Men suffering with diseases which may be communicated by contagion or heredity should not marry. These diseases include: tuberculosis, syphilis, cancer, leprosy, epilepsy and some nervous disorders, some skin diseases and insanity. A worn-out rake has no business to marry, since marriage is not a hospital for the treatment of disease, or a reformatory institution for moral lepers. Those having a marked tendency to disease must not marry those of similar tendency. The marriage of cousins is not to be advocated. The blood relation tends to bring together persons with similar morbid tendencies. Where both are healthy, however, there seems to be no special liability to mental incompetency, though such marriages are accused of producing defective or idiot children. Men suffering from congenital defects should not marry. Natural blindness, deafness, muteness, and congenital deformities of limb are more or less likely to be passed on to their children. There are cases of natural blindness, though, to which this rule does not apply. Criminals, alcoholics, and persons disproportionate in size should not marry. In the last-mentioned, lack of mutual physical adaptability may produce much unhappiness, especially on the part of the wife. Serious local disease, sterility, and great risk in childbirth may result. Disparity of years, disparity of race, a poverty which will not permit the proper raising of children, undesirable moral character are all good reasons for not marrying. MEDICAL EXAMINATION BEFORE MARRIAGE Medical examination as a preliminary to marriage is practically more valuable than a marriage license. Since many entirely innocent young girls to-day suffer from disease, incurred either through hereditary or accidental infection, a would-be husband may be said to be quite as much entitled to protection as his bride-to-be. Prohibitive physical defects are also discovered in this connection. CHAPTER VIII SEX IN THE MARRIAGE RELATION THE WIFE Girls marry, in the final analysis, because love for the male is an innate natural principle of the female nature. At its best this love is pure and chaste. The good woman realizes that its first purpose is not mere carnal pleasure. It is a special avowal of the wife's relations to her husband, and its natural as well as moral end is the establishment of the family on the basis of a healthy progeny. BEFORE MARRIAGE