A. M. Mauriceau

“ The patient awakes, perhaps, out of a frightful dream, with a sense of fluttering in the region of the heart—calls out for breath—begs to have the curtains of the bed withdrawn, the door of the room opened—and will tell you she feels as if she was dying;—wine, brandy, any stimulant that is at hand is resorted to, for the husband or friend of the patient is naturally much excited, and in his alarm scarcely knows how to act. ”

“ Some women are so constituted that they cannot give birth, not to say to healthy, but not to living children. Others again cannot give birth at all, except through the instrumental mangling and cutting of the Cæsarean operation—of a piece-meal extraction of the infant from the mother’s womb—happy, indeed, if the woman’s life fall not a sacrifice to the butchery. Truly, such spectacles are too horrid to contemplate. And yet such women are permitted to become pregnant, in total ignorance that pregnancy ought and can be prevented, by safe, simple, invariably healthy, and infallibly certain means. ”

“ Fathers and mothers! not you who have your nursery and your nursery-maids, and who leave your children at home, to frequent the crowded rout, or to glitter in the hot ball-room; but you by the labor of whose hands your children are to live, and who, as you count their rising numbers, sigh to think how soon sickness or misfortune may lessen those wages which are now but just sufficient to afford them bread—fathers and mothers in humble life! ”

“ Whom ’twere gross flattery to call a coward.’ What epithet then belongs to him who makes it a trade to win a woman’s gentle affections, betray her generous confidence, and then, when the consequences become apparent, abandon her to dependence, and the scorn of a cold, a self-righteous, and a wicked world; a world which will forgive anything but rebellion against its tyranny, and in whose eyes it seems the greatest of crimes to be unsuspecting and warm-hearted! ”

“ He is a man of pleasure—a man of the world. He laughs at the romance of his youth, and marries a fortune. If gaudy equipages and gay parties confer happiness, he is happy. But if these be only the sunshine on the stormy ocean below, he is a victim to that system of morality which forbids a reputable connexion until the period when provision has been made for a large, expected family. ”

“ Discoveries, then, so directly and intimately connected with the personal individual happiness of every man, woman, and child, are alone to see no progress; without being met at the threshold with the senseless and idle cry of “vice and immorality.” Thus then, the sufferings, the pains, the anguish, which have existed five hundred years ago, are to be irremediable and endured in despite of any discoveries by which they can be prevented. We must do nothing to alleviate, or better still, to prevent, the sufferings of the wife, daughter, or mother, because it was not done five hundred years ago! ”

“ Is it that physiological and medical science has long since reached that state of perfection that improvement and discovery are impossible? Is it that preceding generations had engrossed, in physiology, all the knowledge that could be attained, and left nothing for succeeding generations to attain? Is it that disease, decrepitude, bodily suffering and stinted and imperfect physical development among mankind has no longer an existence? ”

“ A humane midwife will use every ingenious effort in her power to quiet the useless fears, and support and comfort the patient. A crowd of frightened, hysterical women, assailing the ears of the woman with tales of woe and sad disasters that have happened should be admonished. Half a dozen midwives, each making pretensions to great skill, ambition, and competition for obstetric fame, assembled around a feeble woman when labor is of a lingering character, is always an unfortunate circumstance, and it would be much better if nearly every one were afar off. ”

“ Were such virtue as this cultivated in mankind generally, how soon might the very seeds of disease die out among us, instead of bearing, as now, their poison-fruit from generation to generation! and how far might human beings, in succeeding ages, surpass their forefathers in strength, in health, and in beauty! ”

“ Vice is never the offspring of just knowledge, and they who say it is, slander their own nature. Would we but trust human nature, instead of continually suspecting it, and guarding it by bolts and bars, and thinking to make it very chaste by keeping it very ignorant, what a different world we should have of it! ”

“ Not one young person, for example, in twenty, is ever told, that sexual intercourse during the period of a woman’s courses is not unfrequently productive to the woman of a species of fluor albus, and sometimes (as a consequent) to the man of symptoms very similar to those of urethritis or gonorrhœa, but more easily removed. Yet what fact more important to be communicated? And how ridiculous the mischievously prudish refinement that conceals from human beings what it most deeply concerns them to know? ”

