Private Sex Advice to Women: For Young Wives and those who Expect to be MarriedArmitage, Robert B.
Science
Private Sex Advice to Women: For Young Wives and those who Expect to be Married
Armitage, Robert B.
Marriage; Sex instruction; Women -- Health and hygiene
Ribot says: "Every work on insanity is a plea for heredity." Maudsley
says: "More than one-fourth and less than one-half of all insanity is
heredity." Riddell says: "Of the great causes of insanity, alcoholism is
perhaps the greatest, while morbid heredity ranks next. Insanity is
largely the result of degeneracy. Most persons who become mentally
deranged are the offspring of neurotic, drunken, insane or feeble-minded
parents." While it by no means follows that one must manifest traits of
insanity or mental disturbance simply because one of his parents
suffered from a like trouble--and we believe that many a one has
frightened himself into those conditions by pure auto-suggestion
inspired by a one-sided belief in heredity--still it is unquestionably
true that a fair mind must concede that wisdom and a proper sense of
right and justice would require that parents of unsound mental
tendencies should not be permitted to bring into the world children who
might inherit a tendency toward a like, or worse, condition.
The Eugenists also have called the attention of the thinking public to
the danger of deaf-and-dumb persons transmitting their condition to
their offspring. Of this Dr. Saleeby says: "The condition known as
deaf-mutism is congenital or due to innate defect in about one-half of
all the cases in Great Britain." Dr. Love says: "In every institution,
examples may be found of deaf-mute children who have had one or two deaf
parents or grandparents, and of two or more deaf-mute children belonging
to one family." A case is noted in England where a deaf-and-dumb man
having been killed by an accident, his relatives could not identify the
body, as the wife and sister were blind, deaf-and-dumb, and the four
children were deaf-and-dumb. The man and his wife were both
deaf-and-dumb when they were married, the wife being also blind.
Perhaps no subject has aroused the active Eugenists to a greater pitch
of indignation than the ascertained results of the effect upon offspring
of parents addicted to the over-indulgence in alcohol. It is known by
the records that a large number of cases of feeble-mindedness and actual
insanity are due to inebriety of parents, and often of grandparents, or
ancestors for several generations. Epilepsy, idiocy, and criminality are
also traceable in many cases to drunkenness of parents. Dr. Saleeby,
moved by indignation by the ascertained results of the investigations of
the Eugenists, has said: "Parenthood must be forbidden to the
dipsomaniac, the chronic inebriate, or the drunkard, whether male or
female."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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