Part 41

With regard to the marriage of near kin, we can only remark that the marriage of those closely related by blood should as far as possible be avoided, and that such a marriage must be absolutely prohibited when in both families there is a history of tuberculosis, mental disorders, diabetes, and the like. When first cousins contemplate marriage, it is indispensable, not only that both individuals should be in perfect health, but also that on neither side there should be any serious family history of transmissible disease or transmissible morbid tendency; and, further, it is absolutely necessary that no such marriage of near kin should have taken place in the proximate ancestry of the cousins, i. e., their cousinship must not be a double one, derived both from the paternal side and the maternal. It is indeed to be recommended, with a view to the production of a healthy and powerful posterity, that marriage should bring about a crossing of healthy individuals proceeding from different families, different places, and different constitutional types. An instance of the advantage to be found in this practice is pointed out by Ribbing, who shows that the most powerful aristocracy in Europe, that of England, by the gradual creation of new peers, on the one hand, and by the gradual decline of younger sons and their descendants into the middle class, on the other, has undergone a continual crossing with less exalted but originally sounder stocks; in this way its vigor and fertility have been maintained, in contrast to the nobility of many continental states, which has so largely perished, in consequence of its exclusiveness in the matter of marriage.

“In this connection,” continues Ribbing, “we must bear in mind, that blood-relationship is not the only matter that has to be considered; in the interest alike of the family, and of society, it is necessary to demand that certain degrees of relationship by marriage alone, should fall within the ‘prohibited degrees’ of love and marriage. There are certain groups related by marriage and held together by the bond of affection, from which foster-parents and guardians may most suitably be selected to fulfil the duties as regards education and training of children who have been orphaned in early years. For such a purpose none seem better adapted than the brothers and sisters of the deceased parents; but the upbringing of the children can be confidently entrusted to the former only if the relationship between the older and the younger branches of the family is one regarded by law, and still more by morality and custom, as one precluding the possibility of the occurrence of sexual love and marriage.”

Möbius, writing on “The Ennobling of the Human Race by Selection in Marriage,” observes: “The most important aim of natural development is the perfection of humanity. The qualities of the coming generation depend for the most part upon the qualities of the parents. Marriage from affection ensures the fulfilment of nature’s aims with more security than marriage from reason; since what we have to think of is not the happiness of the married pair but the quality of their children. Of great importance, also, to the development of the human race are the conditions during the commencement of life, and the mode of education. The improvement of the race has not hitherto been the conscious aim of the generality of people. The law does not as yet, as it should, take into account the advantage of posterity. Capital punishment is fully justified and purposive. Criminals should not be allowed to marry. The perpetuation of disease by inheritance should be checked by the utmost powers of the state. Any one marrying while suffering from any venereal disease still in an infective condition should be punished. The marriage of persons suffering from tuberculosis should be prohibited. For the prevention of disease is more important than its cure. The most important factor in preventive medicine is an improvement in the conditions of life. The human ideal should be, goodness of heart in association with physical and mental health. Goodness, beauty, and strength should be simultaneously pursued. Since, however, man is made by birth far more than by education, selection in marriage is of fundamental importance. In the choice of a partner, attention is rightly paid to beauty, since beauty and health are fundamentally identical; moreover, a human being endowed with beauty is usually also more moral than one devoid of that attribute. Equality of birth is as a rule desirable in marriage; but not the family only is to be considered in determining the existence of such equality, individual characteristics must likewise be taken into account. Whether the crossing of races is desirable is not yet certainly determined.”

From the hygienic standpoint it is necessary that in marriage also the frequency and the manner of sexual intercourse should be regulated.

Wise men and lawgivers of all the nations of antiquity have insisted upon the necessity of certain intervals between the acts of intercourse. Thus, Mahomet prescribed 8 days, Zoroaster 9 days, Solon 10 days, Socrates also 10 days. Moses forbade intercourse during menstruation and for a week after the cessation of the flow. Luther prescribed intercourse “twice a week.”

