XXIII.

(Signed by 55 lady-physicians.)

The memorial as above was initiated by Mrs. Monelle Mansell, M.A., M.D., who has been in practice in India for seventeen years, and it received the signature of every other lady doctor there. The cases of abuse above specified are “only a few out of many hundreds—of cruel wrongs, deaths, and maimings for life received by helpless child-wives at the hands of brutal husbands, which have come under Dr. Monelle Mansell’s personal observation, or that of her associates.”

With regard to case K, and “lawful” use, compare what is said by Dr. Emma B. Ryder, who is also in medical practice in India, concerning the “Little Wives of India”:—“IfI could take my readers with me on my round of visits for one week, and let them behold the condition of the little wives ... if you could see the suffering faces of the little girls, who are drawn nearly double with contractions caused by the brutality of their husbands, and who will never be able to stand erect; if you could see the paralysed limbs that will not again move in obedience to the will; if you could hear the plaintive wail of the little sufferers as, with their tiny hands clasped, they beg you ‘to make them die,’ and then turn and listen to the brutal remarks of the legal owner with regard to the condition of his property. If you could stand with me by the side of the little deformed dead body, and, turning from the sickening sight, could be shown the new victim to whom the brute was already betrothed, do you think it would require long arguments to convince you that there was a deadly wrong somewhere, and that someone was responsible for it? After one such scene a Hindoo husband said to me, ‘You look like feel bad’ (meaning sad); ‘doctors ought not to care what see. I don’t care what see, nothing trouble me, only when self sick; I not like to have pain self.’... A man may be a vile and loathsome creature, he may be blind, a lunatic, an idiot, a leper, or diseased in a worse form; he may be fifty, seventy, or a hundred years old, and may be married to a baby or a girl of five or ten, who positively loathes his presence, but if he claims her she must go, and the English law for the ‘Restitution of Conjugal Rights’ compels her to remain in his power, or imprisons her if she refuses. There is no other form of slavery on the face of the earth that begins with the slavery as enforced upon these little girls ofIndia.”—(“The Home-Maker,” New York, June, 1891, quoted in theReview of Reviews, Vol. IV., p. 38.)

And theTimesof 11th November, 1889, reported from its Calcutta correspondent:—“Two shocking cases of wife-killing lately came before the courts—in both cases the result of child-marriage. In one a child aged ten was strangled by her husband. In the second case a child of ten years was ripped open with a wooden peg. Brutal sexual exasperation was the sole apparent reason in both instances. Compared with the terrible evils of child-marriage, widow cremation is of infinitely inferior magnitude. The public conscience is continually being affronted with these horrible atrocities, but, unfortunately, native public opinion generally seems to accept these revelations with complete apathy.”

For what slight legislative amendment has recently been effected in the grievances mentioned by Dr. Ryder, see Note XXIV., 4. The “Restitution of Conjugal Rights,” so justly condemned by her, does, indeed, appear to have had—by some inadvertence—a recognition in the Indian Courts which was not its lawful due. But for some fuller particulars on this matter, both as concerns India and England, see Note XXXVI., 6.

1.—“Action repeated tends to rhythmic course.”

“Other and wider muscular actions, partly internal and partly external, also take place in a rhythmical manner in relation with systemic conditions. The motions of thediaphragm and of the thoracic and abdominal walls, in connection with respiration, belong to this category. These movements, though in the main independent of will, are capable of being very considerably modified thereby, and while they are most frequently unheeded, they have a very recognisable accompaniment of feeling when attention is distinctly turned to them.... The contraction of oviducts or of the womb, as well as the movements concerned in respiration, also had their beginnings in forms of life whose advent is now buried in the immeasurable past.”—Dr. H. C. Bastian (“The Brain as an Organ of Mind,” p. 220).

4.—“Till habit bred hereditary trace.”

