The Case for Birth Control: A Supplementary Brief and Statement of FactsSanger, Margaret
Science
The Case for Birth Control: A Supplementary Brief and Statement of Facts
Sanger, Margaret
Birth control; Eugenics
_THE SEXUAL LIFE OF WOMAN IN ITS PHYSIOLOGICAL, BIOLOGICAL AND
HYGIENIC ASPECTS. E. Heinrich Kisch. Rebman Co., New York._
A woman with a tendency to alcoholism should under no circumstances be
allowed to marry. In the cases, fortunately rare, in which the drink
craving exists in women, marriage is even more undesirable than it is in
the case of men similarly afflicted, for the female drunkard is in a
position in which she can mishandle and neglect her children throughout
the entire day. P. 258.
_RASSENVERBESSERUNG. Translated from the Dutch of Dr. J. Rutgers.
Second Edition. Dresden, 1911._
Pelman examined 709 of the 834 descendants of an alcoholic vagrant,
named Ada Inke, who died in 1740. Among these were found 106
illegitimate children, 142 were vagrant beggars, 64 were charity
dependents, 181 prostitutes, 96 were tried for various offenses, among
these 7 were for murder. These descendants during 75 years cost the
State 5,000,000 marks. P. 97.
August Forel, who for years was the psychiatrist at the head of a large
insane asylum at Zurich, Switzerland, has this to say about the effects
of narcotic poisons and alcohol in particular: “The offspring tainted
with alcoholic blastophthoria suffer various bodily and physical
anomalies, among which are dwarfism, rickets, a predisposition to
tuberculosis and epilepsy, moral idiocy in general, a predisposition to
crime and mental diseases, sexual perversions, loss of suckling in
women, and many other misfortunes. But what is of much greater
importance is the fact that acute and chronic alcoholic intoxication
deteriorates the germinal protoplasm of the procreators.”
_MICHAEL F. GUYER, Ph.D., Professor of Zoology, University of
Wisconsin in “Being Well Born.”_
In an investigation on the effects of parental alcoholism on the
offspring, Sullivan (Journal of Mental Science, Vol. 45, 1899) gives
some important figures. To avoid other complications he chose female
drunkards in whom no other degenerative features were evident. He found
that among these the percentage of abortions, still-births and deaths of
infants before their third year was 55.8% as against 23.9% in sober
mothers. In answer to the objection that this high percentage may be due
merely to neglect, and not to impairment of the fetus by alcoholism, he
points out the fact, based on the history of the successive births, that
there was a progressive increase in the death-rate of offspring in
proportion to the length of time the mother had been an inebriate. P.
169.
_A TEXT BOOK OF OBSTETRICS. Barton Cooke Hirst, M.D., Professor of
Obstetrics in the University of Penn.; Gynecologist to the Howard,
the Orthopaedic and the Phil. Hospitals, etc. 7th Edition. W. B.
Saunders Co., Phil, and London, 1912._
The effect of chronic diseases of the mother upon the fetus. Women
affected with tuberculosis, cancer, or chronic malarial poisons may give
birth to a succession of dead children. P. 353.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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