Part 53

3. SERIOUS CONSEQUENCES.--The mother who has ruined her health by late hours, highly-spiced food, and general carelessness in regard to hygienic laws, and the father who is the slave of questionable habits, will be very sure to have children either mentally or morally inferior to what they might otherwise have had a right to expect. But the prenatal influences may be such that evils arising from such may be modified to a great degree.

4. FORMATION OF CHARACTER.--I believe that pre-natal influences may do as much in the formation of character as all the education that can come after, and that the mother may, in a measure, "will" what that influence shall be, and that, as knowledge on the subject increases, it will be more and more under their control. In that, as in everything else, things that would be possible with one mother would not be with another, and measures that would be successful with one would produce opposite results from the other.

5. INHERITING DISEASE. Consumption--that dread foe of modern life--is the most frequently encountered of all affections as the result of inherited predispositions. Indeed, some of the most eminent physicians have believed it is never produced in any other way. Heart disease, disease of the throat, excessive obesity, affections of the skin, asthma, disorders of the brain and nervous system, gout, rheumatism and cancer, are all hereditary. A tendency to bleed frequently, profusely and uncontrollably, from trifling wounds, is often met with as a family affection.

6. MENTAL DERANGEMENTS.--Almost all forms of mental derangements are hereditary--one of the parents or near relation being afflicted. Physical or bodily weakness is often hereditary, such as scrofula, gout, rheumatism, rickets, consumption, apoplexy, hernia, urinary calculi, hemorrhoids or piles, cataract, etc. In fact, all physical weakness, if ingrafted in either parent, is transmitted from parents to offspring, and is often more strongly marked in the latter than in the former.

7. MARKS AND DEFORMITIES.--Marks and deformities are all transmissible from parents to offspring, equally with diseases and peculiar proclivities. Among such blemishes may be mentioned moles, hair-lips, deficient or supernumerary fingers, toes, and other characteristics. It is also asserted that dogs and cats that have accidentally lost their tails, bring forth young similarly deformed. Blumenbach tells of a man who had lost his little finger, having children with the same deformity.

8. CAUTION.--Taking facts like these into consideration, how very important is it for persons, before selecting partners for life, to deliberately weigh every element and circumstances of this nature, if they would insure a felicitous union, and not entail upon their posterity disease, misery and despair. Alas! in too many instances matrimony is made a matter of money, while all earthly joys are sacrificed upon the accursed altars of lust and mammon.

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PREPARATION FOR MATERNITY.

1. WOMAN BEFORE MARRIAGE.--It is not too much to say that the life of women before marriage ought to be adjusted with more reference to their duties as mothers than to any other one earthly object. It is the continuance of the race which is the chief purpose of marriage. The passion of amativeness is probably, on the whole, the most powerful of all human impulses. Its purpose, however, is rather to subserve the object of continuing the species, than merely its own gratification.

2. EXERCISE.--Girls should be brought up to live much in the open air, always with abundant clothing against wet and cold. They should be encouraged to take much active exercise; as much, if they; want to, as boys. It is as good for little girls to run and jump, to ramble in the woods, to go boating, to ride and drive, to play and "have fun" generally, as for little boys.

3. PRESERVE THE SIGHT.--Children should be carefully prevented from using their eyes to read or write, or in any equivalent exertion, either before breakfast, by dim daylight, or by artificial light. Even school studies should be such that they can be dealt with by daylight. Lessons that cannot be learned without lamp-light study are almost certainly excessive. This precaution should ordinarily be maintained until the age of puberty is reached.

4. BATHING.--Bathing should be enforced according to constitutions, not by an invariable rule, except the invariable rule of keeping clean. Not necessarily every day, nor necessarily in cold water; though those conditions are doubtless often right in case of abundant physical health and strength.

5. WRONG HABITS.--The habit of daily natural evacuations should be solicitously formed and maintained. Words or figures could never express the discomforts and wretchedness which wrong habits in this particular have locked down upon innumerable women for years and even for life.

6. DRESS.--Dress should be warm, loose, comely, and modest rather than showy; but it should be good enough to Satisfy a child's desires after a good appearance, if they are reasonable. Children, indeed, should have all their reasonable desires granted as far as possible; for nothing makes them reasonable so rapidly and so surely as to treat them reasonably.

7. TIGHT LACING.--Great harm is often done to maidens for want of knowledge in them, or wisdom and care in their parents. The extremes of fashions are very prone to violate not only taste, but physiology. Such cases are tight lacing, low necked dresses, thin shoes, heavy skirts. And yet, if the ladies only knew, the most attractive costumes are not the extremes of fashion, but those which conform to fashion enough to avoid oddity, which preserve decorum and healthfulness, whether or no; and here is the great secret of successful dress--vary fashion so as to suit the style of the individual.

8. COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE.--Last of all, parental care in the use of whatever influence can be exerted in the matter of courtship and marriage. Maidens, as well as youths, must, after all, choose for themselves. It is their own lives which they take in their hands as they enter the marriage state, and not their parents; and as the consequences affect them primarily it is the plainest justice that with the responsibility should be joined the right of choice. The parental influence, then, must be indirect and advisory. Indirect, through the whole bringing up of their daughter; for if they have trained her aright, she will be incapable of enduring a fool, still more a knave.

9. A YOUNG WOMAN AND A YOUNG MAN HAD BETTER NOT BE ALONE TOGETHER VERY MUCH UNTIL THEY ARE MARRIED.--This will be found to prevent a good many troubles. It is not meant to imply that either sex, or any member of it, is worse than another, or bad at all, or anything but human. It is simply the prescription of a safe general rule. It is no more an imputation than the rule that people had better not be left without oversight in presence of large sums of other folks' money. The close personal proximity of the sexes is greatly undesirable before marriage. Kisses and caresses are most properly the monopoly of wives. Such indulgences have a direct and powerful physiological effect. Nay, they often lead to the most fatal results.

10. IGNORANCE BEFORE MARRIAGE.--At some time before marriage those who are to enter into it ought to be made acquainted with some of the plainest common-sense limitations which should govern their new relations to each other. Ignorance in such matters has caused an infinite amount of disgust, pain and unhappiness. It is not necessary to specify particulars here; see other portions of this work.

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IMPREGNATION.

1. CONCEPTION OR IMPREGNATION.--Conception or impregnation takes place by the union of the male sperm and female sperm. Whether this is accomplished in the ovaries, the oviducts or the uterus, is still a question of discussion and investigation by physiologists.

2. PASSING OFF THE OVUM.--"With many women," says Dr. Stockham in her Tokology, "the ovum passes off within twenty-four or forty-eight hours after menstruation begins. Some, by careful observation, are able to know with certainty when this takes place. It is often accompanied with malaise, nervousness, headache or actual uterine pain. A minute substance like the white of an egg, with a fleck of blood in it, can frequently be seen upon the clothing. Ladies who have noticed this phenomenon testify to its recurring very regularly upon the same day after menstruation. Some delicate women have observed it as late as the fourteenth day."

3. CALCULATIONS.--Conception is more liable to take place either immediately before or immediately after the period, and, on that account it is usual when calculating the date at which to expect labor, to count from the day of disappearance of the last period. The easiest way to make a calculation is to count back three months from the date of the last period and add seven days; thus we might say that the date was the 18th of July; counting back brings us to the 18th of April, and adding the seven days will bring us to the 25th day of April, the expected time.

4. EVIDENCE OF CONCEPTION.--Very many medical authorities, distinguished in this line, have stated their belief that women never pass more than two or three days at the most beyond the forty weeks conceded to pregnancy--that is two hundred and eighty days or ten lunar months, or nine calendar months and a week. About two hundred and eighty days will represent the average duration of pregnancy, counting from the last day of the last period. Now it must be borne in mind, that there are many disturbing elements which might cause the young married woman to miss a time. During the first month of pregnancy there is no sign by which the condition may be positively known. The missing of a period, especially in a person who has, been regular for some time, may lead one to suspect it; but there are many attendant causes in married life, the little annoyances of household duties, embarrassments, and the enforced gayety which naturally surrounds the bride, and these should all be taken into consideration in the discussion as to whether or not she is pregnant. But then, again, there are some rare cases who have menstruated throughout their pregnancy, and also cases where menstruation was never established and pregnancy occurred. Nevertheless, the non-appearance of the period, with other signs, may be taken as presumptive evidence.

5. "ARTIFICIAL IMPREGNATION".--It may not be generally known that union is not essential to impregnation; it is possible for conception to occur without congress. All that is necessary is that seminal animalcules enter the womb and unite there with the egg or ovum. It is not essential that the semen be introduced through the medium of the male organ, as it has been demonstrated repeatedly that by means of a syringe and freshly obtained and healthy semen, impregnation can be made to follow by its careful introduction. There are physicians in France who make a specialty of "Artificial Impregnation," as it is called, and produce children to otherwise childless couples, being successful in many instances in supplying them as they are desired.

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SIGNS AND SYMPTOMS OF PREGNANCY.

1. THE FIRST SIGN.--The first sign that leads a lady to suspect that she is pregnant is her ceasing-to-be-unwell. This, provided she has just before been in good health, is a strong symptom of pregnancy; but still there must be others to corroborate it.