“Let it be granted that the more frequently psychical states occur in a certain order, the stronger becomes their tendency to cohere in that order, until they at last become inseparable; let it be granted that this tendency is, in however slight a degree, inherited, so that if the experiences remain the same, each successive generation bequeaths a somewhat increased tendency, and it follows that, in cases like the one described, there must eventually result an automatic connection of nervous actions, corresponding to the external relations perpetually experienced. Similarly, if from some change in the environment of any species its members are frequently brought in contact with a relation having terms a little more involved; if the organisation of the species is so far developed as to be impressible by these terms in close succession, then an inner relation corresponding to this new outer relation will gradually be formed,and will, in the end, become organic. And so on in subsequent stages of progress.”—Herbert Spencer (“Principles of Psychology,” Vol. I., p. 439).

Id.... “I have described the manner in which the hereditary tendencies and instincts arise from habit, induced in the nervous cellules by a sufficient repetition of the same acts.”—Letourneau (“The Evolution of Marriage,” Chap. I.).

Id.... “Ainsi l’évacuation menstruelle une fois introduite dans l’espèce, se sera communiquée par une filiation non interrompue; de sorte qu’on peut dire qu’une femme a maintenant des règles, par la seule raison que sa mère les a eues, comme elle aurait été phthisique peut être, si sa mère l’eût été; il y a plus, elle peut être sujette au flux menstruel, même quoique la cause primitive qui introduisit ce besoin ne subsiste plus en elle.”—Roussel (“Système de la Femme,” p. 134).

Id.... “Il y a eu des auteurs qui ne voulaient pas considérer la menstruation comme une fonction inhérente à la nature de la femme, mais comme une fonction acquise, continuant par l’habitude.”—Raciborski (“Traité de la Menstruation,” p. 17).

Id.... “The ‘set’ of mind, as Professor Tyndall well calls it, whether, as he says, ‘impressed upon the molecules of the brain,’ or conveyed in any other way, is quite as much a human as an animal phenomenon. Perhaps the greater part of those qualities which we call the characteristics of race are nothing else but the ‘set’ of the minds of men transmitted from generation to generation, stronger and more marked when the deeds are repeated, weaker andfainter as they fall into disuse.... Tyndall says: ‘No mother can wash or suckle her baby without having a “set” towards washing and suckling impressed upon the molecules of her brain, and this set, according to the laws of hereditary transmission, is passed on to her daughter. Not only, therefore, does the woman at the present day suffer deflection from intellectual pursuits through her proper motherly instincts, but inherited proclivities act upon her mind like a multiplying galvanometer, to augment indefinitely the amount of the deflection.Tendencyis immanent even in spinsters, to warp them from intellect to baby-love.’ (Essay: “Odds and Ends of Alpine Life.”) Thus, if we could, by preaching our pet ideal, or in any other way induce one generation of women to turn to a new pursuit, we should have accomplished a step towards bending all future womanhood in the same direction.”—Frances Power Cobbe (Essay: “The Final Cause of Woman”).

See also end of Note XXIV., 1.

8.—“Abnormal fruits of birth...”

Dr. John Thorburn, in his “Lecture introductory to the Summer Course on Obstetric Medicine,” Victoria University, Manchester, 1884, says:—“Let me briefly remind you of what occurs at each menstrual period. During nearly one week out of every four there occurs the characteristic phenomenon of menstruation, which in itself has some temporaryimpoverishing effect, though, in health, nature speedily provides the means of recuperation. Along with this we have a marked disturbance in the circulation of the pelvis, leading to alterations in the weight, conformation, and position of theuterus. We have also tissue changes occurring,not perhaps yet thoroughly understood, but leading to ruptures in the ovary, and to exfoliation of the uterine lining membrane,a kind of modified abortion, in fact.These changes in most instances are accompanied by signs of pain and discomfort, which, if they were not periodic and physiological, would be considered as symptoms of disease.”

(The italics are not in the original.) Here is certainly cogent evidence of “abnormal fruit of birth,” and the learned doctor seems to be on the verge of making the involuntary discovery. But he follows the usual professional attempt (see Note XXX., 4) to class menstruation as a physiological and not a pathological fact; as a natural, painful incident, and not an acquired painful consequence. His half-declared argument, that, because an epoch of pain is periodic it is therefore not symptomatic of disease, is a theory as unsatisfactory as novel.

