What a Young Wife Ought to KnowDrake, Emma F. Angell (Emma Frances Angell)
Science
What a Young Wife Ought to Know
Drake, Emma F. Angell (Emma Frances Angell)
Infants -- Care; Marriage; Women -- Health and hygiene
Again Dr. Holbrook says: “We have evidence among primitive people that
they understand the necessity of limiting offspring, and practice it in
a perfectly healthful way. The natives in Uganda, a region in Central
Africa, offer an illustration: ‘The women rarely have more than two
or three children; the practice being that when a woman has borne a
child she is to live apart from her husband for two years, at which age
children are weaned.’ Seaman, speaking of the Fijians, says: ‘After
childbirth, husband and wife keep apart three and even four years, so
that no other baby may interfere with the time considered necessary for
suckling children.’”
It occasionally happens that the wife during pregnancy is troubled with
a passion far beyond what she has ever experienced at any other time.
This in every instance is due to some unnatural condition, and should be
considered a disease, and for it the physician should be consulted.
The husband rightly rejoices in the name of protector of his wife, and
how quick is he to resent any slight or fancied insult which may be
offered her. Nowhere can he show more loyally his love and respect for
her, than in the tender appreciation which he shows her in the control
of her own person. Nay, more than yielding simply to her wishes, he
should be the leader in these things if necessary, and guide her into the
stronger way.
The sedentary life of many men renders them a prey to the gratification
of their lower natures. To all such men exercise becomes a religious
duty, and should be practiced most persistently until their physical
natures are well tired, and the sexual nature will not then dominate the
finer and nobler instincts of their being.
I was pained by the remark of a cultured lady, when speaking of
continence in the married life, a few days ago in my office. She said:
“Does it not seem a strange thing, doctor, that among those who seem most
careless in these things, are many ministers and other good men from whom
we should expect higher and nobler living.” I could but assent to this,
for doctors, unfortunately for their comfort, listen to many confessions
of sadness and unrighteousness in marital relations, and some of them
come from sources which the world would little dream of.
The lady added: “I have an intimate friend, a few years younger
than myself, who married a minister, and one who stands high in the
denomination of which he is a member. They have had seven children,
almost as fast as it is possible to have them, and the wife is a
broken-down woman, spiritless and unhappy, a common drudge at an age
when she should be full of life and joy, were things as they should be.
One remark shows the feeling which this state of affairs has engendered.
When I asked her why her husband allowed such a state of things to exist,
she said, ‘He doesn’t care,’ and she said it with such a dispirited and
utterly discouraged air that my heart ached for her.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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