, (what 
 has been already implied), that the third, or sexual ap- 
 petite, were we not sadly miseducated, would accomplish 
 Nature's leading designs, and conduce largely, to the 
 happiness of all concerned — the individual himself, 
 his family and the world. Abused, as it too often is, 
 on the other hand, it is a source of immense evil, fil- 
 ling society with mourning, lamentation and woe, and 
 drowning virtue and happiness in an ocean of tear's ! 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 KABUL! HE, ,\\i» its 001 VOB8. 
 
 J * 1 1 marriage, though a i al in the 
 
 forma daily social and moral 
 
 marriage — and hence a duty — Bhould do! be con- 
 Bommated too early; while love, or the attachment 
 of tb can hardly make its appearance too 
 
 soon. I care not if it Bpringa up in the xiry pre- 
 cincts of childhood, provided, always, we have wise 
 and careful elders, and other associates, to aid Qfl 
 in directing it. Some of the happiest unions ever 
 yet consummated had their origin in an acquaintance 
 formed in the vcrkst youth ; perhaps in the primary 
 school-room. In'lecd, in more than one install 
 happy married life has followed the playful union of 
 the parties at six, eight or ten years of age. 
 
 Of late it has become rather fashionable to extol- 
 early marriages; and Bome have proceeded to an 
 extent, in this direction, which borders on the ridicu- 
 lous. Dr. Watson, of Nashville, would have this 
 duty attended to, by the young, as soon as they feel 
 prompted in that direction by the passions and ap- 
 petites. But if it were so that marriage could be 
 consummated at this early period, without detriment 
 
TTTYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE.. 21 
 
 to the offspring, it could never be so well for the 
 parents. 
 
 It is, I know, most strenuously maintained that the 
 offspring of elderly people have a feeble organization, 
 and are hence more liable to disease than those of the 
 young. But this, if true, is one of the strongest 
 arguments against early marriages, — such early mar- 
 riages, I mean, as Dr. Watson recommends, — that 
 could possibly be advanced. It is, at least, a most 
 powerful argument against that unlawful, or at least 
 premature, indulgence of the sexual appetite which 
 so enfeebles a person that by the arrival of the usual, 
 fashionable age for marriage, he is wholly unfit to 
 marry, and is sure to propagate a feeble or sickly 
 race. 
 
 If this early abuse of the sexual functions and 
 organs cannot be prevented ; if by the time a young 
 man is twenty-eight or thirty, or thirty-two, his vital 
 energies are already fast ebbing, and his natural force 
 beginning to abate, then I grant the necessity of early 
 marriages, in the modern sense of that phrase and 
 term. But I cannot believe, as yet, that the world is 
 quite incorrigible. Let us, at least, make one more 
 attempt to enlighten and save it. 
 
 Dr. Johnson, an eminent British writer, lays it 
 down as an undisputed point that marriage should not 
 be consummated till we come near to maturity; at 
 least to maturity of body. But this physical or bodily 
 maturity does not take place, as he says, in the male, 
 till about twenty-eight' or thirty years of age ; nor, in 
 
22 PHI M,\ri:i.\<;r.. 
 
 the female, till aboat twenty-three or four. "On the 
 the whole," says lie, "the female should be,al 1< a-t, 
 v-one years of age ; and the male twenty- 
 It is certainly possible that both I to to 
 
 maturity a little sooner in the United States than in 
 Great Britain, and other old countries; but I U 
 the difference, after all, to be very trifling; Physical 
 maturity, id the United States, does not arrive, Sfl a 
 
 general rule, sooner than the twenty-fifth or twenty- 
 sixth year, in the male, and the twenty-first or twenty- 
 second year in the female. It requires a long time 
 for the bony frame to become consolidated, and all its 
 parts fully and completely ossified — as they are, or 
 should be, in perfect physical manhood. And who, 
 that has at all studied human nature, will believe that 
 mental maturity is attained at a much earlier period? 
 
 Dr. Johnson proceeds to say that for every year 
 the female marries below the full age of twenty-one, 
 "there will be, on an average, three year.- of prema- 
 ture decay of the corporeal fabric, and a considerable 
 abbreviation of the usual range of human existence." 
 Thus, if she marries at eighteen, instead of twenty- 
 one, there will be, according to this estimate, which he 
 insists is " a fair one," nine years of premature decay ; 
 and, if she marries at sixteen, instead of twenty-one, 
 her physical decline will be hastened no less than 
 fifteen years ! 
 
 The disagreement between Dr. Watson, before 
 quoted, and Dr. Johnson, is glaring; like the op- 
 
niYsiOLoer of marriage. 23 
 
 posite poles. Both views cannot be true. I have 
 not a doubt that the latter is much nearer the truth 
 than the former. Indeed, we seem, to me, to have 
 the proof before us, every day we live, in the con- 
 tinual deterioration of the race. 
 
 It might be said, and with truth, that the same pre- 
 mature decay must be induced upon the male, in the 
 case of early marriage, as upon the female. Should 
 there be doubts in the minds of any, on this point, 
 simply because Dr. Johnson has not affirmed it, let 
 them remember that if the female fabric is prema- 
 turely impaired, at such a rapid rate, in each gen- 
 eration, it cannot be long before the whole race will 
 have descended the plane, since man is, everywhere, 
 the offspring of woman ! 
 
 That the offspring of unperverted youth, of fifteen 
 or sixteen, in the one sex, and twelve or fourteen in 
 the other, would in itself be preferable to that of per- 
 verted manhood and womanhood, — say at thirty or 
 thirty-five on the one hand, and twenty-five or thirty 
 on the other, — I have not a doubt. But are we yet 
 reduced to the necessity of a choice between these 
 two evils ? 
 
 Suppose, however, we were. Suppose marriage 
 were consummated at sixteen and fourteen respec- 
 tively. Suppose, also, some two or three healthy and 
 vigorous children were the result. Yet, by a law of 
 nature, — the law alluded to by Dr. Johnson, — as 
 irrevocable as that of the Medo-Persians, there will 
 be a degree, greater or less, of premature physical 
 
21 PHYSIOLOGY OF MAKKiAr.i:. 
 
 decay of the corporeal fabric, on the pari of the 
 
 parents as the consequence ; and the natural dura- 
 tion of their lives will be considerably diminished 
 And the tendency, in this direction, during the suc- 
 C generations, will be in a geometrical rai^. 
 
 But this is not all. Admit that one half the family, 
 in such a case, — I mean, now, the first who are born, 
 were more healthy and vigorous than the average of 
 the race; still, is it not probable that the other half 
 would be proportionally feeble and imbecile ? Or, if 
 the dilTerenee were not so great as to be strikingly 
 perceptible in the first generation, would it not be in 
 the second or third ? Deterioration there would be, 
 there must be, somewhere ; it is, in the nature of 
 things, unavoidable. 
 
 In full array against an immature propagation of 
 the human species is the testimony of analogy. No 
 judicious farmer is willing his domestic animals should 
 reproduce themselves till they have reached maturity, 
 or nearly so ; nor that his fruit trees should bear too 
 soon. The first fruits may, indeed, be equally perfect ; 
 I have even seen them preferable to those of worn- 
 out or consumptive trees and animals. Yet, I repeat, 
 no wise farmer would prefer them. He would prefer 
 to wait for a little more maturity of the parent stock. 
 
 I have sometimes wondered why the advocates of 
 early marriage, of the Dr. Watson school, can not 
 look forward a little further than they do. AVhy, 
 what can be more plain, than that a young tree or a 
 young heifer which, instead of bearing fruit or rearing 
 
rilYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 25 
 
 progeny as early as possible, should be restrained 
 from bearing for one year, would be gaining physical 
 strength and vigor, and would attain to a greater 
 average degree of strength, in full maturity, than if 
 it propagated itself a year earlier? The aggregate 
 of physical vigor, in a generation of a hundred cattle, 
 the product of parents three years of age, would be 
 obviously much greater than that of the same number 
 propagated from parents at two years. And let the 
 process of propagation from ancestors of only two 
 years, in this case, be continued for a few successive 
 generations, and who can doubt with regard to the 
 results ? Could there be any other than a marked 
 deterioration ? And would not similar results follow 
 in the case of premature propagation of the human 
 species ? 
 
 May we not hope, then, that the new fanglcd doc- 
 trine of early marriage, — the marriage of mere boys 
 and girls, — will be abandoned ? Or, more properly, 
 may we not hope that it will not extensively prevail ? 
 May it not be reasonably expected that this important 
 point, like all others, will be regulated by moral and 
 physiological laiv , rather than by caprice and fancy ? 
 
 I am, however, obliged to insist on having the 
 period of intimate and special acquaintance of the 
 sexes begin earlier than it now usually does. I 
 know, indeed, that a few weak mothers are suf- 
 ficiently anxious, already, to have their daughters 
 go abroad, but it is not to form life-long acquaint- 
 ances ; it is rather to attract attention. And, even in 
 3 
 
n: I 01 If ABB! AC 
 
 1'lay, th.y usually go in.. 
 I .hibit their true native chara 
 
 The Bpecia] acquaintance of the uld 
 
 . at puberty, or even earlier. T 
 
 are not too man j 
 Bhip form ; . practically, an intermediate school for form 
 ing character, bi tw< < n the infantile school, or that ot 
 brother and Bister on the one hand, and the school 
 of the family on the other. 
 
 When I Bay that this intermediate school for the 
 formation of character can hardly be commenced toe 
 early, I have no reference, — not the remotest, — to 
 the customs of night visiting, and night Bitting. The 
 former of these I would, if possible, prevent ; the 
 latter, I would positively interdict. Unrestrained and 
 undirected, such early acquaintances may wholly 
 defeat the purposes for which they were intended ; 
 yet, with proper direction, and under proper circum- 
 stances, as I have before said, they cannot but add 
 greatly to the sum total of human happiu 
 
 The wise parent should encourage rather than 
 repel these early intimacies. Some pursue an en- 
 tirely contrary course. I have known many fathers, 
 and not a few mothers, who believed it to be alike 
 their duty and their interest to keep the young, of dif- 
 ferent families, out of each others' society as long as 
 possible. Instead of encouraging little friendly meet- 
 ings at their dwellings respectively, in the afternoon, 
 they seemed to think it not only silly, but a great 
 waste of time ! 
 
PnYSTOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 27 
 
 The results, in the latter cases, were, that these 
 meetings of the sexes were often crowded into the 
 evening, continued late, and badly conducted. Or 
 what is vastly worse, some of them were unlawfully 
 managed. Knowing that the parents were opposed 
 to the whole project, the young have stolen away, and 
 joined them without permission. How truly surprising 
 it is that parents, of good sound sense in all other 
 matters, cannot avoid this sad mistake with regard to 
 the young ! 
 
 For, in the first place, it is quite doubtful, to say 
 the least, whether those who grudge the day time for 
 amusement, actually gain anything by crowding it into 
 the night. Nature will have her rights ; and what is 
 borrowed from the late evening hours will either be 
 repaid by late sleeping in the morning, or by unusual 
 dulness and inefficiency during the day. Then, sec- 
 ondly, the tendency to clandestine excursions, and 
 secret or illicit amours, which is sometimes thus given, 
 is a result more to be dreaded than the former. 
 
 The truly judicious father and mother, in the recol- 
 lection that they have once been young and have felt 
 as young people now do, will by no means be back- 
 ward to encourage a proper and rational acquaintance 
 of the sexes ; especially when they are pleased with 
 the general character of the families. They will open 
 their houses for their reception, from time to time, and 
 even put themselves to a little inconvenience, should 
 it be necessary to do so, in ordea*to accomplish their 
 object. An afternoon, now and then, when it does 
 
28 PHTSIOLOGT OF KARRI I 
 
 not Stand iii the way of other duties or of their 
 studies, they will by no means consider as too great 
 an indulgence. 
 
 At these interviews the parents themselves may, 
 and should, be present as much as possible; not to act 
 the spy upon the young, of course, but to add to 
 their happiness; and, if needful, to restrain all tenden- 
 cies to excess. A few parents have the tact to govern 
 themselves in such a manner that the young will pre- 
 fer to have them present; but there are many whose 
 presence is naturally repulsive. Those parents who 
 preserve a juvenile turn, and attain thus to a green 
 old age, possess many advantages, and, with the young, 
 many recommendations. 
 
 It is because the old manifest no sympathy with the 
 young in these . matters, or, perhaps, because they 
 grudge the time, the trouble, or the expense, that so 
 many children and young persons either neglect or 
 refuse to make them their confidants ; or, what is still 
 worse, act openly or covertly against their wishes and 
 preferences. And every one knows something, at least 
 he has heard something, about the sorrows that are 
 wrung from many a parental heart by these departures 
 from the course which parental loudness, but not 
 parental wisdom, had dictated. 
 
 It is not affirmed that these social gatherings of the 
 sexes in the afternoon should, in no case, be protracted 
 beyond sunset. In particular eases they may, no 
 doubt, be continued from the afternoon to the evening. 
 Not, however, in any instance, beyond the usual hour 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRTAGE. 29 
 
 appointed for the termination of the da)', with its 
 labors, studies, and other duties; I mean that of nine 
 or, at most, ten o'clock. And, as a general rule, I 
 think it better that these protracted meetings of the 
 young should terminate as early as nine o'clock. 
 
 But, whatever may be the circumstances, whoever 
 may be present, or, whatever the influence that sur- 
 rounds the company or controls it, there should be no 
 association of these visits with late hours, seclusion or 
 darkness. All concealment or dissimulation, as well 
 as everything low or vulgar, should be always and 
 forever divorced from the subject of courtship and 
 marriage. 
 
 You may be inclined to ask what possible advan- 
 tages can be derived from preferences, at fifteen or 
 eighteen years of age, which are not to be consum- 
 mated, at soonest, till twenty-two or twenty-five. They 
 are numerous ; but I shall only advert to a few of them. 
 
 1. I have already called your attention to a well- 
 established fact, that some of the happiest marriages 
 have been the result of acquaintances early formed. 
 It is only necessary therefore to allude, in passing, to 
 this advantage of early association. 
 
 2. There is, necessarily, less of what I call mask- 
 ing, at this early age ; and in these simple, friendly 
 family meetings less than in the ordinary circum- 
 stances of later acquaintances, without the pale of the 
 family. In truth, it is only in this way that the young, 
 of different families, ever can come to understand fully 
 each others' character. 
 
 3* 
 
30 PHTBIOLOGT OF MAi:uiA<;r.. 
 
 The mora] and restraining inflneneos 
 early formed preferences an never be too highly 
 
 valued. A single anecdote will show my meaning; 
 and is worth a volume of merely dry argument 
 
 Every one has heard of John Newton. This cm- 
 incut and excellent man, at a very immature age, WM 
 employed in the African slave trade. This led him 
 into foreign ports, and, at is u-ual in such ea-e>, into 
 temptation. But an early attachment to a young 
 lady in England preserved him, ae he Bays, in many 
 an instance, from falling to a depth of vicious conduct 
 that might have rendered him irreclaimable. In the 
 moment of peril the thought would rush into his mind, 
 " Should I yield to the temptation, and should she 
 know it, what would she think of me ? " 
 
 I might relate many anecdotes of similar import, 
 but this must suffice. I might also notice several 
 objections which are made, either by the unobserving 
 or the unreflecting, to the general doctrine I have ad- 
 vanced with regard to early courtship ; but they seem 
 to have little weight. Besides, 1 Bhall have occasion 
 hereafter, more than once, to recur incidentally to this 
 subject; and perhaps to meet some of these very 
 objections. 
 
 The unhappy consequences of hasty, ill-assorted 
 marriages, by persons almost wholly unacquainted 
 with each other, are well known. It is from the ob- 
 servation of such premature and ill-judged unions that 
 marriage has been so often stigmatized as a lottery. 
 But it is not the marriage alone of those who are 
 
rriYSTOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 31 
 
 strangers, or almost strangers, to each other, that is 
 to be deprecated and avoided. The sudden or hurried 
 union of those who, though residing in the same 
 neighborhood, have never been but partially acquaint- 
 ed with each other, or who while forming an acquaint- 
 ance, were practically masked, — a thing which, as I 
 before intimated, is greatly common, — is equally 
 productive of unhappy results, and is scarcely less to 
 be regretted. 
 
 The custom which still so extensively prevails with 
 the young of coming together, often under cover of 
 the night and with masks, that is with an artificial 
 dress and appearance, is of little service to those who 
 really seek to know each others' character. In the 
 bosom of the family, where no masking is as yet 
 known, and where, if any where on earth, we see 
 each other as we truly are, the case is greatly altered. 
 
 Marriage, Heaven's first social institution, not to 
 say its most precious one^ when originating and 
 slowly ripening out of these circumstances — need I 
 repeat it? — can hardly be called a lottery. Much 
 less does it deserve to be called a game. It is an 
 institution every way worthy of the name, and worthy 
 of its great and benevolent Author. It is an institu- 
 tion which, imperfectly conducted though it has been, 
 has done more to keep the world together than all other 
 influences — the church itself not excepted. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 BRB0B8 OF EDUCATION. 
 
 There are difficulties connected with the Bobject 
 
 of matrimony to which I have, as yet, hardly adverted. 
 Some of them have their origin in certain mistak< 
 early education. These edncationa] errors pi 
 matrimony to the young under false colon ; and 
 should, if possible, be speedily and effectually removed. 
 A part of these errors are chargeable on parents them- 
 Belves, and a part on the headstrong character of the 
 young themselves. Let me begin with the beginning. 
 
 Among the errors of parents with regard to the edu- 
 cation of their children, few are productive of more 
 evil consequences than the almost universal habit of 
 making false representations to them of the origin of 
 our spec: 
 
 Before they are spoiled by miseducation, mosi chil- 
 dren have some good degree of what the phrenologists 
 call causality. They are anxious to know the whys 
 and wherefores of many things. Some of them arc. in 
 this respect, quite philosophic. It is greatly to be re- 
 gretted that this disposition in the young — this curi- 
 osity that leads them to trace out the causes of Beets 
 — Bhould not be duly led and nourished, rather than 
 repressed till it becomes stinted and dwarfish; and that, 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 33 
 
 too, by those who, above all other persons in the world, 
 are most interested in their well being. Let me par- 
 ticularize. 
 
 A new-born infant, for example, is introduced to the 
 bosom of a family of children ; and they are taught to 
 regard it as a brother or a sister. Its presence and 
 society are hailed with great joy by all present ; in 
 which, of course, the children largely participate. — 
 Amid the general joy, curiosity is ever operative. The 
 inquiry soon comes up, whence the little stranger origi- 
 nated. Is the truth told, in plain and simple terms? That 
 were productive of far less evil than equivocation or 
 falsehood. Is the inquirer told that he cannot under- 
 stand the matter, at present ; but that as soon as he is 
 old enough, he shall be fully informed ? This, as it 
 appears to me, would be not only the more safe, but 
 the more upright and truly honorable course. 
 
 This, however, is not the course usually pursued. 
 He is told, on the contrary, that the doctor, or Mrs. 
 such-an-one, brought the child. Or that the father 
 bought it of the doctor for so much money ; or, per- 
 chance, of some cart-man, who came along ; or, that it 
 was dug up in a distant forest, or quagmire, or swamp, 
 which, it is supposed, even juvenile curiosity and pen- 
 etration cannot fathom ; or, in other but fewer instan- 
 ces, he is told that God sent it. 
 
 Such replies may sometimes satisfy, for a time ; but 
 it is seldom that the matter ends here. A species of 
 intelligence that angels might delight to convey — 
 which angels have even, delighted to communicate — 
 
31 PHT8I0L0GT OF KABBIAGK. 
 
 dial u B child is born," is wafted as on " the wir 
 the wind," to a host of playmates j who are not often 
 alow to put their own constructions on what Beems dark, 
 
 or doubtful, or intricate with regard to their origin. 
 
 And even if there is not found among them all an indi- 
 vidual more advanced in the analogies of Nature than 
 the rest, to lead the van in discovery, there an 
 
 wanting those — in great numbers, too — who 
 ready to laugh at the pretended revelations of the 
 
 nursery, and at him who has been credulous enough, 
 even for a single moment, to receive them. 
 
 In any event, it usually happens that, in going out 
 from the family into the world, even if they do not 
 search in vain for the distant forest or swamp which is 
 possessed of such wondrous qualities, to which they have 
 been vainly directed, the young soon learn that they 
 have been deceived ; and that, too, by those whom, till 
 now, they had most loved, honored, and respected. 
 And what must be the state of that child's mind and 
 heart whose parents (one or the other of them, per- 
 haps both) stand before him convicted of deliberate 
 falsehood? 
 
 Our first female parent needed to commit but one 
 offence against Jehovah, in order to stand before the 
 world in which we live — and perhaps, too, before the 
 whole universe — to all ages of time, and throughout 
 all eternity, as a fallen being. So the parent who has 
 once been detected in falsehood, or even in prevarica- 
 tion or dissimulation, by his own children, has fallen 
 from their entire confidence forever. lie may, indeed, 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 35 
 
 become reinstated in their good graces, in part, but not 
 wholly. 
 
 Some may regard it as a palliation of parental guilt, 
 that the falsehood is not a deliberate, dark-colored false- 
 hood ; but only one of Mrs. Opie's lies of benevolence 
 *r white lies. But, to the young, all lies are black 
 enough, I assure you ; and no apology or palliation 
 will make it seem to them otherwise. The parent, I 
 repeat, stands convicted, before the tribunal of the 
 child's mind, of falsehood ; and is more or less fallen, 
 in his estimation, forever. 
 
 And then, again, the parental attempt at conceal- 
 ment has awakened and increased not merely a laud- 
 able but a prurient curiosit} 7 . It is human nature to 
 magnify, unduly, that which it is attempted to conceal 
 from us, especially when the concealment is practised 
 by those whom we love. And what human nature is, 
 in the race — that is, generally — we may be sure is 
 human nature in the child. Children are not those 
 half-senseless dolts w r e sometimes take them to be, un- 
 less by neglect on the one hand, or brutality on the 
 other, w r e have made them such. In general, they are 
 eagle-eyed. And they not only apprehend readily, but 
 they have thoughts and feelings. 
 
 In the case before us, they have their thoughts — 
 and they think a good deal. Their curiosity is greatly 
 heightened, and their mental apparatus quickened, in 
 its movements, by the concealment which is practised ; 
 and their thoughts frequently turn towards the subject 
 which we attempt to conceal or cover up. The least 
 
36 PHYSIOLOGY OF MAKKIAGE. 
 
 drcomstance — the most hasty and passing allusion to 
 
 it, whether in conversation, action, or books, is quite 
 sufficient to bring back their thoughts to what other- 
 wise might have been unnoticed or soon forgotten. 
 
 Happy the child to whom the society of his play- 
 mates, at home and at school — of his own parent.- and 
 near relatives even — does not prove to be, in this re- 
 spect, "a snare, and a trap, and a stumbling-block." 
 We are, very few of us, "wise as serpents and 
 harmless as doves." Not only do we let fall the 
 coarse allusion, here and there ; but sometimes the 
 still coarser, not to say grossly wicked, innuendo. I 
 have heard things said and hinted at, in the midst of 
 professedly Christian families, that ought not to be so 
 much as named in decent society. This vulgarity on 
 the one hand, and that studied concealment on the 
 other, do much towards destroying many a young per- 
 son, especially of our own Bex 
 
 The school-boy watches, with eagerness, the light- 
 falling snow, at the approach of winter ; and soon 
 forms, from the soft yielding material a hall, which he 
 rolls, with more or less rapidity, over the thick sward. 
 It gains, in size, at each revolution; till, ere long, it 
 requires the combined efforts of him and his fellows to 
 move it. So with the concealment I have mentioned. 
 It is, again and again, revolved in the juvenile mind, 
 till that to which it had been so prematurely and withal 
 so unfortunately directed, swells to giant size, and oc- 
 cupies a space entirely disproportioned to the age or 
 the passing necessities of the individual.* 
 
 * I shall avail myself of the opportunity which a subsequent 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 37 
 
 Is it any wonder that, in circumstances like the fore- 
 going, the young should r.eek with eagerness for infor- 
 mation with regard to the origin of life at sources 
 which are not always the most certain and reliable ? 
 What else, in fact, could reasonably be expected ? 
 Knowledge, the curious, inquiring mind must have — 
 from the tree in the midst of the garden, or some- 
 where else — and if nothing better lies in its way, and 
 especially if, as in days of old, Satan solicits, like our 
 mother of old it seizes and appropriates. 
 
 I have alluded to tne suggestions and temptations 
 of the devil. Now I am not a theologian, nor predis- 
 posed to meddle with theological disquisitions or terms. 
 And yet if there be abroad evil spirits fulfilling, like 
 the good spirits of which the poet Milton speaks, their 
 " aery purposes," I am quite certain they will be found 
 exerting an influence in the matter before us. If men 
 and devils were really in league to poison the minds 
 of the young, from the very first, I know not how or 
 where they could hope for better success than on 
 forestalling our efforts and filling the mind and he£*rt 
 
 chapter will afford of saying xchat should be done, in families, by 
 way of preventing the evils to which I have been directing at- 
 tention. My object, in this place, was merely to point the 
 young to the true source of many things from which they may 
 have suffered, or may still be suffering ; and to aid them, both 
 in their own recovery, and in the recovery of others whom 
 Providence may throw upon their hands for protection or sal- 
 vation. It is perfectly proper that the skilful surgeon should 
 probe, to the bottom, a severe wound or ulcer, in order that his 
 treatment, in the case, may be such as nature demands. 
 4 
 
38 mTSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 with error and imparity, within the precincts of every- 
 day life ; and, as it were, under our very eyes. 
 
 Broussais, in his treatise on physiology, lays it 
 down as a general rule — what I suppose no one will 
 deny — that the human secretions are all susceptible 
 of being influenced by mere thought and feeling. 
 For example, he says, at page 215 : " every one 
 knows with what energy ideas of love act upon the tes- 
 ticles." Is it then surprising that while we are rous- 
 ing into unwonted activity the childish or youthful cu- 
 riosity, on a subject quite in advance of its years, and 
 turning the thoughts into a most unnatural channel, 
 we should, at the same time, be found developing, pre- 
 maturely, that appetite and those passions and feelings 
 which belong exclusively to later years ? 
 
 I have been repeatedly applied to by parents, on be- 
 half of children of both sexes — but more frequently 
 of our own — of only four, five, or six years of age. 
 They were anxious to know what could be done in the 
 way of removing a habit at which, in such young be- 
 ings, one is led almost involuntarily to shudder. I 
 have not, it is true, always found that at this early age 
 they had suffered much from their wrong habits. The 
 danger was prospective. The parents were fearfully 
 alarmed at thought of the evils to which they supposed 
 these unnatural manipulations might ultimately, if not 
 inevitably lead. 
 
 And why should they not be thus alarmed ? For, 
 if other and perhaps prior errors have gone so far a3 
 already to produce a determination of the blood, in un- 
 
rilYSIOLOGY OF MAREIAGE. 89 
 
 due quantity, to the organs of generation, to an extent 
 which leads the mind involuntarily in that direction, 
 and results in those childish manipulations already al- 
 luded to, how much greater will be the measure of 
 evil when injudicious parental treatment or conversa- 
 tion shall give a still stronger direction to the general 
 current ? Will it not be like sowing seed on a field 
 already prepared for vice, in comparison with only 
 casting the same kind of seed on ground both un- 
 broken and uncultivated? 
 
 There is a counterpart to the picture, which I have 
 faithfully presented, of the anxious parent. There are 
 those — perhaps they do not deserve the name of pa- 
 rent — who not only behold the rising indications of 
 appetites, passions, and feelings quite in advance of the 
 child's age, with indifference, but laugh at and even 
 apologize for them. " Why," say they, " it is only act- 
 ing out nature. We do not rebuke the lambs and 
 calves that manifest the same sort of pre-maturity : 
 why should we rebuke our children ? They will soon 
 outgrow it." But may we not hope that parents who 
 err thus strangely, are few and far between ? As well 
 may Satan outgrow his character, as sensual children, 
 by being let alone merely, outgrow their sensuality. 
 
 If we make a careful examination into these abnor- 
 mal cases, as medical men would call them, I fear we shall 
 often find an error on the part of the mother or house- 
 keeper or other near friends, which, had it not the 
 sanction of almost universal custom, would deserve the 
 severest reprehension. It is true there is great reason 
 
40 rnrsiOLOGY of marriage. 
 
 to fear that in this matter, too, there is diabolical 
 agency. Not solely because there is abroad a saying, 
 and has been, time immemorial : " God sends m 
 but the devil sends cooks ; " but because it is so plain 
 and certain and unmistakably a source of mischief 
 that, were not our housekeepers and those who have 
 the care of the physical wants of the young, made at 
 least pur-blind by some agency or another, they could 
 not consent to it. 
 
 The evil agency here referred to, I hardly need to 
 say, is our modern system of cookery. All our high- 
 seasoned viands, and most of our made or complicated 
 dishes are of this description. Dr. Dunglison, who is 
 by no means to be suspected of taking sides gratui- 
 tously against indulgences, at page 283 of his work 
 entitled " Elements of Hygiene," after making many 
 a dolorous complaint about what he calls " the com- 
 plex condition of the culinary art," and especially 
 about the use of eggs in combination with other food, 
 closes his criticism by saying, in the most unqualified 
 terms, — " Hence, every preparation of eggs and every 
 made dish, are more or less rebellious." And Mr. S. 
 G. Goodrich, the famous Peter Farley, in his " Fire- 
 side Education," says of " pies, cakes, and sweetmeats," 
 that " these things are universally known to be poison- 
 ing to children ; and those who give them are conscious 
 that they are purchasing the momentary smile of satis- 
 faction at the risk of after sickness and perhaps of in- 
 curable disease." 
 
 Now although neither Dr. Dunglison, on the one 
 
THYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 41 
 
 hand, as the representative of science, nor Peter Par- 
 ley on the other, as representing the hosts of plain, 
 unsophisticated common sense, has, in just so many 
 words, affirmed that these things tend to licentiousness, 
 yet of the fact itself there can be no possible doubt. 
 There is abroad, everywhere, a most unreasonable 
 prejudice against the plainest suggestions about diet 
 and drink, when those suggestions stand opposed, in 
 any good degree, to our natural inclinations ; and it is 
 not at all surprising that even sensible men, like those 
 I have quoted above, should shrink from every attempt 
 of the writer and of others to effect a change. Yet be 
 it remembered by all whom it may concern, that just 
 as certainly as all made dishes, from their highly con- 
 centrated and over-stimulating qualities, are " more or 
 less rebellious," just so certainly do they prove a source 
 of both irritation and sensuality. It is a war in which 
 there is no discharge. 
 
 Most of our meats have a similar tendency on the 
 young, quite independent of their stimulating character 
 as derived from cookery. Or rather they are rendered 
 too stimulating by our usual methods of preserving 
 them. This objection w^ould not lie against flesh and fish 
 prepared for the table without having been preserved 
 from decomposition by salt, smoke, nitre, aromatics, etc. 
 It is the effect of preservation to which I allude. True 
 it is that many of our meat dishes are made dishes ; so 
 that on more accounts than one they are objectionable, 
 K) far at least as the young are concerned. 
 
 TV demoralizing tendency of confectionary has 
 4* 
 
42 PHYSIOLOGY OF MARKIAGE. 
 
 been understood from the first; and much has been 
 written against it. And yet parents and friends con- 
 tinue to permit its use in their families. Never was 
 there so much of it consumed as at the present day, at 
 least in our own country ; and never was its use so 
 rapidly increasing. 
 
 But it forms no part of my purpose to dwell at 
 length on this subject, in this place ; and I must leave 
 it for your consideration. The bare statement of facts, 
 as having an influence to miseducate each rising gene- 
 ration, was indispensable. The friends of the young 
 must know, clearly and fully, what a host of dangers 
 beset their way, and threaten and too often accomplish 
 their destruction. 
 
 For, as if what 1 have hastily referred to above 
 were not sufficient to set in operation, under the very 
 parental roof itself, a series of fires to scathe and burn 
 children externally and internally, as with the flames 
 of hell itself, they become at this very juncture ex- 
 posed to fires, at the kindling of others, which, joined 
 to the former, render their destruction still more cer- 
 tain than before. 
 
 There are to be found, in the world we occupy, a 
 class of human beings who will do almost anything 
 that promises to put money into their own pockets. 
 They will sell alcohol, tobacco, arsenic, and in short 
 whatever they please, even though it were ever so de- 
 structive of human happiness and life. Their fre- 
 quent apology is, that they only sell what they buy •, 
 x> which they sometimes append the very vulgar say- 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 43 
 
 ing " If we buy the devil, we must sell him again." 
 Others there are, however, who make a different plea, 
 though quite as indefensible, viz. : " If i" do not sell it, 
 somebody else will." 
 
 It must, I think, be under the shadow of an excuse 
 not unlike these — or of one which will no better en- 
 dure the test in the great day of account — that cer- 
 tain monsters in human shape, not only sell, in gene- 
 ral, but particularly to the young, that which is likely, in 
 its results, to burn up, not only the body but the soul also. 
 They will manufacture and sell, or cause to be manu- 
 factured and sold, or, what is nearly or quite as crimi- 
 nal, they will connive at the manufacture and sale of, 
 such food for the mind and heart, as often proves a 
 means of burning up those who partake of it, in the 
 flames of a lower, deeper hell than any which can af- 
 flict or affect the mere house in which the soul lives. 
 
 My aim here is at the manufacture and sale, all over 
 the land (clandestinely, of course), of such books, prints, 
 pictures, engravings, and songs, as may be found in 
 many an obscure and filthy pen of animals, that bear 
 the human shape, while they scarcely deserve to be 
 regarded as belonging to the human family. In a few 
 instances, however, I have found these obscene and 
 wanton publications in worthier and better hands. 
 And yet, not long; for, like corrosive agents, they eat 
 out, as it were, the very vitals of the vessel that holds 
 them. No one will long remain respectable under their 
 influence. 
 
 Very few of our plain common-sense fathers and 
 
44 rnrsiOLOGT of marriage. 
 
 mothers have the remotest idea how extensively circu- 
 lated and read these emissaries of Satan are. Nor 
 have our young people, in some parts of the country 
 (I mean in some of those quiet, old-fashioned places, 
 where the young " mind their own business "), a better 
 idea of this mighty evil than have parents. I do not 
 mean to say that they are wholly ignorant of such 
 books ; but only that they are not at all aware of their 
 abundance. If they have ever been at all acquainted 
 with them, it is only by a hasty glance. They would 
 almost as soon be caught purloining property or slan- 
 dering their nearest neighbor, as perusing such filthy 
 publications. 
 
 The young and the old should understand this mat- 
 ter, just as it is, in all its enormity. They should also 
 understand that it is owing, in no small degree, to our 
 errors of education, especially physical education, and 
 perhaps more than all things else to our murderous 
 cookery, that the present state of things exists. They 
 should know that, as matters now are, we are preparing, 
 in the best possible way, for glad tidings to the spirits 
 shut up in the blackness of despair, and reserved in 
 chains to the judgment of the great day. 
 
 If these books and pictures and engravings furnished 
 for the young reliable information on a subject in re- 
 gard to which the right kind of information is most im- 
 periously demanded, their existence and extensive cir- 
 culation would not be, to the same extent, a matter of 
 regret. But in the first place they are often quite in- 
 correct physiologically. At least they contain, along 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 45 
 
 with their truth, such a mixture of error that it requires 
 something more than a mere schoolboy of eight, ten, 
 twelve or fourteen years to disentangle the two, and 
 cast away the latter. 
 
 Then, in the second place, not a few of them have a 
 tendency to leave on the young mind very erroneous 
 impressions with regard to woman. They assume that 
 she is naturally sensual, like the other sex. They en- 
 deavor to make it appear that all of female reserve 
 and modesty is either a sheer pretence or a stroke of 
 policy. They seem to say that were it not for the 
 ■well known and well established fact that " one false step 
 forever blasts her fame," that in falling once she falls 
 forever, while man sometimes " emerges from the ru- 
 ins of his fall — " woman would be just as sensuous as her 
 " lord ; " and some have endeavored to prove that she 
 would be more so. This error, egregious as it is, has 
 derived support from another class of books of much 
 better reputation, but of no better desert, such as here 
 and there one of the volumes of the poets and the 
 novelists. One of these assures us, most expressly, 
 that " every woman is, at heart, a rake.'" 
 
 Now it is the very young men who have become fa- 
 miliar with the coarser productions of the pen, pencil, 
 and graver, so clandestinely and wickedly published and 
 sold by thousands, who are best prepared to swallow the 
 licentious doctrines of Byron and his clan, and to be- 
 come rooted and grounded in the faith that woman, un- 
 masked and unrestrained by conventional circum- 
 stances, is no better nor any purer than themselves. 
 
46 PIIYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 Is it necessary for me to say that though woman is 
 social, eminently so, no slander can be greater than 
 the affirmation that she is constitutionally, or by natu- 
 ral inclination, impure ? As a general rule, with fewer 
 exceptions than to most general rules, she is as pure as 
 the riven snow-pile of yonder eminence ; at least till 
 perverted or seduced, either by her own sex or by ours. 
 There are monsters of both sexes ; and a monstrous 
 woman is no less a monster than a monstrous man. 
 Indeed nothing can be more true than that " a shame- 
 less woman is the worst of men ; " for a shameless 
 woman has it in her power to do more mischief among 
 her own sex than any other individual. 
 
 With this qualification and exception, however, 
 woman, I say, is naturally and constitutionally pure ; 
 and young men, instead of growing up into society with 
 exactly the contrary opinion, should be set right. 
 They should even be made to understand that it is 
 both their interest and their duty to keep her so. 
 They should be taught to regard her, everywhere, as a 
 mother or a sister, and not merely as a woman. They 
 should regard her as a human being, as remote from a 
 mere plaything as themselves ; and, like themselves, 
 intended to occupy a sphere but little lower than that 
 of angelic excellences. But how different from all 
 this is the common estimate ! How much oftener is she 
 regarded, on the one hand, as a mere plaything ; and, 
 on the other, as our lawful and proper prey ! 
 
 Instead of having it for their settled purpose to sus- 
 tain and increase and preserve female worth and repu- 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 47 
 
 tation everywhere, no less than in their own family 
 circle, how ready are the young to surmise, sneer, vili- 
 fy, and asperse ! Not indeed with malice aforethought, 
 but without any thought at all. It comes of misedu- 
 cation. It comes in the various ways I have mentioned 
 in this chapter ; and in many more which I have omit- 
 ted to mention. It comes of the adversary of all truth 
 and the father of lies and slanders and defamation. 
 It comes of the lowest pit of hell ; and of that part of 
 earth which is most contiguous to it. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 ERRORS OF COURTSHIP. 
 
 From the general forgetfulness or ignorance of oar 
 young men of this great fundamental principle of 
 social life, that what is for the true interest of any one 
 human being is for the interest of all, together with 
 the prevalence of that almost universal skepticism in 
 regard to female virtue which was noticed, to some 
 extent, in the preceding chapter, they are often led to 
 a course of conduct in their intercourse with young 
 women, of which not a few are greatly ashamed when 
 they come to themselves, in subsequent and more 
 truly enlightened stages of their existence, and which 
 some would give worlds, were it in their power, to be 
 able to blot out ! 
 
 No young man, of any sense or spirit, would brook, 
 contentedly, an insult to his own sister, the daughter 
 of his own father and mother. In some parts of the 
 United States, were it known, by a young man, that 
 an individual was in the habit of attempting, by words, 
 looks, or actions, to lower the standard of modesty in 
 a beloved sister of his, or to blunt the keen edge of 
 her virtuous female sensibilities, he would send him a 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 49 
 
 challenge. But young men, everywhere, can and do 
 feel that they and the human brotherhood generally 
 are insulted, even though they do not make proposals 
 for fighting away the insult in a duel. 
 
 •But why should I feel so keenly, and resent so 
 sternly, an abuse of my own sister, while I am guilty 
 of passing over or conniving at a similar abuse, or 
 perhaps repeat it, in the case of an individual who 
 happens to be the sister of somebody else ? Are we 
 not all of one family ? Are we not all brothers and 
 sisters ? Whether in greater or less degree, the loss 
 of female modesty, in every possible case, is it not a 
 loss to the whole sex, and to the world ? 
 
