I cannot be too emphatic upon these points. It is of no use to say that I am straining them to conclusions that are forced and unwarranted. That these are in accordance with fact must be allowed by every medical man at all familiar with the practice of his profession, and indeed by every layman who will for a moment think of the matter. It is one of the simplest common sense, as well as in unison with the teachings of the purest science, and its results are already showing themselves in the ill health of our women and in the gradual dying out of our native population, just as some of the means for preventing pregnancy are evincing themselves to the practised eye in the dyspepsias, the unsteady step, gray hairs, and premature decrepitude of many of our men. In pointing out the physical diseases resulting to woman from intentional abortion, I instanced insanity, of which at that time several cases, thus occasioned, had come under my observation. To this, as to some other of my views concerning the causation of insanity in women, many psychologists have been inclined to take exception. One of the most influential asylum superintendents in the country (I refer to Dr. John P. Gray, of the New York State Asylum at Utica), has lately given most emphatic approval of my views. In his Report for the present year, just published, Dr. Gray devotes several pages to this special question, taking occasion to speak very kindly of “Why Not?” and using the following impressive language: “All must admit the corrupting tendency of vice in any of its shades, and especially when in intent or fact it seeks to thwart, by actual violence, the beneficent laws of our being, and turn the purposes of God, in ordering the ‘holy estate of matrimony,’ into the basest species of prostitution. The existence of this horrid, unnatural, secret crime, carried out, often, by the mutual consent and connivance of husbands and wives, is not new. Its terrible prevalence has steadily increased. I have for many years received and treated patients whose insanity was directly traceable to this crime, through its moral and physical effects.” And again: “I need not here discuss at length the disorders consequent on this crime, in any and all of its shades, but I deem it no less than my duty to declare, as already stated, that it is, directly and indirectly, one of the causes of insanity.”[35] This being the case, well might I preface one of my earlier works by the following quotation from Granville’s Treatise on Sudden Death: “Let the legislator and moralist look to it, for as sure as there is in any nation a hidden tampering with infant life, whether frequent or occasional, systematic or accidental, so sure will the chastisement of the Almighty fall on such a nation.”[36] I pass now to discuss these rights of the husband still further, and to see whether they are unaccompanied, or not, by obligations which should control them. FOOTNOTES: