Should health be a consideration in choosing a husband? Most assuredly. Were the fortunes of none of the human family, save yourselves, affected by your choice, it would make less difference; but while with this generation lies in large measure the health and happiness of the next, the question of health in matrimony is one of great importance. When it is no longer a disputed question that consumption, cancer, scrofula, insanity, and a host of lesser ills, are transmitted from generation to generation, any thoughtful young woman will consider her responsibility in the matter in question. If you have the spirit of the martyrs in you, and are prepared to give your life to nursing your husband and children, even this self-abnegation will not atone for the wrong of thrusting upon the world more degenerates. You would need to trace the history of only one such family through a few generations, to note the mental, moral and physical degeneration, which results from the union of invalids. Even where but one of the parents is unhealthy, it is a sad part of the law of heredity, that the children more often follow the weaker parent, rather than the stronger. Dr. Guernsey, a well-known medical writer, says: “Young men marrying with the slightest taint of syphilis in the blood, will surely transmit the disease to their children. Beside this, thousands of abortions transpire every year from this cause alone, the poison being so destructive as to kill the child in-utero, before it is matured for birth; and even if the child is born alive, it is liable to break down with the most loathsome disorders, and to die during dentition. The few that survive this period are short-lived and unhealthy so long as they do live.” Knowing this, is it not true that too much has been said derogatory to the parents having part in choosing their children’s companions in life? If in anything the parents’ opinion is of consequence, it is here where the life happiness and usefulness of their children are concerned. But the wisdom of the parents must be used in the early days of acquaintance, before the attachment has blossomed into sentimental love. Then the wisdom is interposed too late. In discovering the character of your daughter’s associates, the family physician should be a valuable assistant. If he be a friend, as well as physician, he will gladly come to your aid. “A striking indication of the spreading uneasiness, in regard to marriage, is given in a bill recently introduced into the Ohio legislature, whereby it was proposed that all candidates for marital union should be required to undergo examination, and marriage be forbidden to such persons as shall be believed, through actual condition or hereditary tendencies, to be unfit for the function of parentage.”