 There is not a day or an hour of our lives — the 
 most insignificant of us, of either sex — when we do 
 not share largely and liberally in those rich blessings 
 which have their origin in the sweet influences of 
 female delicacy, sensibility, and modesty. And when 
 but the smallest item is subtracted from the sum total 
 of a commodity which at the best is never too abund- 
 ant in a world like this, each of us, by the operation 
 of a law of social life which is irrevocable, must be 
 sharers in the loss. And are we not bound, in this 
 point of view, to be the keepers rather than the se- 
 ducers or traducers of our brethren — and of our 
 brother, so to speak, of the female sex, as well as of 
 our own ? 
 
 And yet, in spite of all these considerations, or 
 ignorant of their weight and desert — borne away, too, 
 by the influence of mistaken views, and perhaps of 
 5 
 
50 TIIYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 prurient and ungovernable passions and appetites — 
 how often, during a long period of pseudo-courtship, 
 do young men make an unrelenting attack upon that 
 citadel of female character which they should seek 
 rather to render, not only invulnerable, but, as it were, 
 unassailable ? 
 
 They may sometimes be inclined to apologize, and 
 to say that they intend no evil, but are only amusing 
 themselves, or, perhaps, experimenting. But have 
 they a right to experiment on human character in this 
 way — especially on female character ? Is it safe to 
 do so? Can one go on red hot coals and not be 
 burnt ? On this point, we might learn not a little, if 
 we would, from the experience of Solomon of old, if 
 not from many a smaller man than Solomon, and 0/ 
 later date. 
 
 Those of us who are not only aware of the influence 
 of first steps, but of the duty of acting, everywhere, 
 the Christ-like part of being keepers of those who are 
 younger or feebler than ourselves, will not only avoid, 
 with the utmost solicitude, all errors and improprieties 
 in our intercourse with the female sex, but also, as far 
 as possible, all temptations to such improprieties and 
 errors. "We shall even discourage all approaches to 
 forbidden ground, especially in the case of those whose 
 character has become slightly sullied, but is not yet 
 wholly irretrievable. 
 
 For though woman is naturally pure — as pure as 
 I have already represented in the previous chapter — ■ 
 still she is easily and largely susceptible of perversion 
 
THTSIOLOGT OF MARRIAGE. 51 
 
 and injury both at the hands of her own sex and ours. 
 There are, as I have already mentioned, female sedu- 
 cers, as well as male ; only they carry on their war 
 against humanity in a somewhat different manner ; 
 and are, numerically, " few and far between." " Well 
 for the race, that they are so; for they scathe and 
 scourge, wherever they are, most fearfully.* 
 
 With such creatures, in female shape, it may possi- 
 bly be your unavoidable lot to come in contact ; but 
 believe me when I say it will be advisable to keep 
 aloof from them as much as possible. Were you to 
 think of doing them good, the hope would be almost a 
 forlorn one. You will rarely be able to reclaim them. 
 In my whole life I have known but one or two such 
 reformations. 
 
 Their fall to this depth of degradation, though often 
 sudden, is not always so. W T e may sometimes dis- 
 cover the downward tendency, in time to justify an 
 effort to prevent any farther declension. First steps, 
 though always exceedingly dangerous, do not always 
 prove irretrievable. The hand and voice of friend- 
 ship may, sometimes, arrest and save. And blessed 
 is he who is awakened and moved to the duty — nay, 
 the necessity, in self-defence — of exerting himself in 
 this very direction. 
 
 * They fulfil their diabolical purposes, first, by teaching 
 solitary vice ; and, secondly, by suffering themselves to be em- 
 ployed for the purpose of leading virtuous, — perhaps, lovely — 
 worth to dens of prostitution and infamy; ami, thirdly, they 
 give themselves up to a life of prostitution, than which no- 
 thing is more hardening to the heart. 
 
52 PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 Young men may laugh at all this. They have 
 done so ; they may do so again. But the time will 
 come, — must come — when their feelings, in this re- 
 spect, will be changed ; and they will be much more 
 inclined to weeping than laughing. There are, in this 
 world, some serious things and subjects; and I am 
 much mistaken if this is not one of them. 
 
 If we do all we can to prevent the world from dete- 
 riorating, the causes of declension will be sufficiently 
 numerous. And let me repeat, once for all, and let it 
 never be forgotten, that every cause of decline, even 
 though it were but the downward departures of a 
 single female, must inevitably and forever react, with 
 greater or less force, on ourselves. 
 
 It has been often believed by the young, as well as 
 by some of those to whom the term young would 
 hardly be- applicable, — and the belief has been sanc- 
 tioned, if not originated by books of supposed author 
 ity — that the results of impurity to woman, physical- 
 ly, whether in the solitary or social forms, are not so 
 serious, in their consequences, as to man. It has even 
 been maintained that there was, in her case, no injury 
 inflicted, at all. 
 
 Now, I know of no mistake in the world greater 
 than this. Woman's liner wrought, more susceptible, 
 organization, receives far greater injury from sexual 
 abuse, than our own ■ — only the punishment is inflict- 
 ed in a very different manner, and, in some instances, 
 at a remoter period. Solomon has said: " Because 
 sentence against an evil work is not executed speed- 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 53 
 
 ily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set 
 in them to do evil ; " and one might be almost tempted 
 to think that, in saying thus, he had the eye of his 
 mind directed to cases like the one in question. 
 
 So remote and apparently disconnected from the 
 crime, is the punishment, in the present instance — 
 at least very often — that no physiologist should be 
 surprised that the proper relation between cause and 
 efFect, has not, by the ignorant and vicious, been re- 
 cognized. The only wonder is, that physiology itself 
 should have perpetuated so glaring an error. 
 
 This error is mentioned and dwelt upon here, be- 
 cause it lias furnished an apology to many a young 
 man who was but half informed in the matter, and 
 who was, in a greater degree, destitute — perhaps 
 reckless — of moral principle. In the belief that 
 woman was not injured, physically, by sexual indul- 
 gence, he has been inclined to give that license to his 
 appetites and passions, which with another and an 
 entirely different belief, might have been, at least par- 
 tially, withheld. And this license, as we shall see, 
 hereafter, has been taken, within the pale of matrimo- 
 nial ]ife, as well as without its sacred precincts. 
 
 Fornication, I do not believe to be as common now, 
 at least in New England, as it was a hundred years 
 ago — I mean in proportion to the number of inhabi- 
 tants. Still it is quite too common. In a more dense 
 population, the cases which occur, may seem to be 
 more numerous in comparison of the population, than 
 they really are. Whether, however, the substitution 
 5* 
 
54 rilYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 of solitary for social error, augurs good to mankind, on 
 the whole, is a point to be considered in another place. 
 It is sufficient, for the present, if I state the evil re- 
 sults and tendencies of the latter, and enter ray protest 
 against it. 
 
 Were it so that during a courtship protracted, as it 
 sometimes might profitably be, to a period of five, six, 
 eight, or ten years, the sexes were found mutually 
 seeking, not only to become acquainted with each 
 other, in their true character, unmasked, but to ele- 
 vate and improve each other, this part of human life 
 could hardly fail to be one of the most important, as it 
 is now, and ever has been one of the most interesting. 
 
 And hence one reason why I have all along insist- 
 ed — and must still insist — that the mutual acquaint- 
 ance of the sexes should be made, very largely, by 
 afternoon visits, under the eye — the general eye, at 
 least, — of parents, masters, or guardians. These after- 
 noon parties may include more or fewer families of 
 children ; yet I cannot help believing, that if we wish 
 to accomplish the greatest amount of good which the 
 circumstances will admit, that number should be small. 
 And if it were restricted to four, five, or six families, I 
 am not sure we should sustain any loss. 
 
 I acknowledge, most cheerfully, the advantages, for 
 all purposes of mere amusement, or for improvement 
 in science and morals, which are sometimes derived 
 from bringing together large numbers. "We are all, to 
 a considerable extent, creatures of sympathy ; and of 
 this natural sympathy, God is the author. Nor are 
 
rilYSIOLOCY OF MARRIAGE. 96 
 
 we permitted, for so much as one short moment, to 
 doubt its usefulness. But those little family meetings 
 of the young, concerning which I have said something 
 in another chapter, are mainly for another purpose ; 
 and the less they break in upon the usual routine of 
 the great model school — the family — the better. 
 
 On this point I greatly wish to be understood. My 
 remarks are by no means intended to proscribe all 
 visits except those simple family gatherings which 1 
 have been recommending. Far from it. With cer- 
 tain restrictions they may — and I suppose must — be 
 tolerated, at least occasionally. They will, however, 
 be very indifferent opportunities for studying charac- 
 ter. This last must be learned in the family, or no 
 where ; and happy is that arrangement which — without 
 making us members of another family, seven, four- 
 teen, or twenty-one years, like Jacob — gives us the 
 best possible substitute. 
 
 You see, by the tenor of these remarks, how far I 
 am from encouraging what has sometimes been called, 
 by way of reproach, the convent system. As I have 
 already intimated, I think the family the model of all 
 schools, and cannot help deprecating the necessity of 
 separating the sexes from the routine of family habits 
 anywhere. All our schools, unless it be professional 
 ones, should include a due proportion of males and 
 females. To this opinion in practice, I am happy to 
 observe a very general tendency of the public mind, 
 at least of the more intelligent part of it. 
 
 Nor would I, willingly, be misunderstood on another 
 
56 PIIYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 point. My object, in bringing the young together, un- 
 masked, is not, I again say, to encourage them to act 
 the spy upon each other. The whole thing should be 
 perfectly understood, both by parents and children. 1 
 do not mean to say, that parents and children, on and 
 by these occasions, should, mutually and collectively? 
 intend marriage or even courtship, especially at first. 
 But I do mean that parents should, in this way, make 
 known their preferences, as well as lay a suitable 
 foundation, if possible, for the preferences of their 
 children. If, on a fair trial, aversion rather than at- 
 tachment — or even indifference — should be the re- 
 sult, such changes must be made as may meet the 
 exigency. 
 
 Every one knows what a world of woe grows out of 
 the usual custom of leaving it to the young to form 
 their attachments at hap-hazard ; and then, when they 
 do not choose in a manner that suits us, attempting to 
 turn the current. The changes I propose are intend- 
 ed to prevent any such attempts, or any supposed 
 necessity. They include the idea of having a mutual 
 good understanding on the subject, between parents 
 and children, from the very first. They are designed 
 to prevent that which having been neglected, we would, 
 afterward, as wise parents, gladly give the whole world 
 to undo, or eradicate. 
 
 I have alluded to the larger party or visiting circle, 
 on rare occasions, with a degree of approbation. And 
 yet the larger party needs to be watched with greatei 
 care than even the afternoon private circle. All fac- 
 
rnrsiOLOGY of marriage. 57 
 
 titious things and circumstances must be removed. 
 Conversation which is too exciting, and the presence 
 and perusal of highly exciting books, are little less 
 injurious than unreasonable and unnecessary heat, im- 
 pure air, exciting drinks, and rich delicacies. 
 
 Any of these, however, especially the last, are made 
 much worse, in their effects, by being taken at un- 
 seasonable hours. For, if hot tea and coffee, and high- 
 seasoned food, and aromatics, and perfumes, and hot 
 and impure air — with which, perhaps, music is con- 
 joined, vocal and instrumental — are always of doubt- 
 ful tendency to the cause of moral purity, how much 
 is their danger augmented, when the party is protract- 
 ed beyond the hours of nine or ten o'clock at night — 
 perhaps to midnight, or still later ? The reader will 
 see, herein, some of the reasons why I would have no 
 connection between courtship and marriage, and soli- 
 tary or nightly visits ; and, above all, night-sitting. 
 
 Yet let it never be forgotten that the society of the 
 sexes must be cared for and properly maintained, in 
 some shape or other, both within and without the pale 
 of the family. The social law is God's law, from the 
 first. " It is not good for man to be alone," is a de- 
 cree that went out from Jehovah's throne, almost as 
 soon as the human race was created ; and to disregard 
 it is to render us obnoxious to many pains and penal- 
 ties. Nor has it, as a law or decree, ever yet been 
 abrogated or repealed. And who does not know to 
 what narrowness and selfishness celibacy tends ? "Who 
 that has lived long in the world can be ignorant of the 
 
58 PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 general fact that it is but a pathway to demoralization 
 and consequent destruction ? 
 
 Let all our children, then, be trained for marriage ; 
 but let it be that marriage which an inspired Apostle 
 says is " honorable." It is not the mere union of one 
 division or part of our complex nature — it is not 
 physical marriage alone, nor mental marriage alone, 
 nor even social marriage alone, important as that is. 
 It is a union of the whole nature, in such a manner 
 that of two we become one. As the Scriptures say, 
 being twain we become one flesh. It is not a tem- 
 porary union — a union which may be dissolved, at 
 pleasure, by the parties ; it is a union for life. It is 
 of Divine appointment ; and what God has joined 
 together, let not man put asunder. 
 
 But by training the young for marriage, I do not 
 mean that we should give them the kind of training 
 they generally receive at our hands. The less of this 
 the better. If nothing can be done with the young in 
 relation to this subject but to excite their curiosity 
 and pruriency, then, for anything I can at present 
 see, the world must despair, and must ere long com- 
 mence — if it has not done it already — a retrograde 
 movement. 
 
 It is a most miserable state of things when all the 
 teaching on marriage which the young receive, in the 
 family, consists in reading over the hymeneal list in 
 the newspaper, and commenting on it, and in talking 
 over the circumstances of the latest marriages in the 
 neighborhood. I do not say that these things should 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 59 
 
 be excluded from the social circle ; but only that they 
 should not be its Alpha and Omega — its beginning 
 and end — its all in all. 
 
 Wealth, rank, beauty, and accomplishments are not 
 of course to be despised — they have their value. 
 But how contemptible it is, that many, not to say 
 most, of our best Christian families never give the 
 young any other instruction with regard to courtship 
 and marriage than what may be accidentally gathered 
 from a few desultory conversations about these mere 
 externals ? What one party or the other has gained, 
 or is likely to gain, of personal or pecuniary advan- 
 tages, will be far more likely to elicit attention in al- 
 most any social circle, either within the family pale, 
 or beyond it, than the more important inquiry whether 
 the parties, by their union, have, either of them, in- 
 creased "their means of usefulness. Who does not 
 know what is meant — and how much — by the prac- 
 tical and, I had almost said, only question ever asked 
 in these cases, viz. : Has she married well ? Are they 
 pleastintly situated ? 
 
 Nothing is more natural than for those parents who 
 have just become awakened to the importance of 
 giving needful instruction, on this great subject, to 
 make the mistake of saying too much at once. The 
 young do not want homilies or sermons. What they 
 most need — what, in truth, they are hungering and 
 thirsting and starving and dying for the want of — is 
 just such practical every day instruction, with regard 
 to the great end and object of married life, as they are 
 
60 rnrsiOLOGY of marriage. 
 
 wont to give in relation to other matters. Here they 
 enlighten, by little and little, as the young are able to 
 bear it ; and as their minds are in an inquiring frame. 
 Why should it not be done there, as well as here ? 
 When will the children of light become as wise, in 
 their generation, as the children of this world ? 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 INDIVIDUAL TRANSGRESSION AND ITS PENALTIES. 
 
 It is a fundamental law of the great Jehovah's king- 
 dom that as we sow, so we must reap. It is so, at 
 least, in every instance where Jehovah has not chosen, 
 of himself, to depart from his ordinary course of gov- 
 ernment, and make special provision to the contrary. 
 Nor can his special dealings, of this sort, ever be cal- 
 culated on. What has happened only once or twice 
 in six thousand years, can never be properly construed 
 into a general rule. 
 
 It is true that punishment — both for moral and phy- 
 sical delinquency — is sometimes very long deferred. 
 I have seen men who worked amid the fumes of lead, 
 who though well aware of the danger of breathing this 
 poison, believed themselves exceptions to the general 
 rule. They were confident that though others were 
 apt to suffer, they should not. They had been expos- 
 ed for several years, already, they said ; and there 
 were, as yet, no signs of injury. Some, however, on 
 the other hand, confessed they were beginning to suf- 
 fer slightly ; but they hoped their sufferings would not 
 be very severe ; for the duty they owed to their fami- 
 6 
 
62 PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 lies rendered it quite necessary that they should re- 
 main as long as possible in their employment. 
 
 I have watched the results, in both these cases. 
 The former class, notwithstanding their supposed im- 
 perviousness, held out longer than the latter ; but both 
 finally disappeared. I have never yet known an in- 
 dividual who was able to endure the inhalation of white 
 lead more than five or six years. All have been 
 obliged to leave the works or die. 
 
 The overseer of the lead-works in Roxbury, near 
 Boston, — a Mr. Prince, of " iron constitution " — 
 thought himself full proof against the deleterious influ- 
 ence to which he was daily and hourly subjected. He 
 was not obliged to be constantly in the shop, like his 
 men ; but was much of the time in the open air. How- ' 
 ever, two years did not pass, after my last conversation 
 with him on the subject, before all that remained of 
 him, that would have been cognizable to the senses, 
 was covered by the clods of the valley. 
 
 A man in Litchfield county, Conn. — a Mr. Morris 
 — who had long been exposed to the deleterious influ- 
 ences of lead, began at length to have fears about the 
 safety of his employment, and retired to a small farm. 
 Eighteen years afterward he died with every ordinary 
 symptom of lead colic. 
 
 A Mr. Whiting of Poultney, Vermont, a man ad- 
 vanced in years, died some time ago, with all the 
 symptoms of hydrophobia ; although if the disease 
 were hydrophobia at all, it must have been the effect 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 63 
 
 of a bite which he received from a dog in Farmington, 
 Conn., twenty-eight years before. 
 
 You may say that these are remarkable cases — 
 the results of active poisons ; and may perhaps be 
 inclined to doubt whether they at all apply to the 
 more frequent and common transgressions of every 
 day life. But we have other cases, innumerable, 
 which have an every day bearing. Let me mention 
 one : — 
 
 Rev. Mr. Woodbridge, then of Hartford, Conn., and 
 not far from seventy years of age, was beginning to be 
 troubled with paralytic complaints, rheumatism, etc. 
 His son, the geographer, believed his trouble arose, in 
 part, from his very free use of coffee ; but could not 
 for some time, persuade him to abstain from it. He 
 had used it forty years, he said, and he did not believe 
 it had ever injured him. He at length consented to 
 abstain from all drinks but water, and to make cold 
 applications to his lame knee, and in a few weeks he 
 entirely recovered. Nor did the difficulties, so far as 
 I know, ever return. 
 
 Now it is not the fumes of lead, or the virus of the 
 mad dog, or the narcotic effects of coffee, at which I 
 aim, in particular, in these remarks. What I would do, 
 is to impress upon the minds of the young, that punish- 
 ment, however long deferred, must certainly come. 
 And yet there are thousands and tens of thousands 
 who do not practically believe it ; and many more mil- 
 lions who never thought anything, at all, about it ; 
 although Solomon, more than three thousand years 
 
64 PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 ago, seems to have understood the matter and to have 
 uttered his notes of warning, as we have already seen. 
 
 It should, moreover, be distinctly understood that 
 the punishment will come just as certainly when we 
 sin in ignorance, as if we sin with our eyes open. ~Noi 
 is there any atonement for physical transgression. May 
 we not be thankful — ought we not to be — that pro- 
 visions of this sort are made anywhere ? 
 
 But if it were possible to escape the pains and pe- 
 nalties attached to other transgressions of physical law, 
 one thing is made obvious to every day's experience 
 and observation, viz,, that we cannot escape the penal- 
 ties due to transgressions of the law which concerns 
 our appetites. Here, emphatically, the soul that sins 
 must die. Moreover it is in relation to the laws of 
 appetite, in particular, that the sins of parents are vis- 
 ited upon those who come after them. 
 
 The appetites are given us, as has repeatedly been 
 said, for our gratification, at least in part ; and when 
 not abused they do thus minister. It is no dictate of 
 Christianity, or sound sense, that we should set about 
 eradicating them, as certain individuals have done, all 
 the way, from Origen, down to the present time. In- 
 deed we are seldom too much impelled by appetite, 
 unless that appetite is factitious rather than normal. 
 As I have, before, more than intimated, it seems to 
 me that man carries weight and energy with him just 
 in proportion to the strength of his appetites ; though 
 I admit that his energies may be directed to unworthy 
 and ignoble as well as to glorious ends. Appetite, in 
 
TIIYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 65 
 
 short, is the fulcrum on which the lever is yet to be 
 placed which shall raise the world. Is it not meet 
 that the same agencies which sunk the world should be 
 employed to lift it up again ? 
 
 But although our appetites, rightly directed, could 
 hardly, if ever, be too strong, they may become too 
 excitable. Excitability is very far from being synony- 
 mous with strength. On the contrary it is usually the 
 result of weakness or delicacy of constitution. When 
 the pulse, in the adult, instead of beating sixty or sev- 
 enty times a minute, rises to seventy or eighty or 
 ninety, the excitability of the system is increased, while 
 its actual strength is in nearly the same proportion, 
 diminished. So, when, instead of drinking a few times 
 in twenty-four hours, a reasonable quantity and with 
 a good degree of thirst, we are almost constantly sip- 
 ping, it does not indicate strength, but weakness, in 
 this appetite. And so, too, of those who instead of 
 one, two, or three meals a day, are eating as it were 
 all day long. They give evidence of a weakened state 
 of the appetite for food, if not even of a diseased one. 
 
 Nor do they secure the most of animal enjoyment 
 who are in the habit of eating a dozen or twenty times 
 a day, or who gratify any of the appetites too fre- 
 quently. They may, indeed, think otherwise. Many 
 thousands make this very mistake. Some of our mo- 
 thers and housekeepers seem to have attained to a 
 glimpse of truth on this subject, when occasionally 
 wc hear them tell their children and dependents that 
 by eating their fruit, nuts, cakes, seeds, confectionery, 
 G* 
 
66 PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 etc., when they chance to feel an inclination, they will 
 spoil their appetite, especially for the next meal. 
 
 Few things are more common among children and 
 young persons — to say nothing of the habits of many 
 who are older — than this error. In truth, so general 
 is the custom of swallowing something of the nutritious 
 kind, either solid or liquid, between our meals, that 
 very few persons come to the regularly set table with 
 the appetite wholly unimpaired. Three regular meals 
 a day, for adults, even though they should be scanty 
 ones, are the most which can be taken, by any healthy 
 person, and yet preserve, at the same time, a good and 
 healthy appetite. Indeed there is much room for suspi- 
 cion that the far greater part of mankind would be far 
 better served — and would in the same way enjoy 
 more — by two. 
 
 The general principles involved in the foregoing 
 paragraphs are applicable to the sexual appetite, with 
 its indulgences. If we pursue the course indicated by 
 its Divine author, it not only accomplishes its precise 
 purposes, but ministers like the other appetites, to 
 human enjoyment. But when we violate the laws 
 which are connected with the indulgence of this appe 
 tite, whether in one way or another, we may and do 
 increase its excitability, while we diminish its strength, 
 in the same proportion. We may, indeed, in this way, 
 increase its clamor for gratification, but we gradually 
 extinguish our capabilities of enjoyment. But the 
 more we yield to these clamorous demands — whether, 
 I a^ain say, in one form or another — the more, with 
 
pnrsiOLOGY op marriage. 67 
 
 absolute certainty, we increase that excitability in 
 which they have their origin. 
 
 My remarks, unintentionally, may have left, on 
 some reader's mind, the impression that it makes little 
 or no difference whether the indulgence of the sexual 
 appetite be in. one form or another. But this is not 
 exactly so. What I intended to affirm was, that the 
 rule or principle I was endeavoring to enforce or ex- 
 plain, was alike applicable to all the various forms of 
 indulgence, even when the degrees of excess or abuse 
 are very nearly equal. 
 
 Solitary indulgence, so far as the individual is concern- 
 ed who practises it, whether male or female, is most 
 undoubtedly followed by greater injury, near or re- 
 mote, — especially physical injury — than social ; 
 nay it is so, in its effects on posterity. And every 
 form of indulgence, as we have already seen, and as I 
 shall show more fully and clearly hereafter, is more 
 injurious before, than after the period of maturity. It 
 may not be easy to explain why it is that solitary vice 
 is more injurious to the individual and to the race, 
 than social. Indeed I have heard many good men ob- 
 ject to the utterance of this same sentiment in the little 
 book called the " Young Man's Guide." Fornication 
 has, there, it is said, an apology. But it is not so. The 
 writer goes as strongly against social vice, as any man ; 
 only he still insists that bad as it may be, solitary vice, 
 or, as it is usually called, of late, masturbation, is still 
 worse. 
 
 One prominent or rather one general reason for this 
 
C8 PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 belief is found in the well known fact that solitary 
 vice is more unnatural than social. It is a greater act 
 of violence on life's citadel. In that form of social vice 
 called sodomy it is indeed equally unnatural ; and if 
 possible, still more revolting. But I would fain hope, 
 this abomination is as yet but little known, or 
 practised in this country, beyond our dungeons and 
 prisons. 
 
 Perhaps the most complete evidence after all, of the 
 greater ill effects of masturbation is found in the fact 
 that it prostrates much more, the nervous and muscu- 
 lar apparatus ; and other things and circumstances be- 
 ing equal, predisposes, much more, to disease, both in 
 the individual, and in those who come after him. 
 
 Still the young who inherit comparatively strong 
 constitutions, sometimes go on in their solitary indul- 
 gences for a time " swimmingly," especially if there be 
 no peculiar defect or weakness transmissible by inher- 
 itance, but lying latent, as it were, or perhaps dormant ; 
 for if there is, the abuse will be sure to aggravate or 
 to hasten it. Yet ere they are aware — even in 
 the case of the strongest — both their strength and 
 their excitability begin to give way ; and they pass, 
 with great rapidity, through mania, into downright 
 idiocy, and into partial or complete impotence. 
 
 Instead of living on to seventy, or one hundred 
 years, in full vigor and with full strength of appetite, 
 or like Moses, to one hundred and twenty, they of- 
 ten arrive at a disability of enjoyment, at least from 
 the third appetite, at thirty-five or forty years, and are, 
 
rHYSIOLOGT OF MARRIAGE. 69 
 
 at this comparatively premature period, old men — 
 their animal juices, as it were exhausted or dried up. 
 They have rim their course, and by grasping too 
 eagerly for enjoyment, have failed to enjoy as much, 
 in the aggregate, as if they had made a wiser choice ; 
 and have been losers for this life and the life which is 
 to come. 
 
 Young men of fifteen or sixteen years, on finding 
 themselves in possession of new powers of enjoyment, 
 easily flatter themselves that, however it may be with 
 others, they are in no danger of impairing those pow- 
 ers. What ardently we wish, we soon believe. And 
 what, in the ardor of youth, we honestly believe, we 
 are eloquent to defend. 
 
 And their reasoning is specious. God has given us 
 the appetite, say they, and the means of its gratifica- 
 tion ; but why so, if it is not to be indulged ? Perhaps 
 they have a smattering of such knowledge as some of 
 the books and schools have been wont to teach, and 
 have called it physiology. As the existence of the 
 tears, saliva, pancreatic juice, etc., with the curi- 
 ous machinery which forms them, imply an object to 
 be accomplished, say they, why should not the exist- 
 ence of a fluid in the testicles, with the accompanying 
 machinery for its formation or secretion, imply an ob- 
 ject, too ? In other words, as the existence of the sa- 
 liva, gastric juice, etc., prove that we ought to eat, 
 why do not the existence of the genitals and their ac- 
 companying secretion prove that these organs ought 
 to be occasionally exercised ? 
 
70 rnrsiOLOGY of marriage. 
 
 But there is a difference between the two. All the 
 fluids connected with the apparatus for the digestion 
 of our food, have for their object the well being of the 
 individual and the continuance of his existence. The 
 seminal fluid and its machinery on the contrary have 
 nothing to do, directly, with sustaining the life and 
 health of the individual. There are even not wanting 
 in the records of men and things, facts which go far 
 towards proving that the life and health of an individ- 
 ual considered without reference to his duties or re- 
 lations to others, would be quite as well sustained 
 without any indulgence of the sexual propensity, as 
 with that indulgence, even though it were in the 
 greatest moderation. It is not, indeed, certain that 
 such a restricted indulgence as m barely necessary for 
 the continuance of the species, does not subtract, in 
 some degree, from the sum iu^al of the vital forces, 
 which God, in our constitution has meted out to us. 
 
 Much has been said, I know, to prove the health- 
 fulness of matrimony. It must be obvious, however, 
 that all this is merely comparative; and that the 
 comparison is made not with a celibacy of purity in 
 thought, word, deed, and feeling, but with one that 
 is more or less of the opposite character. That mar- 
 riage, even with all its abuses, tends, as a general rule, 
 more to health and longevity than celibacy, with its 
 abuses, I do not doubt in the least ; and, hence, as the 
 world now is, it must be regarded as highly desirable, 
 were it only on the score of general health. 
 
 Were we to make the comparison, however, between 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 71 
 
 the married state as it now is, with that measure of 
 contentment, quiet, and subordination of the passions 
 and appetites which usually accompanies it, and a pure 
 and virtuous celibacy accompanied by the same con- 
 tentment, quiet, and self-subjection, and with the same 
 opportunities (were this possible), for the cultivation of 
 the intellectual, social, and moral powers, it might 
 somewhat modify our conclusions. If Sir Isaac New- 
 ton, and Dr. Fothergill were as healthy and long- 
 lived notwithstanding their entire freedom, during 
 their whole existence, from every degree and form 
 of sexual indulgence, as historians tell us they were, it 
 does not seem very probable they were sufferers, in 
 any considerable degree at least, mentally and physic- 
 ally, from their celibacy. 
 
 The reader will not, of course, understand me as 
 reasoning against marriage, in the abstract ; especially 
 as I have already insisted on it as a primary duty. 
 My only object is to show the fallacy of that reason- 
 ing, if it deserves the name, to which the young so 
 often resort, which, after all, proves nothing but our 
 aptness and facility for inventing pretexts and ex- 
 cuses, as Franklin would say, for whatever we have an 
 inclination to do. 
 
 It is equally unquestionable, moreover, that God 
 has, in the nature and constitution of things, set a 
 limit to the indulgence of the sexual appetite some- 
 where short of our ability to gratify it. He has done 
 bo with the other appetites ; why should he not with 
 this ? He has moreover so ordered it that, if we 
 
72 PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 pass this limit, we and the whole race, so far as we 
 are connected at all with the coming generations, are 
 in a greater or less degree sufferers. But the usual 
 argument of the young, which I have been combating, 
 specious and plausible and agreeable as it may seem, 
 takes no notice of any such limit. It goes upon the 
 assumption that man may do what he has the capa- 
 bility of doing. It amounts, in short, to a kind of 
 special pleading, and to nothing more. 
 
 The natural limit which God has assigned to the 
 gratification of the sexual appetite must certainly be 
 passed when that appetite is indulged in such a man- 
 ner as to prevent the full development of all our pow- 
 ers, physical, mental, and moral ; or as to cripple or 
 embarrass them after they have been developed. It 
 is passed, also, when we gratify them socially, at the 
 expense of the energies of the other sex, as w'ell as 
 when we do so in such a way that, by the law of 
 hereditary descent, we transmit a feebler degree of 
 vitality, than otherwise we might, to coming gen- 
 erations. 
 
 Now in every instance of indulging the sexual 
 appetite, prior to full maturity of the body, we at 
 once retard or prevent the development of that body, 
 and practically defraud those who are to come after 
 us. We may, it is true, defraud ourselves and others, 
 both of the present and future generations, by wrong 
 doing after maturity, but not so readily or so largely, 
 as at an earlier period. 1 
 
 With regard to those abuses of our systems to 
 
rHTSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 73 
 
 which these remarks have reference, it is with pre- 
 mature indulgence very much as it is with premature 
 ahuses of the human system, generally. Thus, the 
 use of tobacco, though always prejudicial to health, 
 whatever may be the age and other circumstances of 
 the individual, is, nevertheless, much more injurious, 
 as might be seen by any careful observer, when begun 
 before maturity, than when begun afterward. The 
 do^jpward road to vice and ill-health, at the present 
 time, is travelled by thousands of mere boys, through 
 the smoke of tobacco. The same remark is applica- 
 ble, and with nearly the same force, to the use of 
 alcoholic drinks, opium, coffee, and every other extra 
 •stimulating or irritating agent. More than half the 
 miseries that ilow to mankind from rum-drinking, 
 tobaccq-using, and useless drugging and dosing, would 
 never have existence if none of these things were 
 practised this side of the twenty-fifth year. 
 
 True it is, and I most heartily rejoice that it is so, 
 that if none of these abuses are practised this side the 
 age of twenty-live or thirty, they will be far less fre- 
 quently indulged in, afterwards. For we are, to a 
 very great extent, creatures of habit; and he who has 
 travelled the right road twenty-five years is not very 
 likely to travel another path afterwards. 
 
 In nothing, however, is the weight and importance 
 of the general doctrine, here inculcated, so perceptible 
 as in the matter to which this chapter is mainly 
 directed. This is so, because the evils of sexual in- 
 dulgence, whether solitary or social, are generally 
 7 
 
74 PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 much greater than has usually been supposed ; and be- 
 cause, too, the tendencies to deterioration, by hereditary 
 transmission, have seldom if ever been fully and freely 
 pointed out. In the last mentioned particular, the 
 public mind is, to a most lamentable extent, in nearly 
 a profound ignorance. 
 
 Let us attempt in the first place, as briefly as the 
 nature of the case may permit, to delineate the evils 
 which premature indulgence inflicts upon the in- 
 dividual himself. These, it is admitted, have been 
 often pointed out. Some of them have been alluded 
 to in the " Young Man's Guide," as well as in several 
 other works ; but twenty-live additional years of ex- 
 perience and observation have given to the observing 
 medical world many new facts and thoughts on the 
 subject. 
 
 We have already seen that premature sexual in- 
 dulgence hurries on, unduly, the stream of life. It is 
 said that, when maturity arrives at twelve or fourteen 
 instead of twenty or twenty-five years, old age comes 
 as much earlier in proportion. Thus, in some parts 
 of southern India, tmd in northern Siberia, where 
 mothers are seen at the age of twelve years, there 
 are not wanting old women at thirty-five. Not only 
 the extremes of heat and cold have influence in thid 
 case, but that precocity and excitability of the appe- 
 tites, which usually accompany and follow. 
 
 In truth, premature excitement, and premature 
 indulgence, of any sort, or of either or any of the 
 appetites, hasten on most fearfully the wheels of 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 75 
 
 life. Hence their influence is so insidious, and some- 
 times so circuitous as hardly to be perceptible to the 
 unpractised observer ; and hence, too, many an un- 
 suspecting young man is deceived. Possessed, by 
 inheritance, of a pretty strong constitution, and finding 
 his face a little more flushed, and his animal spirits a 
 little more readily excited and raised to "flood-tide" 
 than usual, he is naturally led to suppose that his 
 indulgences, instead of weakening him, are actually 
 doing him good. This consciousness, as he regards it, 
 together with the feelings of triumph over childhood, 
 which accompany it, and the proud assurance that he 
 has become a man, impart a strength and give an 
 impulse which, though factitious, he actually mistakes 
 for indications of an increase of elasticity and vigor. 
 As to living at the expense of life, he knows nothing 
 at all about it. 
 
 Indulgence in wine, to a certain extent and for a 
 certain time, reddens the face ; and so do many other 
 indulgences; that of sexual appetite in solitude, 
 among the rest. It would seem that there is a 
 strong sympathy between the genitals and the head; 
 for when an increased amount of blood is determined 
 to the former, as in the case either of solitary or 
 social indulgence, there is, most evidently, a reflex 
 action upon the brain. Nor am I sure that when we 
 excite the brain unduly, as by hot drinks, high- 
 seasoned food, or violent passions, or by reading, or 
 conversing, or thinking on subjects which make their 
 appeal chiefly to the imagination, we may not, by a 
 
76 PnYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 reversion of the rule, excite unduly the organs of 
 generation. In truth, there is very little reason for 
 doubt on this subject. 
 
 Perhaps these considerations may aid us in explain- 
 ing the mystery of that unexpected fall of so many 
 literary men of high standing, as well as not a few 
 excellent individuals of both sexes, of less elevated 
 intellectual powers, but possessed of an ardent and 
 lively imagination, and endued with an unusual degree 
 of physical sensibility. But yesterday, as it were, 
 and none too good to do them reverence ; to-day, we 
 are only able to say of them : — 
 
 "In Caprea plunged, and dived beneath the brute." 
 
 Time immemorial, there has been in vogue a saying 
 very much like this : " vYomen and wine, though they 
 smile, they make men pine." I will not attribute it to 
 Poor Richard, nor stop to make any criticisms. The 
 point to which I wish to direct your attention is the 
 fact of the association. Women and wine certainly 
 produce somewhat similar effects externally ; but the 
 stimulus in both cases proves, in the end, deceptive — " it 
 bites like a serpent, and stings like an adder." 
 
 It is particularly important to young men that this 
 error, of supposing that what flushes the face and 
 gives such a sudden impulse to particular organs 
 may be permanent in its effects, should be effectually : 
 removed. They call it their experience ; and experi- 
 ence, they say practically, is the best school-master. 
 Now, how is it possible to convince them against the 
 current of their own wise experience ? 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 77 
 
 The task is, indeed, difficult, but not hopeless. Some 
 few there may be found who arc not so thoroughly im- 
 bued with our pseudo-republicanism as to disdain all 
 authority ; they will occasionally listen ; especially to 
 those whose age and venerable appearance arc such as 
 to remove all suspicion of sinister motives. 
 
 Let it, in the first place, be deeply impressed on the 
 mind of every young man, especially those who count 
 themselves so very robust, and who are sure that what 
 they call a moderate indulgence of their appetites is 
 doing them no harm, but is even improving their con- 
 dition, that they have entered upon a much frequented 
 path. They may be led by some unforeseen accident, 
 or by peculiar circumstances, to diverge from it, or to 
 turn back, and thus escape the pitfalls that lie in their 
 way, as well as the impassable gulf that yearns at the 
 end of it. But they have no guaranty to this effect. 
 Hundreds of our young men, who felt as strong as 
 they possibly can, as the records of insane hospitals, 
 and other similar receptacles, would abundantly testify, 
 have been alienated from reason, and conscience, and 
 God, and shipwrecked on the sands and shoals of im- 
 potence and idiocy, who, for aught which could once 
 have been seen, set out in life with prospects as 
 promising as themselves. 
 
 Most young men, in these days, inherit a tendency 
 to one disease or another; consumption, gout, apoplexy, 
 neuralgia, scrofula or rheumatism. In some, however, 
 the tendency is very slight, and were they to pursue a 
 proper, or duly prescribed, course, they might pass on 
 7* 
 
78 PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 through life in the enjoyment of tolerable health, and 
 reach a comparatively great age. And there are a few 
 among us, in whom the tendency to disease is so slight, 
 or so obscure, that we do not hesitate, in common par- 
 lance, to pronounce them healthy. 
 
 These comparatively healthy individuals, while in 
 the pathway either of solitary or social vice, seldom, at 
 first, encounter any serious difficulties ; and they can 
 hardly be led to apprehend danger. Perhaps they 
 escape perceptible deterioration for years. Perhaps, 
 too, a fortunate marriage to a sensible woman, or a 
 somewhat unfortunate one, to a miserable invalid, for 
 a time saves them. 
 
 But perhaps, too, a fate far different awaits them. 
 As rum-drinking has its special disease — its specific 
 punishment — in the form of delirium tremens ; and as 
 every other abusive article, such as opium, tobacco, 
 coffee, tea, etc., has its specific disease, so, also, has 
 sexual indulgence, especially masturbation ; and that 
 disease, in terminating, is neither more nor less than a 
 most dreadful idiocy. 
 
 It has been said, I know, that the special and more 
 natural termination of the path of the solitary trans- 
 gressor, is mania. But this is not so. Mania, in 
 general, is only his half-way house to the chambers of 
 death. Signs of mental aberration beginning to ap- 
 pear, the transgressor is, perhaps, sent to the hospital 
 for the insane ; and very properly too. If he has not 
 gone too far, and if the source of aberration can be 
 stopped, he may recover. A very small proportion, 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 79 
 
 only, of each hundred, arc thus fortunate. In general 
 
 his symptoms will, at best, be only mitigated. A 
 small number remain as they were for a time, but 
 finally die. Those in whom the disease can neither 
 be cured nor arrested, proceed, more or less rapidly, to 
 the end of their career, which is drivelling idiocy 
 of the most hopeless kind. Some of the most con- 
 scientious and promising young men of whom New 
 England and New York could boast, and of the best 
 family origin, have thus gone away from earth, and 
 earthly happiness. 
 