Id.... Some of the facts connected with parthenogenesis, alternate generation, the impregnation of insects, &c., passed on through more than one generation, would show by analogy this class of phenomena not extranatural or unprecedented, but abnormal and capable of rectification or reduction to pristine normality or non-existence. The fact of occasional instances of absence of menstruation, yet with a perfect potentiality of child-bearing, indicates this latter possibility. That the male being did not correspondingly suffer in personal physiological sequence is explicable on the ground that the masculine bodily function of parentage cannot be subjected to equal forced sexual abuse; though in the male sex also there is indication that excess may leave hereditary functional trace. And that, again, a somewhat analogous physical abnormality may be induced by man in otheranimals, compare the intelligent words of George Eliot in her poem, “A Minor Prophet”:—

“... milkmaids who drew milk from cows,With udders kept abnormal for that end.”

“... milkmaids who drew milk from cows,

With udders kept abnormal for that end.”

In confirmation of which see “Report of the Committee, consisting of Mr. E. Bidwell, Professor Boyd Dawkins, and others, appointed for the purpose of preparing a Report on the Herds of Wild Cattle in Chartley Park, and other parks in Great Britain.” The Committee state, concerning a herd of wild cattle at Somerford Park, near Congleton, of which herd “the cows are all regularly milked,” that “The udders of the cows here are as large as in ordinary domestic cows, which is not the case in the herds which are not milked.”—(“Report of the British Association,” 1887, p. 141.)

1.—“Misread by man...”

“You say ‘We marry our girls when they reach puberty,’ and you take as indication of that stage one only, and that the least certain, of the many changes which go to make up maturity. It is the least certain because the most variable, and dependent more upon climate and conditions of life than upon any true physical development. No one would deny that a strong country girl of thirteen was more mature physically than a girl of eleven brought up in the close, unwholesome atmosphere of a crowded city, yet you say the latter has attained to puberty, and that the former has not. Into such discrepancies has this physiological error led you.Without going into the domain of physiology for proof of assertion, let me draw your attention to the very practical proof of its truth, which you have in the fact well-known to you all, that girls married at this so-called period of puberty do not, as a rule, bear children till some years later,i.e., till they really approach maturity. I allow that you share this error with all but modern physiologists. Even if marriage is delayed till fourteen, where conception takes place immediately, sterility follows after; but where the girl is strong and healthy there is a lapse of three or four years before child-bearing begins, a proof that puberty had not been reached till then, although menstruation had been all the time existent. Of course there are exceptional cases, but does not the consensus of experience point to these as general truths?”—Mrs. Pechey Phipson, M.D. (Address to Hindoos).

Id.“...sign of his misdeed.”

See Note XXVI., 6.

4.—“...victim to his adult rage.”

Of this, as existent to the present age, abundant direct and collateral evidence is given by abrochureentitled “A Practical View of the Age of Consent Act, for the benefit of the Mahomedan community in general, by the Committee of the Mahomedan Literary Society of Calcutta,” published by that Society, in June, 1891, as “an accurate exposition of the object and scope of the new law, in the clearest possible language, for the benefit of the Mahomedans,particularly the ignorant classes, and circulated widely in the vernacular languages for that purpose.”

The following are extracts from the pamphlet:—

Par. 1. “Now that the Age of Consent Act has been passed by his Excellency the Viceroy, in Council, and as there is every likelihood of its provisions not being sufficiently well understood by the Mahomedan community in general, and by the ignorant Mahomedans in particular, owing to the use of technical legal phraseology in the drafting of the Act, it seems to the Committee of Management of the Mahomedan Literary Society of Calcutta, to be highly desirable that the object and intention of the Government in passing this Act, as well as its scope and the manner in which it is to be administered by the Criminal Authorities, should be laid down on paper in the clearest and easiest language possible, for the information and instruction of the Mahomedan population, and particularly of such of them as are not conversant with legal technicalities.”

Par. 2. “The Committee are of opinion that such a course will be highly beneficial to members of their community, inasmuch as it will show to them distinctly what action on the part of a Mahomedan husband towards his young wife has been made, by the recent legislation, a heinous criminal offence of no less enormity than the offence ofrape, and punishable with the same heavy punishment.”

Par. 3. “It is hoped that they will thereby be put on their guard against committing, or allowing the commission of an act whichthey have hitherto been accustomed to think lawful and innocent, but which has now been made into a heinous offence....”

