Physical degeneracy is also often a consequence of procreation during the alcoholic intoxication of one or both parents. A peculiar arrest of growth and development of body and mind takes place, and, in some instances, the unfortunate children, although living to years of manhood, remain permanent infants, just able to stand by the side of a chair, to utter a few simple sounds, and to be amused with childish toys. During convalescence from a severe sickness, or when there is any local or constitutional disease which would be aggravated by sexual intercourse, it should be abstained from. There is reason for believing that a being procreated at a period of ill-humour, bodily indisposition, or nervous debility, may carry with it, during its whole existence, some small particles of these evils. When there exists any contagious disease, refusals are of course valid, and often a duty to the unborn. Poverty, or the wish to have no more children, can only be exceptionally allowed as a reason for the denial of all conjugal privileges. The opinion that sexual relations practised during the time of the menses engender children liable to scrofulous disease, is a mere popular prejudice. But there are other and better-founded reasons for continence during these periods. The question of intercourse during pregnancy and suckling will come up for consideration when speaking of these conditions hereafter. CONDITIONS WHEN MARITAL RELATIONS ARE PAINFUL. Nature has not designed that a function of great moment to the human race--one involving its very existence--should be attended with pain. The presence of pleasure is indicative of health, its absence of disease. But to a woman who has systematically displaced her womb by years of imprudence in conduct or dress, this act, which should be a physiological one, and free from any hurtful tendencies becomes a source of distress and even of illness. The diseases of the womb which sometimes follow matrimony are not to be traced to excessive indulgence in many cases, but to indulgence _to any extent_ by those who have altered the natural relation of the parts before marriage. A prominent physician, Prof. T. Gaillard Thomas, of New York, has said that 'upon a woman who has enfeebled her system by habits of indulgence and luxury, pressed her uterus entirely out of its normal place, and who perhaps comes to the nuptial bed with some marked uterine disorder, the result of imprudence at menstrual epochs, sexual intercourse has a _poisonous_ influence. The taking of food into the stomach exerts no hurtful influence on the digestive system; but the taking of food by a dyspeptic, who has abused and injured that organ, does so.'