 Should there be a tendency in the family to in- 
 sanity, that is, should there be an insane inheritance, 
 the young man at the hospital will probably linger for 
 some time. For, in order to understand this subject 
 properly, it needs to be observed that the tendencies 
 to disease from whatever cause of excitement, whether 
 from abuses of appetite or anything else, are apt to be 
 in the direction of previous constitutional or acquired 
 weaknesses. Thus, if a person has a tendency, 
 whether acquired or inherited to pulmonary con- 
 sumption, masturbation, instead of bearing him down 
 to the regions of mania and thence onward to the 
 more doubtful and darksome world of idiocy, will 
 hasten on the consumptive disease. So if the tendency 
 be to the liver or any other organ, the voluntary 
 abuses of the individual will hasten on to its final 
 termination, or greatest height, that disease to which, 
 previously, he was inclined. 
 
 It is, in general, only when there is no marked 
 
80 PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 tendency to any other disease that sexual abuses run 
 the transgressor so readily into hopeless idiocy. If 
 there is a tendency in the family, or in his own consti- 
 tution as I said before, to insanity, the diseased ten- 
 dencies may linger there a long time — perhaps till he 
 perishes. But if the tendency is to consumption or 
 some other disease, and especially if the tendency that 
 way is strong, it will save him from mania and idiocy, 
 to kill him of consumption. 
 
 It is, however, rather common for those, who, being 
 inclined to consumption, fall early into sexual indul- 
 gences, especially solitary indulgence, to become af- 
 fected with what is called, in books, tabes dorsalis , 
 but which might just as well be called consumption 
 of the back. It is a very frequent disease, of late 
 years ; and is, I think, in the increase. 
 
 On this subject — the tendency of sexual abuse to 
 consumption — much might be said. The chapter on 
 the law of marriage will reveal other facts of import- 
 ance ; and so will the chapter which furnishes counsels 
 and directions to parents, masters and guardians. I 
 have no more room for it, in this place. 
 
 An individual may tend, by inheritance or otherwise, 
 to epilepsy ; or, as it is vulgarly called, falling sickness. 
 In that case, insteau of becoming a victim to idiocy 
 or mania, or consumption, his course will be to epilep- 
 sy — often of the most incurable kind. — It is worthy 
 of remark, moreover, that a disease of any kind, whe- 
 ther mania, consumption or epilepsy, that might other- 
 wise have been mild, or at least not speedily fatal, will 
 
PIIYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGK. 81 
 
 be rendered more severe or more dangerous or both, 
 by additional tendencies induced by sexual abuse. 
 Particularly is this true, in the case of epilepsy. Many 
 a young man might get along very well with his epi- 
 lepsy, if he would govern his appetites, especially the 
 third. 
 
 I knew one case of epilepsy quite in point, and strik- 
 ing. It had its origin, apparently, in blows on the 
 head at about the age of twelve years. Masturbation, 
 into which the young man fell three or four years af- 
 terward, greatly increased its severity. Excessive 
 abuse of his stomach added still more to the difficulty 
 and danger. He was cured at seventeen or eighteen 
 years of age by entirely subduing his appetites ; but 
 he relapsed into stomach indulgences, and perished 
 soon after of consumption. 
 
 St. Vitus's dance, or, as the books call it, chorea, is 
 another disease which is often brought on some of our 
 most promising young men, as the consequence of 
 masturbation ; — and a most troublesome disease it 
 sometimes proves. It is not by any means pleasant to 
 the sufferer himself to find his arms or legs twitching 
 about, when he would gladly control them ; and it is 
 sometimes still more unpleasant and painful to hi3 
 friends. It is, moreover, a disease which is not easily 
 cured. 
 
 Should there be a tendency in the system to any 
 other disease, such as palsy, apoplexy, hypochondria 
 or hysteria, the result of sexual abuse of every kind, 
 would be to aggravate that tendency; or if they 
 
82 PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 had hitherto remained latent, in the system, to rouse 
 them into activity. 
 
 One of the' diseases last named, viz., hypochondria, 
 is usually thought of as purely imaginary. Now 
 though the imagination is both excited unduly, and 
 disordered, withal, as well as excited, it is doubtless 
 founded on diseased internal organs ; especially some 
 of those which are connected, more or less, with the 
 function of digestion. 
 
 In this dreadful disease — more dreadful to my 
 own mind than the small pox or the cholera — the 
 sufferer sometimes imagines his legs to be made of 
 glass, and supposes he cannot move an inch without 
 breaking them. In other instances, he supposes there 
 are animals of various kinds preying upon his very 
 vitals. In others, still, he fancies he has enemies, se- 
 cret or open, plotting his destruction, — perhaps even 
 among his best friends. 
 
 The most dismal forebodings occasionally make a 
 part of this strange disea.se ; and not a few have actu- 
 ally committed suicide to rid themselves of an anguish 
 which they deemed unsupportable. They are always, 
 in appearance, downcast or shamefaced, as if they 
 thought not only their limbs but their bodies also were 
 transparent, and that everybody was looking through 
 them. 
 
 And yet these patients are scarcely more hopeless of 
 recovery than those who tend to paralysis. Neither is 
 liable to die suddenly ; but it is also true that neither 
 is very likely to get well. The fate of the consump- 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 83 
 
 tive and the idiot is well known aud settled ; but the 
 condition of those that are doomed to die a living 
 death is little more enviable. 
 
 Gutta serena, sometimes called amaurosis, or a 
 species of blindness, is by no means an unusual effect 
 of the form of vice to which I am directing the reader's 
 attention. Indeed all forms and degrees of sexual 
 abuse seem to me to injure, more or less, the organ of 
 vision. 
 
 But I repeat that any disease, whatever, to which 
 the system is predisposed, whether induced by inheri- 
 tance, or by causes applied to the individual himself, 
 may be roused to activity or aggravated by sexual 
 abuses in every form and degree. The most common 
 disease — a cold or a fever — falling upon a person 
 who, by these abuses, had irritated and agitated his 
 nervous system (an effect which is, in these cases, al- 
 ways produced) is thereby rendered more troublesome, 
 if not? more fatal. 
 
 But I find I am likely to be less intelligible, in my 
 remarks, than if I had explained, more fully and parti- 
 cularly, the difference between the predisposing and 
 exciting causes of disease. Let me do so, by a very 
 humble comparison. 
 
 Suppose a musket or a piece of artillery were to be 
 discharged for some purpose, as at an enemy. It must 
 first be loaded with powder and ball. But will it go 
 off — explode — Without anything else being done ? 
 Not in a thousand years. It is only 2)redi$])Osed, so 
 to say, to go off. Before it can go off, it must be 
 
84 PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 ignited, or excited. The powder at the bottom, must 
 be set on fire. 
 
 But unless the powder is ignited, I say again, it 
 would never go off. It would be merely predisposed 
 to go off. Just so with regard to many of the diseases, 
 to which, in this world, we are predisposed. The pre- 
 disposition would not kill us. I had almost said it 
 would not hurt us. Could we be bo fortunate as to 
 avoid the igniting spark — the exciting cause — I se*. 
 no good reason why we might not pass through life pre- 
 disposed to gout, mania, rheumatism, and even con- 
 sumption, and yet die of old age. 
 
 Now young men should know that by their various 
 personal transgressions of physical law — aye, and of 
 jQoral law, too — at every age, saying nothing, now, 
 about inheritance, they are 'predisposing themselves to 
 disease of some sort. Half the world die of fevers. 
 But there may be, and must be, a thousand predis- 
 positions, greater or smaller, to these fevers ; and yet 
 no human being could ever die, merely of these pre- 
 dispositions. There must be first, an igniting sp>ark. 
 
 But every abuse of an appetite, where these predis- 
 positions exist, is or may be an igniting spark. In any 
 and every event, it is an injury. If it do not ignite 
 the pile of combustible matter, it adds to the predisposi- 
 tion, or loads the piece more and more, till at length 
 whenever a more intense excitement is applied, the 
 explosion takes place, and may be terrible. As a 
 general rule, every abuse of the human system adds 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 85 
 
 to the severity of its subsequent diseases. Of this, 
 however, I may say more hereafter. 
 
 There is an evil connected with masturbation, on 
 which its unhappy victims are accustomed to dwell, 
 with peculiar emphasis. I allude to the involuntary 
 — and chiefly nocturnal — emission of a fluid whose 
 emissions at first, only take place in connection with 
 voluntary effort. Few things give to this class of pa- 
 tients more anxiety and trouble. 
 
 Now it is the weakness and depression which im- 
 mediately follow these nightly emissions which lead 
 jroung men to think so much of their evil tendency. 
 They forget — rather, they never knew — that what 
 they call a disease, is only a symptom ; an effect, but. 
 liot a cause. Perhaps they are misled by the books 
 jf which I have already spoken with so much dispar- 
 agement ; and which contain, along with some truth, 
 not a little error. 
 
 Tissot, for example, together with other German and 
 French writers, has much to say of the muscular and 
 nervous debility which results from these involuntary 
 discharges of semen. The loss of one ounce of this 
 fluid, so we are told, is equal to the loss of forty ounces 
 of blood. They thus turn the mind of the criminal to 
 the effect, rather than the cause of disease. And this 
 •opens the door, as it were, to a world of quacks, and 
 brings, at once, upon us, a deluge of quackery. 
 
 It ought to be known, to all young men, that the 
 loss of semen, in itself considered, is of little compara- 
 tive importance. This fluid was not made, it is true, 
 8 
 
86 PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 to be thrown off from the living system recklessly, any 
 more than the saliva. Yet after all, it is the great 
 agitation of the nervous system — it is the wear and 
 tear of the vital powers, and the waste of the vital 
 energies, which accompany or rather precede the dis- 
 charge, and not the mere discharge of the fluid itself 
 — which do the mischief. The weakness and de- 
 pression are an effect, too, and not a cause. 
 
 Whenever young men can be properly informed on 
 this point, they will be far less liable than they now 
 are to fall into that unhappy state of the mind and 
 heart, which is sometimes witnessed by the physician 
 and friends, but which is concealed from the eye of 
 others — a state bordering closely upon despair, and 
 sometimes leading to it. 
 
 Even if the emissions become very frequent, there 
 is nothing to be gained by mourning over them, or 
 even by dwelling on them, in our thoughts. Dr. Rush 
 used to assure his patients that if the emissions did not 
 happen more than twice a week, they would not hurt 
 them. But I do not think we are authorized to say 
 quite as much as this. Twice a week indicates at 
 least a bad condition of the general system — one 
 which would justify, if it did not even require, a little 
 anxiety. * 
 
 I must not stop, in this place, to point out the prop- 
 er course to be pursued by those who are already be- 
 ginning to pay the fearful penalty of their physical 
 transgressions. This, and the manifold dangers from 
 quacks and quackery, to which the young are liable, 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OP MARRIAGE. 87 
 
 will be more fully unfolded and more amply discussed 
 in another chapter. 
 
 It is sufficient, for the present, if I succeed in im- 
 pressing upon the youthful mind this leading idea that 
 the danger to which, as a transgressor, he is exposed, 
 lies chiefly in the causes which pave the way to noc- 
 turnal and other seminal emissions, and not in the 
 emissions themselves ; and that it is to the removal or 
 prevention of these causes that our attention should be 
 chiefly directed. Those effects which so fearfully agi- 
 tate their minds should indeed so far agitate and affect 
 them as to make them give heed to a warning so ter- 
 rible. It is not nature in sackcloth and ashes, merely, 
 it is nature giving vent to her agony in other and 
 more unmistakable signs. The sorrows which most 
 threaten the security of life's deep foundations, are not 
 those which manifest themselves by a shower of tears. 
 In the deepest earthly grief which is known, there is 
 no weeping. 
 
 When a young man who is conscious he is pursuing 
 a wrong path, begins to perceive his appetite to be af- 
 fected, and especially to be irregular ; when the work 
 of digestion, and perhaps the performance of other 
 functions, is accompanied by darting pains, in different 
 parts of the body ; when to these are added a dark 
 semi-circle below the eye, a tumid upper eyelid, weak 
 eyes and flushings of the face, with nightly emissions, 
 let him beware of danger. If, however, to all these is 
 added an unusual and unaccountable weakness of the 
 back, lungs, and nervous system, accompanied by a 
 
88 PIIYSTOLOGT OF MATUIIAGE. 
 
 dry cough and hurried breathing, a weak voice and 
 great trcmulousness, let him know that without reform- 
 ation, speedy and effectual, a most fearful retribution 
 cannot be far off. 
 
 I have dwelt, thus far, for the most part, on those 
 evils which fall upon the criminal himself; and have 
 said little of the results to those who are to come after 
 him. Even, in the " Young Man's Guide," the first 
 work in the United States which attempted to make 
 the subject popular, almost as little was said. Other 
 writers have pursued nearly the same course. Per- 
 haps, like myself in former years, they supposed it to 
 be a topic which would fail to excite their interest. 
 
 But my views are somewhat changed. Young men 
 do not seem to me so reckless as older persons are apt 
 to imagine. They are indeed thoughtless. They are, 
 however, as ignorant as they are thoughtless ; and per- 
 haps their very thoughtlessness is the result of their 
 ignorance, at least in not a few cases. In the matter 
 before us, it most certainly is so. 
 
 Is it strange that our young men and young women 
 should be ignorant of the laws of hereditary descent ? 
 Why, they are not made known, in any considerable 
 degree, to one in ten of those who are older, and how, 
 then, can the young, as a general rule, be expected to 
 understand them ? Such an expectation would be in 
 the face of all experience and all observation, as well 
 as absolutely and strangely unreasonable. 
 
 If a young man knew that by yielding to tempta- 
 tion and seizing what are known to be the unlawful 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 89 
 
 gratifications of the present moment, lie was preparing 
 himself to become the father of a sickly family of chil- 
 dren, would it have no influence with him ? I do not 
 ask whether it would always preserve him from self- 
 immolation ; but would it never save him ? Or if it 
 should not wholly preserve him, might it not partially ? 
 It is certainly worth the trial. 
 
 Let me say then, most distinctly, to every young 
 man, that as surely as he shall ever become the father 
 of a child which shall be formed in his own likeness, 
 — that is, shall be like him in physical constitution — 
 that child must suffer, more or less, from every 'abuse 
 of his (the father's) constitution, prior to the period of 
 his birth, but particularly during the first twenty-five 
 years of his life. 
 
 Does any such young man wish to be roused at mid- 
 night or two o'clock to go in pursuit of a physician for 
 his sick child ? Perhaps he has been at hard work, 
 all the preceding day, and greatly needs rest. Per- 
 haps he is, himself, unwell, and needs the aid of " tired 
 Nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep." Perhaps it is 
 exceedingly cold or stormy without, and he dreads the 
 peltings of the snow. or rain. Perhaps the distance to 
 a physician's office is considerable. Perhaps, finally, 
 the child is attacked with croup or cholera or convul- 
 sions, and the danger is imminent, so that he is almost 
 unwilling to leave him. 
 
 There are a thousand other smaller difficulties, 
 which in the aggregate amount to something, and re- 
 quire not a litle energy and effort. He is a youn^ 
 8* 
 
90 PHYSIOLOGY OP MAItRIAGE. 
 
 man, and keep? no horse. The ease seems an urgent 
 one ; shall he delay long enough to go and procure a 
 horse, — with a degree of uncertainty how long a time 
 it will take to get started on his journey, — or shall 
 he set out on foot ? Shall he go for the nearer phy- 
 sician, whom he dislikes ; or for the more remote one, 
 whom he prefers ? Shall he rouse some near neighbor 
 from his slumbers to remain with his half-distracted 
 companion while he is gone; or shall it be his first 
 object to procure a physician, regardless of every thing 
 else? 
 
 These are only indications, mere hints, painful as 
 they may be, of what a young man is sometimes 
 called to experience while at the head of a family. 
 And scenes like this may have to be acted over, again 
 and again, during many long years. 
 
 Another consideration is of too much importance 
 to be excluded from the account. A young man who 
 is just setting up in life, and even one who is a con- 
 siderable way advanced in it, values his time highly, 
 as well as his money. He does not like to spend his 
 days and nights, perhaps in harvest time, with his sick 
 children ; nor to pay away the earnings of other times 
 for attendants, medicine, and physicians ; perchance, too, 
 for grave habiliments, and coffins, and grave-diggers. 
 
 Besides, a child is practically an investment of 
 property, to the full extent of what it costs us to raise 
 him to a given age ; and this is an item of loss which, 
 when a child dies, — though many parents may shrink 
 from it, — must certainly come into the general reckon- 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OP MARRIAGE. 91 
 
 ing. Colored children arc oftentimes valued at so 
 many dollars and cents per head ; arc white children 
 worth less than black ones ? And then, finally, and 
 worst of all, and most to be dreaded, — should a child 
 die, in the case just supposed, there is the painful, un- 
 speakably painful task of following him to a premature 
 grave. 
 
 Now then, I say, is a young man, for the sake of a 
 little premature gratification, prepared to encounter all 
 these, and many more kindred trials ? Is he willing 
 to sacrifice the future to the present ? Is he willing 
 in fewer words and better English, to gratify himself 
 now, that he may slay his child and torture his own 
 soul in time to come ? 
 
 But I know the heartfelt response of every young 
 man to these inquiries. Taking him as merely a 
 selfish and instinctive being, without a particle of the 
 love of God or his fellow man in his soul, he yet 
 shrinks from the bare thought of pursuing a course 
 which shall involve such results, even for a moment. 
 Convince him that he is doing so, and would the con- 
 viction fail to have influence ? 
 
 And yet is he not, in many instances, doing all this ? 
 Every indulgence, as I have before said, which is a 
 violation of nature's laws, and especially every such 
 indulgence before marriage, is doing this. I care not 
 so much if it is the mere indulgence of the appetites 
 for food and drink ; still, the tendencies of our various 
 violations of the third appetite are rather the worst. 
 
 Do not misunderstand me. I do not mean to say 
 
92 PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 that children would never have croup, or any other 
 disease, without parental transgression. There are 
 few diseases that owe their existence to any one cause 
 to the entire exclusion of all others. A dozen causes, 
 possibly a hundred, predisposing and exciting, may 
 have their weight of influence. But I do and must 
 insist, that no form of licentiousness is without its 
 influence. Such a result were as impossible as for 
 water to change its course, and run up hill. 
 
 No child, born of erring parents, and taking the 
 peculiarities of constitution of those parents, is, in this 
 respect wholly unaffected. Even when, for the most 
 part, he follows in physical constitution his grand- 
 parents or even his remoter relations, he usually takes 
 a tinge, so to call it, from his father or mother, or 
 both. 
 
 Let me also say, still farther, that every disease 
 which befalls a child, at any age — from a cold to the 
 cholera — is the more severe and the less manageable, 
 and even more likely to prove fatal, in consequence 
 of every form and degree of parental transgression. I 
 have even known the effects of drunkenness and licen- 
 tiousness to be visited upon the third and fourth gen- 
 eration. The following is a case in point : — 
 
 A fine young man of New England, with a rising 
 family, entered the army of the revolution, and after a 
 few years became a somewhat distinguished officer. 
 But his associates, as an officer, at length ruined him ; 
 they led him into habits of intemperance and licen- 
 tiousness, in which habits he at length ended his days. 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 93 
 
 Now half .his children, — for he had a considerable 
 family, — were* born before the war, and half after- 
 ward ; and the difference between the posterity of the 
 first, in their various generations, down to the fourth 
 and fifth, and that of the second, is as marked as if they 
 belonged to entirely different families. While most of 
 the individuals descended from the temperate man 
 before the war, are strong and healthy, the greater 
 part of the other sort have for their portion, by in- 
 heritance, more or less of scrofula, consumption, rheu- 
 matism, cutaneous disease, premature decay of the 
 teeth, etc.; and quite a number of them have not 
 apparently lived out half the days which God and 
 nature assigned them. 
 
 Indeed, it sometimes happens that when the causes 
 of disease in a child fall short of producing their 
 wonted effect, the inherited tendency, like a weight 
 thrown into scales nearly balanced, decides the case in 
 the diseased direction. 
 
 More than even this is true. Not only does every 
 parental error tend to aggravate, if not to induce, dis- 
 ease, but it has also the effect to transmit general 
 delicacy, if not actual debility. How many there are 
 who drag through life, merely existing, as it were, 
 when they might have been "so many robust and 
 healthy men and women but for this cause, namely, 
 ancestral transgression ? 
 
 Then, again, parental transgression has its effect 
 on the mental strength and activity no less than on 
 bodily health and vigor. We know not, and never 
 
94 PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 can know till the GREAT day shall reveal it, how 
 many mental, no less than bodily, weaknesses are the 
 result of sexual abuse ; saying nothing of innumerable 
 other errors. 
 
 Indeed, I have not a doubt that, by the law of 
 hereditary descent, many a licentious indulgence, es- 
 pecially before the age of twenty-five, has resulted in 
 a greater or smaller degree of mental inactivity and 
 imbecility; as well as in various erratic affections. 
 We love what we ought to hate, and hate what we 
 ought to love, as the result of heart-feebleness, so to 
 call it ; and this heart-feebleness is often chargeable 
 on the forms of parental error, to which I have in this 
 chapter been directing attention. 
 
 In the preceding paragraphs I have appealed solely 
 to the young man's selfishness. I might, it is true, 
 have appealed to a higher and nobler principle. For, 
 if a few young men among us are to be supposed 
 wholly selfish, it is not generally so. There is a mix- 
 ture of benevolence, or, at least, of sympathy, greater 
 or less, in almost every human being, however fallen 
 and degraded. Mankind are not, to use a legal phrase, 
 " all and singular, devil." I do not say that the ma- 
 jority of them, or indeed any considerable minority, 
 possess the benevolence of the Gospel ; but there is, 
 in their hearts and souls, a fellow-feeling. 
 
 This feeling is so strong that it would make most 
 of us shrink from the idea of inflicting positive wrong 
 on any human being. I speak still of the majority, 
 and not of all. Not one in ten of our young men, as 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 95 
 
 they come up in life, uninfluenced by out of doors 
 depravity, would murder, rob, or openly defraud an 
 African, an Indian, or a Malay. They would not rob 
 him of his money. Much less would they be inclined 
 to rob him of his reputation, health, and life. 
 
 But if they would not, in any of these various ways, 
 
 injure those who arc so remote from them, how much 
 
 less readily would they injure those who are near and 
 
 dear to them — who are, as it were, bone of their 
 
 ' bone and flesh of their flesh ? 
 
 Not a few of our youflg men who are at the head 
 of their respective families, truly love their children as 
 they love themselves. They would as soon — perhaps 
 even sooner — inflict an injury of any sort, on them- 
 selves, as on their children and family. They suffer 
 to their very extremities when their little ones suffer. 
 
 And yet, following out the train of reasoning above, 
 is it not true that every young person who abuses his 
 own system, before and during the time of his being 
 a parent, robs his child of a measure of that vitality 
 which God, in his wise Providence, designed for him ? 
 Fortunate, indeed, is he, if his transgressions do not 
 prove the means of the absolute destruction of his 
 child ! Fortunate — should I not say thrice fortu- 
 nate ? — if he is not guilty of the still higher crime 
 of manslaughter. Observe, however, I do not say 
 murder, in such a case ; but, simply and briefly, man- 
 slaughter. 
 
 Those young men are rarely found — whatever 
 may be thought — who can resist the spirit of appeals 
 like these. I repeat — young men have not been, in 
 
96 PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. • 
 
 this particular, duly informed. Where the blame 
 should rest — in the eye and mind of God does rest 
 — it may not be easy to say; but there is error, some- 
 where. Perhaps it is justly chargeable on society as 
 a whole, rather than on any particular class. If so, 
 let it there rest. 
 
 And yet not necessarily. Society is made up of 
 individuals — begins with individuals. The work of 
 declension or deterioration must have begun with indi- 
 viduals ; why shall not a work of reform begin there, 
 too? Let not the matter *rest, then. Let every 
 young man who reads these pages, resolve, in his own 
 mind and heart, to do all in his power to effect on 
 society, a most important and most thorough work of 
 reform. Shall he not, at least, take the first step — 
 that which must, forever, be the first step — shall he 
 not reform himself? 
 
 We think, sometimes, and speak of Eve — and her 
 mighty work of declension. We speak of her fallen 
 posterity — at the present time almost a thousand 
 millions ; saying nothing about the many thousand 
 millions of the sleeping dead. Now, every young 
 head of a family, for whom I write, may one day 
 have been the progenitor of more millions than Eve 
 yet has. And is not this a solemn thought? Is it 
 not a thought of great and absorbing interest ? Whose 
 heart does not beat high at the bare possibility of be- 
 coming the progenitor of a world, as it were, of pure, 
 holy, healthy, and greatly elevated beings — a race 
 worthy of emerging from the fall — and of enstamp- 
 ing on it a species of immortality ? 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 SOCIAL ERRORS, AND THEIR PUNISHMENT. 
 
 I have already ventured the opinion that fornica- 
 tion is somewhat less frequent among- us than it was 
 a hundred years ago. It is an opinion to which I still 
 adhere. Or, if the crime is as common now as it was 
 then, I doubt whether it is quite as unblushing. — And 
 is there not something gained to the cause of truth 
 and righteousness when vice, instead of holding high 
 its unblushing or impudent head, seeks retirement and 
 concealment ? 
 
 One can almost remember — one, I mean, who is 
 at all advanced in life — the time when not only night 
 parties, and concerts, and balls, and individual night 
 visits, were frequent among the great mass of our 
 people, but even night-sitting. I can certainly re- 
 member such a time. A young person was not thought 
 to act well his part who did not participate at all, in 
 these follies. 
 
 Bundling, as it was called, I do not remember. To 
 those who know the human heart and the strength of 
 temptation, it seems strange that it should ever, for 
 one moment, have been tolerated. And yet there 
 are remote parts of our country — especially of our 
 9 
 
98 PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 eastern States — in which it but recently prevailed, at 
 least in some degree. 
 
 But all the follies I have, thus far, in this chapter, 
 referred to, except perhaps concerts and balls, seem 
 to be on the wane ; for which we owe much to God 
 and an enlightened public sentiment. Night-sitting, 
 in most places, is'nearly unknown. Still there is quite 
 enough of it; and quite too much of fornication, at 
 least in some particular parts*of our country. 
 
 I have already expressed a doubt whether mastur- 
 bation, as a substitute for fornication, is a public gain. 
 I might have said more, viz., that so far as it has 
 beeen introduced as a substitute, we are losers by it. 
 I do not think it any better than fornication, even for 
 females themselves. I do not believe it to be half as 
 injurious to a female, physically considered, to bear 
 and nurse a child, every two years, as it is to prac- 
 tise solitary vice, during the same period of time. If 
 matrimonial life, and the bearing and rearing of chil- 
 dren, by being begun at the early age of sixteen, cuts 
 off several years of valuable female life, masturbation 
 cuts off a still greater number. And the delicacy and 
 disease it inflicts on themselves and the next genera- 
 tion are to be, at the least, equally dreaded. Its ef- 
 fects on our own sex, that is, comparatively, I have 
 already mentioned. 
 
 But though solitary indulgence is so bad, in its ef- 
 fects — one of the very worst scourges ever inflicted 
 on the civilized world — it does not thence follow that 
 fornication is not a great evil. As masturbation has 
 
THYSIOLOGY OF MAURIAGE. 99 
 
 its specific and awful penalty — a most drivelling and 
 
 hopeless idiocy — so fornication has, too, its penalty, 
 only in another form. The syphilis, or venereal dis- 
 ease, in its various shapes, appears to be by the ap- 
 pointment of Heaven, one of the safeguards of the 
 virtue of the species ; and woe to the individual who 
 disregards it ! 
 
 It is less easy to trace the disease to those parts of 
 the world where it first made its appearance, than to 
 ascertain how it now originates. But, however, this 
 or any other circumstance may be connected with the 
 disease, of one thing we may be sure, viz., that it is 
 an infliction of high heaven — an almost direct punish- 
 ment of crime. 
 
 Perhaps this foul disease is as old as the world in 
 which we live ; at least as old as the world that was 
 drowned. In portions of the world after the flood — 
 most certainly in the cities of the plain — social abuse, 
 at least of the kind most revolting and abominable, 
 was well-known. But of this I have spoken before. 
 
 Whether fornication, as well as sodomy, was com- 
 mon in the old world, we are, of course, ignorant. 
 That in the days of Noah, and at the approach of the 
 flood, " they were eating and drinking, marrying and 
 giving in marriage " — giving themselves up as slaves 
 to their appetites and lusts — certainly looks suspi- 
 cious. Yet whether the modern penalty of social 
 vice, among the sexes, was then inflicted, we have no 
 means of ascertaining. 
 
 It is thought by some, that this foul disease may be 
 
100 mYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE 
 
 generated by social indulgence, at least in certain 
 circumstances, without the existence of contagion 
 or infection, or any peculiar predisposition.' It cer- 
 tainly must begin somewhere ; for it is more or less 
 severe, everywhere, in proportion to the extent to 
 which the abuses of the sexual system have been 
 carried. The deeper and more loathsome the prostitu- 
 tion is, as in some of our most densely populated cities, 
 the more dreadfully loathsome is this disease ; but if 
 it can be aggravated, made many fold worse by in- 
 dulgence and abuse, in almost every degree, why 
 should not the larger and more excessive degrees of 
 indulgence actually originate it, especially when clean- 
 liness and purity, and all the other laws of health are 
 grossly neglected ? 
 
 Of course, social indulgence weakens both parties 
 in body and mind, and tends to bring on them and 
 their posterity a thousand ills ; such as I have men- 
 tioned in the preceding chapter as being connected 
 with solitary vice. I need not repeat in this place 
 what the reader can so easily turn to, and examine and 
 reflect on for himself. 
 
 I greatly desire to present to the young, especially 
 to young men, for whom mainly I write, a few of the 
 horrors of venereal disease. And yet the thing is 
 hardly possible. To do so would require that we 
 should visit, together, some of the dens of prostitution 
 and infamy with which portions of our highly favored, 
 but greatly diseased, society abounds. 
 
 It would be necessary, in order to a correct knowl- 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 101 
 
 edge on this point, to conduct a young man to the 
 places which the inmates of our houses of ill-fame 
 occupy by day, and let him see, in all or nearly all of 
 its native deformity, the half putrid and highly offen- 
 sive carcass that, at other times, is partly concealed by 
 costly habiliments, forced smiles, paint, and darkness. 
 Here would be a revelation, — to many a young man, 
 — of what, in his ignorance of himself and human 
 nature, he could before have hardly expected. He 
 should also witness the temper with which the internal 
 agonies of a being whose very bones are, as it were, 
 consumed, arc sustained. 
 
 If there is a living hell any where above the earth's 
 surface, it is a boarding-house for prostitutes. If there 
 are infernals not yet quite shut up. to the blackness of 
 despair forever, it is the inmates of such a house. If 
 there is spiritual misery, without a parallel, anywhere, 
 it is here. 
 
 To form anything approximating to a correct idea 
 of the misery to which I allude we must take, in 
 imagination, one journey more. \Ye must visit to- 
 gether some of our medical museums. Here are 
 specimens, in great numbers, of diseased formations in 
 the human body, not a few of which are the result of 
 venereal disease. Bony, as w r ell as fleshy parts, are 
 changed, and enlarged, and distorted to an extent of 
 which, before, you could have had no conception. 
 
 The dreadful disease of which I am speaking is, as 
 you already know, communicable ; and, though it may 
 sometimes be originated, it is usually acquired by con- 
 9* 
 
102 rnTsiOLOGY of marriage. 
 
 tact. In some of its forms, however, it is so mild as not 
 to be suspected from any external appearances, even 
 the face. And yet in some of the severer cases I 
 have met with the most dreadful inroads are made 
 upon the throat, mouth, and nose. I have met with 
 individuals whose noses had been literally eaten off, so 
 as to present little if any prominence beyond the 
 general level of the features. 
 
 The best troops, in making an attack in time of 
 war, are usually placed in front of the army, and 
 this for various reasons. One, is to cover up or 
 conceal a body of men comparatively inferior, or 
 perhaps greatly enfeebled or crippled. In a similar 
 way, and by a similar manoeuvre, many a young man 
 has been deceived with regard to the hosts of the 
 houses of death. The troops which form the vanguard 
 of this numerous army are, usually, such as are com- 
 paratively healthy ; or, at least, such as with the aid 
 of rouge and dress can be made to appear so. Hence 
 he is often deceived and lulled to security till a dart 
 as Solomon says, strikes through his liver, and he is 
 reckoned among the strong men cast down, or the 
 slain. 
 
 But there is another thing that lulls to security, in 
 these cases, and thus facilitates the downward progress 
 of many a young man, namely, the ease with which 
 he supposes he can be cured of this disease, should he 
 happen to contract it. He is told, perhaps in books 
 of various kinds, — some of them purporting to be the 
 productions of wise and learned professors, — that 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 103 
 
 almost all our young men, sooner or later, have this 
 disease, at least in some of its milder forms ; and lie is 
 easily led to believe that, after all, it is a very trifling 
 concern, at least ii it can be kept in concealment. 
 
 Our newspapers, moreover, especially our dailies, 
 teem with the advertisements of those who call them- 
 selves physicians, stating in the strongest terms that, 
 for a smaller or larger sum, they can and will cure all, 
 or nearly all, the secret ills that flesh is heir to ; and, 
 perhaps, in the short space of three days. There are 
 papers that secure to their owners a good living by 
 inserting such pompous and wicked assurances. 
 
 Now, I do not presume to say, that none of those who 
 advertise in this way are, or ever were, regular phy- 
 sicians ; but I must say to the young, — for duty com- 
 pels me, — that they are wholly unworthy of the 
 name ; for, if they ever were physicians of respecta- 
 bility, they are now fallen ones. Satan, the prince of 
 darkness, was once, so we are told, an angel of light. 
 
 These men know, and the public ought to know it, 
 that if the terms, quackery and humbuggery are ever 
 applicable, it is here. No matter, however, perhaps they 
 think, as long as they live well on their humbuggery ! 
 
 Another term, however, would be little less ap- 
 plicable. They have been called bloodsuckers; but 
 this is too mild. Sharks — land-sharks, if you please, 
 would be preferable. For if they do not quite swallow 
 those of the young who throw themselves into their 
 jaws, they at least swallow a large sum of their 
 money. 
 
104 PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 I do not say that they never effect anything re- 
 sembling a cure ; for they certainly sometimes do. In 
 other cases, however, and those probably the majority, 
 they are of no manner of service. They get their 
 fees, or at least one half, and this is usually no mean 
 sum ; and the patient is left, for the most part, nearly 
 as he was at the beginning. Nature, however, even 
 if the medicine is comparatively inert, will, in the 
 meantime, often rally a little ; and there will, at least 
 to the unpractised eye, appear to be a degree of im- 
 provement. Yet as to a perfect cure, — as to effecting 
 much more than nature, unaided, would have effected, 
 in the same time, — I have many doubts. 
 
 In short, when once the solids and fluids of the 
 human system have been thorougly affected by the 
 poison of this foul disease, I do not believe they are 
 ever again perfectly restored to their purity. Nature 
 may, indeed, in process of time, wear it out in part, but 
 I think not wholly. Trust her, however, and not 
 quackery. Obey her laws, and in due time the terrible 
 virus will work its way out of the blood, at least par- 
 tially. Or if you consult medical skill at all, call in 
 your family physician. Do not put your very life and 
 health into the hands of a man with whom you would 
 not trust a dollar of your money. 
 
 The young man who really desires to avoid every 
 form of this terrible disease, and who believes that 
 prevention is better than cure, has before him a plain 
 path. He has but to take heed to the old adage: 
 " Every one should mind his own business ; " and he 
 
rTTYSIOLOOY OF MARK I AGE. 105 
 
 is safe. If lie avoids the first steps in this downward 
 road, lie will avoid all (he subsequent ones. 
 
 Once more I entreat every young man to leave 
 off putting trust in the skill of these boasted half 
 conjurors. They promise more than they can do. 
 They seldom or never, so far as I have been able to 
 ascertain, effect a permanent cure. In nine cases of 
 ten they do no good at all. Believe not even Profes- 
 sor Miraculous, of Wonderful College. His new book, 
 though it should sell by ten thousands, will prove a 
 broken reed, which shall pierce him that leans upon it. 
 
 A highly intelligent young man of Massachusetts told 
 me, not long since, with great assurance, of a new book, 
 such as is hinted at in the last paragraph ; and asked 
 me what I thought of the author's theory. He said he 
 appeared to be a very learned man ; and mentioned, in 
 proof, his connection with a certain college. I told him 
 I doubted, seriously, whether a gentleman of that name 
 had ever been connected with the said college, as one 
 of its professors ; for I had known something of the 
 college for many years, particularly the last year. 
 
 The public cannot be too much on their guarfcj 
 against impostors of this description. It is not long 
 since a young man calling himself Professor C, of 
 Andover, Massachusetts, travelled in northern Ohio, 
 giving lectures to young men, in such style and man- 
 ner that, had it not been for his pretended connection 
 with Andover, he would have been repulsive. Now I 
 happen to believe that no such individual as this Pro- 
 fessor C. ever resided in Andover. 
 
106 PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 But I have not finished this chapter. Young men 
 little know, and old men will scarcely believe when 
 they are told of it, what an amount of human misery, 
 under the forms of debility and disease, are inflicted 
 upon children, by parental transgressions, of the kind 
 to which these remarks refer ; and so much might be 
 said, without exhausting the subject, that I hardly 
 know how or where to begin. 
 
 Thousands, perhaps I should say tens of thousands, 
 are born every year in the United States, who, in con- 
 sequence of venereal disease in those from whom, 
 under God, they derive their existence, never enjoy 
 health. They are sufferers greater or less, from the 
 beginning of life to the very end of it. And not a 
 few are so greatly diseased that they perish from the 
 earth almost as soon as they are born into it. 
 
 Something like a quarter of a century ago, a case 
 in point occurred in Charlestown, near Boston ; of 
 which I had some particular knowledge. It was that 
 of a dissipated sea-captain, who, having become tired 
 of a sea life, concluded to settle down, and make it his 
 home on the land. He was already somewhat ad- 
 vanced in life ; I think he was about fifty. 
 
 He married an excellent woman, much younger 
 than himself, by whom he had several children. The 
 first of these was shocking to behold. It was little 
 more, at best, than a semi-putrid mass. It was not 
 till after the birth and death of this child, — and these 
 events came pretty near together, — that I knew in 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 107 
 
 what a dreadful condition his system was, both the 
 Bolids and the fluids. 
 
 The second child survived a considerable time, but 
 was never healthy. It was as full of tubercles as 
 if it had been for twenty years dying of consumption. 
 Tenacious of life, exceedingly so, as the young are, it 
 numbered some six or seven years before it perished ; 
 but it did not die till it had been a very great sufferer. 
 
 The third was healthier; it appeared to take the 
 mother's constitution, at least in part. I believe it to 
 be alive yet. It is, however, by no means vigorous ; 
 neither are two other living children, who were born 
 subsequently. The eldest of the last two I have 
 named is, however, one of those " shining marks " in 
 which, it is said, death delights. 
 
 If it is better " to be," than " not to be," under the 
 worst circumstances, — and some hold to this opinion — 
 — then it is better, of course, that these three feeble 
 children of a vicious and intemperate, and only half- 
 reformed father should have had existence; even 
 though they are " the poor inheritors of smart," by 
 virtue of that law of God which renders it necessary 
 that the sins of the parents should be visited upon 
 children to the third and fourth generation, and, per- 
 haps, to the thousandth. 
 
 How must such a father as this feel, unless his 
 heart is adamant, to see his family falling around him 
 one after another, while yet just entering on the 
 threshold of existence ! — and all because he could 
 
108 PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 not deny himself the gratification of his appetites, 
 even for a few short moments ! Alas for human 
 selfishness, and forbidden pleasures ! 
 