Par. 9. “... There has already been a provision in the Indian Penal Code, passed more than thirty years ago, that a man having sexual intercourse with his own wife, with or without her consent, shebeing under the age of ten years, shall be considered guilty of the offence ofrape, and shall be liable to transportation for life, or to rigorous or simple imprisonment for ten years.”

Par. 10. “From this it follows that, under the Penal Code a man having sexual intercourse with his own wife, with or without her consent, if she isabove tenyears of age, shall not beconsidered to have committed the offence ofrape. But the Act that has just been passed, in amendment of the above provision in the Penal Code,raisesthe age of consent fromtentotwelveyears, and provides that a man having sexual intercourse with his own wife, even with her consent, shall be considered to be guilty of the offence of rape, if the wife be of any age undertwelve completed years. This is all the change that has been made in the law.”

Par. 11. “It having been ascertained, from various sources, that in some parts of the country husbands cohabit with their wives before they have attained to the age oftwelveyears, and even before they have arrived atpuberty, the result of such intercourse being in many cases to cause injury to the health, and even danger to the life of the girls, and to generate internal maladies which make them miserable throughout their lives, and such a state of things having come to the notice of Government, they have considered it their duty to put a stop to it, and this is the object of the present legislation.”

Par. 12. “The law does not interfere with the age at which a girl may be married, but simply prohibits sexual intercourse with her by her husband before she istwelveyears of age.”

Par. 13. “It is thereforeincumbentupon all husbands and their guardians (if they are very young and inexperienced lads) to be very careful that sexual intercourse does not take place until the girl-wife haspassedthe age oftwelveyears. It will also be the duty of the guardians of the girl-wife not to allow her husband to cohabit with her until she has attained that age.”

Par. 17. “... The Mahomedan law (i.e., religious law) distinctly sanctions consummation of marriageonlywhen the wife has reached puberty, and has besides attained such physical development as renders her fit for sexual intercourse, and it isnot imperativeupon a Mahomedan husband to consummate marriage with his wife when she isunderthe age oftwelveyears. Even in those rare cases in which the wife attains to puberty and the necessary physical development before the age oftwelve, a Mahomedan husbandmay, without infringing any canon of the Mahommedan Ecclesiastical Law,abstainfrom consummating his marriage with heruntilshe attains that age.

Par. 18. “The above will clearly show that the Act recentlypassed by the Legislature does not, in any way, interfere with the Mahomedan religion, andnoMahomedan husband will be considered to have committed a sin if he abstains from consummating marriage with his wifebeforeshe istwelveyears of age.”

(The pamphlet is published, as aforesaid, by the Mahomedan Literary Society of Calcutta, of which the patron is the Hon. Sir Charles A. Elliott, K.C.S.I., C.I.E., and the president Prince Mirza Jahan Kadar Bahadur (of the Oudh family), and is signed by the secretary, Nawab Abdool Luteef Bahadur, C.I.E.; Calcutta, 16 Taltollah, 22nd June, 1891.)

The italics, as above, exist in the original (with the exception of those in Par. 3), and serve, singularly enough, to point for us a moral very much deeper than that intended. It is a happy fact that British feeling, supported by the growing sentiment of the more intelligent and educated of the native population, has effected even so slight an amelioration of law and custom, and we may hope for and press forward to further improvement. Though the utterance quoted above is only that of the Mahomedan section, it is, of course, understood that the law does not apply or point to them alone, but to all the peoples and sects of India; and that the approval of this legislation is also general among the enlightened of those other creeds. (See end of Note XVII., 8.)

Singular confirmatory evidence as to the distressing prevalence of this child-marriage is incidentally given in the following paragraph from theTimesof 31st March, 1892:—

“A correspondent of theTimes of Indiamentions some oddinstances of minor difficulties which have occurred in the working of the amended Factory Act, which came into force in India at the commencement of the present year. The limit of age for ‘full-timers’ in factories is fixed at fourteen years, and as very few native operatives know their children’s ages, or even their own, the medical officer has, in passing lads and girls for work, to judge the age as best he can—generally, as in the case of horses, by examining their teeth. If he concludes that they are under fourteen, he reduces them to ‘half-timers.’ In one Bombay mill recently a number of girls were thus sent back as under age who were actually mothers, and several boys who were fathers were also reduced; and one of the latter was the father, it is said, of three children. The case of these lads is particularly hard, for, with a wife and child, or perhaps children, to support, life, on the pay of a ‘half-timer,’ must be a terrible struggle.”