Birds and many mammals are competent to perform intercourse at exceedingly short intervals. A well-bred cock will repeat this act 50 times daily; a sparrow, 20 times in an hour; a bull, 3 to 4 times in an hour. In the human species, however, too rapid repetition of intercourse is deleterious not only to the male, but to the female also, though the latter certainly suffers in less degree. For in this act the female plays a more passive part, and for this reason can repeat it with impunity more frequently than the male, who loses semen at each repetition. It is not possible, however, to lay down precise rules as to the permissible frequency of intercourse in either sex; the matter must depend upon physical needs. Moderate and regular indulgence in sexual intercourse is unquestionably advantageous to women both physically and mentally, regulating all the functions of the body, and tending to produce a contented and cheerful frame of mind.

During menstruation, a woman should refrain from intercourse. By the Mosaic law the death punishment was allotted both to the man and to the woman who indulged in coitus while the latter was menstruating. As a matter of fact, considerations alike of hygienic cleanliness and of sanitary precaution prohibit the performance of coitus during this period. Severe menorrhagia, perimetritic irritation, and parametritic inflammations, have been observed to follow such indiscretions. On the other hand, it is more than doubtful whether, in the event of pregnancy resulting from intercourse performed during menstruation (and conception is especially apt to occur at this time), the child is likely, as earlier authors maintained, to be unfavorably affected, and to suffer from cachexia, scrofula, or rickets.

After the act of intercourse, a woman should rest; and indeed sleep for some hours is especially to be recommended. A vaginal douche should not be administered until several hours have elapsed, otherwise there will be a risk of preventing fertilization of the ovum. The water employed for vaginal irrigation should never be quite cold; a temperature of 79°–82° F. (26°–28° C.) is best.

All measures for the purpose of artificially increasing sexual desire, such as alcoholic beverages (especially champagne), and certain drugs (especially cantharides), are even more harmful to women than they are to men. The woman who conceives while in a state of intoxication commits a great sin against the coming generation. Just as harmful, however, are the anaphrodisiacs sometimes employed to diminish the intensity of sexual desire when this cannot be gratified. When affected with intense sexual excitement, a woman is much more unfavorably situated than a man, since man claims the right to indulge in sexual intercourse whenever he feels disposed, and has, moreover, ample opportunity for sexual gratification. A woman, however, properly endowed with self-respect, will understand how to bridle her senses. Bodily exercise, moderate, unstimulating diet, intellectual occupation with serious matters, the avoidance of equivocal literature and of sensual dramatic representations, cold bathing, and the use of a hard mattress and light bed-clothing—these means will coöperate powerfully toward the prevention of excessive sexual desire. Horace already remarked: “Otia si tolles, periere Cupidinis arcus.”

The wife should know how to bridle, not her own desires only, but also those of her husband. She must not demand too much during the intoxication of youthful vigor; she must prevent the complete combustion of the flames of masculine passion, and must keep sparks glowing in the ashes. Economy during the sexual prime preserves sexual power, enables a man to continue intercourse to a ripe age, and avoids premature exhaustion and satiety. When the husband is drawing near the end of his sixth decade, the wife must accustom herself to see in him rather the father of her children than her own husband, and must reduce her sexual demands to that measure which will not be injurious to his health. Demosthenes, writing of the sexual life of the Athenians of his time, said: “In order to obtain legitimate offspring and to provide a faithful guardian of our household, we marry a wife; for our service and for the performance of daily household duties, we keep concubines; for the joys of love, we seek the hetairai.” The task is extremely difficult, but a clever and virtuous modern wife must endeavor to combine in her single personality the sensual attractiveness of an Aspasia, the chastity of a Lucrece, and the intellectual greatness of a Cornelia; she must bear in mind the epigram of Bacon, “A wife must be a young man’s mistress, a middle-aged man’s companion, an old man’s nurse.”

In the act of intercourse the woman must always play the more passive part; she must be desired, rather than desire. Woman’s modesty increases man’s desire. By this coquetry, permissible because natural, the woman can bind the man to herself, and can give the lie to the assertion that marriage is the grave of love. Partial concealment of her desire on the part of the woman is more stimulating to the man than an open manifestation of the sexual impulse; and a certain amount of modest reluctance is more alluring to him than a plain invitation. Plenty of room must be left for the play of fancy and imagination. Schiller makes Fiesco say to the Countess Julia, as he covers up her bosom, “The senses must be blind letter-carriers only, and must not be aware of that which nature and the imagination communicate each to the other. The best of news is stale as soon as it has become the talk of the town.”