 It may not be amiss to append to this chapter two 
 cases which go farther to illustrate this part of our 
 subject — derived from the pages of "The Boston 
 Medical Journal," for May 3d, of the present year. 
 They were communicated by a highly respected 
 physician of Boston, and were of very recent oc- 
 currence. 
 
 The first case was comparatively a mild one. The 
 child appeared to do well till it was about three months 
 old. About this time the head and face became affect- 
 ed with " superficial ulcerations, most of them covered 
 with crusts." Soon the symptoms became more severe. 
 The child's head became " swollen and livid, and it 
 was evidently on the verge of suffocation." On ex- 
 amination, " the nose was found completely plugged 
 by some hard substance, which proved to be a ^nass 
 of bone covered with inspissated mucus ! " The phy- 
 sician had no doubt that the child had beei* con- 
 genially affected, and "treated it accordingly. At 
 length it recovered; though not without such a ioss of 
 the bony parts of the interior of the nose, as seemed 
 to depress considerably this organ, and give to th •• 
 features for life a disagreeable expression. 
 
 In the second case, though the child was remarkably 
 plump, at birth, and apparently healthy, yet it soon 
 began to lose its appetite and its flesh till it became 
 
TIIVSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 109 
 
 so puny that, at the age of two months, all hope of 
 roaring it had been given up. " The skin," more- 
 over, " was covered with a scaly eruption of a 
 copper or brownish hue, most abundant about the 
 nates, the limbs, and the face. The trunk did not 
 present any spots. There was obstinate ulceration 
 about the nail of one of the great toes, and the nail 
 had been thrown off. Smaller ulcers and cracks ex- 
 is! cd about the anus and labia, and also upon the face." 
 The father was an intemperate man ; his other habits 
 were not examined! The child died in a few weeks, 
 after having been a terrible sufferer. There was no 
 doubt with regard to the cause. 
 
 The mother of the child, moreover, had lost two 
 children before, very suddenly, and under the influence 
 of suspicious symptoms. 
 
 Most young men when they approach the end of 
 their earthly career, especially if that career has been 
 a dishonorable one, would gladly live their lives over 
 again. Even Dr. Franklin expressed the desire to 
 correct, in the second edition of his book, certain errors 
 of the first. 
 
 A wise Providence has forbidden us this privilege ; 
 but has granted us another almost equal to it. A 
 father's heart is bound up in his children, as Jacob's 
 was in Joseph; and even in Joseph's children — his 
 own grand-children. We take such an interest in 
 children and grand-children, that we may be said, not 
 unaptly, to live our lives over again in them. In the 
 case of the Charlcstown father, what is the hope ? 
 10 
 
110 TIIYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 When will men so live that these second editions of 
 the book, as Franklin would call them, may, indeed, 
 be more perfect than the first ? Not, most surely, till 
 our young men learn to revere God's holy and perfect 
 laws ; and the physical laws, no less than the moral 
 ones. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE PHYSICAL LAWS OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 I have asserted and fearlessly maintained that 
 every young person should look forward to marriage, 
 at suitable age and under proper circumstances, as a 
 moral duty. This opinion I cannot recall or alter. 
 Entering, then, within the pale, as it were, of this 
 institution, let us inquire concerning its laws. 
 
 Did fathers hold familiar conversation with their 
 sons, and mothers with their daughters, on this im- 
 portant subject, and did the young make their parents 
 their oracles instead of trusting to sources of informa- 
 tion, which, at best, are very questionable, we should 
 not find so many of both sexes rushing within the 
 precincts of this sacred enclosure as ignorant of the 
 first principles of matrimonial law as if no such law 
 had ever existed. 
 
 Since the publication of the Young Man's Guide, 
 — now nearly a quarter of a century ago, — I have 
 received visits or letters, and sometimes both, from 
 young men belonging to nearly every portion of this 
 western world, and even to Europe. Among the 
 number of my visitors and correspondents, have been 
 
112 PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 some of our best educated young men — graduates, 
 perhaps with honors, of Yale, Harvard, Amherst, etc. 
 
 One of these liberally educated young men came to 
 me, a few years ago, at the close of a lecture on the 
 physiology of marriage, at which he had been pre- 
 sent, and taking me by the hand, with all that affec- 
 tion which he was wont to express towards his own 
 father, not only thanked me for the information he 
 had that evening received, but solicited farther in- 
 struction. He said that the thoughts to which he had 
 been led, by the lecture, were not only new, many of 
 them, but to him, as a recently married man, of the 
 utmost importance. 
 
 It is not so, however, with all our liberally edu- 
 cated young men. Some few of them receive, it is 
 true, a smattering of instruction on this topic, from 
 the president or one of the professors under whom 
 they have studied. But the far greater proportion of 
 our students, both in colleges and elsewhere, care 
 nothing at all about it, except so far as it gratifies a 
 morbid curiosity. 
 
 I am, however, acquainted with one venerable pre- 
 sident of a college in this country, who is, in this re- 
 spect, as well as in a thousand others, like a father to 
 his pupils. Nay, I even do him injustice in saying 
 no more. Few fathers in the world act so truly the 
 part of a father — I mean at this slippery period of 
 life — as he. 
 
 But, if our liberally educated young men are, for 
 the most part, not only exceedingly ignorant of the 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MA.tfRlA.GE. 113 
 
 functions and laws of their bodies, but willing to re- 
 main so, how much worse must it be with the vast 
 majority of the young, with their fewer and less favor- 
 able opportunities for information ? Are they not 
 almost as unfit to assume the semi-sacred responsibili- 
 ties, so soon to devolve upon them in matrimonial life, 
 as the beasts that perish ? 
 
 * It is but a very short time since one of the better 
 sort of these uninformed young men joined me as I 
 was walking along, with considerable luggage, towards 
 a distant railroad depot, and begged the favor of 
 carrying one of my parcels. He had attended my 
 lectures and hail read some of my writings ; and was 
 greatly anxious for a few moments conversation. 
 
 As we passed along, he very modestly and cautious- 
 ly introduced several of the topics which are discussed 
 in this book. He was amiable, sensible, and in many 
 things well-informed ; though not very familiar with 
 books and school. As a sailor, he had traversed the 
 world from the seventy-third degree of north to the 
 sixtieth degree of south latitude ; and not only knew 
 something of human nature, generally, but — what is 
 much more difficult — something of himself. He was, 
 moreover, conscientious, and desirous to know the 
 truth, in order that he might love and obey it. He 
 was frank and confiding ; and in great earnest. 
 
 Seldom if ever, have I met with a young man to 
 
 whom I could hopefully impart more truth, in half an 
 
 hour, than to him; and I left him with feelings of 
 
 regret, and with a new interest in this class of my 
 
 10* 
 
114 rilTSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 fellow-men. Can it be, I said — must it be so — that 
 young men are left by their parents and friends in 
 such deplorable ignorance? Something they know 
 — the most ignorant of them — of business, and books, 
 and politics, and religion ; but what do they know of 
 themselves ? What do they know of the house they 
 live in ? 
 
 There are mysteries everywhere — it must be so, 
 under a government which is administered by such a 
 Governor as ours is — so much above us, in his per- 
 fections and attributes. But is there a greater mys- 
 tery, anywhere, than this general ignorance on a sub- 
 ject which everybody knows to be of almost para- 
 mount importance ? 
 
 The first question asked by inquiring young men, 
 who are fairly within the matrimonial enclosure, usual- 
 ly is, " What is right, with regard to sexual inter- 
 course ? " " Here we are," say they, " with our appe- 
 tites and passions urging us on ; and yet we are fully 
 assured there is a limit which we ought not to pass. 
 1 ell us, if you can, where that limit is." 
 
 But, in order to reply, in the best possible manner, 
 to such a question as this, much time is required. 
 Were I asked, by an individual, how much he ought 
 to eat, or drink, or sleep, or how much clothing, or 
 what kind of clothing he ought to use, by day or by 
 night, I could tell him something at random imme- 
 diately ; but to tell him rationally and scientifically, 
 could not be the work of a moment. 
 
 I must first know very particularly about his hab- 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 115 
 
 its, hereditary and acquired; both as regards health 
 
 ami disease. I must know something also of his edu- 
 cation, and of liis temper and temperament. I must, 
 in short, to do justice, either to him, or to myself, and 
 
 the cause I serve, make a thorough physiological ex- 
 amination. It would be comparatively easy to lay 
 down a code of abstract rules, without these prelimi- 
 naries ; but judiciously to adapt or apply them to his 
 particular case and circumstances, would 1x3 the prop- 
 er work of a much longer period. It would even be 
 desirable to live by him, and to see him at various 
 times, and under various circumstances. 
 
 Just so with the instructions to be given with refer- 
 ence to the physiology of marriage. Twenty years 
 ago I asked a most excellent man, of great age, obser- 
 vation, and experience — one, moreover, whose praise 
 was in " all the churches," what he should regard as 
 matrimonial excess. He hesitated, at first. Much, 
 he said, would depend on circumstances. What would 
 be excess in one person of a certain temperament and 
 of a particular age, would be but moderation in an- 
 other — all of which to a certain extent, even to an 
 extent much greater than that to which he would 
 have carried it, is true. However, he concluded at 
 length, that as a general rule, any thing beyond twice 
 a week, for him and his companion, would be ex- 
 cess. 
 
 On relating this conversation, sometime afterward, 
 (of course without giving names) to an experienced 
 physieian, he remarked, that as many indulgences as 
 
11G rilYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 two in a week would destroy him and many others — • 
 persons even of average constitutions. 
 
 I have made extensive inquiry on this subject — 
 of all sorts and conditions of men. One very aged 
 New England clergyman — who had been the hus- 
 band of four wives — told me that after fifty long 
 years of observation, experience and reflection, he 
 had come to the full conclusion that, for literary and 
 sedentary men, however robust and healthy, any thing 
 of this kind beyond once a month would partake of 
 the character of excess ; although he well knew that 
 in some circumstances, and for a time, a much greater 
 indulgence could not only be borne, but seemed, at 
 first view, to be even beneficial. 
 
 Some of my readers may perhaps be already aware 
 that the far-famed, and very far-hated, Sylvester Gra- 
 ham taught a doctrine not greatly unlike that of the 
 preceding paragraph. A frequency of sexual indul- 
 gence greater than that of the weeks of the year, he 
 said was absolutely inadmissible ; while, as a general 
 rule, it would be better, for both sexes — no less than 
 for posterity — if the indulgence were restricted to 
 the number of lunar months. 
 
 This doctrine, it is true, so utterly at war with the 
 general habits and feelings of mankind, was almost 
 enough, at the time it was announced, to provoke the 
 cry of, Crucify him. Indeed, I have often thought 
 that while the public odium was ostensibly directed 
 against his anti-fine flour and anti-flesh eating doc- 
 trines, it was his anti-sexual indulgence doctrines, in 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. H7 
 
 reality, which excited the public hatred and rendered 
 his name a by-word and a reproach. But, as a belief 
 in the great doctrine of the circulation of the blood, 
 though it gained little credence, while Dr. Harvey, the 
 discoverer, was alive, began to gain ground as soon as 
 he was dead, so Mr. Graham was hardly dead, -and 
 not at all entombed — ere the views which he pro- 
 claimed, on this subject began to find favor, both in 
 this country and in Europe. 
 
 At the present time, I doubt whether there are a 
 dozen men of sound science, in the ranks of physiolo- 
 gy and hygiene, to be found in the known world, who 
 Sill object to the soundness of Mr. Graham's views 
 on this particular topic. They seem to discover, m 
 the constitutional habits and tendencies of woman, 
 what was the original intention and purpose of high 
 Heaven, in a matter concerning which, specifically, 
 revelation does not determine. 
 
 A few indeed have gone much farther, at least in 
 theory. Assuming that the sole object of the sexual 
 instinct and its apparatus, is the reproduction of the 
 species, and that to this great end, exclusively, every 
 "congress" should be directed, they would hunt the 
 recurrence of the act to the mutual desire of the par- 
 tics to become parents. 
 
 But is there not room for doubt, after all, whether 
 this was the whole of the Divine intention ? For, if 
 it were so, why should the power of procreation con- 
 tinue, in our sex, when not abused, as long, or nearly 
 as lon^r as life ? And why should the susceptibility to 
 
118 PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 pleasure, in the other sex, continue beyond the age to 
 which child bearing is limited ? 
 
 Is it not much more probable, all things and cir- 
 cumstances taken into the account, that, by the Divine 
 plan, the gratification of the sexual instinct is deter- 
 mined, as Graham and others have thought, by the 
 menstrual period, at least while that function con- 
 tinues ? For, we must not forget, as one item in our 
 estimates, that if woman, by virtue of her own consti- 
 tutional tendencies, independent of mis-education or 
 perversion, ever makes any advances towards the 
 other sex, as a sex, except perhaps during pregnancy, 
 it is soon after the cessation of the menstrual dis- 
 charge. May we not, hence, infer that this function, 
 while it prepares for the commerce of the sexes, at 
 the same time limits its frequency ? 
 
 On this point, however, I speak, as it becomes me, 
 with some diffidence. For, I am by no means sure 
 that our most ultra physiologists are not very near 
 the truth, after all. I am by no means certain that 
 Scripture revelation — to say nothing of physiology 
 
 — in its most rigid interpretation, does not restrict us 
 to the simple purpose of perpetuating the race. I 
 am, however, quite sure that one indulgence to each 
 lunar month, is all that the best health of the parties 
 can possibly require. 
 
 It will be said, I know — it has often been so said 
 
 — that if this is the law, it is a most rigid one. And 
 so, indeed, at first view, it may seem. But what, 
 then ? Am I at fault, in announcing it ? I certainly 
 
TIIYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 119 
 
 did not make the law. At most, I am but its inter- 
 preter. So far as I can see, and so far as close rea- 
 soning, both from analogy and the nature of the case, 
 can carry me, it presents itself to my own mind as a 
 most excellent law. 
 
 For, have we not already seen that the amount of 
 human enjoyment to be derived from the appetites is 
 not graduated by frequency of indulgence, so much as 
 by infrequency ? That it is not he, for example, who 
 is almost always eating and drinking, who obtains, 
 even for the time, the most gustatory enjoyment ; but 
 oftener the reverse ? So, in my own view, with the 
 sexual appetite. 
 
 If this last is indulged too frequently, although it 
 might sometimes happen that the power to enjoy and 
 the sum total of our enjoyment would increase for 
 a time, yet both of them will prematurely fail. It is 
 a general law that they who give themselves up to 
 early and persevering indulgence, become early im- 
 potent, or at least lose, early, their susceptibility to 
 venereal pleasures — and, indeed, to all sorts of pleas- 
 ure — while they -who are more self-denying, retain 
 their powers and their pleasures' to the end of life ; or 
 at least to a very late period. 
 
 It is, moreover, worthy of notice that the pleasures 
 of love, no less than the strength of the orgasm, are 
 enhanced by their infrequency. It is, in this also, as 
 in eating and drinking. Eating twice or three times 
 n day probably gives us more gustatory enjoyment 
 than eating half a dozen or a dozen times during the 
 
120 PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 same period. Nor does frequent eating sooner wear 
 out or spoil the appetite than frequent sexual indul- 
 gence. It is by no means certain that the smallest 
 number of meals a day which is compatible with 
 health — I mean one, only — would not give, to any 
 of us, who are adults, a greater quantity of gustatory 
 enjoyment, taking the whole of life together, than a 
 greater number. We certainly enjoy most when we 
 have the most perfect appetite ; but this perfect appe- 
 tite we seldom have. Real hunger is usually antici- 
 pated. We seldom wait long enough for our food to 
 be really hungry. In other words we eat before we 
 are hungry, and hence are seldom if ever hungry. 
 
 From what we know of the ways and works of 
 God, it is hardly a presumption to infer that strict 
 conformity to his holy laws, physical not less than 
 moral, will in the end, taking only this short and un- 
 certain life into the account, give us the most of enjoy- 
 ment. The heaven below docs not conflict at all with 
 the heaven above ; but is part and parcel of the same 
 thing. 
 
 If the maximum frequency of sexual commerce be the 
 gradually recurring lunar months — if, I mean to say, 
 this doctrine can be fairly inferred from a strict and 
 honest interpretation of the Divine law — then it is to 
 be presumed that in rigidly conforming to this ar- 
 rangement we shall in the end secure the most pleas- 
 ure, even if this little life were our all. It is probably 
 so, I mean to say, as a general rule ; to which how- 
 ever, as to most general rules, there may be more or 
 fewer exceptions. 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 121 
 
 Or if this should not be admitted, it must be admit- 
 ted thai by carrying out God's plan to the full extent 
 of the most rigid self-denial which his law really re- 
 quires, we gain the most of happiness, physical, social, 
 intellectual, and moral, on the whole and in the end. 
 We shall be best satisfied with ourselves in the final 
 review. 
 
 I have qualified these remarks by saying, " as a gen- 
 eral rule." It was meet that I should do so. We are 
 made, as a race, and normally, to last on to old age ; 
 and must govern our conduct in all the every-day 
 concerns of life, on the presumption that we shall do 
 so. Nevertheless we may be killed to-morrow at 
 Norwalk; or drowned next week in some Arctic 
 On these last exigencies, however, we may not and 
 should not calculate. 
 
 As an additional argument against the too frequent 
 indulgence of the sexual propensity, and an argument, 
 too, which is not without its weight, it should be ob- 
 served that one of Europe's most able philosophers — 
 the celebrated Montesquieu — is said to have been 
 begotten on the evening of a re-union of his parents, 
 after a separation of many long years. 
 
 But however this may be, in point of fact, we know 
 one thing, that prostitutes seldom conceive ; and still 
 more rarely give birth to living, healthy children. 
 Still further, we know how common it is, with the 
 young, who give way to their feelings, ad libitum, in 
 early married life, to remain a long time without any 
 issue. These and numerous other consideration, 
 11 
 
122 PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 taken together, certainly mean something ; and should 
 not, by the wise, be overlooked. 
 
 But young men, as we have seen, are usually with- 
 out information ; and hence seem to suppose that 
 within the pale of matrimonial life there is no limitfto 
 indulgence except that which grows out of a due 
 respect for woman — rather, I should perhaps say, to 
 a good and faithful beast of burden — and some 
 degree of regard to their own immediate suffering. 
 Hence it is that the first months of matrimonial life 
 arc, so often, little better than a season of prostitution, 
 except that it has not yet been stigmatized with the 
 name. Hence, too, one reason why we have so many 
 still born, prematurely born, and sickly children ; as 
 well as why we lose one half of all who are born 
 under ten years of age. 
 
 A young man near the metropolis of New England, 
 who had been married to a very active, healthy young 
 woman less than a year, and, who, from being hale 
 and robust at the time of marriage, had become pale, 
 emaciated, cadaverous, feeble, and irresolute, seemed, 
 at length, to be on the verge of a galloping consump- 
 tion. It is quite possible that he might have inherited 
 a tendency to this dread disease from his ancestors ; 
 for nothing, as we shall see hereafter, is more common 
 than a connection between this tendency and undue 
 amativeness. Of this however, in the case before us, 
 I have no reliable information. 
 
 A young neighbor of his, who was a disciple of 
 mine, and had read much on the subject, said to him 
 
PnTSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 123 
 
 familiarly one da)', « Sara, don't you know what ails 
 you ? " ■ " No, I don't," said he, " except that, as the 
 doctor says, my nerves are very weak." " Has the doc- 
 tor told you nothing more ? " « No." " Then I can tell 
 you."- So he proceeded, with great freedom, and frank- 
 ness, and good humor, to bring home to his mind such 
 charges that the wretched invalid made immediate 
 confession to nine or ten months of daily indulgence. 
 My young friend in the further exercise of his pity 
 and benevolence, gave him the best counsels of which 
 he was capable, and left him. Nor were his counsels 
 unheeded. A new world was opened to the trans- 
 gressor. In a year more he was nearly recovered ; 
 and he is still living and at the head of a small, though 
 rather sickly family. 
 
 Some of the blinded devotees of sensuality may 
 here inquire, and with much apparent shrewdness, — 
 for Satan and his friends are seldom wanting in this 
 commodity — whether it is not quite probable that this 
 young invalid, during the nine or ten months aforesaid, 
 secured to himself such an aggregate of enjoyment 
 that he could afford to be still for a time. " Here were 
 some two or three hundred indulgences," it may be 
 said, " while the philosophy or physiology you advocate 
 would hardly allow us more than two or three times 
 this number in a whole life time." 
 
 In answering this inquiry and objection — by no 
 means unfair after all — several things are to be con- 
 sidered. It should be understood that the young 
 transgressor was rendered almost impotent at the time 
 
124 PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 my young friend met with him and put him into the 
 right path; and that his course, but for this timely 
 interview, seems to have been almost run. Suppose, 
 however, he had been left to go on to the last stages 
 of consumption, and had died the next year or next 
 but one; will it be claimed that with such an end 
 before him, he acted the wise, or even the truly 
 selfish part? Would this have been to secure the 
 highest possible measure of amative enjoyment ? 
 
 Suppose, however, that, though in his restoration to 
 a measure of his former general health and vigor, his 
 virile powers were never entirely regained, is it not 
 possible — nay is it not quite probable — that he was 
 thus actually a loser of at least one half of that sexual 
 enjoyment, which God, in his providence, and in virtue 
 of his original physical organization, had kindly de- 
 signed for him ? 
 
 But then again, admit that he did not seize and 
 appropriate to his own use quite one half of all the 
 physical sexual enjoyment God had provided for him 
 as the inheritance of a life time, still was it no draw- 
 back or reduction from the remaining one half to 
 remember that he had involved another, more dear to 
 him, if possible, than himself, in a punishment, which 
 though unlike his own, could scarcely, in the aggregate, 
 be less in amount — and not her alone, but his children, 
 too, should he ever have any ? 
 
 Was it — would it have been — no draw-back upon 
 the short-lived pleasures of sex, allotted to him, to be 
 obliged, as the result, to consult or employ, a host of 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 125 
 
 physicians attendants, or apothecaries, and to pay 
 another lio'i of bills of expense ? Was it no draw-back 
 upon the happiness of his after life to be obliged to 
 watch, with fearful tremblings and foreboding?:, the 
 issue of some scores of childrens' diseases — to say 
 nothing of the performance of the last sad duties to 
 the departed ? Would it bsve been nothing to see his 
 children, in the sequel of a long and painful sickness, 
 go down, one after another, into the silent grave ? 
 
 It is as utterly in > possible that the young should 
 escape these consequences of parental transgression — 
 whether thot trpaisgression takes place within or with- 
 out the precincts of matrimonial life — as to resist, 
 effectually, the laws of attraction and gravitation. It is 
 indeed true, as before admitted, that the evils of early 
 abuse, before the age of twenty-live, are more numerous, 
 and certain, and severe, than the others. The same 
 law of hereditary descent prevails in both cases ; and 
 the same God reigns above, to visit iniquity by the 
 appointed agencies, in his own time and manner. 
 
 It is proper to remark, however, that sexual indul- 
 gence, for some reason or another — both solitary and 
 social — seems to be pursued, with more eagerness, by 
 consumptive, nervous and delicate people than any 
 other. It certainly is so within the pale of matrimo- 
 nial life. It is curious, also, to observe, as I have 
 said already, that it is persons of this very class or 
 description who are soonest and most certainly injured 
 or destroyed by it. 
 
 A young couple had been recently married, both of 
 
 11* 
 
 ■ 
 
]26 PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 whom liad inherited a tendency to pulmonary con- 
 sumption. It is true that they had not, till now, 
 experienced any symptom's of the disease. Suddenly, 
 however, I was called to visit them. They were going 
 downward as fast as the wheels of time, and of 
 sensuality, could carry them ; especially the husband. 
 
 My prescription and counsels had sole reference to 
 the removal of the cause of the diseased symptoms, and 
 were apparently efficacious. An entire or almost entire 
 non-intercourse law, in the progress of a year or two, 
 gave them both, once more, a tolerable constitution, 
 though by no means a strong one ; and what is more, 
 under Providence, gave them a family of comparatively 
 healthy children. Nearly twenty years have elapsed, 
 and they are still in the land of the living. Have not 
 twenty years of moderation been worth more than one 
 year of brutal excess would have been ? 
 
 I have alluded to the opinion, quite common with 
 the young of our sex, that marriage is, or may be, a 
 state of unrestrained intercourse. So far is it from 
 being the design of the great author of this institution, 
 to render it a scene of unlicensed indulgence, or, in 
 other words, of habitual, practical prostitution, that I 
 have no doubt the intention was the reverse of all this. 
 Instead of encouraging indulgence without limit, one 
 of its very designs appears to me to teach us self- 
 restraint and self-denial. Nor could the Divine Being 
 give us, as far as I can see, a more favorable school 
 for this purpose. 
 
 Man, to repeat what has been repeatedly affirmed, 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 127 
 
 already, is coarse and sensual — he needs to be polished 
 and purified. Both of these offices, marriage, when 
 rightly understood and properly regarded, never fails 
 to accomplish. It does not require celibacy or the nun- 
 nery on the one* hand, nor does it permit indulgence on 
 the other. It simply requires us to be men and women ; 
 but it demands that we should be rational men and 
 women, and not mere brutes. Above all, it does not 
 permit us to be brutes of the lowest and most degraded 
 cast. It seeks to reinstamp on us that Divine image 
 which by disobedience we have lost.* 
 
 One eminent man among us is wont to say that it 
 is in matrimonial life, and especially in those circum- 
 stances in which we are delegated with a kind of sub- 
 creative power, that we approach nearer than in any 
 other place below the sun to Jehovah's spotless throne. 
 
 Is it not passing strange, that with the Bible in his 
 hands, any intelligent person should hold forth the 
 doctrine that man, in the gratification of his various 
 appetites, is a creature of mere instinct, on a level 
 with the brutes? Yet such assertions have been 
 heard. Be assured they are not in accordance with 
 reason, revelation, or sound sense. 
 
 * I might make more of this idea, if space permitted. Par- 
 adoxical as it may seem, it is scarcely too much to say, that 
 one of the very ends of marriage is gradually to purify us 
 wholly from sensuality, by bringing our bodies under that law 
 of which Paul makes so much in his writings. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 A FUNDAMENTAL ERROR. 
 
 ■ No one has a right to forget, either within the pale 
 of matrimony or elsewhere, that by a general law 
 as irrevocable as the laws given at Mount Sinai amid 
 thunderings and lightnings — and emanating from the 
 same Divine source — like begets its like. Not that 
 the child always resembles, in every particular, the 
 mother, or any one of the remoter relatives ; indeed 
 such a result is but seldom. Still a resemblance there 
 will be, to some or all of them ; and not unfrequently 
 a resemblance, so striking, to some one of them that 
 we speak of it, in terms not unlike the following : — 
 " How much that child looks like its father ! " or 
 " That boy is the very picture of his mother ! " or 
 "James looks as much like his uncle Richard as if he 
 were his own son ! " 
 
 According to Alexander Walker and others who 
 have made extensive observations on this subject, it 
 often happens that when the general features — as in- 
 dicated by the frame work of the face — and the vital 
 organs resemble those of one parent or progenitor, the 
 locomotive part, or the bony and muscular systems, 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 129 
 
 resemble those of the other; and the contrary. So 
 that when we say of a particular child, that it is the 
 very picture of one or another of its relatives, we do 
 not necessarily deny that in somethings he may also 
 resemble others. In truth, if the doctrines above 
 mentioned are well founded, we rather affirm it. 
 - Perhaps it is not too much to say, in plain English, 
 that every child is and must be a combination of various 
 qualities derived from the stock or breed; and that 
 these qualities are in different proportions. Here, in 
 one, there is more of the character, physically, of \he 
 mother ; there, in another, of the father. And, in a 
 few instances, we follow a remoter ancestor 'more 
 closely than our own immediate parents. 
 
 Another circumstance greatly modifies human char- 
 acter. It is the condition of parents, as regards tem- 
 per, health, and a thousand other things, at the 
 time of conception. The child's character, though 
 substantially built up on that of the whole ancestry 
 as a basis — but resembling some one of that ancestry, 
 more than any other -is yet, in no trifling degree 
 that of the parents, at the moment above mentioned • 
 especially of that parent, whom, in constitution he' 
 most follows. 
 
 Some have made too much of the last species of 
 influence. They seem to have supposed that character, 
 in after life, was almost wholly dependent on the' 
 parental state of body, mind and heart, at the moment 
 whence we date our fetal existence. But I am 
 
130 rnrsiOLOGT of marriage. 
 
 satisfied, most fully, that this is carrying the matter 
 quite too for. 
 
 David says, in one of his Psalms: — "Behold I 
 was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother con- 
 ceive me." I do not suppose, however, that in thus 
 pouring out, as it were, his very soul, and bemoaning, 
 before God, his sinfulness, David intended to express 
 the exact physiological truth. His language, doubtless, 
 partakes largely of the figurative, like that of the 
 orientals generally. And yet it may have been, in 
 part, true, physiologically. The best of us are greatly 
 shaped in guilt and sin, unless descended from a race 
 that has never apostatized. Nor is it too much to say 
 that the best of us transmit the effects of guilt and 
 sin to those who come after us, down to the third and 
 fourth, if not to the three hundredth and four hundredth 
 generations. 
 
 The condition of David, as indicated by the most 
 literal interpretation of his language is, almost without 
 exception, the condition of our race. We are con- 
 ceived, generally, under many unfavorable circum- 
 stances ; and some of us under the worst circumstances 
 possible. But this broad statement will be better 
 understood and more likely to be received, when it is 
 accompanied by a few explanations. 
 
 Each day of our existence is, as it were, a little 
 life. From the death of sleep we are raised every 
 morning — and by nothing less than Almighty Pow- 
 er — to a new and wonderful existence. But we are 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 131 
 
 not raised to our wonted full strength and perfection 
 at once. There are stages or gradations of eacli 
 daily or miniature life, as well as of the life that is 
 measured out by threescore years and ten. 
 
 Rest and sleep do, it is true, partly restore us, but 
 not wholly. This may be seen by comparing the 
 state of the pulse at rising, with its condition at nine 
 or ten o'clock of the forenoon ; as well as by many 
 of the other functions of the body. The pulse, though 
 quicker, is not so full and strong in the morning, as it 
 is about the middle of the forenoon. When we have 
 been abroad, more or less, and inhaled more or less 
 the pure air and drank in the pure light of Heaven, 
 and used more or less all our powers of body, mind, 
 and spirit, the motion of the heart, arteries, lungs, 
 brain, etc., though it may be slower, becomes at the 
 same time stronger; and we rise to what might, 
 perhaps, be called the flood-tide of the human 
 system. 
 
 This highest, most perfect state of humanity, physi- 
 cally speaking, this flood-tide of the vital and sanguin- 
 eous circulation takes place > as already intimated, at 
 about nine or ten o'clock. It varies, however, with 
 our varying state of health or debility, with the earli- 
 ness or lateness of our rising, with the state of our 
 stomach, our mental apparatus, our affections, and 
 many more circumstances. 
 
 At this summit, this very highest pinnacle of our 
 existence — this physical Pisgah of humanity — we 
 are best prepared to survey the land before us, and go 
 
132 TIIYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. _ 
 
 forth to its possession. For devotion, study, labor, 
 amusement, conversation, and even for the gratifica- 
 tion of our appetites, we are best prepared, and 
 probably best disposed. And other things and cir- 
 cumstances being equal, I cannot help thinking that in 
 propagating ourselves at this highest point of human 
 elevation, we should best accomplish, in one respect at 
 least, our earthly mission. 
 
 It is indeed true that everything cannot be done at 
 once. If the early morning hours must be given to 
 devotion and study — as seems perhaps most na- 
 tural — it is obvious that eating, drinking, amusement, 
 labor, etc. must wait. Or if, as with many — perhaps 
 the most of our people in civilized life — the gratifi- 
 cation of the stomach, and daily labors, and amusements 
 occupy the first place, then devotion and study must 
 either be deferred for a time or hurried, or otherwise 
 so conducted as to be greatly diminished in value. 
 
 I do not mean to affirm that the varied duties of 
 human life, with its pleasures, too, cannot be performed, 
 by the robust and healthy, at almost any part or hour 
 of the day, cr even of the night, should circumstances 
 require it ; for they certainly can be. But they can 
 be most worthily performed, no doubt, when we are, 
 so to speak, most truly alive ; that is, when we are 
 nearest to the top of our condition. 
 
 As we pass from nine or ten to twelve or one 
 o'clock, in the progress of our daily journey, our 
 strength of body and mind — for these must accompany 
 each other — gradually decline ; as is shown by a 
 
THISIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 133 
 
 quicker, more frequent, and consequently more feeble 
 pulse, as well as by a more excitable but less energetic 
 state of the cerebral and nervous systems. Refresh- 
 ment and rest, from time to time, of suitable quality 
 and quantity, may somewhat retard the ebbing tide ; 
 but the check, after all, will be temporary. The 
 waters will recede, gradually, till evening — in general 
 till we retire for rest — when it will be ebb-tide. 
 
 If we sit up unusually late, we are not only at 
 ordinary low water mark, but very low — so low that 
 our usual hours of sleep do not always restore us. 
 AVe are, in a measure, diseased. Our nerves are over 
 excited ; our arterial and respiratory movements are 
 accelerated ; and our organs of sense become in some 
 respects clamorous. I do not mean to affirm that our 
 sensual powers — our appetites — are strengthened at 
 this time ; for it is the reverse. They are weakened 
 in just proportion to their increased activity and 
 demand, etc., for gratification. If nuts, cider, cakes, 
 oysters, eggs, ice creams, music and other indulgences 
 are demanded, it is a morbid or diseased demand, and 
 not a natural or healthy one. " Tired nature's sweet 
 restorer, balmy sleep, " is the only gratification which 
 the healthy system can require or demand, at nine, 
 ten or twelve o'clock at night. 
 
 In short, tlie human being, at the hour of ordinary 
 retirement to rest, is in a febrile state. This miniature 
 fever is indeed more perceptible in the case of the 
 feeble, the over-fatigued, or the over-indulged ; and of 
 those who, as I said before, sit up very late ; but it 
 12 
 
134 PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 exists in all. Happy is it, when it is not carried to a 
 degree that exposes us to danger from acute or severe 
 disease — fever, croup, palsy, apoplexy, etc. 
 
 Thousands of our race perish, not at the height 
 of this daily fever, but during its decline, or near what 
 might be called its termination. They perish, in one 
 word, during what medical men would call the collapse, 
 which follows the previous excitement. They have 
 labored, or studied, or amused themselves all day, and 
 perhaps during a long evening besides ; and to late 
 hours and a febrile state they have added new indul- 
 gences, if not new excesses. Perhaps they have spent 
 their evening at a concert, a ball, or a levee, till it is 
 eleven, twelve, or one o'clock. At two, or three, or 
 four, the fever subsides, and nature yields, in collapse. 
 The vital powers, depressed and oppressed, are unable 
 to rally ; nature struggles a short time, but ineffectually ; 
 the curtain falls, and the scene closes.* 
 
 This is, briefly the history of a very considerable 
 portion of our transgressing race, especially in this 
 land of abundance and of freedom to indulge our 
 
 * Since the above was written I have seen an article copied 
 from the "Foreign Quarterly " into the " National Magazine," 
 which confirms the statements I have here made, in a most 
 striking manner. The writer in the Quarterly says he deduced 
 his conclusions from observations on 2,880 deaths of persons 
 of all ages ; and his conclusion is in these words: — "The 
 least mortality is during the mid-day hours, viz, from ten to 
 three o'clock ; the greatest, during early morning hours, from 
 three to six o'clock." The maximum of deaths, he says, is 
 from five to six o'clock in the morning. 
 
PIIYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 135 
 
 appetites. The subject is more painful in the re- 
 view, from the consideration that so many of our 
 ablest citizens, particularly our statesmen, judges and 
 other public officers, have perished in this way ; and 
 what is truly a little remarkable, not a few of them at 
 a particular hour of the night, or rather at an early 
 hour of the morning, and at the climacterical period 
 of sixty-three. 
 
 In most persons, of course, at least for a considera- 
 ble time, say for twenty, forty, or sixty years, the 
 current of life, conjoined with the force of long habit, 
 is so strong, even in the collapse of which I have 
 spoken, as to carry them by the point of danger ; and 
 hence they continue to live on. It is, however, to the 
 physiologist a matter of no little surprise that they 
 should do so. 
 
 But I have made these preliminary and preparatory 
 remarks, in part, that you may be in readiness for 
 the doctrine announced by the Shepherd-King of 
 Israel ; and, in part also, to show you, by physiological 
 reasoning, their bearing and correctness in their appli- 
 cation to the human race generally. I wished to show 
 you how it is that, as a race, — whatever David may 
 or may not have intended, and whatever may have 
 been the facts in relation to him, — we are all con- 
 ceived in sin, and shapen in iniquity. 
 
 It is, however, hardly necessary that I should state 
 to an American reader the palpable and indisputable 
 fact that it is precisely from the hour when nature, all 
 exhausted, depressed and feverish, — not to say when 
 
136 PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 she is suffering under a load of abuse, — sinks, col- 
 lapses and is, as it were, almost ready to " beat a re- 
 treat," that we date, as individuals, our existence. It 
 is when we are nearest the point where we are fit for 
 nothing but " tired nature's sweet restorer," that we 
 perform one of the most responsible, I had almost said, 
 most serious duties devolving upon humanity. 
 
 Suppose it could be true, — what some of our phre- 
 nologists, and perhaps a few of our physiologists, have 
 told us, that, as is the parent physically and morally 
 at the important moment of conception, so is the child, 
 — how long would it take to extinguish utterly, the 
 vital flame which God has breathed out upon the 
 earth in which we have our abode ? How many cen- 
 turies could pass before man, made at first in the 
 image of God, would absolutely become extinct ? 
 
 But we may be assured that, though greatly abused 
 and crippled in a thousand ways, we are not left, as a 
 race, with the power of self-destruction so immediate 
 and so inevitable. Deterioration there must, indeed, 
 be in the matter of which we are now treating ; 
 deterioration there has indeed been, but there are 
 redeeming circumstances, and let us be grateful to 
 Almighty God that there are. 
 
 Still, the race to which we belong can never rise — 
 we can never, eject from this part of Jehovah's vast 
 domain, " disease, and all our woe" — till a great 
 and important change is effected in our habits. What 
 that change must be, in all its phases, cannot be told 
 in a single volume ; nevertheless, I must, in this work, 
 
PIIYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 137 
 
 small as it is, point to first principles, and, at least, 
 suggest the true means of laying broadly, and deeply, 
 and firmly, a sure foundation. 
 
 One thing appears to me plain, that, if our race will 
 continue to date their existence, physiologically and 
 foctally, at the most unfavorable and unfortunate hour 
 of the whole twenty-four, we must remove all fac- 
 titious things and circumstances. We must not render 
 the human inheritance, physical, mental, or moral, 
 worse than the direst necessity compels. Physically, 
 intellectually, socially and morally, we must be at this 
 sub-creative hour, — I had nearly said this most sacred 
 of all hours, — in our approach to that marriage-bed, 
 which an apostle has declared to be intrinsically " hon- 
 orable," in as good a condition as the nature of the 
 case will possibly admit. 
 
 It is often believed by the vulgar, and I am in- 
 clined to think not wholly without truth, that idiocy, 
 partial or complete, has sometimes been the result of 
 sexual commerce when under the influence of intoxi- 
 cation. It is even supposed that, to this end, it is not 
 indispensable that both parents should be " inebriate," 
 but only one. Now it would seem quite enough that 
 humanity should be conceived when nature is at ebb- 
 tide merely, without the addition of other deteriorating 
 influences ; and that this circumstance alone is suf- 
 ficient to account for that physical deterioration of the 
 race which is, everywhere in civic life, so obvious. 
 One, I say, might come to this conclusion, without 
 being very deep in the knowledge of physiology or 
 12* 
 
138 PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 hygiene. But when, in addition to all this, the parent's 
 brain, during the day, has been steeped, as it were, in 
 rum, tobacco, cider, wine, ale, tea, and coffee, par- 
 ticularly the former two, what has poor human nature 
 to hope for ? 
 