Lest it should be objected that such abuses—with their consequences—as have been instanced in India, are peculiar to that country or civilisation, and that their discussion has therefore no bearing on our practices in England, and the physical consequences ensuant here, it will be salutary to recall what has been our own national conduct in this matter of enforcement of immature physical relations on girl children or “wives” within times of by no means distant date. Blackstone tells in his “Commentaries,” Book II., Chap. VIII., that “The wife must be above nine years old at her husband’s death, otherwise she shall not be endowed, though in Bracton’s time the age was indefinite, and dower was then only due ‘si uxor possit dotem promereri,et virum sustinere.’” Whereupon Ed. Christian makes the following note, worthy of the most careful meditation:—“Lord Coke informs us that ‘if the wife be past the age of nine years at the time of her husband’s death, she shall be endowed, of what age soever her husband be, albeit he werebutfouryears old.Quia junior non potest dotem promereri,et virum sustinere.’ (Coke on Litt., 33.) This we are told by that grave and reverend judge without any remark of surprise or reprobation. But it confirms the observation of Montesquieu in the ‘Spirit of Laws,’ Book XXVI., Chap. III. ‘There has been,’ says he, ‘much talk of a law in England which permitted girls seven years old to choose a husband. This law was shocking two ways; it had no regard to the time when Nature gives maturity to the understanding, nor to the time when she gives maturity to the body.’ It is abundantly clear, both from our law and history, that formerly such early marriages were contracted as in the present times are neither attempted nor thought of.

“This was probably owing to the right which the lord possessed of putting up to sale the marriage of his infant tenant. He no doubt took the first opportunity of prostituting (i.e., selling in marriage) the infant to his own interest, without any regard to age or inclinations. And thus what was so frequently practised and permitted by the law would cease even in other instances to be considered with abhorrence.If the marriage of a female was delayed till she was sixteen, this benefit was entirely lost to the lord her guardian.

“Even the 18 Eliz., cap. 7, which makes it a capital crime to abuse a consenting female child under the age of ten years, seems to leave an exception for these marriages by declaring only thecarnal and unlawfulknowledge of such woman-child to be a felony. Hence the abolition of the feudal wardships and marriage at the Restoration may perhapshave contributed not less to the improvement of the morals than of the liberty of the people.”—(Blackstone’s Comm., Christian’s Edition, 1830, Vol. II., p. 131.)

6.—“...manner...”

“Manner,” or “custom” is the early Biblical definition for this habit (videGen. xviii. 11, and xxxi. 35). It may be noticed that the word is not rendered or translated as “nature.” It is also called “sickness” (Lev. xx. 18); and “pollution” (Ezek. xxii. 10). See also Note XXV. 8.

The authorised version of the Bible is here referred to. The euphemisms attempted in the recent revised version as amendments of some of these passages are equally consonant with the argument of this note.

1.—“Vicarious punishment...”

Revolting was the shock to the writer, coming, some years ago, with unprejudiced and ingenuous mind, to the study of the so-called “Diseases of Women,” on finding that nearly the whole of these special “diseases,” including menstruation, were due, directly or collaterally, to one form or other ofmasculineexcess or abuse. Here is a nearly coincident opinion, afterwards met with:—“The diseases peculiar to women are so many, of so frequent occurrence, and of such severity, that half the time of the medical profession is devoted to their care, and more than half its revenues depend upon them. We have libraries of books upon them, special professorships in our medical colleges, and hosts of doctors who give them their exclusive attention....The books and professors are all at fault. They have no knowledge of the causes or nature of these diseases” (or at least they do not publish it, or act on it), “and no idea of their proper treatment. Women are everywhere outraged and abused. When the full chapter of woman’s wrongs and sufferings is written, the world will be horrified at the hideous spectacle....”—T. L. Nichols, M.D. (“Esoteric Anthropology,” p. 198).