For this reason, also, it is more suitable that intercourse should take place, not by day, consequent on the brutal prompting of vision, but by night only, beneath the protecting veil of darkness. A night’s rest, moreover, will serve to restore the exhausted nerves, and to replace the expended secretions. Less advisable is coitus in the morning, on awaking from sleep, since the labors of the day must immediately thereafter be undertaken. Partially impotent men only, who wake up with an erected penis, endeavour to avail themselves without delay of this favorable opportunity, bearing in mind the French proverb, “On aime quand on peut, et non pas quand on veut.”

The French custom, in accordance with which the married pair sleep together in a double-bed is undesirable on several hygienic grounds, and, in the first place, for the reason that this continuous nocturnal proximity is likely to give rise to the habit of indulging in excessively frequent acts of intercourse. The best and most affectionate of men has neither disposition nor capacity to play the part of Romeo every night, and thus the value and enjoyment of marital duties becomes lessened. The fulfilment of his desires should not be rendered quite so easy to the husband; he should always appear the lover, one who seeks a woman’s favours because he longs for her; he should not be the master, exacting an unquestioned right. For this reason, separate beds are advisable for the married pair, and, when possible, even separate bedrooms.

Among the ancients, Lycurgus, the Spartan law-giver, regarded maternity as woman’s principal attribute, and considered the sexual impulse to be the means merely by which healthy citizens were provided for the state. In accordance with this view, the sanctity of marriage was violated, and every powerful, handsome, and valiant Spartan had the right to request the privilege of intercourse with the wife of another, in order to enrich that other’s family with his seed. Elderly, impotent men conducted well-formed young men into the arms of their own wives. The girls, like the young men, went through a course of gymnastic exercises, in order to harden their bodies, and to fit them for the bearing of strong and healthy children. No man might marry before attaining the age of thirty, no woman before attaining the age of twenty. Girls ripe for marriage were assembled in a dark place, and there the young men chose their brides, as chance might direct. The young men were allowed to visit their wives by night only, and secretly, in order that the vigor of the sexual impulse might be increased and maintained.

Among the Spartans, it happened quite frequently, that a man whose wife had remained childless, and who believed himself to be at fault in the matter, would beg one of his fellow-countrymen, or even a foreigner, to come to his assistance. It was enacted by one of Solon’s laws, to prevent a man from neglecting his marital duties, that he should have intercourse with his wife not less than three times monthly. According to another of Solon’s laws, an Athenian heiress might call upon her nearest relative for the gratification of her sexual desires.

The bluntest contrast to this Spartan simplicity is furnished by the unbridled lasciviousness that prevailed in Rome under the Cæsars, when women’s sole desire was sexual enjoyment, while maternity was a state to be avoided. To such an extreme was this carried, that the Roman ladies of that day preferred to marry eunuchs, and further, as Pliny reports, hermaphrodites were in great request. Juvenal writes: “There are women who prize the infertile embraces of base eunuchs; thus they are able to dispense with the use of abortifacients.”

The hygiene of the nuptial night deserves from the physician more attention than it has hitherto generally received. He should warn and enlighten the young husband, in order that the brutality with which the act of defloration is apt to be performed may be lessened, and further in order that mistakes in this connection, resulting from ignorance and likely to have serious consequences, may be avoided. It is well known that lacerations of the hymen and its environment, and even serious injuries of the genital organs, may result from maladroit attempts at penetration. The physician will admonish the husband in the words of Michelet: “Bear in mind in this hour that thou art an enemy, a tender, considerate, and gentle enemy!”

The young woman entering upon marriage should receive instruction from her mother regarding all the sexual processes of copulation, instruction at once earnest and complete. By such enlightenment, the young bride will be spared much suffering, and a sudden disillusionment which might seriously affect the whole of her future life will be avoided; complete ignorance, on the other hand may lead, not merely to needless mental and physical suffering, but to the most tragic consequences on the bridal night. In one case known to me, the young wife, who before marriage was utterly ignorant of the nature of physical love, was so completely overwhelmed in her ideals by the somewhat energetic procedure of the bridegroom as soon as he found himself alone with his wife, that she fled from her new home then and there in the night, and by no persuasions could be induced to return.