 Moreover, for every idiot, or half-idiot, formed by 
 these larger abuses, conjoined with the general irri- 
 tability and feverishness of the rundown and wornout 
 machine, we have probably some scores, if not some 
 hundreds, of quarter-idiots, so to call them ; and some 
 thousands, or ten thousands, whose intellects, if not 
 their spiritual powers, are more or less affected and 
 deteriorated, all the way from one fourth to one hun- 
 dredth or one thousandth. For there are degrees of 
 abuse in all the proportions herein indicated ; and. 
 why should not the inheritance be in proportion to the 
 abuse ? Most certainly it is so. 
 
 The man who, without coming to the still evening 
 hour half or one fourth intoxicated, is yet heated in 
 his blood, and indeed throughout his whole system, by 
 more or less of alcoholic drink, should not complain, 
 of God or man, if he has sickly, imbecile or effeminate 
 children. He is but reaping, — such is the law under 
 which we live, — according as, in his folly, he has 
 sown. 
 
 It is not distilled and fermented drinks alone, how- 
 ever, nor even these and tobacco, that pave the down- 
 ward road, to which I am now endeavoring to direct 
 the public mind, in order that there may be a timely 
 escape. It is anything and every thing that, by excess 
 
TIIYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 139 
 
 .n quantity or error in quality, poisons the vital cur- 
 rent, or embarrasses the functions of the body or the 
 mind. Every thing which is wrong in our food and 
 drink ; all unnecessary medication ; and all cabins of 
 bad air, from the counting-room or school-room of ten 
 or twelve feet square, to the unventilated mechanic's 
 shop or cotton factory of even gigantic dimensions, are 
 as certainly doing us mischief during the day, as that 
 two and two, when added together, make four ; and 
 are as certainly, though it may be not so rapidly, un- 
 fitting us for matrimony, physiologically considered, as 
 rum and tobacco. 
 
 And then, again, it is not those things alone which 
 atfect the body and derange its mechanism ; the mind, 
 too, has its influence. lie who, during the day, or any 
 considerable part of it, has been the slave or the victim 
 of anger, fear, grief, envy, melancholy, liatred, revenge, 
 or even over anxiety, has been as certainly unfitting 
 himself for the high prerogative of Paul's honorable 
 marriage-bed, as if he had been under the influence 
 of downright intoxication, only not in the same de- 
 gree. How poorly fitted must the progeny of such 
 circumstances be to form a meet temple for the in- 
 dwelling of the Divine Spirit ! 
 
 When I think what temperance, health, and general 
 purity are required, not merely on occasions, but 
 habitually, in order to become a parent, I can scarcely 
 forbear to tremble. Is it not enough that we are 
 willing to replenish the world from the very dregs, as 
 
140 PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 it were, of life — the mere remnant of a worn out day, 
 the cuttings and clippings of an old garment — but must 
 we add to it the abuses of gluttony, intemperance, 
 and perverted, and degrading, and depressing pas- 
 sions ? 
 
 This suggests to every one who will but take the 
 trouble to think at all, his whole duty in relation to 
 this matter. He who aspires to the great work of in- 
 creasing and multiplying and replenishing the earth, 
 according to the directions given to the Jirst Adam, 
 must enter into the spirit and temper of the second. 
 He must cultivate and elevate, were it only with 
 reference to the improvement of his own progeny, his 
 whole nature. He must, with a view to this im- 
 portant end, obey all the known laws of God, physical, 
 intellectual, social and moral. He must elevate him- 
 self, aided by the Divine influences, to such a height 
 of physical and moral excellence as may render him 
 worthy of co-operating with the world's Master Spirit 
 in the great work of human redemption. 
 
 You will have observed before now, that I do not 
 say with much positiveness what definite course should 
 be taken under the circumstances to which I have, in 
 this chapter, called your attention. I have pointed to 
 a fundamental error embodying, as it were, all our 
 other errors ; but have left it, thus far, to the good 
 sense of my readers to apply the proper remedy. I 
 must, however, in closing, endeavor to secure your 
 attention to the subject a few moments more, by way 
 of review. 
 
rilYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 141 
 
 Suppose you have iu your family a drivelling idiot. 
 To support him by your hard earnings might be 
 borne, and borne easily ; especially if you had no 
 lurking suspicion or secret misgivings with reference 
 to the part you had acted, in connection. But to bear 
 with his weakness and folly ; to be subjected day after 
 day, and year after year, to all the physical, intellec- 
 tual, moral, and social trials to which his condition 
 must inevitably subject you — to the pain of thinking 
 that, in all probability, you have been the cause of 
 your and his suffering — how could your heart en- 
 dure it ? 
 
 Suppose, even, a state of things short of downright 
 idiocy. Owing to your ill-health, or to other circum- 
 stances, you knew you were not in a proper condition 
 to become the progenitor of a child. Yet, for the 
 sake of a momentary gratification, and stimulated by 
 external and internal heat, you incurred the risk. 
 And now the iniquity of the father has been visited 
 upon the child. He is weak, wayward, froward ; in 
 one word, hard to govern, as the phrase is. He is 
 your child, and yet you are almost ashamed of him. 
 He is to be educated ; but you hardly know how. 
 He has an immortal spirit, yet he has not character 
 enough to encourage the hope of making on him any 
 lasting good impressions. Alas ! what trials may be 
 in reserve for transgression, which timely light and 
 truth may now prevent ! 
 
 And then the slighter degrees of transgression have 
 
142 PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 their influence in forming fallen character ; we hardly 
 realize how much; nor shall we, in all probability, 
 understand this matter as it truly is, till the last day 
 shall reveal it. Our duty, however, so far as known, can 
 be heeded. We can do what we already know to be 
 right. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE LAW OF TREGNANCT. 
 
 It is, to say the least, quite doubtful whether, on 
 any point connected with the physiology of matri- 
 mony, young men from the ordinary walks of life are 
 shrouded in thicker darkness than in regard to the 
 laws of human gestation or pregnancy ; and, if light 
 is needed any where, is it not here ? 
 
 On this subject, if on nothing else, I speak that to 
 which, in the Providence of God, my attention has 
 been so long and so extensively called that I may 
 justly consider myself competent to testify. Young 
 men, I say again, are in utter ignorance, or almost so, 
 with regard to the laws of pregnancy. But then there 
 is one redeeming thing about it, many are anxious to 
 know them. This, so far, is encouraging. To find 
 young men in the spirit of progression gives us hope. 
 But to keep such young men no longer in suspense, 
 Jet us proceed to our inquiry. 
 
 The savages of the wilderness, in some instances, as 
 ve are told, practise what might be called non-inter- 
 wurse during the whole period of utero-gestation. 
 This, if true, arfd I suppose it to be so, is a most re- 
 
144 PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 markable, and, at the same time, most interesting fact 
 in the history of mankind. 
 
 Some of the British and American physiologists, in 
 pursuance of their investigations, have come to the 
 conclusion that the savage state, in this particular in- 
 stance, is the true state of nature. Surprising is it 
 that it should be so. "We have seen that our appetites 
 are fallen appetites ; now, can the appetites of the 
 most degraded of our race be less fallen than those of 
 the most elevated and cultivated ? 
 
 Let us examine this matter, — for it will richly 
 repay the trouble. Let us see, if we can, what the 
 truth is ; this precious commodity is sometimes found 
 midway between extremes. In the present case the 
 extremes of social life, refinement and barbarism, 
 seem to*meet, and to unite, in proclaiming entire ab- 
 stinence during a long period of matrimonial life ; 
 while the general practice of the world of mankind 
 proclaims, as we have elsewhere seen, an almost 
 unlimited and unrestrained indulgence. 
 
 "We will look at the subject, first, in the light of 
 analogy; secondly, in that of anatomy, physiology, 
 and hygiene; and lastly, in that of Christian morality. 
 
 For the purpose of deriving an argument from an- 
 alogy, we will suppose the case of an intelligent young 
 man who intends to keep pace with the spirit of the 
 times. He sets out trees in his field or garden, or by 
 the road-side, for usefulness, for shade, and for orna- 
 ment ; will he not take care of them from day to day, 
 and from week to week ? Will he not jjpnce, water, and 
 
rnrsiOLOGY of marriage. 145 
 
 watch them, as he sees them need it ? Most certainly 
 he will. 
 
 Indeed, I know many a gardener and farmer, each 
 of whose trees cost him, in various ways, a dollar or 
 more a year. He protects them by boards or by 
 stakes from external violence, as much and as well as 
 he can. He knows full well that all hacking, bruising, 
 galling, and peeling them would be greatly injurious. 
 Accordingly he visits them from day to day, and even 
 yearns over them with a degree of that tenderness 
 with which a mother yearns over her offspring. 
 
 Other cares are needed. Perhaps the trees require 
 watering and mulching in times of drought and heat. 
 Perhaps there is need, at the approach of winter, of 
 protecting them from the severe frost. His mind is 
 ever and anon directed to the supply of their wants ; 
 and when he finds any one of them suffering or perish- 
 ing, or even not making that progress which he had 
 expected, he is grieved. In our intercourse with 
 human beings we love most those whom we have 
 most watched over and cared for, and suffered for ; 
 and hence, no doubt, one prominent source of parental 
 love. And is it not true that, in conformity with this 
 general principle, we become, in greater or less degree, 
 attached to those plants, trees, and flowers, which we 
 have watched over long and carefully ? 
 
 Now what would be thought of him who should take 
 exactly the opposite course to that which has just 
 been suggested? What would be thought of the 
 o 
 
146 PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 farmer or gardener, who, after digging a suitable 
 number of holes in the ground, just about large enough 
 to set posts in, and hastily crowding the expanding 
 roots of a parcel of young trees into them and covering 
 them, should leave them to themselves for months 
 and years ? No man who should do this could expect 
 to retain, long, the reputation of a man of sense or 
 skill in his profession. He could hardly retain a 
 suitable degree of self-respect. 
 
 But if these things are so — if mere negligence 
 would be disgraceful and disreputable — what would 
 be thought of downright violence, or even of rough 
 handling and treatment ? What would be thought of 
 him who should willingly, or by intention, disturb the 
 roots of his young trees and shrubs, by the plough, the 
 hoe, the spade, or the harrow, or in any other way ; 
 or who should recklessly wound, bruise, maim, or in 
 any way disfigure them ? If it is not workmanlike to 
 neglect them, how much worse is it to agitate, enfeeble, 
 or in any way, disturb them by the rude attacks of man 
 or beast ! 
 
 The same general remarks are applicable to planting 
 and sowing ; and with even more of force. Who is 
 there that does not endeavor to leave the ground into 
 which he has cast his seeds, in perfect quiet, during 
 the first days, weeks and months, in order that the 
 processes of germination and growth may have their 
 perfect work ? Who is he that would shake roughly, 
 or in any way agitate the soil in which the young 
 
rnrsiOLOGT of marriage. 147 
 
 embryo plant was forcing its way into life ? None, 
 most certainly, but one who was entirely unfit for his 
 business — an ignoramus, an idiot or a madman. 
 
 Again, in the management of domestic animals of 
 all sorts ; who is lie that wholly neglects the well- 
 being of the young in embryo? Above all, who is 
 he — where is he to be found — who not only neglects 
 but exposes it, willingly, to violence ? We are bound, 
 always, to be merciful to our beasts, as Solomon has 
 intimated ; but some men do not come up to Solomon's 
 standard in ordinary every day circumstances. Many 
 an individual treats his domestic animals with great 
 roughness, from time to time — not to say with much 
 of cruelty. Yet where is the individual to be found 
 who will treat his animals, with young, with violence 
 and cruelty ? It would be to act in opposition to his 
 own interest. If cruelty and violence were ever 
 justifiable — and would ever comport with good 
 policy — it would not be in circumstances like these. 
 
 "We will now apply our remarks to the young of the 
 human race, and thus finish our analogy. If sound 
 sense and good policy — to say nothing of mercy — 
 would lead us to do all in our power for the nutrition 
 and development in the best and healthiest and most 
 approved manner, of our plants and animals, should 
 we do less for our own offspring — those who are, as it 
 were, a part of us — who are bone of our bone and 
 flesh of our flesh? Will we, above all, with open 
 eyes, and full assent, inflict violence of any kind on the 
 young being in embryo ? Or if a young man were 
 
148 PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 reckless enough, of himself, to do this, would he not 
 spare the companion of his bosom the pangs which his 
 recklessness might inflict on her, at least if she were 
 intelligent enough to know that the foetus is susceptible 
 of being affected by violence ? 
 
 Yet such reckless young men there have been — 
 such, I fear, there still are. They well know that as 
 the plant or tree depends on the quiet, proper arrange- 
 ment, moisture, strength of soil, etc., in which it grows, 
 so the infant in the uterus is best sustained and per- 
 fected, when the mother's solids and fluids — as a soil 
 in which it is placed — are in the best possible condi- 
 tion ; and the roots, so to call them, of the little being, 
 are most undisturbed by any species of violence. And 
 yet knowing the fact, they practically disregard it. 
 
 Thus far, the arguments to be derived from analogy, 
 in their bearing on the case before us, are obviously in 
 favor of non-intercourse during the whole period of 
 utero-gestation. There is one more analogy remaining. 
 It is mentioned last, not because it is regarded as of 
 second or third rate importance, but because it is of 
 such a nature as to render it very closely allied to our 
 anatomical and physiological division. It is, in truth, — 
 to give it the most appropriate name — a fact, derived 
 from and based upon comparative physiology. 
 
 It has always struck me, as not a little remarkable 
 that, in the providence of God, the whole animal 
 world, below man, are restricted to non-intercourse, by 
 their instincts. By the removal of the sexual instinct, 
 during the long period of many months — in some 
 
TIIYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 149 
 
 instances, no less than nine — the process of utero- 
 gestation is wholly uninterrupted ; and as appears 
 most probable, not to say certain, the deterioration, no 
 less than the destruction of the race, thereby pre- 
 vented. 
 
 ! Now tills arrangement of High Heaven, is either in 
 accordance with Infinite Wisdom and Benevolence, 
 1 ad hence conducive to the highest good of the various 
 tribes of animals, or it is not. "Would we dare to say 
 that it is not so ? 
 
 But if non-intercourse, during pregnancy, is the law 
 of Jehovah to all the tribes of animals below man, by 
 what mode of reasoning shall it be made to appear 
 that the law which is perfect for the brute, in a 
 matter like this, is not perfect for man? True it is that 
 we cannot always reason from brutes to men — so wide 
 is the gulf between the two, at least when morally and 
 religiously considered — but in the case before us, such 
 reasoning appears to me legitimate. Heaven has thus 
 made sure the perpetuity of the mere animal — with- 
 out liability to deterioration — by an almost impassable 
 barrier ; while it has delegated to free agency, here, 
 as well as elsewhere, the power " to counteract its own 
 most gracious ends," if it chooses to do so. 
 
 There is another point to be considered ; and here 
 our comparison foils a little short. We are to 
 remember that while in our dealings with the world 
 of vegetation, the seed which produces a plant or tree 
 is first separated entirely from the parent, and then 
 cast out into a foreign soil, it is entirely different in 
 13* 
 
150 rnrsiOLOGY of marriage. 
 
 the animal world. The young human tree, so to call 
 it, is for many long months, on the parent tree ; and 
 only thrives as the parent thrives. It suffers also, if 
 the parent surfers. In the formation of the fruit of a 
 tree from the blossom, and in its preparation to be cast 
 off or isolated from the parent, there may be a slight 
 resemblance to those changes in the animal world 
 which we are considering — but not so much in the 
 germination and growth of the young shoot. 
 
 Now while the seed, in its germination, and the 
 young shoot, in its growth, are, by their isolation, 
 secured, on the one hand from all dangers which 
 might be received through the parent, they are equally 
 secured, on the other, from a necessity of that watch- 
 care which is bestowed on the young animal, especially 
 the rational one. The parent tree, of course, has no 
 sepse of responsibility for the right germination and 
 growth of its progeny ; and the parent of the mere 
 animal is almost equally irresponsible, though in some 
 respects, equally influential. But here, in the last 
 instance, instinct is invoked ; and to instinct the whole 
 matter is assigned. In the case of the human animal, 
 on the contrary, a most fearful responsibility is in- 
 curred. 
 
 There are a thousand things that have to do with 
 the actual condition of the embryo human being, which 
 are entirely within the control of the parents, but 
 which are intimately connected with the well being of 
 the child. Especially is it so when we look at the 
 subject in the light of the laws of Anatomy and 
 
rilYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. lol 
 
 Physiology, to some of the more important of which, 
 I must now call your attention. 
 
 No one at the present day, can be wholly ignorant 
 of the fact that a considerable proportion of the chil- 
 dren born among us are still-born. So far as I have 
 examined — and my opportunities for examination have 
 not been confined to the crowded city, by any means — 
 the proportion is about one in fifteen of all who are 
 born. The proportion, moreover, appears to be 
 increasing. But even at the present rate our annual 
 national loss, from this source alone, can hardly be less 
 than forty thousand. 
 
 This item of human mortality is believed to be, for 
 the most part, the result of violence. All disease is 
 indeed, in a general sense of the term, violence. But 
 we mean something more than this, in the case of still- 
 born children. They are, for the most part, destroyed 
 by violence in the common, rather than the physiologi- 
 cal and pathological acceptation of the term. 
 
 There are, indeed, numerous forms of violence to 
 which the child in the uterus may be subjected. 
 Among these are blows on the abdomen, externally ; 
 falls ; violent efforts in amusement and labor ; and 
 great mental agitation, as by fear or grief. How these 
 mental causes may have the effect of violence, so as to 
 produce foetal death, it may not be easy to say, in few 
 words ; and perhaps, in this particular instance you 
 may as well assent to mere authority. But of all the 
 forms of violence which are wont to inflict injury in 
 the present case, none are so common as that violence 
 
152 PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 to the whole nervous system which is produced during 
 the terminus of sexual intercourse. 
 
 One of our most distinguished medical men — one 
 who presumes to be a leader in the corps of his pro- 
 fession — is wont to say, with reference to still-born 
 children, that they are killed by mechanical violence. 
 His language on the subject is that of indignation ; 
 and will not, here, be repeated. It is just in its appli- 
 cation, but it is severe; and approximates to the 
 vindictive of the vulgar. The common sense of the 
 mass of mankind — unenlightened as it now is — in- 
 clines in the same direction. Mechanical violence is 
 better understood — is more tangible — than any other. 
 
 Without assuming that what everybody says must 
 be true, it is nevertheless undeniable that this opinion 
 has truth in it. There are brutes in human shape, of 
 both sexes. There are those, especially of our own 
 sex, who would not deny themselves one iota of imme- 
 diate enjoyment, for the sake of joys remote, though 
 ever so much magnified, if by so doing they knew they 
 could save a wife from much future suffering, and an 
 embryo child from certain destruction. Worse than 
 even this. There are those of both sexes, as we shall 
 see by and by, who would prefer the destruction of 
 the child, and would choose violence of this very 
 kind — if other forms were to fail — for its accom- 
 plishment. 
 
 But this is not the usual way in which children in 
 the uterus arc killed by violence. Scientific men are 
 accustomed to explain the matter more in accordance 
 
rnrsiOLOGY of marriage. 153 
 
 with the laws of health and disease, as well as with 
 analogies, such as have just now been presented. 
 
 They know, full well, that the embryo child thrives 
 when the mother thrives. Give to her the most 
 perfect health, in an uninterrupted stream, and the 
 child can neither sicken and die, nor fail to be devel- 
 oped in due proportion and harmony. But take away 
 from the mother any measure of this high and as some 
 call it, perfect health,* and we take away in similar 
 proportion, from the health and vigor of the child. 
 
 This healthful and vigorous state of the mother is 
 always abated somewhat — I mean of course during 
 gestation or pregnancy — by sexual indulgence. It 
 is so, even if the mother takes little or no active part 
 in it ; but it is especially so when the contrary is the 
 fact. The nervous orgasm is too great for the young 
 germ. As certain processes of agriculture or hor- 
 ticulture, when carried on amid the newly set or 
 recently germinated plants loosen their hold on the 
 mother earth and caus^ them gradually to sicken, 
 droop, and die, so does that agitation of the human 
 being, to which I refer; especially wh^n oft and 
 frequently repeated. 
 
 Let me be understood, here. It i* not affirmed that 
 
 * Perfect health I suppose to mean, iu general, immunity 
 from fear and suffering — a sort of medium health, which 
 passes for perfection. Such a tiling as perfect health, ia the 
 physiological sense of the term, is not known to the preeca* 
 fallen world. 
 
154 PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 no mechanical violence is committed, to hasten on a 
 fatal result, especially when the orgasm, both on the 
 maternal and paternal side is strong ; but only that it 
 is, comparatively, inconsiderable in its effects. It is 
 seldom, if ever, sufficient to produce the immediate 
 destruction of the foetus. The mischief comes in 
 another way and manner. 
 
 First, the mother is herself weakened, through the 
 attack on her nervous system ; and whatever weakens 
 her, even temporarily, weakens her offspring in utero. 
 But, secondly, the child, dependent as it is upon the 
 parent, is, in these circumstances, fed from a current 
 of blood less rich and nutritive than it otherwise would 
 be. The starvation system will do for adults much 
 better than it will for the young in embryo. 
 
 Here, too, I greatly desire not to be misunderstood. 
 One transgression of a healthy robust father or mother 
 does not always kill, of course. Perhaps it may even 
 seem to do no injury. Farther than this, even, may be 
 true. Such persons may repeat the transgression to 
 an extent that can only be measured by the term 
 frequently; and yet the child may not be still-born. 
 Healthy parents do not generally have still-born 
 children as the result of this particular form of vio- 
 lence. 
 
 It does not hence follow that no injury is inflicted. 
 
 The child in utero may be injured, doubtless often is 
 so, without being destroyed ; and the aggregate, or 
 Bum total, of these smaller inflictions may greatly ex- 
 
rnrsiOLOGY of marriage. 155 
 
 ceed the mischief which is designated when we speak 
 of a yearly loss of forty thousand children in the 
 United States. 
 
 Children may come into the world with disease for 
 their inheritance. They may be of a feeble and deli- 
 cate organization. They may be feeble or erratic, 
 mentally or morally. There is, indeed, no doubt that 
 they often are so. I have seen parents of this de- 
 scription, who, out of a large family, had not a single 
 healthy child. Every body wondered, and every cause 
 was invoked, of the strange phenomenon, except the 
 right — the frequent violation of the irrevocable laws 
 of Heaven. 
 
 Of course I do not say that families may not be 
 found of the description given in the last paragraph, 
 where the cause of the debility or disease may be en- 
 tirely different. The world abounds with causes of 
 disease, both moral and physical. God works by 
 means in this, as well as in other departments of his 
 kingdom. 
 
 But if the children of very strong and healthy pa- 
 rents are more or less demented or diseased by sexual 
 commerce during pregnancy; if there is always a 
 tendency, even in the case of the robust, to the ex- 
 tinction of the child's vital energies, how much more 
 is this the fact in the case of the great majority, whose 
 physical inheritance is less favorable ? 
 
 The whole truth should be proclaimed. Sexual in- 
 tercourse during pregnancy, as a general rule, robs the 
 child in the uterus, reduces its constitutional vigor, and 
 
156 PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 predisposes it to various debilitating diseases ; and, in 
 some instances, as we have seen, quite extinguishes 
 the flame of life. If forty thousand are killed outright 
 every year, in the United States, in the uterus, it can 
 hardly be doubted that some hundreds of thousands 
 are partly killed. They are at least duly prepared 
 to become the victims, sooner or later, of actual, it 
 may be very severe, disease. Their minds, as well as 
 their bodies, are somewhat deteriorated, especially in 
 their tone or energy. 
 
 Now our young men — our old ones, too — should 
 think of such facts as these whenever and wherever 
 temptation solicits. Or if it should be said that they 
 have not known the law, and hence know very little 
 about the penalties annexed to its transgressions, then 
 the proper reply is — they ought to know it. No 
 young man who reads this book, and reads it through, 
 shall be able to make the plea of honest ignorance 
 hereafter. If I do not succeed in enlightening him, I 
 will at least pioneer the way to truth and light. He 
 shall know, at least, that there is something which he 
 does not know. 
 
 I do not say that these considerations, standing by 
 themselves, should compel us to the sweeping conclu- 
 sion that all commerce of the sexes during gestation 
 should be avoided ; but they certainly point in that 
 direction. They are to be taken into the account in 
 settling the great question, and are entitled to weight. 
 
 Woman is also liable during pregnancy to abortion. 
 This liability exists at every age, from puberty to the 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 157 
 
 cessation of the menses. It is, however, on some 
 accounts, a greater evil in proportion as it occurs early 
 in matrimonial life ; because, if it does not inflict a 
 greater amount of immediate injury, it does,«at least, 
 render a person more liable to a recurrence of the 
 same difficulty ; — but it not unfrequently cripples her 
 for life. 
 
 This abortion I say, then, even under the most 
 favorable circumstances, is an evil. For its existence, 
 as for still-births, there are many and various causes. 
 Indeed, the same causes sometimes produce still-births 
 and abortion both. But the most common cause is 
 sexual indulgence, especially when it occurs at certain 
 months of pregnancy. 
 
 It is most frequent during the first, toward the end 
 of the third, and during the fourth month ; and, also, 
 about the seventh ; but it may happen at any time 
 during pregnancy, earlier or later. Against danger 
 from this quarter, the female should be always strictly 
 guarded ; but especially so during the most dangerous 
 seasons. She should even be aided by man in the work 
 of guarding herself, as one of the highest of his offices. 
 For woman alone, unaided, is not sufficient for this 
 great work. What can she do without the co-opera- 
 tion of man ? What, above all, can she do when man 
 becomes her seducer ? He is bound, as we have seen 
 in an early chapter, by the special arrangement of 
 Jehovah himself, to be her keeper. Does he perform, 
 conscientiously, his duty ? 
 
 Let him, henceforth, fully understand that anatomy 
 14 
 
158 physiology or MISUAOI 
 
 and physiology point to sexual commerce, daring 
 pregnancy, as one prolific source not only of still-births 
 and abortion, but also of that whole train of smaller 
 «\ ua^wnjcLinarshal themselves under these two leaders. 
 Millions and millions of our race are slowly murdered 
 in this way ; while other millions, nay, other hundreds 
 of millions,* are partly destroyed. And the destruc- 
 tion, in every degree, alights upon the soul Bfl well Bfl 
 the body. 
 
 My most deliberate conviction is that if young men 
 as a general rule, could see, at a single clear view, u 
 they may perhaps see it in the review of the Great 
 Day, all the diseases of mind and body to which, 
 by their sensual indulgence during pregnancy, they 
 subject their wives and children, they would hesitate 
 in their career of thoughtlessness and recklessness 
 They could not, with open eyes, bring mourning, la 
 mentation and woe into their own houses, and to theii 
 own firesides and bed-chambers. They would govern 
 themselves far better than now They would not, 
 so often at least, prepare for themselves a world of 
 misery before the time ! They would wait a little I For, 
 selfish as the world is, the number of young men who 
 are so selfish as to be happy while they know they are 
 the authors of suffering to their wives and children, 
 most be very small indeed. The direct torment inflicted 
 on themselves by a consciousness of such wrong doing, 
 would be sufficiently dreadful ; but this would not 
 
 * It is about fifty millions, as nearly as can be ascertained, to 
 each generation of thirty years. 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 159 
 
 diminish the intensity of the suffering of others. It 
 would still be immense and appalling. 
 
 There is one more form of suffering to th^ race, to 
 which I have not yet adverted in particular. Thou- 
 sands of fathers and mothers go far enough in trans- 
 gression to cause premature labor, and a somewhat 
 delicate offspring, while it can hardly be said that the 
 general health of the child, or even of the mother, is 
 seriously impaired by it. Still, it inflicts injury more 
 or less, and should be avoided. 
 
 In the closing part of the volume, as well as in 
 other parts of the work, I shall give such directions 
 with regard to physical education prospectively, as the 
 nature of the case demands. 
 
 This is the place to speak of sexual indulgence 
 during pregnancy, as viewed in the light of Chris- 
 tianity. On this part of our subject I must be as 
 brief as possible. 
 
 "We should not forget that man is made, that is, de- 
 signed, in the image of God. It is our duty, as Chris- 
 tians, to preserve that image. Nay, more ; it is our 
 duty to restore it as fast as possible, whenever and 
 wherever it is lost. These remarks, I confess, amount 
 to little more than the most common truisms. And 
 yet, can it be that their force is duly apprehended 
 when brought to bear upon the case before us ? 
 
 It would seem to be a smaller detraction from the 
 image of God to give a wrong direction to the plants 
 and vines which we cultivate ; or even to neglect to 
 give them a right direction, than to give a wrong 
 
1G0 PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 direction to the human being. God has, as it 
 were, enstamped himself even on these; will we 
 not do all, we can to aid them in retaining his Divine 
 image ? 
 
 But if so ; if not to give them a proper direction 
 from the first were a species of wrong, is there nothing 
 blameworthy in detracting from their value, or mar- 
 ring in them that structural perfection and beauty 
 which reflect the character of their Author, and, in a 
 sense, constitute his image ? Does not he who reck- 
 lessly loosens their roots, poisons them through their 
 sap vessels, or withholds from them that nurture 
 which he knows their advancing nature demands, — 
 for every plant and tree must have its appropriate 
 food, — detract from the image of a holy God, and a 
 most kind and benevolent Father ? 
 
 And then, too, by parity of reasoning, is there no 
 guilt attached to a more direct, and I fear more gen- 
 eral detraction from God's image, in marring and 
 defacing and destroying that symmetry, beauty, health, 
 mental force and moral worth, which, but for our in- 
 terference might have been an instrument in blessing, 
 in countless ways, this dark world ? But all this, and 
 much more than can be readily portrayed in a few 
 short paragraphs is done every day, and in a thousand, 
 if not ten thousand instances. He who begets a child 
 in his own image, when that image is defaced by sin 
 and guilt in any of their forms, is of that description. 
 So is he who, by yielding to his lusts, at the expense 
 of a child in embryo, prefers present pleasure to the 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 1C1 
 
 future physical, intellectual, and moral happiness of 
 his own offspring. 
 
 As I have frequently adverted to the effects of 
 6exual commerce during pregnancy on the moral 
 character of the child in utero, and may have frequent 
 occasion to do so in time to come, it may be well to 
 state more fully my meaning. 
 
 I suppose it to be an incontrovertible fact, that the 
 more the foetal existence is undisturbed, and the more 
 the whole physical, mental and moral energies of the 
 mother are concentrated on the new being, the greater 
 the probability that the latter will be reinstated, in due 
 time, in the Divine image. The child whose energies 
 are half robbed or destroyed ere he sees the light, will 
 be likely to come forth upon the stage of life in such a 
 debilitated or unbalanced state of body and mind as will 
 render him a more ready slave to his own appetites 
 and passions. Christianity may claim such individuals, 
 no doubt, as they pass on in the journey of life ; but 
 its claims are not very greatly honored, nor the cause 
 they would sustain greatly promoted, when their vitals 
 have been sapped and drained and eaten out at the 
 very threshold of their foetal existence. 
 
 It has sometimes been objected to the views which 
 have been made prominent in this chapter, that par- 
 turition is much more easy and natural in those in- 
 stances where the sexual instinct has not been wholly 
 neglected during the period of pregnancy. But this 
 opinion is one that will not stand the test of truth. 
 
 Some fifteen or twenty years ago, when I began to 
 14* 
 
1G4 PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 frequent as to prevent certain evils to which an 
 apostle refers, in writing to the Corinthians, is endear- 
 ing. No doubt. But what is the kind of endearment? 
 Does it have affinity to the spiritual nature, or is it 
 merely instinctive ? There is abroad, in vulgar life, a 
 similar saying with regard to the lowest, most grovel- 
 ling, and most filthy of domestic animals — that sleeping 
 together makes them love each other ! 
 
 The wife of a minister of the gospel, in one of our 
 large cities committed suicide, a few years ago, in her 
 own sleeping chamber. Some of the fancied wise ones 
 of her neighborhood, in their very superficial search for 
 the cause of so strange an event, believed they dis- 
 covered it in a supposed alienation of feeling, induced 
 by a pledge of herself and her husband to total absti- 
 nence for a few weeks, for the very simple and 
 praiseworthy object of being able to do more for others. 
 They were engaged heart and hand in a benevolent 
 enterprise of very great magnitude and importance. 
 Her death, it seems, took place in about six weeks 
 after their separation. 
 
 Now it is one of the most common occurrences in the 
 world — in these days of busy enterprise — for hus- 
 bands and wives to separate for business or amusement, 
 not merely six weeks, but as many months. . Are 
 these cases attended with an undue proportion of 
 suicides ? It would be difficult to prove this. It is 
 even highly probable that there are fewer, than in 
 other circumstances. 
 
 Let a maritime county in Massachusetts — that of 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 165 
 
 Barnstable — bo called to the stand, on this occasion. 
 The writer happens to be acquainted with a single 
 neighborhood of that county, in which there are no 
 less than thirty-five ship masters— men with families — 
 besides a large number of common seamen, in similar 
 circumstances. But it would be difficult to hear of a 
 single suicide in all that region. 
 
 Only one more objection will be noticed at present. 
 An aged and excellent deacon of a church in Connecti- 
 cut, in a very valuable letter written many years since, 
 took the position that God did not intend for the 
 brutes as much of mere animal enjoyment as for man, 
 the nobler animal. This is conjectural. It may or may 
 not be so. It is certainly possible that more of sensual 
 enjoyment is allotted to man in his disciplinary state, as 
 an earnest of that higher, and nobler, and more scrip- 
 tural enjoyment, which is in reserve for him when this 
 corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this 
 mortal shall have put on immortality. It is, at least a 
 pleasant speculation. 
 
 And yet I doubt, after all, whether these specula- 
 tions — agreeable as they may be to many — are of 
 much consequence. Had they not been the sober 
 and dispassionate convictions of a most excellent 
 follower of Christ, 1 should have been inclined to refer 
 them to a very different source from that whence I 
 now know them to have emanated. They would grace, 
 far better, a shrewd apology for excessive amative- 
 ness. 
 
 Besides, whatever weight such speculations may 
 
16G PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 have had on the minds of others — and whatever of 
 weight they really possess — is generally set to the 
 credit of sexual indulgence generally ; and not merely 
 during the period of pregnancy. The subject was 
 introduced in this place, as a mere matter of conven- 
 ience. 
 
 The doctrine which I am defending in this chapter 
 will meet with the strongest opposition from feeling — 
 not from argument. It is so, generally, with anything 
 which goes against the propensities. Convince men 
 against their stomachs, and it is no conviction at all, 
 practically. . The stomach will over-ride all decisions 
 of the higher court of judicature, the head. Paul 
 himself, in his day, spoke of those individuals — and 
 they are as numerous in these days as they ever 
 were — whose God was no higher than the upper por- 
 tion of the human abdomen. See Phil, iii., 19. 
 
 Is it so, then, can it be so, some reader will be likely 
 to say, that a total and unqualified non-intercourse is 
 the great law of human pregnancy — and that, too, 
 without a solitary exception? Is that your exact 
 meaning ? 
 
 It is not precisely what I have affirmed ; though it 
 comes tolerably near the truth. According to the 
 testimony of analogy and facts — and according to 
 the general tenor and spirit of Christianity and science 
 this must be the general rule. But almost all general 
 rules have their exceptions ; and there may be one or 
 two in the present case. Let us briefly attend to 
 them. 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 167 
 
 "Woman, as is well known, in a natural state — un- 
 perverted, unseduced, and healthy — seldom, if ever, 
 makes any of those advances, which clearly indicate 
 sexual desire ; and for this very plain reason that she 
 does not feel them. I have even known of two or 
 three most excellent female heads of large families, 
 who never felt them. Such at least is their testimony. 
 
 On the contrary, not only before marriage, but dur- 
 ing its first weeks and months, and through life, wom- 
 an is to be icon. And yet there are a few exceptions 
 amounting in all probability to diseased cases. One 
 of these, most certainly, is of this description. In it, 
 the natural course of things is entirely reversed. — The 
 following are the two most striking cases of diseased 
 female amativeness with which 1 am acquainted. 
 
 In nervous women, at certain times, and under 
 circumstances of pregnancy, it occasionally happens 
 that the female appetite becomes erratic, and makes 
 unusual, and in themselves considered, very objection- 
 able demands. Distant articles of food or drink, or 
 strange medicated mixtures, become the object of 
 desire to an extent whose intenseness has long been 
 characterized, or indicated, by the word longing. 
 
 This longing has been variously regarded and 
 treated, both by the husband and the wife herself. In 
 some instances the erratic demand has been most 
 rigidly, not to say superstitiously complied with, even 
 at the risk of affecting, injuriously, the health, both of 
 the mother and her offspring. It has even been sup- 
 posed, by a few, that both the mother and her offspring 
 
168 PHYSIOLOGY OV MARRIAGE. 
 
 would be seriously injured — especially the latter — 
 without them. In other instances, the desire is laughed 
 at, both by the husband and the other friends ; and 
 unless the wife is made of adamant, or is able to join 
 in a laugh against herself, she often becomes a serious 
 sufferer. 
 
 Now these erratic appetites are not to be despised 
 or trifled with, on the one hand ; nor wholly and 
 unreservedly yielded to, on the other. Woman should 
 fully understand their cause, and endeavor to act the 
 part of reason as much as possible. What can be 
 done, without too much inconvenience, and without 
 too much of opposition to the laws of health and life, 
 should be done ; what it seems necessary to dispense with, 
 should, in the true spirit of Christianity, be given up. 
 
 The husband and friends should have the same feel- 
 ings, and should pursue a similar course. Nature 
 should not be trampled on, I say, on the one hand ; 
 nor over-indulged or pampered, on the other. It 
 should be understood that disease, or at least debility, 
 is at the foundation of all these things. It is usually 
 quite enough for the hardiest and healthiest female 
 constitution to go through with the trials of gestation 
 and child bearing, without faltering; and when the 
 system falters, as a whole, it is not strange that the 
 appetites should sympathize in the general embarrass- 
 ment. In this condition of things, the appetite which 
 God, in his wise Providence, has established within 
 us, as a means of perpetuating the species, becomes 
 erratic, at least occasionally, as well as the rest. 
 
nirSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 169 
 
 Woman, though before reserved, modest, and even 
 distant, becomes now, on occasions, open, bold, and 
 forward. — I say on occasions, because it is exceed- 
 ingly seldom, even in those individuals who are con- 
 stitutionally most inclined to it. 
 
 Under these circumstances, it may and does become 
 a grave question which will be productive of most 
 harm, to repel the diseased appetite or to yield, tem- 
 porarily — perhaps in a single instance — to its de- 
 mands. So far as the question relates to the mere 
 heal tli of the female, in itself considered, I have not a 
 doubt that such an occasional indulgence would be 
 favorable. It is quite another question whether the 
 child will suffer less or more from a persevering self- 
 denial, amid feelings of continued uneasiness and un- 
 happiness ; or whether, as a choice of evils, the 
 contrary course, in an instance or two, should be 
 pursued. 
 
 The common idea that the child in utero suffers, if 
 the mother's desires are not gratified, is correct, in a 
 certain sense ; and yet, in other points of view, incor- 
 rect. It is certainly true that if the mother suffers, 
 whether that suffering arises from one cause or another, 
 the child is not so well sustained, as the consequence, in 
 the uterus. But when this doctrine is carried to the 
 extent of some ; when we are told that if the mother 
 longs for a particular fruit, the product of a distant 
 land, which cannot be obtained, or is refused something 
 which might be procured for her, the child will be 
 marked with that particular article, or will come into 
 15 
 
168 PHYSIOLOOI 0] MARRIAGE. 
 
 would be seriously injured — especially the latter — 
 without them. In other instances, the desire is laughed 
 at, both by the husband and the other friends ; and 
 unless the wife is made of adamant, or is able to join 
 in a laugh against herself, she often becomes a serious 
 sufferer. 
 
 Now these erratic appetites are not to be despised 
 or trifled with, on the one hand ; nor wholly and 
 unreservedly yielded to, on the other. Woman should 
 fully understand their cause, and endeavor to act the 
 part of reason as much as possible. What can be 
 done, without too much inconvenience, and without 
 too much of opposition to the laws of health and life, 
 should be done ; what it seems necessary to dispense with, 
 should, in the true spirit of Christianity, be given up. 
 
