The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English: or, Medicine Simplified, 54th ed., One Million, Six Hundred; and Fifty Thousand — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English: or, Medicine Simplified, 54th ed., One Million, Six Hundred; and Fifty Thousand
John Stuart Mill · en
PHYSICALLY. Reciprocated love produces a general exhilaration of the
system. The elasticity of the muscles is increased, the circulation is
quickened, and every bodily function is stimulated. The duties of life
are performed with a zest and alacrity never before experienced. "It is
not possible for human beings to attain their full stature of humanity,
except by loving long and perfectly. Behold that venerable man! He is
mature in judgment, perfect in every action and expression, and saintly
in goodness. You almost worship as you behold. What rendered him thus
perfect? What rounded off his natural asperities, and moulded up his
virtues? Love mainly. It permeated every pore, so to speak, and seasoned
every fiber of his being, as could nothing else. Mark that matronly
woman. In the bosom of her family, she is more than a queen and goddess
combined. All her looks and actions express the outflowing of some or
all of the human virtues. To know her is to love her. She became thus
perfect, not in a day or a year, but by a long series of appropriate
efforts. Then by what? Chiefly in and by love, which is specifically
adapted thus to develope this maturity." But all this occurs only when
there is a normal exercise of the sexual propensities. Excessive
indulgence in marital pleasures deadens all the higher faculties, love
included, and results in an utter prostration of the bodily powers. The
Creator has endowed man and woman with passions, the suppression of
which leads to pain, their gratification to pleasure, their satiety to
disgust. Excessive marital indulgence produces abnormal conditions of
the generative organs and not unfrequently leads to incurable disease.
Many cases of uterine disease are traceable to this cause.
MORALLY AND INTELLECTUALLY. In no country where the polygamous system
prevails do we find a code of political and social ethics which
recognizes the rights and claims of the individual. The condition of
woman is that of the basest slave, a slave to the caprice and tyranny of
her master. Communism raises her from the slough of slavery, but
subjects her to the level of prostitution. An inevitable sequence of
polygamy is a decline of literature and science. The natural tendency of
each system is to _sensualism._, The blood is diverted from its normal
channels and the result is a condition which may be appropriately termed
_mental starvation_. Sensualism is in its very nature directly opposed
to literary attainments or advancement. Happily there is a golden mean,
an equalization of those elements which constitutes the acme of
individual enjoyment.
THE WELFARE OF SOCIETY.