Owen's Moral Physiology; or, A Brief and Plain Treatise on the Population QuestionOwen, Robert Dale
Philosophy
Owen's Moral Physiology; or, A Brief and Plain Treatise on the Population Question
Owen, Robert Dale
Birth control; Malthusianism
Yet _conjugal_ chastity is that which is especially valued. The
inconstancy of a wife commonly cuts much deeper than the dishonor of a
sister. In that case, then, which the world usually considers of the
highest importance, the fear of offspring _imposes no check whatever_.
It cannot make one iota of difference whether a married woman be
knowing in physiology or not; except perhaps, indeed, to the husband’s
advantage; in cases where the wife’s conscience induces her at least
to guard against the possibility of burthening her legal lord with the
care and support of children that are not his. Constancy, where it
actually exists, is the offspring of something more efficacious than
ignorance. And if in the wife’s case, men must and do trust to
something else, why not in all other cases, where restraint may be
considered desirable? Shall men trust in the greater, and fear to
trust in the less? Whatever any one may choose to assert regarding his
relatives’ secret inclinations to profligacy, these arguments may
convince him that if he has any safeguard at present, a perusal of
Moral Physiology will not destroy it.
’Tis strange that men, by way of suborning an argument, should be
willing thus to vilify their relatives’ character and motives, without
first carefully examining whether any thing was gained to their cause,
after all, by the vilification.
Footnote 22:
Instances innumerable might be adduced. Not one young person, for
example, in twenty, is ever told, that sexual intercourse during the
period of a woman’s courses is not unfrequently productive, to the
woman of a species of fluor albus, and sometimes (as a consequent) to
the man of symptoms very similar to those of urethritis or gonorrhœa,
but more easily removed. Yet what fact more important to be
communicated! And how ridiculous the mischievously prudish refinement
that conceals from human beings what it most deeply concerns them to
know? The following case is related by Dr. Dewees in his work on
Diseases of Females: “We have known a complaint communicated to the
male by intercourse with a woman labouring under _Pruritis_. It was
very similar to that which affected the female in its general
character. When this occurs with the married man, much disturbance is
sometimes created from a supposition that the wife has been
unfaithful, and the contrary. Indeed it has occurred in more instances
than one, within our own knowledge, where the woman has thought
herself the injured party; and in one case, the recrimination was
mutual. In this instance, the friends of the parties assembled to
determine on the terms of separation, when it was suggested, by one of
those who happened to be more rational than the rest, that before they
proceeded to such an extremity, their family physician should be
consulted. We were accordingly sent for. After an attentive hearing of
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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