As the years go on, we may have great hopes that the regarding of
psychology as just as much a necessary part of a doctor’s education as
biology, or therapeutics will produce a better feeling among medical
men in regard to the great question of which the statistics of the
birth-rate form the gauge. Doctors will probably understand that harm
done to the body and harm done to the soul react upon one another with
remorseless certainty, and that there can be no real separation of
spirit and matter. And directly this is understood we shall never find
medical men recommending and assisting what Dr. Roux calls “sterile
love” though some of us could find a very different name for it.
The layman unhesitatingly accepts the advice of his physician, and
here “private judgment” hardly exists. If a priest tells a certain
type of Englishman that Evening Communions spoil and maim our holiest
sacrament, and are bad for the soul, he will resent it, and say that
he will choose for himself in the matter. Yet if a doctor tells the
same person that it is dangerous to eat mushrooms that have been
gathered for more than two days, or that the irritation at his wrists
is a symptom of uric acid in the blood, there will be no question of
disbelief. The influence of doctors is incalculable, they rule us by
our fear of death and our instinct of self-preservation, and rarely do
we find that they abuse the trust reposed in them, or use their great
power for ill always excepting the instance under discussion. When,
therefore, the medical profession can be brought to see the preventive
check system as it really is, when doctors understand that
interference with natural laws induces a deterioration of character
and temperament which eventually acts upon the body for its harm, and
tends to race-degeneracy, then much will be gained. And when they
progress still further in the coming reconciliation of science with
the Christian Revelation, and own that the laws of God, set out and
promulgated by His Holy Church, are no less binding than the laws made
known by the revelation of science, then the battle will be half won.
The final victory or defeat will be with the priests and ministers of
every church and sect, the men who are the physicians of our souls.
The last few pages have been occupied with a statement of the
Neo-Malthusian propaganda. I have been careful rather to understate
than exaggerate the case. Much that I might have included,
corroborative testimony from people who know, individual instances,
letters, and so forth, has been rejected for the purposes of this
essay. Were I writing another book upon the subject I should have used
this material. In a collection of papers devoted to various subjects,
and which will have a more general appeal than a work devoted entirely
to vital statistics, it is impossible. But any one who has followed me
thus far may be sure that I have been strictly temperate in statement.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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