So, again, in speaking of menorrhagia:—“The causes of this disease, whatever they are, must be removed. Thousands of women are consigned to premature graves; some by the morbid excesses of their own passions, but far more by the sensual and selfish indulgences of those who claim the legal right to murder them in this manner, whom no law of homicide can reach, and upon whose victims no coroner holds an inquest.”—(Op. cit., p. 301.)

2.—“...grievous toll...”

And this in every grade of society, even to the pecuniary loss, as well as discomfort, of the labouring classes of women.

“Statistics of sickness in the Post Office show that women” (these are unmarried women) “are away from their work more days than men.”—(Sidney Webb, at British Association, 1891.)

5.—“...no honest claim.”

TheTimesof Aug. 3, 1892, reports a paper by Professor Lombroso, of Turin (at the International Congress of Psychology, London), in which occurs the following:—“Itmust be observed that woman was exposed to more pains than man, because man imposed submission and often even slavery upon her. As a girl, she had to undergo the tyranny of her brothers, and the cruel preferences accorded by parents to their male children. Woman was the slave of her husband, and still more of social prejudices.... Let them not forget the physical disadvantage under which she had to labour. She might justly call herself the pariah of the human family.”

The word is apt and corroborative, for it was no honest act—it was not Nature, but human cruelty and injustice that formed a pariah.

8.—“...opprobrious theme.”

Conf.ancient and mediæval superstitions and accusations on the subject. Raciborski notes these aspersions (Traité, p. 13):—“Pline prétendait que les femmes étant au moment des règles pouvaient dessécher les arbres par de simples attouchements, faire périr des fruits, &c., &c.” And a further writer says more fully:—“Pliny informs us that the presence of a menstrual woman turns wine sour, causes trees to shed their fruit, parches up their young fruit, and makes them for ever barren, dims the splendour of mirrors and the polish of ivory, turns the edge of sharpened iron, converts brass into rust, and is the cause of canine rabies. In Isaiah xxx. 22, the writer speaks of the defilement of graven images, which shall be cast away as a menstruous cloth; and in Ezekiel xviii. 6, and xxxvi. 17, allusions of the same import are made.” Unless we accept the antiquated notion of a “special curse” on women, howreconcile the idea of an “ordinance of Nature” being so repulsively and opprobriously alluded to? Well may it be said:—“Ingratitude is a hateful vice. Not only the defects, but even the illnesses which have their source in the excessive” (man-caused) “susceptibility of woman, are often made by men an endless subject of false accusations and pitiless reproaches.”—(M. le Docteur Cerise, in his Introduction to Roussel, p. 34.)

1.—“Thoughts like to these are breathings of the truth.”

“I submit that there is a spiritual, a poetic, and, for aught we know, a spontaneous and uncaused element in the human mind, which ever and anon suddenly, and without warning, gives us a glimpse and a forecast of the future, and urges us to seize truth, as it were, by anticipation. In attacking the fortress we may sometimes storm the citadel without stopping to sap the outworks. That great discoveries have been made in this way the history of our knowledge decisively proves.”—H. T. Buckle (“Influence of Women on the Progress of Knowledge”).

Id.... “Then there is the inner consciousness—the psyche—that has never yet been brought to bear upon life and its questions. Besides which, there is a supersensuous reason. Observation is perhaps more powerful an organon than either experiment or empiricism. If the eye is always watching, and the mind on the alert, ultimately chance supplies the solution.”—Jefferies (“The Story of My Heart,” Chap. X.).

Id.... “Women only want hints, finger-boards, and finding these, will follow them to Nature. The quick-glancing intellect will gather up, as it moves over the ground, the almost invisible ends and threads of thought, so that a single volume may convey to the mind of woman truths which man would require to have elaborated in four or six.”—Eliza W. Farnham (“Woman and Her Era,” Vol. II., p. 420).

3.—“...futile mannish pleas...”

Roussel details fully some nine of these main theories or explanations of the habitude. (“Système,” Note A.)

6.—“In blindness born...”

“Tous ces faits nous induisent fortement à conjecturer qu’il a dû exister un temps ou les femmes n’étaient point assujettiés à ce tribut incommode; que le flux menstruel bien loin d’être une institution naturelle, est au contraire un besoin factice contracté dans l’état sociale.”—Roussel (Op. cit., Chap. II.).

Note that menstruation (scriptural “sickness”) remains a pathological incident, not, as child-birth, an indubitably natural and normal physical function.

See also Note XXX., 4.

Id.—“...in error fostered...”

Not only the habit itself, but its causes. And this by medical,i.e., assumedly curative, practitioners. As to which “fostering,” medical and clinical manuals afford abundant spontaneous and ingenuous testimony, and also of otherprofessional practices of instigation, or condonation, or complicity, at which a future age will look aghast.Conf.the following from Whitehead, “On the Causes and Treatment of Abortion and Sterility” (Churchill, 1847):—

“In a case under my care of pregnancy in a woman, withextreme deformity of the pelvis, wherein it was considered advisable toprocure abortionin the fifth month of the process, the ergot alone was employed, and, at first, with the desired effect.” [The italics are not in the doctor’s book; he remarks nothing wrong or immoral, and—in an unprofessional person—illegal, and open to severest penalty; he is simply detailing the effects of a specified medicament.] “It was given inthree successivepregnancies, and in each instance labour pains came on after eight or ten doses had been administered, and expulsion was effected by the end of the third day. It was perseveringly tried in a fourth pregnancy in the same individual, and failed completely” (p. 254).

There is an ominous silence as to whether the patient’s health or life also “failed completely.”

See further a case noted on p. 264,op. cit.:—

1st child, still-born, in eighth month, April 1832.2nd child, abortion at end of 6th month.3rd child, abortion at end of 6th month.4th child, abortion at end of 5th month.5th child, abortion soon after quickening, Summer, 1838.6th child, still-born, 7th October, 1839.7th child, no clear record given.

1st child, still-born, in eighth month, April 1832.

2nd child, abortion at end of 6th month.

3rd child, abortion at end of 6th month.

4th child, abortion at end of 5th month.

5th child, abortion soon after quickening, Summer, 1838.

6th child, still-born, 7th October, 1839.

7th child, no clear record given.

Also other somewhat parallel cases given, the constant incidental accompaniment being painful physical suffering and grave inconvenience, frequently with fatal results. Medical records are full of similar histories. To the unsophisticated mind, two questions sternly suggest themselves: Firstly, Is it meet or right for an honourable profession, orany individual member of it, to beparticeps criminisin such proceedings as the above? and, secondly, is the indicated connubial morality on any higher level, or likely to be attended with any better consequences, than the prior ignorant or savage abuses which are responsible for woman’s present physical condition?

The advocacy of cardinal reform in this direction—in the wrong done both to the individual and the race—is urgent part of the duty of our newly-taught medical women. Nor are their eyes closed nor their mouths dumb in the matter. Dr. Caroline B. Winslow is quoted by theWoman’s Journalof Boston, U.S., 16th Jan., 1892, as saying in an article on “The Right to be Well Born”: “What higher motive can a man have in life than to labour steadily to prepare the way for the coming of a higher, better humanity?... Dense ignorance prevails in our profession, and is reflected by laymen. All their scientific studies and years of medical practice have failed to convict men of the wrongs and outrages done to women; wrongs that no divine laws sanction, and no legal enactments can avert....

“The physician is a witness of the modern death-struggles and horrors of maternity; he sees lives pass out of his sight; he makes vain attempts to restore broken constitutions, broken by violating divine laws that govern organic matter: laws that are obeyed by all animal instinct; yet all this knowledge, observation, and experience have failed to reveal to the benighted intellect and obtuse moral sense of the ordinary practitioner this great wrong. He makes no note of the unhallowed abuse that only man dares; neither will he mark the disastrous and deteriorating effect of thiswaste of vital force on his own offspring. The mental, moral, and physical imperfections of the rising generation are largely the result of outraged motherhood.”

7.—“The spurious function growing...”

Mr. Francis Darwin, in a paper on “Growth Curvatures in Plants,” says of the biologist, Sachs, who had made researches in the same phenomena: “He speaks, too, ofcustomoruse,building upthe specialised ‘instinct’ for certain curvatures. (Sachs’ ‘Arbeiten,’ 1879.) These are expressions consistent with our present views.”—(Presidential Address to the Biological Section of the British Association, 1891.)