In that decisive moment in which the maiden loses her virginity, she must find in her husband, not the brutal man who forcibly takes possession of her body, but the chosen man of all, to whom her love can refuse nothing.

“Delicate foresight and restraint,” writes Ribbing, “are needful above all at the commencement of married life. The young wife, coming to the bridal bed a pure virgin, is not, like her husband, fully prepared for what is to take place. In all cases she is somewhat fearful of the new experience. The first act of intercourse involves for her a certain amount of pain, and this pain is not solely physical. * * * Moreover, we must remember that the entire change in her mode of life makes a deep impression upon a woman’s mind; time and quiet are needed before she can find herself at home in the novel surroundings, before she can adapt to the changed circumstances her moral and religious convictions, and before she can ‘think true love acted simple modesty’ (Romeo and Juliet, III, 2.16). Impatient husbands, through want of knowledge and lack of consideration during the honeymoon, have often ruined the happiness of subsequent married life.”

It happens often, unfortunately, that the wife has reason to complain of the reckless manner in which her husband has used, or misused, his sexual powers. Frequently enough, on the bridal night, the man proceeds with such violence in his assault on the virgin reproductive organs of his newly-wedded wife, that we must actually speak of him as ravishing an ignorant and timid girl. Later, when the stimulus of novelty has passed away, the husband often performs intercourse in a manner more calculated to awaken his wife’s sexual desires, but in seeking his own lordly gratification and obtaining it he is still apt to leave out of the reckoning the need for effecting coitus in such a way as will give complete satisfaction also to his wife.

The wedding journey likewise deserves consideration from the hygienic standpoint. Much is to be said in favor of such a journey, inasmuch as it endows the necessarily somewhat brutal first act of intercourse with an aspect of romance. The removal to a foreign country, to a strange environment, will spare the chaste maiden much shame and vexation. On the journey, moreover, the young couple are much in each other’s company, and the process of mutual adaptation is agreeably favored. And yet this modern custom of making a wedding journey entails certain serious disadvantages. The young woman leaves her home and her nearest relatives, and is in a moment involved in the excitement of travel, an excitement liable to increase to the degree of morbid anxiety. The fatigues of railway-travel, of wandering about strange towns, of visits to museums and picture-galleries, are apt to cause general loss of nervous tone, and also local hyperæmia of the genital organs. In addition, false modesty and the prescribed arrangements for the journey may lead the onset of menstruation to be ignored and the customary rest at this period to be dispensed with. Still more, the possibility of the occurrence of conception and of the commencement of pregnancy is usually left altogether out of the account. Many an attack of menorrhagia, of perimetritis, and of endometritis, many a miscarriage, and many instances of protracted sterility, are dependent upon the hygienic mistakes of the wedding journey, and less, indeed, upon the abuses arising out of the intoxication of passion, than upon the fatigues of excessive travel both by day and by night. The bride who on her wedding-day was young, healthy, and full of vitality, not infrequently returns from the wedding journey a sickly and debilitated woman.

With regard to wedding journeys in relation to the causation of chronic metritis, Scanzoni has expressed an authoritative opinion. “After many weeks of unsatisfied sexual desire, the young married pair, now freed from all restraint, give themselves up to the joys of love; the intense sexual excitement causes great stimulation and hyperæmia of the female sexual organs; in addition, the noxious influences of travel make themselves felt, and also hygienic indiscretions are perpetrated, dependent upon the young wife’s modesty; it is, therefore, by no means to be wondered at that, having left home a perfectly healthy woman, she returns from her wedding journey with the germs of an illness from which she never fully recovers, and which is the source of unending suffering, and more particularly of a sterile marriage.”

Sexual hygiene demands a certain moderation in the enjoyment of physical love, and also a certain constancy, such as may be expected in a happy marriage.