 The husband and friends should have the same feel- 
 ings, and should pursue a similar course. Nature 
 should not be trampled on, I say, on the one hand ; 
 nor over-indulged or pampered, on the other. It 
 should be understood that disease, or at least debility, 
 is at the foundation of all these things. It is usually 
 quite enough for the hardiest and healthiest female 
 constitution to go through with the trials of gestation 
 and child bearing, without faltering; and when the 
 system falters, as a whole, it is not strange that the 
 appetites should sympathize in the general embarrass- 
 ment. In this condition of things, the appetite which 
 God, in his wise Providence, has established within 
 us, as a means of perpetuating the species, becomes 
 erratic, at least occasionally, as well as the rest. 
 
rilYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 169 
 
 Woman, though before reserved, modest, and even 
 distant, becomes now, on occasions, open, bold, and 
 forward. — I say on occasions, because it is exceed- 
 ingly seldom, even in those individuals who are con- 
 stitutionally most inclined to it. 
 
 Under these circumstances, it may and does become 
 a grave question which will be productive of most 
 harm, to repel the diseased appetite or to yield, tem- 
 porarily — perhaps in a single instance — to its de- 
 mands. So far as the question relates to the mere 
 health of the female, in itself considered, I have not a 
 doubt that such an occasional indulgence would be 
 favorable. It is quite another question whether the 
 child will suffer less or more from a persevering self- 
 denial, amid feelings of continued uneasiness and un- 
 happiness ; or whether, as a choice of evils, the 
 contrary course, in an instance or two, should be 
 pursued. 
 
 The common idea that the child in utero suffers, if 
 the mother's desires are not gratified, is correct, in a 
 certain sense ; and yet, in other points of view, incor- 
 rect. It is certainly true that if the mother suffers, 
 whether that suffering arises from one cause or another, 
 the child is not so well sustained, as the consequence, in 
 the uterus. But when this doctrine is carried to the 
 extent of some ; when we are told that if the mother 
 longs for a particular fruit, the product of a distant 
 land, which cannot be obtained, or is refused something 
 which might be procured for her, the child will be 
 marked with that particular article, or will come into 
 15 
 
170 PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 the world with a half insane and quite insatiable 
 craving for it, we are, as friends of sound science, 
 compelled to demur. 
 
 There is a second exception to the general rule of 
 non-intercourse during pregnancy. This is more 
 obviously a case of disease than the former ; for the 
 disease and the actual condition of the diseased parts 
 are now well understood. It is what is called, in 
 books, nymphomania. 
 
 It may be said — I suppose it will be said — that 
 women who are affected with this troublesome com- 
 plaint, ought not to enter the bonds of matrimony. 
 Tliis may be true ; nevertheless they sometimes do. 
 Indeed it is a very commonly received opinion that 
 matrimony is a cure for several diseases ; and for this 
 among the rest. And would it not be very unreason- 
 able to expect women who have never been informed 
 on this subject, to rise much above the level of vulgar 
 prejudices? The husband, moreover, in these days, 
 who finds himself united, for life, to a woman whose 
 only defect or weakness is a slight nymphomania, may 
 think himself quite fortunate. 
 
 It is a curious fact, by the way, that mothers are 
 sometimes much more anxious to see their sickly, or 
 at least feeble daughters settled in life, than their more 
 healthy ones. The reasons for this are various — but 
 I cannot present them, in detail. It is sufficient for 
 our purpose that I have stated, in broad and unmistak- 
 able terms, the existing fact, and alluded faintly to what 
 may be one of the principal. 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 171 
 
 Now if, beyond these two exceptions to the general 
 law of non-intercourse, there are any others, I must 
 frankly confess that I know not what they are. But 
 it is not my object, in the preparation of this work, to 
 say everything which can be said on the physiology 
 and hygiene of marriage ; but rather to present what 
 I have been taught, by a long course of reading, obser- 
 vation, and experience, to be true. 
 
 I am fully aware that it is not easy for human nature, 
 as it now is, to receive some of the doctrines I have 
 here inculcated, especially those of the present chapter. 
 Our sex, in general, have been so trained as to enter- 
 tain a very different view of woman from that which 
 I have been led to embrace. Women have rights of 
 various kinds ; among these are some few which their 
 most renowned champions have not yet ventured — 
 at least in public halls, and on public platforms — to 
 claim for them. They have the right of asserting and 
 maintaining, against all aggression, their own health 
 and the health of those whom God has, in more than 
 one sense, committed to their charge. 
 
 But my business with the young is only half accom- 
 plished when I have merely asserted and unfolded the 
 laws of pregnancy, and told them what should riot be 
 done. There are sins of omission, in this world, as 
 well as of commission. There are things to be done 
 by us, the professed lords of the creation,* during a 
 
 * I do not mean, by this, a reproach on our own sex, so 
 much as a hint with regard to the kind of rule or dominion 
 which is delegated to men by Divine appointment, not only 
 
172 rnysiOLOGY of marriage. 
 
 season when those who are constitutionally weaker 
 than ourselves, bear for our race, by Divine appoint- 
 ment, a burden which we cannot bear for them, if we 
 would do it. There is much to be done, if we would 
 not only encourage but assist in the great work of 
 training up a generation that will cooperate with the 
 Son of God, in the redemption — body, soul and 
 spirit — of a fallen race. 
 
 We should be at least as earnest in seeking woman's 
 comfort and happiness, during pregnancy, as we have 
 before been in seeking our own. In saying this, how- 
 ever, I do not associate with the word happiness any 
 of those mawkish ideas which many husbands do. It 
 is one thing to attempt to make woman happy by 
 treating her as a mere doll, only to make her still more 
 a plaything than before ; and quite another thing to 
 treat her as a woman, a wife, and a Christian. 
 
 It is really too trifling for a man five or six feet 
 high to amuse himself, or think to perform the duties 
 he owes to his wife under the most trying circumstances 
 in which female nature can be placed, merely by pre- 
 senting her, from time to time, with those petty trifles, 
 and those alone, which, after all, only minister to the 
 clamorous demands of already perverted appetites and 
 fallen tastes, and render those tastes and appetites still 
 
 in his creation, but in the ordinary ways of Providence. Man 
 is to rule, as a good king should rule, by conferring favor on 
 his subjects, as being weaker than he, and by advancing their 
 interests, to the full extent of his power, in all sorts of known 
 ways for promoting their happiness. 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 173 
 
 more perverted and clamorous. This is an extreme 
 almost as silly as that of despising and attempting to 
 turn out of doors those erratic appetites which I have, 
 in the foregoing pages, described. 
 
 He who would make his wife, both as a wife, and in 
 prospect as a mother, truly and really happy, should 
 labor, in the first place, to make her as healthy as 
 possible, both in body and mind. This, during the 
 season of pregnancy, is not, always, an easy thing. In 
 the great work of establishing a new being, at the 
 expense, so to call it, of a delicate and perhaps enfee- 
 bled female frame, nature too often cowers ; and it is 
 hardly to be wondered, at, if in these circumstances, 
 she should feel, in an unusual degree, the need of aid 
 and sympathy. 
 
 Woman, in these circumstances, above all other things 
 except kind aid and sympathy, needs pure air by night 
 and by day ; and abundant, but not too violent physi- 
 cal and mental exercise. She also needs a full sup- 
 ply — but by no means an over supply, — of good 
 nutritious food. But nutritious food and stimulating 
 food are by no means identical, though not a few seem 
 to suppose they are. The latter would be as injurious 
 as the former is beneficial. 
 
 I have alluded to mental exercise. The tendencies 
 in woman, during pregnancy, are so many of them 
 downward, towards the land of melancholy if not of 
 despondency, that it may sometimes require a little 
 effort to give the mental powers just the right employ- 
 ment, and prevent the mind from pursuing a mill- 
 15* 
 
174 PIIYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 horse track, and preying .upon itself. Many seem to 
 think that if they walk just so far every day, say to 
 such a tree, or house, or hill, they have done all they 
 can do. And yet it is quite possible they have come 
 far short of the full benefit which exercise is calculated 
 to impart, when the mind too, has change, as well 
 as the body. 
 
 On this account it might be well for all, especially 
 for all women in pregnancy, in going abroad for exer- 
 cise, to have associates with whom they may hold 
 agreeable and cheerful conversation. But at any rate, 
 and at all hazards, there should be great cheerfulness ; 
 and happy is the husband who is disposed to aid in 
 keeping a wife cheerful, even if it costs some sac- 
 rifice. 
 
 It is by no means intended that a husband should 
 give himself up to the work of endeavoring to render 
 his wife cheerful during her " appointed time," and do 
 nothing else. With at least one warlike nation of 
 which we read, it was deemed proper for the young 
 husband to remain with and comfort his wife, after 
 marriage, a whole year, before he was liable to be 
 drawn into the military service of his country ; but 
 such usages, nationally or individually, are not com- 
 mon. Such facts, whenever and wherever we can 
 glean them up, are suggestive, but they are hardly 
 entitled to higher consideration. 
 
 We must draw towards a close of this long chap- 
 ter, not because our subject is exhausted, or because 
 the objections which might be urged against the views 
 
rnrsiOLOGY of marriage. 175 
 
 herein presented have all been answered ; but because 
 it was determined, from the first, not to be led aside 
 into collateral subjects, or even into very much of de- 
 tail on the main topics. There is room, however, for 
 one or two thoughts more. 
 
 One of these is the following. Is it not surprising 
 that nature, unperverted, the female nature I mean, 
 hould not have taught us, long before now, one im- 
 portant part of our duty as regards physical mar- 
 riage ? The very fact that no advances are ordinarily 
 made by females during pregnancy, even where the 
 temperament of the individual, to say nothing of dis- 
 eased tastes and tendencies, would incline her in that 
 direction, should, with all sensible men, have much 
 weight. 
 
 The other thought has relation to the purity of the 
 air in our sleeping rooms. If any adult person in the 
 wide world needs pure air, it is pregnant woman. 
 She needs it for her own sake ; she needs it still more 
 for her offspring. I have said that she must, at all 
 hazards, be cheerful ; but who can be cheerful without 
 good air in their lungs, and in sufficient quantity ? 
 
 Two reasons exist which render it necessary that 
 particular attention should be paid to the matter of 
 pure air, during pregnancy. One of these grows out 
 of the fact that female dress tends to cramp and em- 
 barrass the lungs to an extent which, in any circum- 
 stances, very much interferes with the needful work 
 of renewing the blood in the lungs. Some pregnant 
 women, when they are panting for breath, loosen their 
 
17G rilYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 dress, at least occasionally ; but if they are to be seen 
 out of their own family circle, conventional law, in 
 oilier words, fashion, usually prevails, and the screws 
 are re-applied. The fact that women dress too tightly, 
 now-a-days, may be questioned by some, but is, un- 
 happily, pretty well attested. Then, again, in the 
 most favorable moments of advanced pregnancy, the 
 chest is not so well expanded as usual by reason of 
 the upward pressure of the abdominal contents. Here 
 is a general and strong reason for extra effort, by 
 night and by day, in order that the diminished quan- 
 tity of air which is inhaled, in a case where an in- 
 creased amount is imperatively needed, may be as 
 pure as possible. 
 
 Now is this point secured when woman is secluded 
 too much, and especially when she is confined to hot 
 rooms and impure air? Is our duty to her duly per- 
 formed, — aye, and our duty to our offspring too, — 
 when we do nothing to drag her forth beyond the 
 inner walls of the domestic sanctuary ? 
 
 Are we doing our duty when we suffer her to sleep 
 in a narrow, unventilated bed-room, especially during 
 the later months of her seclusion ? And does it add 
 to the purity of the air she is to breathe to have others 
 occupying the same bed, and using up one half or 
 more of the natural supply of oxygen which God, in 
 his Providence, had designed for her? 
 
 It does not follow, as a matter of absolute necessity, 
 that a husband shall sleep at a distance. Woman 
 needs sympathy, above all, during pregnancy. He 
 
rnvsiOLOGr of marriage. 177 
 
 may have his bed in the same room, if the room is 
 large ; or, if not, a door or two may perhaps be 
 thrown open to form a channel of intercommunica- 
 tion, as well as to secure a measure of ventilation. 
 
 I might say a good deal of other evils to which a 
 sleeping-partner exposes the female; and still more 
 her offspring. There are many ways of accidentally 
 inflicting violence, in these circumstances, which might 
 result in still-birth or abortion, if nothing worse. But 
 perhaps I have said enough. Should not a word to 
 the wise, on such a subject, be sufficient ? 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 CRIMES WITHOUT NAME. 
 
 For nearly everything valuable in civic life, we are 
 compelled to submit to a greater or less degree of taxa- 
 tion ; though this apparent drawback upon our enjoy- 
 ment is usually least perceptible in the case of real 
 necessaries, such as air, water, clothing, and plain food. 
 Yet even air and water, and plain food, can hardly be 
 obtained without some pains-taking. 
 
 This almost universal taxation, though in many 
 cases slight in amount, and perhaps so far removed 
 from tyranny as to be usually fraught with blessings 
 in disguise, is heavier just in proportion as we rise 
 higher in the region of present indulgence. The taxes 
 of luxurious eating and drinking are greater than 
 those which are levied on plainer viands. Neverthe- 
 less, mankind usually prefer the former to the latter, 
 even with the taxes. Or, what is nearer strict truth, 
 instead of honestly complying with the stern demands, 
 and fulfilling the exact conditions of a known law, they 
 seize and appropriate to their own use the more 
 doubtful pleasure, and then evade, if they can, the 
 payment of the tax. 
 
FHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 179 
 
 Every man knows, or ought to know, that the great 
 object of the sexual function is the reproduction of the 
 species ; and though not all the seed which is cast into 
 the human soil is expected to germinate and grow, 
 yet when it does spring up and bring forth, he is 
 bound to take care of it ; and the younger and more 
 delicate the germ, or the shoot, the greater is his 
 obligation to rear it and nurture it, even till it reaches 
 maturity. 
 
 This, I have by figure, called a tax. Is such taxa- 
 tion tyrannous? It is not deemed burdensome and 
 tyrannous to be compelled to take care of the young 
 shoot in the vegetable world ; nor the young calf or 
 lamb in the animal world. At least, it should not be 
 so. These we watch over, and with pleasure, from 
 germination to maturity. Or if it were possible for 
 us to feel such cares to be burdensome at the time, the 
 usefulness of the crop, when matured, would be apt to 
 make us forget the tax we had paid. Is the promise 
 of the future, in the case of human reproduction, of 
 less value ? 
 
 Some appear to regard it so ; indeed, many do. — 
 They wish for full liberty to scatter their seed ; it is a 
 pleasure to them, a luxury to which they seem to think 
 themselves entitled ; but they do not wish to have a 
 crop. It would be burdensome to them. A mow of 
 wheat or rye, or a bin of corn they would highly prize ; 
 but a family of children they do not want. The bur- 
 den of rearing young immortals would be a taxation 
 bo tyrannous that they could not endure it. 
 
180 niYSIOLOGT OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 Hence it is that ways, almost innumerable, are de- 
 vi-< .1 for evading nature's laws altogether. Some of 
 these ways are more, others less objectionable ; but 
 they all partake in greater or less degree of the same 
 character. They are all evasions. They are all 
 criminal, even though they should be, as they seem to 
 be, crimes without names. 
 
 Some twenty or twenty-five years ago, a physician 
 of New England, of much greater practical skill than 
 strict integrity, especially towards God, became the 
 author of a small pocket volume, with a very inviting 
 title, whose- avowed object was to teach people, both 
 in married life and elsewhere, the art of gratifying 
 the sexual appetite without the necessity of progeny. 
 His book had a wide circulation. I have found it in 
 nearly every part of our wide-spread country. 
 
 It was the more successful, no doubt, from the fact 
 that the author declared his chemical mixture or lotion 
 to be not only certain in its preventive effects, if ap- 
 plied immediately, but entirely uninjurious to the deli- 
 cate tissues against which it was injected. It is in 
 vogue, even now, in many parts of our country, and 
 is highly prized. They, who have tried it, usually re- 
 gard it as entirely certain in its effects ; though I have 
 reason to doubt the soundness of this conclusion. | 
 
 I am well acquainted with one whole maritime 
 county of New England, whose husbands and wives, 
 to a very large extent, do not wish to have issue. 
 The husbands are, for the most part, and for the far 
 greater part of the year, absent. They are not \vill- 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARKIAGE. 181 
 
 ing to subject the party at home to confinement, in 
 6olitude ; nor even to the trouble of rearing children 
 without the co-operation and aid of a companion. 
 Nor is the wife who remains at home much more wil- 
 ling to be subjected to these evils. There may be 
 present, there doubtless are, some of the other motives 
 which so extensively prevail ; such as the love of 
 pleasure, a regard to economy, or the fear of absolute 
 poverty ; but the ostensible motives are a regard to 
 each others' feelings and convenience. 
 
 Now among the means used to prevent the fulfil- 
 ment of the great command, " Increase and multiply 
 and replenish the earth," by the comparatively simple 
 
 people I have just mentioned, is Dr. 's chemical 
 
 lotion. And, as I said before, it usually succeeds ; 
 but then, I have also heard of occasional failures. 
 
 Frequent indulgence, as a preventive of conception, 
 has been already incidentally mentioned. But it is not 
 only true that prostitutes seldom conceive ; those who 
 pursue a course of prostitution within the pale of 
 matrimony come under the same general law. Now 
 this matrimonial prostitution, one half the year, namely, 
 the winter, is considerably frequent, everywhere ; but 
 particularly in the region I have just mentioned. 
 
 How far this indulgence is intended as a preventive 
 of conception, I am not quite certain. It is so fre- 
 quently followed by the chemical preparation I have 
 described, as well as by a degree of violence and 
 >s which, if not intentional, is greatly un- 
 favorable, that it is not ea>y to know how far particu- 
 16 
 
181 rilTSIOLOGY 01 MARRIAGE. 
 
 ]ar r the consequence of concerted action; 
 
 But however this may be, it is most certain that foetal 
 
 germinatioD, growth, and development require quiet; 
 
 - the well-being of the mother herself 
 
 Anotb » course of conduct which, sometimes from 
 
 snee, sometimes from intention, has either a pre- 
 ventive Of an abortive effect, is going abroad a good 
 deal to parties of pleasure, especially by night. So 
 cheerfulness is concerned, the going abroad 
 I happy tendency} but the excitemenl which usually, 
 or at least frequently accompanies balls, assemblies, 
 < ■-. and all pleasure parties, especially where 
 
 I numbers congregate, is always injurious. And 
 
 then, above all, the physical excitements, the bad air, 
 high-seasoned food, exciting drink, and late hours, say- 
 ing nothing now of other irregularities, are, if possible, 
 much more hazardous than the mental ones. If there 
 should be no considerable violence or concussion, there 
 b a tend I whole, to injure the mother, and, 
 
 still more, the offspring; and not a few know this, and 
 gOI em themselves accordingly. I have, BS a physician, 
 known families in which it was believed the mother 
 made special efforts by jumping, on these occasions, 
 
 ially at the point of extreme fatigue, in hope of 
 
 destroying what previous efforts had failed to prevent. 
 
 It not [infrequently happens that several of the 
 
 causes I have been enumerating are united. In such 
 
 . conception is more certainly prevented, or early 
 abortion more certainly secured, than where only one 
 eau^e ot destruction is operative. Thus, late evening 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 183 
 
 parties, as T have before intimated, and carelessless, 
 with frequent sexual indulgence, are very generally 
 brought to bear, in solid phalanx, against the strug- 
 gling tendency to life and light with almost as much 
 certainty of success as that two and two make 
 four. 
 
 Some few there arc who prevent conception by vio- 
 lent labor. They do it, I mean, intentionally. The 
 least fear of what may happen almost makes them 
 rave, as with habitual anger. Indeed, so far as I have 
 observed, most women are unwilling to bear children. 
 Most, it is true, are anxious to be mothers ; but only a 
 small number are willing to pay the price. How few 
 act, in this matter, with any sense of duty, or any 
 proper regard to principle ? 
 
 How many, especially in the lower walks of life, 
 shall we find laboring with unusual energy, when a 
 recent suspicion has arisen in their minds ; and per- 
 sisting in their labor, even to exertions which are vio- 
 lent ! And this general disposition to avoid conception 
 and pregnancy seems to me greatly increasing. 
 
 Now if to some or all the causes, above-mentioned, 
 which have an agitating tendency on the human sys- 
 tem, we add prolonged violent efforts, hard lifting, or 
 straining, who does not know that the results aimed 
 at are pretty sure to follow, and are, in some women, 
 quite inevitable ? 
 
 Thousands, that might otherwise have lived, have 
 been destroyed by violent motion and concussions 
 of various sorts. In certain portions of our country 
 
184 rnYSiOLor.T or marriage. 
 
 tr.idir ' hand ■ long li>t of certain measures 
 
 r. Milt which is, by many, deemed so 
 
 rtant 
 
 ];ut of all the measures for accomplishing these 
 
 which I have Called crimes icithmit nnmc, none 
 
 ■re mow onnmun, I think, than the use of poison of 
 
 OM kind or another, and that of instruments; and 
 
 snore reprehensible. True it is, 
 
 that if dune with the same intention, CrimC IS crime, 
 .1 development ; and not less bo at 
 pcSoa Still there is something peculiarly shock- 
 ing !;. . • 9 of destruction which approximate to 
 maturity of the embryo, especially when the results 
 soomplished by poison, or by surgical instruments. 
 The public, as a general thing, are not aware — 
 perhaps it may be well that they are not so — to what 
 ■ this violence against Nature and Nature's 
 is carried on in our country ; nor how respectable 
 of some of the agents in these diaboli- 
 cal r- Milts. 
 
 True it is that many who find themselves pregnant 
 • to tradition and household practice lor what 
 
 titty Call relief. Some field, or swamp, or grove con 
 the needful poison ; and forthwith it is swallowed 
 Som< times life is destroyed as the result; — I mean, 
 now. the lit'- of the principal offender — but it happens, 
 much more frequently, that she escapes with less injury 
 than her offspring. 
 
 ' there arc physicians, male and female — physi- 
 cian- they style themselves, though sometimes such by 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 185 
 
 the appointment of a college for the education of horses 
 or horse doctors, if any — in many parts of the coun- 
 try, whose counsels may be had for a very small sum ; 
 or, if not, for a large one ! To these men, when 
 household prescriptions fail, it is not unusual for 
 application to be made. 
 
 In the progress of operation by these physicians, 
 real or pretended — whether male or female, and in 
 city or country — it sometimes happens that owing to 
 want of skill, or to the intrinsic difficulties of the case, 
 immediate death occurs. In these circumstances it is 
 only necessary to use a little of what quacks call 
 management. The underground railroad from the 
 " doctor's " house to the late home of the deceased, is 
 no longer or more difficult than the underground road 
 which brought her to the bench of the operator. And 
 every reader knows how easy it is in these days to 
 announce " sudden death ; " and the public swallow it 
 all down at once. Mankind on particular occasions, 
 and in certain matters where there is a sort of com- 
 mon concern and common guilt, are wonderfully 
 gullible. ■» 
 
 I wish it were practicable to obtain the statistics of 
 these crimes without names, and publish them to the 
 world. They must come to light here or hereafter 
 Is it not just as well that they should come out here ? 
 
 Let us call to our aid for once, a little imagination. 
 A table embracing the elements to which I refer may 
 be supposed something like the following : 
 
 Destroyed, yearly, by means of a certain book, 
 16* 
 
18G ■ m.ki \«.r.. 
 
 ten thousands. 
 
 1 by too firequi nt i wads. 
 
 1' itroyed by careless inte r co u r se thousands. 
 
 I ». -•: • ed by violent intentional efforts . .thousands. 
 
 J in- ana hundreds. 
 
 ring — foreign and do- 
 
 ten thousands. 
 
 I' itroyed by instramenta] violence .... hundreds. 
 
 I ». • yed by over working hundreds. 
 
 I Little ashamed to own that among the 
 
 . ! fear women too — who aid in this 
 
 work, a work for which Herod himself might 
 
 for goilt and Bhame, are a few who have 
 
 ived tin* diplomas of other colleges besides horse 
 
 What will not men do — beings in the shape 
 
 of men,! mean — for money? Such individuals ought 
 
 t-> l».- expelled from every respectable body of men 
 
 with whom they may chance to be connected, if not 
 
 Gram the world, itself In truth, I know of very few 
 
 . which capital punishment should be inflicted, 
 
 •• this. 
 
 lint if our physicians, nfen who have reduced thcm- 
 
 a depth of infamy of which Milton's rebel 
 
 \\ ho fell "nine day-:," might be ashamed — 
 
 if these & i rve banging, what shall be done with our 
 
 Madam Etestells and a host of other madams in our 
 
 I and elsewhere, who make good the poet's 
 
 I : — 
 
 v shameless woman is the worst of men 1 " 
 
THYSIOLOGY OF M.fttRIAGE. 187 
 
 But I turn from the detail of these "crimes without 
 name " in disgust, and almost in indignation, and pass 
 to consider some of the effects of this violence on the 
 mother and her offspring generally. For it is not the 
 dead alone that we mourn, in this connection; the 
 living, too, are sufferers. I will illustrate, and endea- 
 vor to prove. 
 
 It is sometimes said — and by many it appears to 
 be believed — that the mothers and wives in the par- 
 ticular maritime district to which I have but just now 
 referred, are as old, now a days, at forty-five, as they 
 were half a century ago at sixty years of age. This 
 premature age is, I know, ascribed by many, to their 
 anxiety — and sometimes excessive grief — about their 
 distant sons, and brothers, and husbands. But how 
 can it be known, by those who entertain such notions, 
 that the cause to which I have directed your attention, 
 has had nothing to do with it ? 
 
 But proof is not wanting in the case. Among the 
 inhabitants aforesaid is an aged pair, who are not only 
 themselves prematurely old, but whose children, too, 
 are diseased and feeble. This now aged couple set 
 out, in life, with a general determination to have no 
 family. • The measures adopted to prevent such a 
 result were those which they deemed most justifiable, 
 and most safe. And yet despite of all their efforts, 
 they have had — I believe now have — no less than 
 six living children. And yet, as I said before, they 
 have none of them, much hardihood. The stoutest 
 and strongest has been obliged to pass his winters in a 
 6outhem climate. 
 
188 ,V «T MARRIAGE. 
 
 ips with your want of expe- 
 in human nature and things, I shall somewhat 
 
 Surprise yOU when I t- 11 yOU that I was once consulted, 
 
 bm idical man. by tin- parties most concerned in 
 remarkable case, in order to know whether I 
 I ssible thai the feebleness of six chil- 
 dren i owing to tin.- preventive efforts, of va- 
 rious kind-, which bad been made by the parents. 
 II ere waswl I ird as the concession of plain 
 
 imsophisticated coni n sense to ■ well known physi- 
 
 oonrse you need not ftutt at my 
 
 to the inquiry. No child could be as healthy, 
 
 other things and circumstances being equal, who was 
 
 born in .-pile of parental efforts to prevent it, as the 
 
 child of parents who had made no such attempts to 
 
 thwart the tendencies of Nature to reproduction. And 
 
 Jit not to close my remarks under this head 
 
 - that I found occasional instances of 
 
 this sort, all over the aforesaid maritime district, and 
 •i elsewhere* 
 
 Another thing, too, must not be omitted. In no 
 ion that I have visited, not wholly given 
 
 up to the crowded merchant and manufacturer, have 
 
 J found so large a proportion of the population either 
 consumptive or scrofulous, as in the one we are now 
 
 . ring, liut of the connection direct and indirect, 
 ■ a consumption, and sexual error and abuse, I 
 
 I aid Something already. 
 
 It you wish to see a truly healthy family of children 
 
 accompanied by a mother who is apparently little older 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 189 
 
 or less vigorous than they, just go with me to a certain 
 house, within the circle of my acquaintance, where there 
 are twelve or fourteen children of various ages from 
 two upward — just about two years apart, and all born 
 at the appointed time, and without any manual inter- 
 ference. 
 
 Some may be inclined to inquire whether there are 
 no parental conditions and circumstances which would 
 both justify and require a departure from Nature's 
 general plan. Must she who has it not in her power 
 to nurse her own children, though in tolerable bodily 
 health, be in every particular obedient to the great 
 command, " Increase and multiply ?" Must she who 
 is insane or consumptive? Must they who have been 
 reduced as a family, — perhaps by no fault of their 
 own — to sudden poverty, the most abject ? 
 
 These inquiries are appropriate and important. My 
 reply shall be as brief as the nature of the case will 
 admit. 
 
 With regard to the first mentioned case it may be 
 remarked that there is found, here and there, a mother 
 who without the ability to nurse her own offspring, 
 has yet become the female head of a large and com- 
 paratively healthy family. Such a result, as we plainly 
 see, is far enough from being impossible ; and yet it 
 is not to be relied on, as a general rule. Without 
 doubt the general law is that a mother shall nurse her 
 own children, or not bear them. 
 
 As to the other two inquiries, the answer is more 
 difficult ; and I must candidly confess myself unable, 
 
PHTI I >I MAi:ni.\<,r. 
 
 hat i- ilio ■ xact rule of duty. If 
 
 ber in married life, fully 
 
 await* <>f their tendencief to disease — and I see not 
 
 and principles, and 
 raJ direetioo of wise parents, Bbould 
 • urti( i, respectively, this knowledge — 
 jv and hygiene clearly point 
 babilityUi ordangeroosdii 
 
 will be tnuiamitted to offspring, should they bare any, 
 1 rtain ■ doubt that it is their duty to 
 
 :i childless. It would be a preferable o 
 rer, for such parties not to marry* Wehai 
 right, with out en, to propagate ■ race with 
 
 every reasonable prospect of its being a sickly one. 
 
 There arc one or two measures which might be 
 adopted for the prevention of offspring, which, though 
 perhaps open to criticism, in some few particulars, are, 
 nevertheless, to be regarded, on the whole, in s some- 
 what different light 
 A measure of the animal or sexual enjoyment 
 lining to the sexual embrace, may be obtained by 
 ■ If-denial on the part of the husband! 
 
 which though it should be, in ntial form, like 
 
 that of Onan, would be without his particular form 
 of guilt Masturbation and Onanism, as the careful 
 
 . are not by any means the same thing; 
 though such was, formerly, the prevailing impression. 
 Suppose, however, it should be doubted by any 
 individual, whether he possesses the power of self-con- 
 trol to the full extent of the patriarch I have mentioned, 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 191 
 
 and suppose, too, its propriety should be doubted, it 
 is nevertheless obvious that one thing more remains. 
 It is a measure recommended by many judicious 
 writers, and certainly entitled to a moment's consider- 
 ation. 
 
 It seems to be a well known physiological law that 
 conception cannot take place at every period of female 
 life between the catamenial discharges ; but only dur- 
 ing the first fortnight, or as some say, the first eight 
 days which immediately follow the cessation of the 
 menses. If, therefore, we deny ourselves, during a 
 full fortnight as above mentioned, no subsequent inter- 
 course, up to the commencement of the next catame- 
 nial discharge, can possibly be productive. 
 
 You will observe that I have been stating in the 
 last paragraph, a generally received opinion ; and not 
 a mere surmise of my own. Whether the course 
 which is thus indicated is right or not, is quite another 
 question. I will only say that if it is not right, many 
 an individual in this world we occupy, who wishes 
 to do right at all hazards and all sacrifices, is after 
 all, in this particular, still wrong. 
 
 In any event one grand, final resort remains, still — 
 that of refraining from the sexual embrace altogether. 
 Some have taken this course. Others have feared to 
 adopt a course so rigid, on others' account. A still 
 greater number have refused to do it on their own 
 account. They have not been quite satisfied. They 
 have doubted its righteousness. 
 
 I will only add, at present, the language of Paul — 
 
ike their own application : — 
 
 loaded in hk own mind." 
 
 ■ II' that doubteth i? condemned it* he • 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE LAWS OP LACTATION OR NURSING. 
 
 Dr. Loudon, an eminent British writer, maintains 
 that children ought not to be entirely weaned from 
 their mother till they are two years of age. 
 
 This decision, of very high authority, may perhaps 
 answer for the social latitude and longitude of England ; 
 but it cannot do so well for the United States of Ameri- 
 ca. Here, not a few mothers, who call themselves 
 healthy, would suffer, more or less, and some very 
 seriously, by extending the period of lactation much 
 beyond one year. And the number is exceedingly 
 small of those who can nurse a child as many as two 
 whole years. 
 
 Suppose, however, there were no objections to such 
 a long period of lactation, on the part of the mother — 
 would it be well for the child ? And then again, as 
 we are told by our physiologists that the sexual em- 
 brace should be postponed during this period, is there 
 no objection to be derived from this consideration? 
 Man, it will be said, cannot forget always, that he is 
 man — certainly not two or three years at a time; 
 17 
 
] • ; 01 M LIB 
 
 m<M there n<.!. in the ma- 
 
 what i- the end 1 1 
 With regard to thai part of the objection which 
 ■Aran thai the law ii too rigid Ibc man to beech 
 
 l ippoee, in reality, we have nothing to 
 
 It" it i- law, tl ( itor made it bo, and 
 
 : I . ■ . | We have bat to ascertain 
 
 thai ■ thing ii really law, and then yield <>ur heartj 
 
 it. let it affect onr present feelings and 
 
 ai it may. 
 
 Bnt herein is the question to be settled — what it 
 
 the law ': My own views do not entirely accord with 
 
 that would seem to lie on the rarfaoe of th< 
 going. The extent of the period of lactation does not 
 determine the limits of the period of non-intercourse 
 of tl,' That limit is to be determined much 
 
 more by ■ reference to the condition of the infant's 
 
 I do not mean by this that as soon as the first teeth 
 of the infant appear, we have full latitude given us 
 t<» the indulgence of onr passions and appetites ; hut 
 only that this appearance indicates the commencement 
 on in which sexual indulgence is not al»~u- 
 lntely prohibited. 
 
 Souk- have placed this beginning ])criod at the re- 
 turn of the menstrua] discharge; which, as you know, 
 usually disappears during pregnancy, and early lacta- 
 tion ; but tlii- seems to me too uncertain a point 
 11 like to have .something more certain and 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 195 
 
 definite. Some women, moreover, menstruate during 
 the whole period of lactation, if not of pregnancy ; 
 while, in others, this function does not resume its 
 wonted course tjll the child is entirely weaned, — 
 whether this embraces a period of one or two years, or 
 even longer. 
 
 It will be observed, however, that when I speak of 
 the first dentition, as being the proper period for a re- 
 currence to venereal pleasures, it is only, after all, by 
 way of compromise. For, as it cannot come earlier, 
 and as the period of pregnancy, and this early period 
 of lactation, when taken together, include at least four- 
 teen or fifteen consecutive months of non-intercourse, 
 it appears to me that a species of compromise is, in 
 the circumstances, quite justifiable. I mean just 
 this : Although it is true that we are guided best by 
 the catamenia, at least when that discharge ceases, yet 
 a partial return to the sexual embrace at a period 
 somewhat earlier than this usually happens after preg- 
 nancy, may be preferable, on the whole, to a more 
 rigid adherence to the strictest letter and closest in- 
 terpretation of physiological law. 
 
 But I may, perhaps, be asked by those whose op- 
 portunities for information on this subject have been 
 more limited than others, why it is that non-intercourse 
 is demanded during any period of lactation, except 
 perhaps the very first month. They can understand, 
 they may say, why the enfeebled state of the mother 
 may forbid this during the first few weeks, but not 
 afterward. The child is no longer a part of the 
 
ri!Y5I0L0GT OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 mother, and can receive no injury, they add ; and now 
 bjectioo on the part of « ■iiln-r the mother 
 
 or the child, whence comet any objection at all ': 
 
 The reply to all this is, that tfaoagfa th«' child is no 
 
 r a port of the mother, nmmnaBjff yet it i 
 
 realh/. That i-. it is so. to all practical intents and 
 purpo^-.. ; and a> such, needs all the Bopporl which 
 
 edition of body and mind both, in 
 mother, can impart Sexual commerce, 
 other partakes in die act, depr i ves the child In 
 her arms, or rather at her breast, of its rightful nonriah- 
 menl ; and nnleai there i- ■ natural inperabundance 
 of that nourishment, the child i< as certainly robbed 
 an attack bad been made upon it on the high- 
 way. There may, it is true, be this difference in the 
 . The highway robber usually takes away 
 nothing but our property ; while the parental robber 
 away hi* child*! health. Even if it were pleaded 
 
 that the mother furnished an o\ i-r-ahnndant rapply, it 
 
 hi .-till tp be remembered that perchance the quality 
 of the lecretion from the breast might he impaired by 
 .1 intercourse. 
 Now what would we say of a father who should, by 
 
 f..re.- <,t" arms, deprive his child,— a helpless infant 
 child, — of his rightful title to property, real or per- 
 il? --Who steals my pone, steals trash;" we 
 hare again and again heard. Bui to steal from a 
 ehild would he a crime. But how much more 
 
 strange, — nay, how much more reprehensible,— - the 
 
 act on the part of a parent, who, with open eye* and 
 
PHTSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 197 
 
 full consciousness of what he was doing, deprives his 
 child of that constitutional health and vigor to which 
 God, in his providence, has given him a good and 
 valid and unalienable title ? 
 
 Not only is every father bound not to rob his chil- 
 dren of their property or their health, but to see that 
 their just rights are conceded to them by others. 
 More than even this might be said. He is bound to 
 do all in his power to add to his child's estate, — es- 
 pecially in the matter of constitutional vigor, — to the 
 full extent of his ability. This is to be brought about 
 in several ways. 
 
 First, by avoiding the very common error of sleep- 
 ing in the same bed with the mother and the child. I 
 have urged this point of sleeping separately already, 
 and given several reasons why it is objectionable during 
 pregnancy ; but other considerations come in here. 
 God has made provision in the child's constitution for 
 such a deficiency of oxygen as may enable it to sleep 
 in the mother's bosom ; yet he has not provided for 
 that deficiency of this precious commodity, and that 
 redundancy of carbonic acid gas, which will be found 
 in a bed of only ordinary dimensions, in which there 
 are two or three grown persons. 
 
 Secondly. We thus diminish the temptation — 
 rather we prevent it — to rob the child, in a more di- 
 rect manner. The heat of the bed, as well as other 
 existing circumstances, where many living bodies are 
 crowded together, is as unfavorable to self-denial as it 
 is to health. 
 
 17* 
 
nrmoLOOT 01 ttuaa 
 
 Y.y. We shouM keep always before as, in mind, 
 niton of a race, «iii. 
 . or of those who obey In lore — i 
 
 1 . . • has been the mother of. on 
 to this hour, lint I have presented this main idea in 
 another connection ; and need not here repeat 
 
 One objection, — on*,' which to many will seen final 
 and mmm — will no doubt l"- mads to the 
 
 whole tenor of my reasoning, both in this, and cbap- 
 I VH,and IX. It will be said that I rcq- 
 
 • which human nature cannot \« ST, 
 
 a- i; now i- ; and since God it tin- author of human 
 nature, it is hut a reasonable presumption that he has 
 not so arranged things as to require of his creatures 
 what ifl almost an impossibility. 
 
 Why, according to your views, it will be said, there 
 
 are merely a few short intervals, at least this side of 
 
 • forty-five or fifty years, when we mayap- 
 
 ii woman at all. Sin- i- not approachable till 
 
 matrimony, of course ; in this, all agree* Then she is 
 
 IT children, 0006 in about two \ 0818, from twenty- 
 two to forty-live ; and pregnancy and lactation being 
 
 seasons of oon-intercourse, we bave only nine months 
 
 of every two year-, during which, according to your 
 
 views, she Es at all accessible. But nine months for 
 every two yean onder forty-five, give us an aggregate 
 
 ly about ninety months. Can it be that this is 
 
 an arrangement of Infinite Wisdom? 
 
 I might reply by saying that even at this rate, — 
 and leaving unmentioned the period beyond forty-five 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 199 
 
 or fifty, — much greater license is given us, than is 
 given to the beasts that perish. Are we more brutal, 
 — rather more truly animal, — than they ? If not, 
 why do we demand a more free use of what might be 
 called the animal prerogative ? 
 
 But however this may be, — for I do not lay claim 
 to papal infallibility, — I greatly desire young men to 
 be self-denying. Never did I stand by the bed-side 
 of a dying man — and I have stood by the dying beds of 
 many, — who lamented that he had not indulged, in a 
 higher degree his animal nature. Often have I heard 
 lamentations of entirely another character — regrets 
 that the higher nature had not oftener gained a vio- 
 iory over the lower. 
 
CHAPTER A If. 
 
 :h LT Dl -i ::vi: n<» name. 
 the numerous letter- I ha\. r • • ;\. <] on 
 
 jeet, — thai which forma the leading 
 
 topic of this chapter, — I select the following for in- 
 sertion in this place, and for comment. It was ra- 
 I in the beginning of the year is ">:_>, from ■ 
 young woman in the very heart of New England 
 The apologies for addressing me on a subject of so 
 delicate a nature, with preliminaries, I shall omit en- 
 tirely ; and proceed at once to the extracts. 
 
 '■ I think my difficulty is one of the uterus, com- 
 bined with Other Weaknesses Of similar location. I 
 
 am n<»\v twenty-aii yean of age; have been a widow 
 
 some years; have been troubled with ■ weakness 
 
 the first year of my marriage." 
 
 In another letter, one which contains not a few 
 
 titions, — a thing not at all unusual in such cases, 
 
 — she writes thus ■ — 
 
 u I am twenty-eii years of age. I was married 
 
 and left a widow while young and very ignorant, 
 
 under circumstances the most painful." 
 
 Now every medical man who receives such letters 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 201 
 
 as these, knows, too well, what they mean ; though to 
 others the " circumstances" described as being " most 
 painful," and the " weakness" which had troubled her 
 * from the first year of her marriage," might mean 
 one thing or another, according to the measure of gen- 
 eral intelligence on such subjects. So might the follow- 
 ing farther extracts from her letters, which serve to show 
 how deep was the anguish of soul which she endured 
 in her attempts to reveal to a stranger her difficulties. 
 She was suffering as the consequence of a "crime 
 which deserves no name." 
 
 " I am an ardent, impulsive creature, possessing a 
 nervous, sanguine temperament, naturally cheerful and 
 equable ; but rendered, by sickness, irritable and 
 capricious. I came of a long-lived family ; and for 
 that reason I fear I shall die of some lingering dis- 
 ease. My mind is made up in regard to the future, 
 so that my hopes of heaven are pleasant. The most 
 I dread is the struggle in separating from life. I fear 
 consumption so much that were I convinced it was 
 fastened upon me, and were I not restrained by a 
 strong moral influence, I might be tempted to commit 
 a crime which could not be forgiven." 
 
 Another extract reveals more deeply still, if possi- 
 ble, the intensity of her mental sufferings. 
 
 " I am unaccountable to myself. I think, sir, that 
 my mental disturbances greatly impair my health. 
 Imagine, sir, a well-built ship, having powerful ma- 
 chinery, but without a pilot on board to direct it to its 
 destined port ! I see, by your letter, you understand me." 
 
n 
 
 . -till : — 
 
 " I feel a universal languor. I tin, at times, un- 
 I feel dead i«> all things. Then 
 f vitality. At other times, 1 feel ■ * use of soft 
 n. All these feelii I 
 
 :»m one of those who possess rery Btrong 
 by inheritance and temperament 
 •• I met tli'- other day with a slight from a friend, a 
 which caused such • grief that I bare 
 
 o suffering from influenza." 
 
 . now, 3 oung men who read this, what think 
 
 of all this suffering both real 
 
 imaginary — for imaginary evils are sometimes ijuito 
 
 a- hard to bear, as real ones ? My visits, subsequently, 
 
 to this poor woman, hit no room for doubt She 
 
 .!- <1 tu me, as to a father, no less than a physician, 
 
 which 1 had already expected — such foots, I 
 
 am sorry to say, as are not, by any means, unirequent — 
 
 ili-tail, as I suppose, had an influence on my 
 
 mind m leading me to write this very chapter. By 
 
 her marriage to ■ 3 oong man whom she I01 ed, she had 
 
 contracted a disease, which however justly inflicted on 
 
 liim, should never haw been communicated to her. 
 
 Heaven's decrees and laws may sometimes seem 
 
 rigid; but Heaven itself never appears to have made 
 
 provision for Buch punishment as this. It punishes 
 
 woman as well as man, lor pinning out of wedloek ; 
 
 hut virtue and rice are alike assailed within the jiale 
 of the marriage institution, when such wretches as the 
 
 husband of this young woman come to be invested with 
 ST. 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 203 
 
 Were this young woman a solitary sufferer from 
 this source, I would not have said a single word. 
 "Were she even but one among a dozen or a score, I 
 might have hesitated. But, alas ! thousands suffer in 
 like manner. In one of our most sober and even 
 most refined cities of comparatively virtuous New 
 England, I have full and reliable evidence of the 
 existence of this crime that deserves no name ; and 
 that, too, in many instances. But if the polite and 
 highly cultivated city of twenty thousand inhabitants, 
 is in this respect guilty, what are we to expect of such 
 places as New York, Baltimore, New Orleans, Phila- 
 delphia, and fifty other considerable cities and towns, 
 which I could name ? 
 
 Nay, more than even this. While apologizing to 
 my audience at the close of a lecture which had 
 elicited a few passing remarks on this subject, and ex- 
 pressing the charitable hope that the remarks in such 
 a quiet, industrious, and virtuous community were un- 
 called for, I have had the repeated assurance that 
 even there crimes so undeserving of a name had 
 found their way at least occasionally. We are 
 sometimes compelled, in spite of ourselves and our 
 charities, to subscribe to the declaration of eighteen 
 hundred years ago, that "the whole world lieth in 
 wickedness." 
 
 Here, for example, in central Massachusetis, was a 
 young man of apparently good standing in society. I 
 affirm this with substantial reasons; for otherwise I 
 am sure he would not have ventured to address a 
 
BJHTSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 
 v. ,un2 woman, who. fo say the least, WSJ respectable 
 
 ■ad intelligent. Bat he addressed her — probably 
 loved ber, tad offered bar Ins band The feeling wai 
 reciproeated — llic union, in due time, vn ooasanv 
 i i. Bel be was suffering ander the effects of 
 venereal disease. Of bai guilt in its contraction. 1 
 
 Will ri"t BflJ a word. Be bad the disease; this id 
 !i. and t<>o mocfa. He gave it to an inoffensive 
 
 woman — o oyer, whom he professed to 
 
 and. a- I -aid before, probabl j did love. I crimes 
 like these deserve a name? And d<> those who com- 
 mit them with - — end with open eyes th<-y 
 
 mast do it, if done at all — deserve a place in decent 
 society? And if capital punishment, by hangings 
 shooting, etc., is to be banished from among as, shoold 
 we not at least have some lazar honse — some feproas 
 community — some Botany Bay — whither to Bead 
 saeh criminals a- might, perchance, disgrace a common 
 baiter, or even a guillotine ? 
 lint I most not lose patience, I suppose, in the 
 
 review of Climes BO horrid. If God does not strike 
 
 dead the criminal, hnt suffers him to go on in his awful 
 course of guilt, unscathed even by tin- forked lightning 
 
 or the raging floods of burning lava, it becomes DM — 
 though I proclaim loud his guilt as a warning to 
 others — to bow in silence, and await the punishment 
 to he inflicted by Him who sits enthroned beyond the 
 electric cloud, or the flaming and quivering volcano. 
 
 You will say; But perhaps the young man above 
 mentioned, thought he was cured. The notion is 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 205 
 
 certainly abroad, on the face of society, that by going 
 through with certain processes of medication — in 
 plain English, by applying to the blood certain poisons 
 — the poisonous nature of the disease can be arrested ; 
 and if its effects do not at once disappear, it is, at 
 least, no longer communicable. This is indeed some 
 apology ; but is it sufficient ? Would a youug man, 
 on entering into matrimony, in such circumstances, 
 with the effects of a terrible disease still, in some 
 measure, adhering to him, be doing as he would wish 
 to be done by ? Would he not, in similar circumstances, 
 expect the diseased individual to wait a little while ? 
 
 Nothing appears to me more plain than the duty of 
 waiting, a little time, in these circumstances, instead 
 of proceeding headlong, as soon as a few doses of 
 mercury have been swallowed. Or if a young man is 
 determined «ot to wait at all, but rush at once, into 
 hymeneal bands, lie ought at least to reveal the 
 circumstances in which he has placed himself. To do 
 less, as I think, would be to forfeit every ordinary 
 claim to common truth and honesty; and to lay him- 
 self open to all the guilt which I have, in the preced- 
 ing paragraphs, alluded to. 
 
 I can, indeed, conceive of a case, in which an inof- 
 fensive young man may fall into sin and consequent 
 suffering, and yet become truly penitent afterw irda. 
 Such a young man will act the pan of the penitent if 
 he has sense enough to know what that part is. In 
 any event, he knows what it is not. He knows, very 
 well, that it is not acting the part of a penitent to 
 18 
 
8 PHI BI01 OOT Of makkiaci:. 
 
 married lift without letting his oompaioa 
 . Bomethiog of bis own history : ami it* shi 
 opportunity <-! i it. before, of his 
 
 ter. 
 
 The trutli is, that honesty should be applied to tins 
 matter of ooortship and marriage, m weD at to 
 matters of mere business. I like < xc< edingly the 
 follow ■ which, in it- essentia) nets, mi 
 
 relied oil It might, by a Kittle transposition, Km 
 a pari of our chapter on the errors of ooortship. 
 
 .V worthy citizen of New England's metropolis, 
 I me attached to a beautiful young lady , and with- 
 out sufficient consideration offered her bis band. But 
 there was ■ stain on her character, which time had 
 not yel effaced; of which h<' was ignorant In ■ 
 thoughtless hourshe had purloined some property from 
 a shop, and bad been detected. The crime wi 
 well known and the offence betrayed bo much of de- 
 piavitytha! the distressed parents were about to spurn 
 her from their home, when by the intercession of a 
 friend, they retained her; and Bhe ever afterwards 
 acted the part of a true penitent When offen 
 marriage were made her, Bhe revealed the substance 
 of these bets to her lover. This rery honest) over- 
 came him ; the offer of his hand was repeated, and 
 with new earnestness ; and they became, in the Bequel, 
 a happy couple, and are now bringing op, in the nurture 
 and admonition of the Lord, a happy family. 
 
 But 1 do not think we Bhould expect Buch honesty 
 and Conscientiousness on thu part of a young man who 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 207 
 
 has Lad the venereal disease. It is not, in this matter, 
 as it is with masturbation. Young men are not fully 
 impressed with the idea — they never have been — 
 that masturbation, in every degree, is wrong, just as 
 truly wrong as fornication. There is a lingering belief 
 abroad that though the illicit intercourse of the sexes, 
 in every instance and degree, is sinful, yet such is 
 the male constitution that occasional solitary indulgence 
 is hardly wrong. The evil is supposed to lie, as with 
 rum, in excess, and not in moderation. And this as 
 with the friends of temperance in regard to rum, leaves 
 them at liberty to indulge a little now and then ; and 
 yet maintain a comparatively good conscience. 
 
 But with regard to illicit social indulgence, every 
 enlightened and truly conscientious person is fully 
 aware of its guilt. In this view, therefore, there is 
 no apology for the sin, not even for one transgression. 
 With this admission — and who is there that will not 
 be ready and willing to make it — we remove, at 
 once, all apology for the venereal disease. If social 
 indulgence, out of wedlock, is wrong — is truly guilty — 
 then he who contracts the venereal disease out of 
 wedlock, is truly guilty, and ought to suffer the heaven- 
 appointed penalty. 
 
 It is to be feared, after all, that the great majority 
 of those who communicate this disease, in any of its 
 forms, to their wives at home, neither are now, nor 
 have ever been, truly conscientious men. It is, at all 
 events, to be presumed that in exposing the virtuous 
 and the innocent, they are not conscientious ; especially 
 
ra 
 
 ■ 
 
 abhorrence it indue -. 
 
 ulutt-lv intol< r.il \v. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 DIRECTIONS TO PAKE NT 3 AND GUARDIANS. 
 
 The general truth, that lie who would be most 
 useful, most honorable, most healthful and most happy, 
 in life, must enter, at a suitable age, into marriage, has 
 been sufficiently asserted, and reiterated. Indeed it 
 seems so obvious a truth that one is almost ready to 
 apologize for asserting it at all. 
 
 But he who shall enter into matrimonial life, as a 
 man of honor and principle, may reasonably expect to 
 hold a station of power and influence. In fact, it 
 cannot be otherwise. As sons, ward-, clerks, appren- 
 tices, or journeymen, he will, almost inevitably have 
 around him, at all times a greater or smaller number 
 of young men. He may, as a teacher, or in some 
 other situation of responsibility, have around him and 
 dependent on him, not a few, merely, but some scores 
 or hundreds. 
 
 Now in his contact with young men, under any or 
 all these circumstances, he will and must have more 
 or less of influence. This influence he can make 
 promote the cause of good and truth, or that of evil 
 and falsehood — just as his heart may be inclined to 
 18* 
 
LBBIA.G1 
 
 Bat ti Ml in- 
 
 :■ for ( \il. inv. ibility. 
 
 '1 ■ onsibility, young men who enfc r matrimo- 
 
 ; 
 would. Even if they should escape the charg 
 tmaU children, they cannot wholly escape thai of 
 older. In some form or other, they will 
 young men, who are as 
 : ■ uli to shape properly, as their pai 
 
 and sppetib tiger or more i salable. 
 
 Jn short, those for whom tl 
 -will.: al role, in their turn, have the care of 
 
 the young. Suppose, now, you have fairly got b ; 
 the dangers of youth and childhood — aye and if you 
 
 •, manhood, too — so that all, or nearly all I have 
 
 written, thus far, bas been of no service to you, with 
 
 rd to your own health ; you may, perhaps, profit 
 
 from what remains, in its application to those whom 
 
 you ! ■ .-m. 
 
 gappoa utrustedwith the care of sons and 
 
 daughters. The education and particular management 
 
 of the daughters, you will, almost as ■ matter of course, 
 
 dally to your wife — onlyiemind- 
 
 i p, from time to time, of the dangers, in general, 
 
 which beset them, here and there ; begging her to be 
 
 tant, in season and out of season, in her endeavors 
 
 ipe them. 
 
 For yourself, you will proceed, as soon as possible, 
 
 to th" great work of endeavoring to prevent that tissue 
 
 of miseducation, misinformation, and misguidance to 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 211 
 
 which you were yourself early subjected ; and to give 
 to your sons, and those dependent on you, from time 
 to time, as their opening years may require, such 
 instruction and guidance as God, in making you a 
 father, or master, intended you should bestow — which, 
 moreover, might have saved you, had it been applied 
 properly, many a pang, as well as many a bitter tear 
 of remorse. Or if you have clerks, apprentices, 
 wards, or pupils in your family, whose age and cir- 
 cumstances and dangers require your care, you will 
 not fail to perceive the necessity — 1 mean now the 
 duty — of having an eye to their right management 
 and instruction. 
 
 You will not, of course — at least you need not — 
 make the somewhat frequent mistake of not adapting 
 your instructions to their age, circumstances, and 
 necessities. You will remember the good old-fashioned 
 and common sense rule of " here a little and there a 
 little, as they may be able to bear it." 
 
 I knew the father of a large family in the city 
 of Hartford, who made it a principle to begin with 
 his sons, in this matter, at eight years of age. On 
 asking him if his efforts were not somewhat premature, 
 his reply was that Satan did not think so — that 
 through the medium of ungodly, profane, and wickedly 
 obscene school-boys, bad seed had been sown in their 
 hearts, already ; and it was high time to attend to 
 them. And I know of no man whose success, in this 
 preventive department of physical education, was 
 greater. 
 
212 PHI BXIA.OB. 
 
 only instance I have known v. 
 tiinila . by similar means, has h en obtains d ; 
 
 b I am obliged to confess thai instances of the kind 
 I no means as numerous as I could wish they \ 
 Bui | re and there, widely 
 
 A Esther mrho would accomplish the greatest amount 
 . in hia power, by this preventive course of 
 instruction, Bbould labor in season and out < t season, 
 are the full confidence of bis sons, clerks, wards, 
 or spprenl that in all th«lr trials, difficulties, 
 
 temptations, or failures, they may not shrink from the 
 duty of coming to them at once, and unbosoming 
 themselves, and asking for that counsel or aid which 
 the circumstances of the case demand 
 One of the fathers I have alluded t«>. told me thai 
 lined the point which Beems to me bo desirable — 
 that of making hi< bous feel lull confidence in him, 
 and take him lor their mosl intimate friend — in such 
 I ction, that whenever their amativehess or alimen- 
 ts became unduly and undesirably active, they 
 did not hesitate for a moment, to come to him and ask 
 him to aid them in restoring their Bystems to such a 
 condition that the higher law of the mind could n 
 
 and hold its wonted supremacy. How much evil may 
 been prevented, in this way, eternity only r-Aii 
 make fully known. 
 
 S i will ask, perhaps, and very naturally', what are 
 
 Of the Btepfl tO 1"' taken in this matter. In other 
 
 words, suppose a boy eight years of age is to be con- 
 1 with ; how should we begin ? 
 
PnTSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 213 
 
 I will present you, in as brief space - as possible, 
 with the essentials of a course which has been taken 
 with boys of this age ; and even with those who are 
 younger. In your own family you may not be able 
 to follow it implicitly; and yet it will afford you 
 many hints. Nor does it require, as you may at first 
 be led to suppose, large measures of physiological 
 knowledge. A little acquaintance with the human 
 system, — the house we live in, — with a large amount 
 of good sense, and a hearty desire to do good, are all 
 the qualifications for the work which are indispensably 
 necessary. 
 
 Observe, however, that though the narrative part is 
 professedly put into the mouth of a father, it is not in- 
 tended to affirm that I have repeated every word of 
 the conversation just as it took place ; but only the 
 substance of it to the best of my present recollection 
 and ability. 
 
 " An inquisitive little boy, say six or seven years of 
 age, being in the room with me one day, just after 
 dinner, I asked him whether he had eaten anything 
 that day. yes ! was his reply ; I have eaten break- 
 fast and dinner. And where is your dinner now ? I 
 said. He hesitated, but at length replied: I su] 
 it has gone down into my legs and feet, and up into 
 my arms and head to make them grow. 
 
 " I took occasion to present him with a new and 
 better edition of his physiology of digestion ; for 
 though he had done pretty well for a boy of hh 
 age, yet he was obviously and manifestly a little be- 
 
211 
 
 im, tliat the food li<- had • 
 
 . and arm-, ami all 
 ike them grow ; but ool till il 
 
 w rk« -1 il].. in hi- Stomach ami 
 
 lungs, into blood. 
 •■ I . the first time he had i 
 
 hi of machinery in his "house;" and, even now, 
 he had not thought of an architect So I told him 
 forth* : what he bad eaten bad been 
 
 ;. You BWallowi ;. 1 I I him, 
 
 of the .-Kin- and your appl . 
 
 when you Bwallow Buch things a- these they cann 
 
 nj> into blood Yon sometimes, also, eat more 
 than the digestive machinery can \u>rk up. In these 
 . ami to prevent these Bobstances from accumu- 
 lating ami giving us trouble, they are carried out of 
 the hoily. 
 
 ••To facilitate the process of conducting off the 
 
 OUr food, and BUDStanceS Which cannot 
 
 solved at all. the great Creator has provided a 
 long crooked channel or pipe in our bodies, called the 
 intestinal canal. The Btomacb i- a pari of it. only it 
 
 i-. a- it were, Bwelled out. or enlarged, at the place 
 where your food and drink arc iir-t received. The in- 
 testinal canal, in a grown person, i- almost two rods 
 
 Ion-. Now all the waste food ami undissolved bud- 
 Btanoea we take into our stomachs, are carried out of 
 the body through this pipe. 
 
 ••At a second conversation, in continuation of the 
 subject, I .-poke of drinks, and of the necessity of a 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 215 
 
 conduit, or sluice, to cany off the waste liquids out 
 of the system ; and briefly described it. One promi- 
 nent object was to lead his mind, by the observance 
 of design, up to a designer, or Creator ; to refer him 
 to laws ; and to extend rfre domain of conscience. 
 
 " It was reserved to another conversation to speak 
 of the penalties which God, in his providence, has an 
 nexed to our frequent violations of his laws, with 
 respect to the conduits, or sluices, of the human sys- 
 tem ; such as neglecting to masticate our food, eating 
 between meals, using too much sugar, and other sac- 
 charine substances, etc. I also told him something about 
 flatulence, acidity, heart-burn, costiveness, diarrhoea, 
 etc., as the penalties of violated law. 
 
 " In this, and subsequent conversations, I also said 
 something of what physiologists call defecation, and 
 of the necessity or duty of promptly attending to 
 Nature's call at the outlets of these great internal 
 channels of the body ; and spoke of the penalties 
 which God has annexed to our neglect of attention to 
 these calls or indications. 
 
 " I soon found that I had succeeded in impressing on 
 his mind, the idea of law, in connection with the organs 
 of digestion : so that when he thought of any of the 
 parts of the body that had the remotest connection 
 with this function, he thought of God, the Creator. I 
 was, of course, encouraged, and led to proceed to 
 the execution of my plan. I was anxious to enthrone 
 the Deity, so to speak, in this his rightful province, 
 
.;li all hi- HU p0SM§- 
 
 ■ 
 
 . I 
 
 i ntlets of the body, in man or 
 1 already menti 
 
 . 
 V think of a Bentiment 
 
 (.1* th< . Milton ; t: 
 
 ..it. 
 •• Whl ii be 1 
 
 it, — in ti 
 
 . i :>•., — I did pot hesitate I 
 to him in plain, but correct langui laws 
 
 penalties. In due 
 and little, I pointed out to him the 
 rhich would follow those violations of 1 
 
 tempted by bis 
 
 or by hit own depraved appetites and 
 
 1 fondly hoped, judg- 
 
 . m. 
 with him thus caul p by 
 
 Qt a part, at least, 
 
 which mi subjected in their 
 
 I by early bad • ; and, at 
 
 ame time, avoid awakening on the other hand 
 prurient feelings, and that prurient curi< 
 which arc so common in society, and against which it 
 
rHYSIOLOGT Or MATiRIAGE. 217 
 
 is so desirable to guard. I did not, it is true, entirely 
 avoid the latter danger; but the conscience, as I trust, 
 had obtained such a hold that the body was, for the 
 most part, kept under; and a measure, at least, of that 
 purity preserved which, during early life, is so often 
 prostrated, if not sacrificed." 
 
 Boys, trained in this way, are easily prepared, 
 perhaps by the age of ten or twelve, for such in- 
 struction about the great end and designs of mar- 
 riage as I have given in the early chapters of this 
 book; and, at a little later age, for all those subse- 
 quent instructions which are little, if any. less needful. 
 And if we do not gain, by our efforts, all we could 
 desire, we may, at the least, hope to gain something. 
 
 It will, doubtless, sometimes happen that, after you 
 have done your best, — after you have fortified your 
 son's purity of character as well as you know how, — 
 the old Adam will still be stronger than the young 
 Melancthon ; at least, temporarily. Your son or 
 pupil may come to you, and complain of a lecherous 
 tendency manifested, as it may be, both in his sleeping 
 and waking hours ; and he may, very properly, in- 
 quire of you what he can do to avert or avoid it. 
 
 In such an exigency, you ask him about his diet 
 and drink, and his clothing by night and by day, — 
 about his books, his associates generall} r , but especially 
 his female society. You may possibly ascertain that 
 his diet is too stimulating; that his drink is taken hot; 
 that lie sleeps on feathers or under thick comfortables; 
 that he lias bad associates, male or female ; or that his 
 19 
 
IM! II Of MAKKI V 
 
 By the 1 
 • r. I do not mean 1-M.k- of th< 
 : atl j and fondly to be bopeoVhe would 
 
 not incline to; but inch books as some of 1 1 1 « » ~ . - which 
 : be (bond in nearly all of our I - and 
 
 libraries, but which do not always deserve a place so 
 picuous. 
 I- itifying to B father, and 
 
 will more than repay him all the trouble it costs, to 
 find hi- sons, wards, pupils, clerks, and a] 
 thus making him a confidant, and consulting him in 
 
 mrd to which most of the young 
 n<< u-tomed to consult, in preference, the emissari - of 
 
 tin- Prince of Darkness. But the time may yel (.•nine 
 when many fathers .-hall be so wise as to attain to this 
 
 ,1 honor. 
 
 And yet after having done all in our power, — pcr- 
 
 baps with entire success, — a new «1< i »< r i« It i it may come 
 
 under our care, in the form of an apprentice or clerk, 
 
 habits were ruined at bis arrival Ami if we 
 
 '1 in gaining his confid< nee it i-. perhaps, only 
 
 to know that he ha- been abused by quacks, or is 
 
 abusing himself by his fears. 
 
 I have spoken elsewhere of land-sharks. Our 
 young apprentice or clerk has fallen, it may be, into a 
 
 shark's month ; and the usual COD84 quenCOS have fol- 
 lowed. I need not point out to yen the road to be 
 pursued in such cases a- regards medical treatment, 
 
 because I have Baid all I intended to say, on this sub- 
 ject, in Chapter V. Of his treatment with regard to 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 219 
 
 health generally, — and this, after all, is substantially 
 nearly the whole medical treatment, — I shall have 
 occasion to say something presently. 
 
 One of the most frequent troubles you will hear of, 
 — I mean during, or in connection with, these confi- 
 dential disclosures, — will be the very common, and 
 very ancient one, of nocturnal emissions. But having 
 treated of these at considerable length elsewhere, 
 and said that it is not the emissions, themselves, to 
 which we must direct our attention, but the means of 
 restoring bodily health and vigor, I shall proceed 
 immediately to the particular consideration of that 
 subject. 
 
 Of course it is taken for granted here, that the 
 prominent or first cause of all the trouble complained 
 of is forever laid aside ; for, otherwise, nothing effec- 
 tual is done, or can be. The most important part 
 of repentance is reformation, — in these matters, as 
 well as in morals. 
 
 I have remarked in Chapter VII, that the con- 
 sumptive and nervous are much more inclined to 
 sexual indulgence than other people. The truth is, 
 that consumptive and nervous people are very much 
 given up to the pursuit of indulgences of every sort. 
 Who will show us any good ? is, practically, their con- 
 tinual cry. Something they demand perpetually, to 
 satisfy a nervous craving. They are hungry, and 
 must eat often, or, at least, just taste a little. They 
 are thirsty, and must drink. Their stomachs feel 
 badly, and they must take something — I mean of the 
 
PHI 
 
 ] lo be 
 
 in the 
 little 
 . ( >r, 
 in infancy and childht 
 
 ■ isfy their crai i 
 mental cravings, which appear to 
 1 in view, namely, to tickle the 
 i gem ral 
 
 whicfa ! 
 
 I mand of I mach, the 
 
 nna with newspapen and picture books and 
 
 yellow covered literature, — ■ : old, with 
 
 :.d locust-. 
 
 W< .1 do I remember a poor consumptive man of 
 
 fifty years ago, — for he was the only consumptive 
 
 :i I knew in t' of consumptive scarcity, 
 
 — who was the very personification of the character* 
 
 of which I am speaking. Greatly vicious, in- 
 
 Sy that 1. IS, for he had I 
 
 o j hut tip ■ latent proDensity, 
 
 and the matter seemed to he w-M understood all o\er 
 • ighborhood. 
 But this young man's t%ir osuous indul- 
 
 extended to almost every tb»ug He was sx 
 
 ively fond Of hot drink of every -oil; and the 
 
 stimulating it was the better \< pin ased him 
 He was equally loud of hot and greasy food, hot 
 r is, and hot beds.* And his indulgent fri< o4$ di 1 
 
 * Had lie lived half a century later, ho would have K'li~re4 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 221 
 
 not scruple to furnish him, now and then, with a little 
 hot toddy, or some other medicinal mixture, such as 
 they supposed the delicacy of his constitution and his 
 particular complaint demanded. 
 
 In truth, the common sense of the community, even 
 at that time, — rude and uncultivated as that common 
 sense itself was, — seems to have been nearly in 
 unison with the decisions of science at the present 
 hour. It was said to me, repeatedly, by my good 
 mother (who feared the approach of pulmonary con- 
 sumption), whenever I was about to indulge myself 
 with hot biscuit and butter, hot short cake, dough-nuts, 
 chicken-pie, mince-pie, high-seasoned food, or hot tea 
 and coffee : " Now, my child, remember consumptive 
 people are always fond of hot things." But " con- 
 sumptive people," in my narrow vocabulary, meant 
 Mr. Harmon, our neighbor; and the thought that I 
 might, perchance, have consumption, and look as 
 emaciated, and cough as dreadfully as he, kept my 
 hands away from hot food and drink to an extent that 
 even now, in the recollection, gives me much satisfaction. 
 
 The young man who has fallen into the habit of 
 self-pollution will, almost of a certainty be found 
 greatly attached to hot and exciting food and drink. 
 He will not be apt to relish plain water, or good bread 
 and fruits, — I mean as a means of meeting and 
 satisfying the natural demands of the system. He 
 
 most keenly air-tight stoves. They are better fitted for such 
 persons as he than for anybody else, though better adapted, in 
 the same degree, to destroy them. 
 19* 
 
if mm a € 
 
 will, in ]• ed, ai ' cool bim '. and 
 
 minting 1 
 and fruits, as indul Uy at unseasonable 
 
 : but he would almoel ai booo perish aa follow out 
 inch a prescription aa the nature of I prould 
 
 ire. 
 
 it*is, in part, that young nun fall into tl 
 mercil I have already Bpoken. 
 
 ■ willing t • pursue the pal 
 th<ir natural inclination-, and then, by waj 
 bark's mouth, than to - 
 little self-denial for a few weeks or months, and pre- 
 • nli a painful necessity. 
 But the wise father, who has so far gained the confi- 
 dependent as to make him desirous of 
 Li 'ii on the Bubject,must seize his opportunity 
 i what the nature of the case requires. He must 
 to make him understand the indispen- 
 sable of his using no other drink but plain 
 Water, and no other food than the plainest and 
 tible \ iands. 
 Among these, good plain bread, — usually of unbolt- 
 ed meal, — of suitable age, with ripe fruits, < ked or 
 
 otherwise, aa may be most convenient, are, in general, 
 to I"- preferred. To these, however, may be added 
 of the more digestible of the garden and field 
 tables and roots, Buch as beans, peas, turnips, pars- 
 nips,* I squashes; and, in moderation, beel - and 
 S i '• ■ ry few of the foreign farina 
 ances and bruits arc also admissible, — such as 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 223 
 
 rice, sweet potatoes, arrow root, sago, tapioca, olives, 
 dates, etc. 
 
 Such of the garden and field vegetables as are 
 improved by cookery — and most of them undoubtedly 
 are — should be prepared in a plain and simple 
 manner ; and be partaken of in the form of two or 
 three, but never more than three meals a day. I have 
 elsewhere alluded to some of the mischiefs resulting 
 from the use of improper food, and bad cookery ; it 
 remains, only, that I should say, positively, what things 
 are most useful. 
 
 The last meal of the day should be taken at least 
 four or five hours before retiring to rest, and perhaps 
 six would be preferable. In the latter case, however, 
 but two meals should be allowed — one at nine or ten 
 of the forenoon, and the other at four in the afternoon. 
 The fewer kinds of food taken at the same meal, the 
 better; but there should be considerable variety at 
 different meals. 
 
 Although I am friendly to cookery — despite of the 
 new-fangled doctrines of Dr. Schlemmer and his 
 school — yet I am opposed, most decidedly, to all 
 complication and abuse of this art. If our cookery 
 cannot be simple, it were better to have none at all. 
 Men may subsist, tolerably well, without the application 
 of any culinary processes to their food, at least if early 
 trained to it. And even in other circumstances, and 
 especially for that class of invalids for whom I am 
 now writing, I should greatly prefer no cookery at all 
 to that eternal round of mixed dishes— pies, cakes, 
 
PHYSIOLOGY or KJJDKLK 
 
 poddil • which inv. 
 
 a> in : . bandied rod eighty-five ways of 
 
 ofiing the 
 
 1 iking ia legitimate, even for invalids, when with- 
 id any Lees agreeable to the taste, 
 it Increase! its nutritious properties, or renders it move 
 tible. Thus the cooked potatoc i~ at once more 
 nutritious rod more digestible, without tx ing V ■ 
 palatable, when cooked properly, than when • 
 raw. Bui when in addition t<> umple cookery — 
 roasting, baking, boiling, etc. — it u besmeared with 
 condiments or deluged with gravies, it ia injured. So 
 milk, at least for the young, when recent, is good 
 food; but when Bubjected to any process of cookery, 
 '.ally when tortured into butter and cheese, it 
 difficult of digestion and is exceedingly un- 
 wholesome, especially for the lecherous, or the sensitive 
 and delicate. Jt is indeed the best when most recent 
 
 \ >.'■ should the patient, in the case before ns, be 
 permitted to use dressings of all sorts witfa bis food 
 Jt were far better for bim, as a general rule, that all 
 seasonings were excluded, except perhaps, a little salt 
 And even this last, when it has bi en applied to food in 
 the way of preserving it, is objectionable. If used 
 at all. it Bhould be in very Bmall quantity, — sprinkled 
 on our food after it i- prepared and laid on our plates* 
 
 In any other manner, and in any but the smallest 
 
 possible quantity which is necessary to Batisfy the 
 clamorous demands of a fallen stomach, it is no other 
 than a moderate poison to every body. Dr. liush 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 225 
 
 supposed the fabled notion that Venus rose from the 
 sea. had its origin in the well known connection between 
 the use of salt and venery. 
 
 I have alluded to the use of salt in the way of pre- 
 serving food, as being injurious. Now it should be 
 known, most fully, by every father who has the care 
 of sensuous or debilitated young men, that all ap- 
 pliances to preserve food from decomposition are 
 injurious — not merely salt, but saltpetre, smoke, spices, 
 and even concentrated sweets. For all these tend to 
 harden, if not change the texture of the food to which 
 they are applied, especially animal food; and whatever 
 does this to food tends to render it, at the same time 
 more or less indigestible, and, consequently, in the 
 same proportion likely to cause irritation, and lead to 
 sensuality. 
 
 As to animal food, in itself considered, much might 
 be said. In any other manner, except in the form of 
 plain fresh steak or muscle, plainly cooked, or not 
 cooked at all, without any dressing, except it be a 
 little salt sprinkled over its surface at the table, it is 
 decidedly objectionable for the young. And even in 
 this way. there are few who would be so much bene- 
 fited by its use as they would be by submitting to the 
 digestive action, daily, a suitable quantity of good 
 bread and fruits. 
 
 Of the animal products, as they are called, I have 
 already spoken, at least in part. Butter and cheese 
 have been wholly proscribed. Milk, recently from a 
 healthy animal, may sometimes be allowed in the way 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 Bggl arc to be interdicted, and still 
 
 ngly bard oook( 
 
 It is not stimulus, properly so called, thai young 
 
 nu-n need, in the case 1" fore as, n much m noorish- 
 
 meat The mass of mankind have, however, mi-taken 
 
 stimulus for nutriment. Flesh and 6sh afford nutri- 
 
 . in tolerable proportion, bat they also Btimolate 
 
 the nervous system too much. The habit of depending 
 
 on this stimulation along with our food, baa led most 
 
 ind stimulation and innervation; and 
 
 if an article of food is ever BO nutrition-, and y<-t docs 
 
 stimulate the uervea of the Btomacfa and 
 of the rest of the system, it is thought to be deficient 
 
 in nutrient properties. It would be Btrange indeed if 
 you, who read this book, should have escaped this 
 error. 
 
 A- things are, it will be the wiser course for you. in 
 
 ting the diet of debilitated young men, to labor 
 
 to ti:id out, as nearly as yon can, what is rights and 
 
 require them to follow it. Neither you nor they have 
 
 •1 to trouble yourselves about the degree of 
 
 immediate strength which food affords. Half a L r ill 
 
 of alcoholic liquor thrown into the Btomach will some- 
 times ;_ r ive more Btrength lor half an hour or an hour 
 
 than half a pound of bread or meat. Does it therefore 
 nourish more? By no means. It does not nourish 
 
 at all. It does not contain a particle of nourishment 
 We mistake Stimulation of the nerves, or nervous ex- 
 citement, for nutrition. AVe mistake temporary for 
 permanent Btrength. So it is with many other things. 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 227 
 
 The degree of immediate strength, therefore, which 
 a thing affords, is far enough from being the measure 
 of its nutritive power. Flesh and fish and high 
 seasoned and highly concentrated dishes excite the 
 nerves of the stomach, I say, and seem to give more 
 strength than plain viands ; but do we not mistake 
 excitement for strength ? On this point, there can, I 
 think, be little doubt ; and I need not enlarge. If 
 what I have said is not intelligible, more would not 
 probably be so. 
 
 Most young men, in the circumstances to which these 
 remarks refer, are in haste to get well, and are unwil- 
 ling to follow the farther but surer road. Medicine, 
 or rather quackery, holds out the promise of a better 
 road — better at least, because shorter. But if you 
 can convince them that the road which is a little 
 " farther round," is the more safe one, you will gain a 
 great victory. Plain food and water, if faith, and 
 hope, and cheerfulness, can go along with them, will 
 have a far better remedial effect, without any aid from 
 medicinal agents, than an overweening regard to 
 medicine, while the dietetics are overlooked or disre- 
 garded. I may say still more ; that if the diet and 
 other things about to be recommended, are as they 
 should be, no medication will often be needed. I speak 
 here of the cure of nocturnal emissions grounded on 
 mere debility. The occupation should be such as may 
 be adapted to the existing degree of strength and the 
 peculiarities of taste and general character. If possi- 
 ble it should be such as to give a great variety of 
 
n: 
 
 : in the open air, and in 
 
 :ul circumstances. And if it be such as combines 
 with other qualifications the consciousness and pleasure 
 of impar ti ng good\ it will be BtiU better adapted to the 
 wants and circumstances of the patient 
 
 The number of hours he Bhould spend in labor] 
 daily, a- well as the character of the labor, will require 
 a little thought And here let me say wbal I must 
 rhere, that though you may not need advice 
 medical an d, ii to medicine, pi 
 
 called, you may «!- rive the most important, to you, of 
 all information in the world, by consulting them in 
 
 ! to prevention. The ordinary routine of medi- 
 cal practice is not to be despised; but here, in the 
 
 world of prevention, h a much nobler field than that 
 
 of mere cure ; and happy is he who is ready and 
 
 willing to enter and occupy it. 
 In general, the patient Bhould be so occupied as 
 
 I- the Dumber of hour- he i> employed, and the. 
 
 6 and amount of Strength he may he called upon 
 
 rt, as will be likely to secure for him th< 
 amount of constitutional vigor. If it is needful to 
 avoid the extreme of idleness, on the one hand, — in- 
 volving a- it necessarily would, a tendency of the 
 
 mind to prey upon itself — it is equally desirable to 
 avoid the other and worse extreme, that of over ex- 
 haustion and depression. In avoiding Scylla, it is 
 wise, always to beware of Charybdis* 
 
 \ • i may not always I"- able to change, suddenly, a 
 young man'- occupation, e\en -where that occupation id 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 229 
 
 wrong. But you may, for the most part, do something. 
 If a permanent change is not practicable, a temporary- 
 change may be. Avoid, above all, an occupation that 
 confines him too many hours in bad air, in contact as 
 it were with a modern air-tight stove; and which 
 keeps him sitting too much. Nor is it a small thing, 
 in itself, physiologically, to say that he should not sit 
 much in positions which unduly heatliis body or any 
 part of it. Sitting much with the lower limbs across 
 each other is to be avoided. 
 
 His clothing should neither be too scanty on the one 
 hand, nor too abundant or too irritating on the other. 
 To go, habitually, with a chilly and shrunk skin would 
 be to cause the blood to retreat, in a measure, from the 
 surface towards the internal organs — perhaps to over- 
 load and excite them unduly ; and as one of its 
 results, to produce the very evil which those who have 
 long been the slaves to masturbation are wont to 
 dread. 
 
 On the other hand, to keep the surface of the body 
 too warm, is no less injurious, as all experience shows 
 than to keep it too cool. Perhaps we may not be able 
 to explain fully the process by which such a result is 
 effected; but there is reason for believing it is by 
 weakening what is usually called the calorific function — 
 by which is meant, in general, the machinery for 
 generating heat. That machinery is, in a sense, the 
 whole human body ; but particular organs, such as the 
 lungs, skin, and brain, are supposed to have greater 
 calorific power than others. The lungs have been 
 20 
 
2 ' rarnoLOGi 01 makkia<;f. 
 
 usually regarded as the great fire-place of the human 
 i ; hut whether or not this is so, the stronger the 
 lunga are the better, without ■ doubt. 
 
