Searchlights on Health: The Science of EugenicsJefferis, B. G. (Benjamin Grant)
Philosophy
Searchlights on Health: The Science of Eugenics
Jefferis, B. G. (Benjamin Grant)
Eugenics; Hygiene; Marriage; Medicine, Popular; Sexual ethics
2. FALSE CLAIMS OF IMPOSTERS.--During the past few years a great deal
has been written on the subject, claiming that new remedies had been
discovered for the prevention of conception, etc., but these are all
money making devices to deceive the public, and enrich the pockets of
miserable and unprincipled imposters.
3. THE TRUTH OF THE MATTER.--Dr. Pancoast, an eminent authority,
says: "The truth is, there is no medicine taken internally capable of
preventing conception, and the person who asserts to the contrary, not
only speaks falsely, but is both a knave and a fool."
4. FOOLISH DREAD OF CHILDREN.--What is more deplorable and pitiable
than an old couple childless? Young people dislike the care and
confinement of children and prefer society and social entertainments
and thereby do great injustice and injury to their health. Having
children under proper circumstances never ruins the health and
happiness of any woman. In fact, womanhood is incomplete without them.
She may have a dozen or more, and still have better health than before
marriage. It is having them too close together, and when she is not in
a fit state, that her health gives way.
5. SELF-DENIAL AND FORBEARANCE.--If the husband respects his wife he
will come to her relief by exercising self-denial and forbearance, but
sometimes before the mother has recovered from the effects of bearing,
nursing and rearing one child, ere she has regained proper tone and
vigor of body and mind, she is unexpectedly overtaken, surprised by
the manifestation of symptoms which again indicate pregnancy. Children
thus begotten cannot become hardy and long-lived. But the love that
parents may feel for their posterity, by the wishes for their success,
by the hopes for their usefulness, by every consideration for their
future well-being, let them exercise caution and forbearance until
the wife becomes sufficiently healthy and enduring to bequeath her own
rugged, vital stamina to the child she bears in love.
6. A WRONG TO THE MOTHER AND CHILD.--Sometimes the mother is diseased;
the outlet from the womb, as a result of laceration by a previous
child-birth, is frequently enlarged, thus allowing conception to take
place very readily, and hence she has children in rapid succession.
Besides the wrong to the mother in having children in such rapid
succession, it is a great injustice to the babe in the womb and the
one at the breast that they should follow each other so quickly that
one is conceived while the other is nursing. One takes the vitality of
the other; neither has sufficient nourishment, and both are started in
life stunted and incomplete.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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