It is not possible to lay down a general rule with regard to the frequency of sexual intercourse, notwithstanding the earnestness with which religious zealots, physicians, and moral teachers have in all ages endeavored to determine how often it was proper for a man to cohabit with his wife. The rules that have been prescribed by the various authorities had in view, for the most part, the protection of the wife from excessive demands on the part of her husband; sometimes, however, by the establishment of a minimum period, a certain amount of sexual gratification was secured to the wife; finally, also, the generation of a healthy posterity had to be taken into consideration. Ribbing, however, justly observes: “Sexual intercourse results from a natural impulse, and he whose senses are unimpaired, and who has learned, at the same time, amid the tumult of his sensations, to preserve proper consideration for his wife—such a man runs little danger of making any mistake. In opposition to the opinion of many, I regard it as entirely right and reasonable that husband and wife should have intercourse whenever physically and mentally impelled to that act. Nor do I see any reason why, during the first period in which they are able to enjoy without intermission the pleasures of sexual intercourse, they should, in accordance with any theory whatever, impose on themselves further restraints than those demanded by care for their physical and mental health. The touchstone of marital hygiene is this, that on the day following intercourse both husband and wife should feel perfectly fresh, vigorous, and lively, alike in body and mind—even more so, perhaps, than on other days. In the absence of such feelings, we may feel assured of the occurrence of sexual excesses.” The same author quotes a saying of Pomeroy’s: “We may quaff the nectar as freely as we will—nature herself mixes the draught and holds the goblet to our lips; if, however, we drink too much, she first dilutes the draught with water, later adds gall, and ultimately perhaps deadly poison.”

The occupation, trade, or profession, and the nutritive condition and physical constitution of the married pair, have an important bearing on the frequency with which, without detriment to health, cohabitation is permissible. The rules of the Hebrew Talmud already take these circumstances into account, ordering as they do that young and powerful men not engaged in any regular occupation shall have intercourse with their wives daily; manual labourers, on the other hand, once a week only; whilst brain-workers, finally, or those whose work is extremely arduous, should allow an interval of one or more months to elapse between the acts of intercourse. Acton also prescribes that in the case of brain-workers and of those manual workers whose labours are exhausting, intercourse must not occur more frequently than once every week or ten days.

The married couple should understand how to impose on themselves a certain restraint in the matter of marital intercourse, without, however, going so far as on altogether trifling grounds to refuse the husband access to his wife. In this respect also, the opinions that have recently come to prevail concerning the rights of women have had an influence. W. Acton relates a case that came under his observation in which the wife refused to allow her husband any voice in determining when and how often intercourse should take place; the wife, she maintained without hesitation, since she had to bear the consequences of intercourse, was fully justified, whenever she thought fit, in refusing her husband’s embraces.

The dangers to the sexual life of woman which are involved by the modern woman’s rights agitation are seen already in the changes which the emancipation of women in North America has produced in the functions of woman as wife and mother. In that part of the world, everything possible has been done “to transform” (to quote the words of a brilliant journalist) “the doll into an independent existence, to enable the helpless woman to earn her own subsistence, and the result of these endeavors has been most striking. The American woman has obtained the right to enter every profession and to follow every kind of occupation which have hitherto been reserved for men; she is physician, lawyer, merchant, professor; her boudoir has become an office, often connected with the stock exchange by a private wire. Legally, also, she now possesses the same rights as man; in many States she has both the suffrage and the right of entering the house of representatives; she has fully emancipated herself from her former condition of tutelage, and in her shrillest tones can cry to heaven ‘I am free, I am independent, I am emancipated, I am myself!’ And observe, as the result of all these attempts at the conversion of woman into man, that in the matter of marriage also she acts as if she were no longer woman. The American woman no longer marries; perhaps, indeed, because she no longer has the capacity. So long and so eagerly has she given herself up to masculine occupations, that her inward feminine nature has also perhaps undergone transformation, so that she has become affected with a kind of neutral lack of desire. Unquestionably, the desire for marriage on the part of this modern ‘emancipated’ woman has vanished in the most alarming manner, there is a notable fall in the birth-rate, and the indigenous (white) population actually threatens to disappear.”