 [l ihould be well understood by the young, particu- 
 larly debilitated young men, thai every degree of 
 unnecessary heat, externally applied, whether by 
 raising th<- temperature of the air in our rooms, or by 
 adding t<» our clothing, has an effect at the Bame time, 
 and in the same proportion, to extinguish whal I bora 
 call 1 1 j * - into rnal fire* In other words, it takes away 
 from the lungs, and .-kin. and internal organs, — and 
 from tl*«* Bystem generally — their power to generate 
 ; so that when the fire within might otherwise 
 keep up the bodily heat at ninety-eight or one hundred 
 degrees, and be able to spare a. good deal to the sur- 
 rounding atmosphere besides, without any tidings of 
 discomfort, it seems to act as if somewhat smothered, 
 and the person is chilly. 
 
 The power of gem rating our own heat — and con- 
 sequently the necessity of having strong and active 
 bodies, — especially in a climate like our-, and in our 
 (alien condition, is of immense importance; and woe 
 to him who reduces it in the smallest possible degree 
 without necessity. But this reduction is made when 
 we wear more clothing than we really need, whether 
 by night or by day. 
 
 It should be understood that just in proportion to 
 our power of generating heat, is our power of casting 
 Off any excess. Sir Charles lilagden, who Buffered 
 himself to be heated gradually, in an oven, to two 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 231 
 
 Imndred and sixty degrees — till most substances 
 would bake in a very short time by his side — had, 
 of course, great power of throwing off the excessive 
 heat, both through his skin and his lungs. But he 
 had power, in the same proportion, of generating his 
 own heat. At least he had this power, unless he made 
 so many experiments of this kind as to weaken it. 
 But after all it is not a few temporary chills or heats 
 that weaken us, so much as the habitual application of 
 a temperature higher or lower than is best for us. 
 
 Hence will be seen the great importance, to the 
 debilitated young man, of so dressing himself by day 
 as well as so protecting himself by night, as shall, 
 if possible, secure to him this golden mean. He should 
 so manage himself that instead of weakening his skin, 
 from day to day, and subjecting himself to those ups 
 and downs of temperature which so many feel, in our 
 variable climate, his skin may be constantly growing 
 more healthy and vigorous. The skin is a kind of 
 safety valve to the human system ; nor am I sure 
 that, if properly attended to, the boiler would ever 
 burst. 
 
 If it is advisable to have a proper regard to our 
 clothiijg by day, it is still more so — vastly more so — 
 to have every thing as it should be by night. Not so 
 much, it is true, because nocturnal emissions are more 
 frequent in hot and unventilated beds than elsewhere, 
 though this consideration should have weight; but 
 chiefly because too much clothing, and clothino- of 
 certain kinds which might be named, is apt to increase 
 
PH KABRIA4 
 
 J :ui«l local debility on which the emit 
 
 I is i fad which not ;i few have noticed, that Bleeping 
 on Bofl feathen and <l<»wn is apt to induce perspiration, 
 and weakness about the loin.-. We all perspire freely, 
 general role, while we Bleep; bat why we Bhoukl 
 1m- particularly weakened at the loins i< not bo evident 
 Is it that the kidneys, being relieved of a part of their 
 labor by the increased activity of the skin, become 
 irritable ? 
 
 I would almost as Boon have ■ son or clerk of mine 
 who was at all amative, or who was debilitated by 
 amative indulgences, sleep on ahatchel as on a feather 
 bed. Indeed, I Bee no reason why the former should 
 not be preferred. The Bharp points could only injure. 
 
 tin- body : they could not reach the spirit. Jlut the 
 
 unnatural and unnecessary heat, by means of an 
 influence which it' obscure ami indirect i- nevertheless 
 certain, will be likely to affect the bouL For myself, 
 1 i much despise leather he<K that I would never 
 consent to use one, except as a treat t«» visitors who 
 were accustomed to them. Good husk and hair 
 mattresses and elastic wire beds have always answered 
 my own purpose, and that of my family. • 
 
 But thick comfortables, too, are objectionable. They 
 
 are too hot : and besides they do not admit of a proper 
 
 change of air, and electricity. Dutch blankets arc 
 
 preferable. I have travelled in a region where it was 
 
 unary to nse two feather beds — one over, and 
 
 the other underneath the occupant. Comfortables 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 233 
 
 above, and feather becls beneath, are little, if any 
 better, for the cause of purity. 
 
 Most people sleep under a great deal too much 
 clothing. The custom is ruinous to all, but especially 
 to the feeble in infancy and youth. It makes them 
 tender and delicate ; and, in a particular manner 
 renders^hem liable to take cold. 
 
 Most persons have such a quantity of clothing on 
 their beds as enables them to get warm almost as soon 
 as they lie down, even in the coldest weather. They 
 are not willing to wait a reasonable time. The result 
 often is, that they lie all night under one third or one 
 fourth too much covering. This is exceedingly inju- 
 rious. 
 
 On stopping at a public house in the western part 
 of Massachusetts, many years ago, I was furnished 
 with a bed without feathers. Rejoiced to find myself, 
 for once in my life, allowed to sleep on a mattress, with- 
 out " quarrelling " with my landlord, and being too 
 much fatigued to have more than one idea in my head 
 at a time, I forgot to notice the amount of clothing. 
 About midnight I awaked and found myself sweltering 
 under too much clothing. I removed just one half of 
 it, and yet slept quite warm enough. Nor did I, 
 while I remained there — a week or more — need 
 more clothing than I used the first night, though the 
 weather remained about the same. 
 
 My full and deliberate conviction is that the great 
 mass of mankind, the civilized world over, sleep under 
 one fourth, if not one third, more clothing than they 
 20* 
 
PHT8IOLOG1 
 
 really need, even in the coldest weather. And the 
 more ire use, the more ire may : and, indeed, most, — 
 rod for :i very plain reason. The more we depend on 
 nal beat, the more indolent and inefficient tin- in- 
 ternal fire • And then, too, the old ad 
 
 an inch, and take an ell," becomes applicable 
 re indulgence we grant to the naturally 
 indolent calorific (unction, the more liberty it tak< 
 sitting .-till and doing nothing. 
 
 horn I know, takes pains to have bis 
 as a preventive of < viL He goes even 
 farther. He never allows a young man to Bleep with 
 bis arms in the bed. Such a caution might be advan- 
 i- to many older persons, as well as to the j oung. 
 If it is said that we could not sleep so warmly in this 
 position, I reply, bo much the better, provided you are 
 not chilly. Such Bensations as might lead as to change 
 our position a few times, during the night, arc bene- 
 ficial rather than of evil tendency. 
 
 The healthy, vigorous young man has very little 
 
 ion for going to the fire in winter, or for >« eking 
 
 the shade or the refrigerating cup in the Bummer. 1 le 
 
 i- not wholly insensible to the extremes of heat and 
 
 cold ; but then he does not greatly Buffer from them, 
 lie wears, if wise, a sufficient amount of clothing 
 during the day-time to enable him, with suitable exer- 
 
 proper food and drink, and a cheerful state of 
 
 mind, to prevent being permanently chilly ; hut not 
 one iota more, if he can avoid it. He seldom or never 
 
 goes to the fire ; and he never allows himself to sit 
 
rJITSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 235 
 
 roasting himself by the stove or fire-place, or toasting 
 his feet. 
 
 We do not, indeed, expect the young to turn recluse, 
 and imitate the late Cardinal Cheverus, of Boston, or 
 the benevolent Abbe de l'Epee, of Europe, and go 
 without artificial heat, in their rooms all winter, — for 
 though such denials may be borne, I have doubts of 
 their general usefulness. Trained as most of us have 
 been, I think such a course would, in the end, prove 
 too exhausting for human nature to endure. But I 
 have a right to* expect that every feeble young man 
 who assents to the force of what I have here written 
 will deny himself more or less, daily and hourly, in- 
 stead of rushing to the fire at every slight sensation of a 
 little cold. I expect him, moreover, to remember that 
 for every degree of unnecessary warmth, — of warmth, 
 I mean, which a little moderate exercise, with plain 
 food and reasonable clothing, and patient waiting, and 
 general cheerfulness would bring him, — in which he 
 indulges, he must pay a future penalty in comparative 
 delicacy and feebleness of constitution ; saying nothing 
 of the tendency of sore eyes, sore throats, lung fevers, 
 brain fevers, peripneumony, rheumatisms, etc., in the 
 winter ; diarrhoeas, and dysenteries, in summer ; and 
 asthmas, scrofulas, and consumptions, at all seasons. 
 
 Nor must young people, especially the delicate and 
 debilitated, go suddenly to the fire when very cold. 
 This, if done, and thousands do it, is exceedingly in- 
 jurious. But I have no room in this place to enlarge 
 
236 PHT81 I »f makki.vge. 
 
 and to present all the physiologic*] reasons which 
 might !)«• desired. 
 
 I must, however, repeal the caution I have given 
 with regard to excess of heat daring the night; be- 
 eaase I know of no one place in which so much mis- 
 chief is done to the delicate, and sensitive, and nervous, 
 and consumptive as in their Bleeping-chambers. To 
 roasfl ourselves, as it were, by fires or Btoves, especially 
 in unventilated sir, is had mougA ; bat then it is not 
 usual — it is exceedingly rare — forns to be steeped 
 in bad air. six, eight of ten consecutive boon, any 
 where else except in our sleeping rooms. Here, how- 
 ever, hardly anything is more common. Thonsandi 
 and tens of thousands, young and old, immure them- 
 selves to the full extent of periods of time like these, 
 under an amount of clothing that is every month, and 
 week, and day crippling, as fast as possible, their 
 calorific powers ; and hastening apace, the day of their 
 death. 
 
 It is not well for debilitated young men to retire too 
 early; though it would undoubtedly be worse for them 
 to retire too late. Nor should they, as a general rule, 
 retire at all till there is a reasonable expectation of 
 going at once to sleep. As sleep however on occasions 
 may, otherwise, he dreamy, I have usually advised the 
 debilitated young man to take care to be properly 
 fatigued before going to rest. In this view I have 
 occasionally recommended, just before retiring,a walk 
 of one, two or three miles. 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 237 
 
 The more our debilitated young men are abroad in 
 the open air, the more they confine themselves to plain, 
 simple, and coarse food, and, in short, the better they 
 obey all the laws of health and physiology, and the 
 less they depend on medicine, the better. The laws 
 of health, duly obeyed, are more efficient than all the 
 pills, and tonics, and bitters in the known world. 
 
 Every young man, sick or well, should have a dress 
 for the night. This enables him to hang up his day- 
 clothes during the hours of his rest, and his night- 
 clothes during the day, and thus gives him, at all times, 
 fresh and well-ventilated apparel. 
 
 Much has been said of cold bathing in these cases, 
 and, especially, shower bathing. With a little good, 
 sound sense to be applied, cold bathing may sometimes 
 be very serviceable ; but, unless judiciously managed, 
 it is apt to do quite as much harm as good. I have 
 seen it tend greatly to invigorate the constitution ; but 
 I have also known it prove debilitating. 
 
 To be made beneficial, either in the particular cases 
 we are considering, or any where else, it must be fol- 
 lowed by what is called a reaction. In other words, 
 it must be followed by a general warmth, if not a 
 glow, all over the surface of the body, and by an in- 
 creased buoyancy of spirits, and mental activity. No 
 person, — unless it were a maniac, — who is made pale, 
 cold, or, even chilly, dull, languid or melancholic by the 
 cold-bath, will derive much benefit from it, whatever 
 may be the other attending circumstances, or however 
 
PHYSIOLOGY 01 mauuiage. 
 
 . in his own case, tin- apparent Mcessity of its 
 applicatioau 
 
 Load bathing, in the case of your debilitated son 
 or clerk, will often <1<> better than general bathing. 
 Among the various forms of local I > : 1 1 1 » i 1 1 _r is Uu 
 l»ath. This consists Bimply in Bitting in a tnl> of 
 water usually cold, and remaining two, five or tan 
 minute-, a- may be deemed advisable on trial. The 
 douck, <>r dash, which consists in throwing a jel of 
 tinst Borne pari of the body, is often useful 
 
 I . aeral bathing will often have tin.* best effect on 
 the debilitated, when taken on going to bed. A tub 
 
 should be used; the water >hould be tepid or warm — 
 from 85 to 98 degrees. The whole body, up to the 
 head, may be immersed in the tub from ten Vj twenty 
 minutes. On leaving the bath, the body should be 
 wiped dry as quickly as possible, and should be 
 made warm in bed as soon BS possible* 
 
 In Borne few cases, it will be bund preferable to use 
 cold water, for general bathing, rather than Mann. 
 lint this must be taken at rising in the morning, or 
 
 about tin- middle of the forenoon. The latter is the 
 best time t<> L r <-t a reaction ; but the former is the most 
 Common, lint even then I would not use the shower- 
 bath : and the tub-bath is little better. !Nor would I be- 
 gin by bathing the whole body at once. 
 
 My method i- as follows. Remove the clothing as 
 quickly as possible, and after washing little more than 
 the head and hands, apply coarse towels not only to 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 239 
 
 the head and hands, but to the whole body. Rub well, 
 for several minutes. If not very robust, an assistant 
 will be needed here ; and, if ever so healthy, the good 
 strong hand of a friend will be useful. When the 
 friction is over, apply the clothing again as quickly as 
 possible, and use moderate but quick exercise. 
 
 The next day I proceed a little farther. I now 
 venture to sponge the chest, before the friction. The 
 third day I extend the water still farther. The 
 fourth a little farther still. Thus beginning with very 
 nearly what Dr. Franklin would call the air-bath, I 
 gradually convert it into a general sponge-bath. 
 
 With the aid of cautions and suggestions like these, 
 nearly every debilitated young man may derive bene- 
 fit from bathing, in some of its various forms ; and 
 oftentimes from cold bathing. But, I repeat once more, 
 — he must take care to secure a good re-action after 
 the cold bath, or it will be of very little service to 
 him. 
 
 In connection with the remark above, that an as- 
 sistant is sometimes useful, I have an anecdote to 
 relate, to which I beg the closest attention ; for it 
 points to a truth of great importance. 
 
 The wife of one of our most distinguished literary 
 men was feeble, and had long been in the daily use of 
 the cold shower-bath. As she had no help, she came 
 out of the bathing-room, at the close, pale and wan, and 
 exceedingly exhausted. In these circumstances, as 
 might have been expected, she did not secure a good 
 reaction ; and, of course, remained in the same state 
 
2io ntrsiOLOGY 01 mammolow, 
 
 of health : or. if there was my alteration at all.it was 
 for Hi" w< 
 
 husband saw the difficulty, and proposed ■ 
 
 ly. This was to relieve her from the necessity 
 
 of exhausting her strength daring the friction. In ■ 
 
 word, he proposed to assist her, and the proposal was 
 
 gladly accepted. 
 
 This changed the state of things entirely. "Not a 
 month elapsed i re she was able to obtain a good re- 
 action, in every instance; and in a year or tv. 
 general health was greatly improvedi 
 
 I ought to say, however, thai her husband made 
 use of hu band, as well as of a coarse towel. He was a 
 stout, healthy man. and Beemed to have a superabun- 
 dance of electricity in his general Bvstem. El was a 
 question with him, which I cannot solve, but which L 
 Leave to your consideration, how far he electrified or 
 magnetized her; and to what extent her recovery was 
 owing to this influence. 
 
 Ii a debilitated young man attends school, — and it 
 ii by do means Dneommon o nl of his feeble- 
 
 Bess to send him to school for a time, — great care is 
 necessary with regard to his health while there* In 
 the far greater proportion of our schools, little or no 
 attention is paid to the health of the pupils, any more 
 than if the subject bad no claims whatever on the 
 teacher's attention, or even on the parents'. If the 
 young do not actually get sick at school, no one seems 
 to think of any delinquency. There is a great mis- 
 i. here. The youngs of every age, should improve 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 241 
 
 in health, while at school, with just as much certainty 
 as in knowledge, or excellency, or good behavior. 
 
 One of the most common abuses at the school-room 
 consists in an almost entire neglect of the laws of ven- 
 tilation. I do not believe one school in ten, — I speak 
 now more particularly of our public schools, though 
 the remark would not be inapplicable to some of our 
 private schools, — has pure air in it for a single hour 
 in the day. 
 
 But exercise, too, is neglected at school. The laws 
 of amusement seem hardly beginning to be under- 
 stood. Then, again, the fixtures for heating our school- 
 rooms, and the situation and position of the desks 
 and benches, are anything conceivable, rather than 
 what they should be. The hygiene of the school-room 
 has been, as yet, but little studied. 
 
 With regard to society, it not unfrequently happens 
 that debilitated young persons shun mankind as much 
 as possible, especially females. They are diffident and 
 shamefaced, at least for the most part. I have, how- 
 ever, known a few of a contrary character, — bold, 
 confident, blustering and impudent. But these last 
 will never be likely to possess enough of ingenuous- 
 ness to make a mother or a father their confidant. 
 Their confidants, if they have any, will be those land- 
 sharks to whom I have before alluded ; and you may 
 almost as well give them up, for lost, at once. 
 
 Now it is fortunate for young men, (as I have shown 
 in other chapters), in the first place, that they have 
 Sisters) which, as you know, is the general rule. 
 21 
 
FBI BIOLOGY 01 makki LOB. 
 
 Secondly, it is highly important thai the schools of 
 
 our country, for the tar greater part, are made up of 
 
 males and females; and that w few of them are ar- 
 ranged on the convert system. It is scarcely leas im- 
 portant thai nc have, in one form or anotlier, in almost 
 every neighborhood, social gatherings of some sort or 
 other. 
 
 If any of our young men could get along and 
 maintain their health and virtue without female so- 
 il is most clearly none of those of whom I am 
 now speaking. For if their natural diffidence and 
 disinclination to female society, together, perhaps, with* 
 accidental and providential privations have been al- 
 ready injurious to them, why should not the same 
 isolated condition keep them so? 
 
 In any event, let them be brought into society as 
 much as possible. Not, of course, into night parties 
 or night sitting; for these, especially the last, would 
 be the worst evils that could possibly befall them; 
 
 but into such afternoon family meetings of the B 
 
 as I have repeatedly suggested and recommended 
 
 These are beneficial in every point of view; but 
 especially to our debilitated young men. 
 
 Books are society. Great care is necessary, in 
 these days, in selecting books for the young, especially 
 for that class of the young to whom many of our 
 modern publications that pass current are but mild 
 poison. 
 
 The worst class of books that could fall into the 
 Lands of debilitated young men is, undoubtedly, a part 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OP MARRIAGE. 243 
 
 of that very class that is professedly designed for their 
 use. " Manhood," a French work, by Deslander, is at 
 the head of the objectionable division of this class. 
 It contains much valuable information for a medical 
 man ; but by grouping together so many horrid 
 " cases," appears to me to convey an impression on 
 the youthful mind calculated to defeat its own end. 
 They think the dangers of masturbation exaggerated. 
 But there are numerous books and papers that, with- 
 out directly encouraging sensuality, do so indirectly. 
 The same might be said of not a few of the books in 
 our lighter libraries ; and especially of our newspapers 
 and magazines. 
 
 The question is often asked whether such young 
 men as those for whom the foregoing directions are 
 intended, ought to marry. To this inquiry the French 
 and German physiologists, and medical men almost 
 uniformly, reply : Yes ! But the true reply might be 
 both, yes or no, according to circumstances. I mean 
 by this, that some young men in a state of disease 
 from self-abuse ought to marry, and others ought not. 
 
 As long a* a young man is depressed and dis- 
 couraged, and his mind is turned continually to what 
 he supposes to be the source of his woes, namely the 
 emissions, and those are increasing in frequency, or 
 even not diminishing, he ought not to think of mar- 
 riage, except in a general or philosophic way. I make 
 this last exception, because I have already advanced 
 the opinion, more than once, that the young ought by 
 all means, as a general rule, to look forward to matri- 
 
211 PHYSIOLOGY 01 KAKSLiOS. 
 
 mouy. A state of di irever, sometimes forbids 
 
 i tar :i- i<> think of it afl very neat at band 
 
 When, however, things take a better turn, and the 
 young man begins to have a little courage : when it 
 bvions that ho has passed quite beyond the 
 "slough of despond," as Banyan calls it, and has be- 
 gnn to L r ain the ascent beyond it, then he may be en- 
 couraged to marry. The hope of being able bo <!" so, 
 will now prove a healthful stimulus t<» him. It i- tine, 
 that he must imt plane the 'lay of consummation too 
 near; nor i- it necessary. The hope of 1» ing a hus- 
 band, and of enjoying the society of a wife, thoogh 
 many years distant, will be far better than downright 
 discouragement and dejection. [See Appendix A.] 
 
 AVhy is it that our writers on this subject do not 
 discriminate ? True it is that they cannot reach the 
 particulars of every case, were it ever so desirable; 
 but there are often a few leading principles, that should 
 be laid down and adhered to, like the foregoing. 
 
 There is one thing more to be mentioned that will 
 greatly aid a young man in recovering health and 
 vigor. It is the love of improvement. Our rules of 
 improving the body are of little value, — I had almost 
 said none at all to those for whom they are given, — 
 unless there h coupled with the rest a burning desire 
 to become wiser and better, no less than healthier. 
 For all our efforts to obtain health, nnless in order that 
 
 We may he good and DSeful, what are they hut sheer 
 Selfishness? And though selfish men may improve in 
 health and vigor, yet they will not make half as much 
 
PHTSIOLOGT OF MARRIAGE. 245 
 
 progress, other tilings and circumstances being equal, 
 as benevolent ones. 
 
 I know not exactly how it is, — but there is some- 
 thing in human selfishness that not only tends to nar- 
 row and contract the feelings, but to impair the bodily 
 health at the same time. Or if the effect is so slow as 
 not to be readily perceptible, it is none the less certain. 
 It is not too much to say that under the influence of 
 benevolent feelings, when a person is not too far gone, 
 all the organs of the body will slowly gain strength ; 
 and that this is true even of the skin and bones. 
 
 Though it forms no part of the plan of this volume 
 to inculcate morals and religion, yet I must be per- 
 mitted to say that it will add much to our influence, 
 in endeavoring to recover a fallen young man, if 
 we can be successful in bringing him to the practical 
 benevolence of the Gospel, and making him a true fol- 
 lower of the Lord Jesus Christ. He was evidently 
 healthy ; and a part of this, at the least, was the 
 natural reward of his untiring practical benevolence. 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 GENERAL DIRECTIONS TO ALL WIIO ARE 
 CONCERNED. 
 
 No man, whatever, in any age of the world, has 
 written more pointedly against licentiousness, in Dearly 
 
 all its varied forms, — from sodomy to polygamy,— 
 than PauL From Romans to Titus, all the way, we 
 find him inculcating the necessity of " keeping under 
 the body," lest it should obtain the mastery over the 
 spirit, and prove the destruction of soul and body 
 both. 
 
 Some may think the world has grown wiser and 
 better Binee the daya of Paul; and, in many respects, 
 it may be so. But young men arc more Bangoine in 
 this belief than older ones. The latter are forced to 
 the conclusion, every day they live, that there is great 
 need of laboring, as Paul did, to keep under the body, 
 and bring it into subjection to law, physiological, no 
 1 <-s than moral. 
 
 ' Elliot, sometimes called the Indian Apostle, 
 
 two hundred years ago, was anxious to pro- 
 
 ** of anatomy and physiology, to teach 
 
 the laws of their bodies, and how 
 
THYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 247 
 
 to keep them under. He saw most clearly the practi- 
 cal impossibility of making good Christians of men 
 who knew nothing of themselves. 
 
 It is true, he failed to accomplish his object ; and it 
 is also true that there was something a little visionary 
 in his plan. It was not anatomy and physiology that 
 the savages needed so much as a few of the simple 
 laws of hygiene, or health. Anatomy and physiology 
 are necessary to certain classes and professions of 
 men; but not to everybody. And those boards of 
 education, who have recommended them to be taught 
 to everybody by placing them among the elementary 
 studies of our common schools, have acted, in the 
 premises, without a proper understanding of the sub- 
 ject. It is not the structure of our bodies, — the 
 machinery, so to call it, — that is so indispensably 
 necessary ; nor the functions, or, in other words, the 
 play of that machinery, — but how to keep the 
 machinery in proper condition. 
 
 I admit, indeed, that a knowledge of the structure 
 and functions of the body — anatomy and physiology — 
 would be of some service to every individual of every 
 age ; and so would many other sciences which could 
 be named. But life is not long enough for everybody 
 to learn everything. Besides, a knowledge of the laws 
 of our bodies, such a knowledge as will enable us to 
 take care of ourselves, may be obtained nearly as well 
 without anatomy and physiology, as with them. 
 
 How convenient it would be for everybody to know 
 how to make their own clothes, shoes, furniture, 
 
213 PHT8IOJ.OGI Off MAKKiA'.r.. 
 
 house.-, etc.. bat is it practicable? I- it best? How 
 convenient it would be for all mankind to understand 
 the nature of disease and of medicine, so as to be their 
 own physician? But is that practicable? is lift long 
 enough ? I do not think it is. Neither do I think 
 that life is long enough for everybody to study anat- 
 omy and physiology. 
 
 A- the world and things now are, we get a smatter- 
 ing of these sciences, unavoidably. We cannot read 
 - and newspapers and magazines of the day, 
 otherwise Tiny are a BYStem <<f instruction, so to 
 >j»<-;ik, on all subjects. Through their instrumen- 
 tality every one, as a general rule, obtains a tmivenat, 
 if n«.t a university education. I say every one, be- 
 cause almost every family, except a few of the very 
 poorest, read newspapers. Most read, or at least look 
 over, several. Indeed, nothing is more common than 
 for a family to take a daily paper; and not a few 
 families receive from five to fifteen periodicals of all 
 sorts and kinds. 
 
 Grant, indeed, that, as Bacon says, a little knowl- 
 edge i- a dangerous thing. Still, the little know] 
 period must be passed through. The time has been 
 when knowledge was the property of a few. It was 
 not deemed safe to give knowledge to the mass of the 
 people, even religious knowledge. But republicanism « 
 is now the order of the day ; to some extent it is so, 
 under despotic governments. The decree lias gone 
 out, from the Eternal Throne, that man shall be edu- 
 cated ; and, in trovernments like our own, the decree is 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 249 
 
 beginning to be obeyed. The press is educating us. 
 The press is the people's college. It is, at least, a 
 'pioneer college. And as I said before, it already 
 brings almost everybody within its influence. 
 
 And among the things which have so long been 
 secluded from the common people, as useless to them, 
 is a knowledge of the laws which regulate their own 
 bodies. It is not yet a quarter of a century since 
 those who controlled the public press, even in enlight- 
 ened Boston, opposed the idea which a few minds had 
 then conceived of teaching hygiene or the laws of 
 health, to the mass of mankind, as not only a useless 
 scheme, but an injurious one. And when the Library 
 of Health, a monthly journal that sought to inculcate 
 a knowledge of the laws of health began its career, 
 twenty years ago, there was but one physician in Bos- 
 ton who was quite ready to bid it God speed ; nor but 
 one man in New England quite ready to subscribe 
 for it. 
 
 That journal, with others of kindred spirit together 
 with a few books in the same spirit has so changed 
 the tone of the public feeling, that there is a general 
 demand for this sort of instruction, and everybody 
 avows himself in its favor. Indeed we are going over 
 to the opposite extreme — as I have already inti- 
 mated — and demanding not only that every one shall 
 understand Hygiene or the Laws of Health, but 
 Anatomy and Physiology besides. Further still, even, 
 some arc Loing, and demanding that every one shall 
 become his own physician. But after a few vibrations, 
 
250 rnvsiOLOGY of marriage. 
 
 backward and forward, the pendnlmn will probably 
 rest midway between the two extranet. 
 
 The public demand, I say, for instruction in hygiene, 
 
 strong, thai nearly every periodica] responds in one* 
 way or another. One responds by noticing some new 
 work that professes to teach hygiene to families; in- 
 other by noticing a new school book on this Bubject, 
 another still by original or extracted articles on health ; 
 some of which are hardly worth reading : while here 
 and there one is valuable. Bat the for greater portion 
 
 of the controllers of the public press are far more ready 
 
 and willing to aid in selling something that professes 
 large powers of cure, in one department or another, 
 rather than that which teaches the way of preven- 
 tion. The truth is, that there is yet a vast deal of 
 ignorance with regard to the kinds of knowledge which 
 is really demanded. 
 
 lint along with every deduction, drawback, and 
 difficulty, we are making many advances. The press 
 has raised the standard of knowledge so that marly 
 every individual knows something of everything ; and 
 this smattering of everything is fast maturing into 
 a general knowledge of everything. 
 
 The knowledge of hygiene has so far advanced that 
 most persons have attained to some of the plainer 
 principles of the science, and taken them for granted. 
 Thus every one, or almost every one, knows that 
 water is be-t adapted to quench thirst, and that dis- 
 tilled and fermented drinks are of doubtful tendency. 
 That plain, simple, unstimulating food is better for 
 
TIIYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 25l 
 
 health than rich, high-seasoned or complicated dishes. 
 That tobacco, opium, and all other drugs and medi- 
 cines, are more or less hurtful to everybody in health ; 
 that we should breathe pure air freely ; that we should 
 use abundant exercise ; and that we should neither go 
 habitually chilly, or too much heated, by night or by 
 day. 
 
 These and many more of the simple laws of hy- 
 giene, are now, I say, common property. Every- 
 body understands them. I have addressed this book 
 to young men with the presumption that they under- 
 stand them. They cannot have lived in the world 
 during the last fifteen, or twenty, or twenty-five years, 
 without understanding them. 
 
 Except, therefore, in the single chapter which pre- 
 cedes this, I have said very little about the laws of 
 hygiene — above all, those of physiology. The latter 
 • — I repeat — I deemed hardly necessary ; the former 
 I have taken for granted, were pretty well understood. 
 Besides, had I stopped to teach the laws — or even to 
 point to them — as I passed along, it would have 
 swelled my book to a much greater size than I had 
 intended. 
 
 Perhaps too, some would, in that case, have called 
 it a learned book ; when my object was simply to make 
 it plain and intelligible. Those who have no more 
 than that mere smattering of hygiene which hardly 
 any body can help possessing, will almost certainly 
 understand me ; and those who are more learned, of 
 course, can. 
 
252 PHYSIOLOGY 01 MABBL1CUL 
 
 In .-hort, I lliink no one who reads the work thor- 
 oughly wUl fail to \» rceive tbat lie cannot but be a 
 very greal gainer by devoting a little time to the study 
 of himself — at least so far is the plain laws of health 
 arc concerned. Lectures, rock ss Ik- may have oppor- 
 tunity to attend, will gn-atly assist him; bat having 
 been stirred up by lectures, and by the little that has 
 been well said to him here or elsewhere, lie will 
 doubtless f< el his need <>f farther information. That 
 information, fortunately, can now be had, in forms 
 which are intelligible. The only great difficulty will 
 be in making a selection. 
 
 Among the more reliable forms of instruction, which 
 is afforded to the young at the present day, one 
 which should be hailed with great joy by every friend 
 of truth and humanity, is found in the increasing 
 tendency of medical men to address the public on sub- 
 jects for which they are better prepared, other things 
 being equal, than any other class of citizens. This 
 fountain of correct information, it is loudly hoped will 
 ere long be opened more widely and more extensively 
 than it ever yet has been. [See Appendix B.] 
 
 One of the savayis of Massachusetts — himself a 
 medical man by education — ha- been heard to say, 
 that such lectures as those I have just alluded to, and 
 from men whom we know and in whom we are accus- 
 tomed to confide, are needful every week in every 
 school district of our wide-spread country. 
 
 This blessing however will be likely to he some- 
 what limited in its application, by that vulgar, *ot >*» 
 
PIIYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 253 
 
 jay wicked prejudice, which so extensively prevails 
 against every form of hygienic instruction which could 
 be named, even that which is least exceptionable ; but 
 especially against those forms which are particularly 
 intended for the young. The writer of this work has 
 juffered in the estimation of his best friends, in this 
 rery way ; nor has he suffered alone. He could name 
 tn this connection half a score of others. 
 
 It is not long since I received from a physician of 
 the highest standing in one of the United States, a 
 most interesting letter, which, in some of its aspect*, 
 develops facts concerning the public prejudice of which 
 I am speaking, which seem a little unpropitious 
 to the cause of human advancement, but are yet in 
 perfect keeping with the sentiments of the preceding 
 paragraphs. Although the letter was never intended 
 for the public eye, yet to confirm the heavy charges I 
 have made against the ignorance and apathy of those 
 who have the care of the young, I venture on the fol- 
 lowing extract. The reader will perceive some of 
 the difficulties under which preventive men labor. 
 
 " I feel a good deal as you express yourself, as if I 
 would like to be an Apostle of Health to the great 
 mass of humanity, and it is difficult for me now to 
 restrain myself within the narrow enclosure of those 
 private pursuits which the support of a family im- 
 peratively demands. It is a most inviting field of 
 labor, but requires a fortune to work it. 
 
 " I first became warmly interested in this subject 
 about fifteen years ago, when I was unexpectedly ap- 
 22 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF HABBI 
 
 pointed by the Common Council, to the office of- , 
 
 an office which I held only ten month-, but which ex- 
 cited a taste for sanitary Btody which time and obser- 
 vation of the general ignorance of the subject has only 
 rendered more intense. I believe, however, I have 
 been pecuniarily a great loser by that "little brief 
 authority;" for my general reputation, thereby attain* 
 ed, Bfl B devotee to matters of public interest, has inter- 
 I not a little with my reputation as a practitioner, 
 by which craft I live. 
 
 u On this account I have of late years, rather avoid- 
 ed much public exposition of my name in connection 
 with the subject ; and must continue to hide my light 
 feeble as it is, under the bushel, unless I can manage 
 to connect with the preaching of the subject, the 
 receipt of a good salary." 
 
 Strange, indeed, that it should be so; but so it is. 
 Everywhere we hear the old adage that "an ounce of 
 prevention is worth a pound of cure ; " and yet the 
 man who devotes himself to preventing disease most 
 suffer in his reputation and purse ; while he who 
 devotes himself to the work of cure may receive, and 
 does receive, both a good salary and a good reputa- 
 tion. 
 
 But let us not by any means despair. There is — 
 there must be — a better day coming. Truth is 
 mighty, and must ultimately prevail. Prevention must 
 yet have its day, or all else, even troth itself, is sheer 
 mockery. It cannot but be seen and realized, that, 
 in the language of a motto to one of our medical and 
 
rnrsiOLOGY of marriage. 255 
 
 surgical journals, " The best part of the medical art, is 
 the art of avoiding (i. e. preventing) pain." 
 
 The young shall yet be duly cared for, and their 
 just rights accorded to them. It is quite too much to 
 deal out to them in every form from day to day empty 
 compliment, concerning their importance and influence, 
 especially when we wish to gain, at least in prospect, 
 more or less of political or other local capital. It is 
 time that our professed regard for the young should 
 mean something. It is time to feed them with that 
 which is bread, and will endure. If they are to bear, 
 in their turn, the public burdens, let them be duly pre- 
 pared for it ; and let their bodies be attended to", no 
 less than their minds. The value of the sound mind 
 can never be duly appreciated, except when lodged in 
 the sound body ; nor can the moral man be greatly 
 advanced while the physical man is so sadly neglected. 
 
APPENDIX A. 
 
 On the subject of keeping the thoughts away from 
 forbidden objects, as a means of restoration, the fol- 
 lowing paragraphs, derived from Dr. Carpenter's 
 Physiology, page 4 Go, will be found worthy of careful 
 consideration ; and though primarily addressed to 
 medical students, and being chiefly on fornication, are 
 applicable to all young men and to all the forms of 
 impurity : — 
 
 " The sexual secretions are strongly influenced by 
 the condition of the mind. When it is frequently and 
 strongly directed towards objects of passion, these 
 secretions are increased in amount to a degree which 
 may cause them to be a very injurious drain on the 
 powers of the system. On the other hand, the active 
 employment of the mental powers on other objects has 
 a tendency to render them less active ; or even to 
 check altogether the processes by which they are 
 elaborated. 
 
 "This is a simple physiological fact, but of high 
 moral application. The author would say to those of 
 
2o8 PHI SIOLOGT Off >: \kima«:k. 
 
 his younger readers wbo urge tlic wants of natore as 
 
 an excuse for the illicit gratification of the sexual pas- 
 sions ; try the effects of a close application to some of 
 those ennobling pursuits to which your profession intro- 
 duces you, in combination with vigorous bodily < 
 rifle, before you assert that the appetite is unrest rain- 
 able and act upon that assertion. Nothing tends BO 
 mnch to increase the desire as the continual direction 
 of the mind towards 1 1 1 * * objects of its gratification. 
 The following observations, which the author believes 
 to be strictly correct, are extracted from a valuable 
 little work addressed to young men. They are direct- 
 ed to those who maintain that the married state being 
 natural to man, illicit intercourse is necessary for those 
 who are prevented by circumstances from otherwise 
 gratifying the sexual passion. 
 
 u When the appetite is naturally indulged, that is, 
 in marriage, the necessary energy is supplied by the 
 nervous stimulus of its natural accompaniment of love, 
 which prevents the injury which would otherwise 
 arise from the increased expenditure of animal power. 
 And, in like manner, the function being in itself grate- 
 ful, this personal attachment performs the further 
 necessary office of preventing immoderate indulgence, 
 by dividing the attention through the numerous other 
 sources of sympathy and enjoyment which it simul- 
 taneously opens to the mind. But when the appetite 
 IS irregularly indulged, that is, in fornication, for want 
 of a healthful vigor of true love, its energies become 
 exhausted ; and for the want of numerous other sym- 
 22* 
 
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 259 
 
 pathetic sources of enjoyment in true love, or similar 
 thoughts, common pursuits, and above all, in common 
 holy hopes, the more gross animal gratification of lust 
 is resorted to with unnatural frequency, and thus its 
 powers become still further exhausted, and therefore 
 still more unsatisfying, while at the same time a habit 
 is thus created, and these jointly cause an increased 
 craving ; and the still greater deficiency in the satisfac- 
 tion experienced in its indulgence further, continually, 
 ever in a circle, increases — the habit, demand, indul- 
 gence, consequent exhaustion, diminished satisfaction, 
 and again demand — - till the mind and body alike be- 
 come disorganized." 
 
 To the foregoing remarks and quotation, Dr. Car- 
 penter also appends the following statement, which is 
 at least as applicable to the United States as to Great 
 Britain ; and involves considerations which furnished 
 one strong argument for the publication of the forego- 
 ing work. 
 
 " The author regrets to be obliged further to re- 
 mark, that some recent works which have issued from 
 the medical press, contain much that is calculated to 
 excite, rather than to repress, the propensity ; and that 
 the advice sometimes given by practitioners* to their 
 patients, is immoral as well as unscientific." 
 
APPENDIX B. 
 
 In confirmation of the truth of my remarks, as well 
 as in proof of the usefulness of the instruction of this 
 volume to young men under fifteen years of age, it 
 may not be amiss to observe thai but the other day 
 the author had a letter from a young man in one of 
 our best colleges, on the subject of giving a lecture or 
 two for the benefit of his associates in that institution, 
 who may not improbably be greatly indebted for his 
 present excellency and purity of his character, to a 
 lecture which he heard from me, at the age of fourteen, 
 in one of the villages of southern Massachusetts. 
 Though my advertisements excluded him, his aged, 
 and as I trust, now sainted father, came to me and 
 requested, as a special favor, to be permitted to bring 
 'thifl >on.' He said he was not aware of any partic- 
 ular necessity in the case ; but he was a full believer 
 in the great doctrine of prevention. And it is my 
 •nt strong conclusion that imperfect as the lec- 
 ture may have been, both the father and the son had 
 th> ir reward. 
 
 But anecdotes and statements, of the same general 
 character, might be multiplied to almost any extent, in 
 a world where Bin has entered, and in a soil in which 
 it is wont to luxuriate.