The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast — Volume 01Brann, William Cowper
General
The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast — Volume 01
Brann, William Cowper
Brann, William Cowper, 1855-1898; Essays; Reformers
she ever becomes a wife and mother she will learn
somewhat of the caprices of her sex subsequent to
conception that will materially modify her complaint.
Reasoning by analogy from the inferior order of animals to
man hagled more than one enthusiastic physiologist
into serious error. The medical profession is continually
alarming the country. It has been but a little while since
men were assured that they were poisoning their babies by
kissing them, and now they are flatly told that their wives
regard the nuptial couch with aversion. Havana cigars give
a fellow the "tobacco heart," plug exhausts the saliva
necessary to digestion, and bourbon whiskey burns his
stomach full of blowholes. Beer makes him bilious, tea and
coffee knock out his nerves, while plum-pudding gives him
dyspepsia, grape pie appendicitis and hot biscuits
undermine his general health. Emotional preaching afflicts
him with "jerks," golf has a tendency to paresis, the round
dance infects him with philogyny and bicycling deforms his
face. We might just as well be dead and with Lucifer as
believe these doctors, for life wouldn't be half worth the
living if we heeded their laws. My brethren of the loaded
capsule and sociable stethoscope are evidently off their
equipoise. Babies flourish much better on the kiss
micrococcus than on the slipper bacillus, few women will
live with impotent husbands, and nearly every centenarian
is a collocation of bad habits that, by all the laws of
Hippocrates, should have buried him at the halfway house.
It may seem unchivalrous to say so, but it is a stubborn fact
nevertheless, and merits the consideration of Dr. Maxwell,
that more men are misled by lustful women than maids
betrayed by designing men. In fact, no man--at least no
civilized man--makes improper advances to a woman
unless he receives some encouragement, being deterred
both by chivalrous sentiment and respect for the persuasive
shotgun. Despite the picture drawn by the lady lecturer and
others of the horrors of married life, I opine that the woman
who captures a sure-enough man who isn't negotiating
simply for a cook and chambermaid, and who can be
depended upon to play Romeo to her Juliet for sixty
years or so, should be in no unseemly haste to break into
that heaven where Hymen is given the marble heart, and
the matron who breaks into the game with seven obedient
husbands to her credit has no advantage over the old maid
who never swallowed a pillow while watching a man clad
only in a single garment and a cerulean halo of profanity,
making frantic swipes under the bureau for a missing collar-
button.
* * *
HYPNOTIC POWER OF HER.
I have received a letter from Tyler, Texas, propounding
the following fateful conundrum: "Can Woman Hypnotize
Man?" My correspondent adds that "by answering, the
ICONOCLAST will confer a favor on the people of Tyler,
decide a bet and settle a vexatious question."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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