In the same section was also read a paper by Francis Darwin and Dorothea F. N. Pertz, “On theArtificialProduction of Rhythm in Plants,” in which were detailed results very apposite to this “growing of a spurious function.”

8.—“...almost natural use the morbid mode appears.”

“So true is it that unnatural generally only means uncustomary, and that everything which is usual appears natural.”—J. S. Mill (“The Subjection of Women,” p. 22).

1.—“Grievous the hurt...”

Buckle notes one of the many incidental evil results in his “Common Place Book,” Art. 2133:—

“It has been remarked that in our climate women aremore frequently affected with insanity than men, and it has been considered very unfavourable to recovery if they should be worse at the time of menstruation, or have their catamenia in very small or immoderate quantities.” (Paris and Fonblanque’s “Medical Jurisprudence,” Vol. I., p. 327).

5.—“...reintegrate in frame and mind.”

“Thus then you have first to mould her physical frame, and then, as the strength she gains will permit you, to fill and temper her mind with all knowledge and thoughts which tend to confirm its natural instincts of justice, and refine its natural tact of love.”—John Ruskin (“Of Queens’ Gardens,” p. 154).

5, 6.—“...given in our hand,Is power the evil hazard to command.”

5, 6.—“...given in our hand,

Is power the evil hazard to command.”

“That which is thoughtlessly credited to a non-existent intelligence should really be claimed and exercised by the human race. It is ourselves who should direct our affairs, protecting ourselves from pain, assisting ourselves, succouring and rendering our lives happy. We must do for ourselves what superstition has hitherto supposed an intelligence to do for us.... These things speak with a voice of thunder. From every human being whose body has been racked with pain; from every human being who has suffered from accident or disease; from every human being drowned, burned, or slain by negligence, there goes up a continually increasing cry louder than the thunder. Anawe-inspiring cry dread to listen to, against which ears are stopped by the wax of superstition and the wax of criminal selfishness. These miseries are your doing, because you have mind and thought and could have prevented them. You can prevent them in the future. You do not even try.”—R. Jefferies (“The Story of My Heart,” pp. 149et seq.).

Id.... “From one philosophical point of view, that of Du Prel, the experiments are already regarded as proving that the soul is an organising as well as a thinking power.... Bernheim saw an apoplectic paralysis rapidly improved by suggestion.... The more easily an idea can be established in the subject, the quicker a therapeutic result can be induced.... I think that hardly any of the newest discoveries are so important to the art of healing, apart from surgery, as the study of suggestion.... Now that it has been proved that even organic changes can be caused by suggestion, we are obliged to ascribe a much greater importance to mental influences than we have hitherto done.”—Dr. Albert Moll (“Hypnotism,” pp. 122, 318, 320, 325, 327).

Id.... “It would, I fancy, have fared but ill with one who, standing where I now stand, in what was then a thickly-peopled and fashionable part of London, should have broached to our ancestors the doctrine which I now propound to you—that all their hypotheses were alike wrong; that the plague was no more, in their sense, Divine judgment, than the fire was the work of any political, or of any religious, sect; but that they were themselves the authors of both plague and fire, and that they must look tothemselves to prevent the recurrence of calamities, to all appearance so peculiarly beyond the reach of human control.... We, in later times, have learned somewhat of Nature, and partly obey her. Because of this partial improvement of our natural knowledge and of that fractional obedience, we have no plague; because that knowledge is still very imperfect and that obedience yet incomplete, typhus is our companion and cholera our visitor. But it is not presumptuous to express the belief that, when our knowledge is more complete and our obedience the expression of our knowledge, London will count her centuries of freedom from typhus and cholera as she now gratefully reckons her two hundred years of ignorance of that plague which swooped upon her thrice in the first half of the seventeenth century.”—T. H. Huxley (“On Improving Natural Knowledge”).

And the pestilent malady from which woman specially still suffers is as definitely the result of man’s ignorant or thoughtless misdoing, and is as indubitably amenable to rectification, as the plague of the bye-gone ages, or the typhus and cholera of the present.

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