“ But passions are strong, and temptations great. Curiosity, perhaps, introduces him into the company of those poor creatures whom society first reduces to a dependence on the most miserable of mercenary trades, and then curses for being what she has made them. There his health and his moral feelings alike are made shipwreck. The affections he had thought to treasure up for their first object, are chilled by dissipation and blunted by excess. He scarcely retains a passion but avarice. Years pass on—years of profligacy and speculation—and his first wish is accomplished ”

“ This delusion is most common to women who marry late in life, and who are very desirous of offspring. Now the breasts lose their intumescency; the morning sickness vanishes; the swelling of the abdomen subsides; the imagined stirrings of the fœtus cease, or the sensation becomes so unequivocal as to satisfy that it arises from the movement of wind; and, to put everything beyond hope, the menses return in overwhelming quantity. ”

“ I should like to hear these gentlemen explain, according to what principle they imagine the chastity of their wives to grow out of a fear of offspring; so that, if released from such fear, prostitution would follow. I can readily comprehend that the unmarried may be supposed carefully to avoid that situation to which no legal cause can be assigned; but a wife must be especially dull, if she cannot assign, in all cases, a legal cause; and a husband must be especially sagacious, if he can tell whether the true cause be assigned or not. ”

“ If the little being lives, the dove in the falcon’s claws is not more certain of death, than we may be, that society will visit, with its bitterest scoffs and reproaches, the bruised spirit of the mother and the unconscious innocence of the child. ”

“ Let us say, then, if we will, that the youth who thus sacrifices the present for the future, chooses wisely between two evils, profligacy and asceticism. This is true. But let us not imagine the lesser evil to be a good. It is not good for man to be alone. It is for no man’s or woman’s happiness or benefit that they should be condemned to Shakerism. ”

“ It is a common mistake to suppose that, because a woman is nursing, she ought, therefore, to live very fully, and to add an allowance of wine, porter, or other fermented liquor, to her usual diet. The only result of this plan is to cause an unnatural degree of fullness in the system, which places the nurse on the brink of disease, and which of itself frequently puts a stop to, instead of increasing, the secretion of the milk. The health and usefulness of country nurses are often utterly ruined by their transplantation into the families of rich and luxurious employers. ”

“ In regard to the morality of preventing conception it is contended that everything which tends to the amelioration of mankind, to improve their condition physically, morally, and socially, or equalize their condition pecuniarily, cannot be immoral. That the instinct of reproduction should be, like our other appetites and passions, subject to the control of reason,—that when the gratification of this instinct results in evil effects either to ourselves or to our offspring, or even to society—if such evil can be prevented, it is the obligation of morality that it should be. ”

“ Few things tend more to the destruction of children than drenching them with drugs. Medicine may be sometimes necessary for children; but that it injures them ten times for once it does them good, I will venture to assert. A nurse or mother, the moment her child seems to ail anything, runs immediately to the doctor or the apothecary, who throws in his powders, pills and potions, till the poor infant is poisoned; when the child might have been restored to perfect health by a change of diet, air, exercise, clothing, or some very easy and simple means. ”

“ In view, then, of the transmission of disease and suffering to our offspring, should they even survive a brief existence, every reflecting being should hesitate whether it were not better to prevent pregnancy than to thrust human beings into the world, and blighting their brief existence with entailed disease and wretchedness—for such offspring are seldom reared to maturity. ”

“ You seem to pre-suppose—from your own experience, perhaps—that the hearts of all men and more especially of all women, are deceitful above all things and desperately wicked; that violence and vice are inherent in human nature, and that nothing but laws and ceremonies prevent the world from becoming a vast slaughter-house, or an universal brothel. You judge your own sex and the other by the specimens you have met with in wretched haunts of mercenary profligacy ”

“ Nay, I am well convinced, that mere curiosity has often led ignorant young people into situations, from which a little more confidence and openness on the part of their parents and guardians, would have effectually secured them.
“But if we could prevent the circulation of truth, why should we? We are not afraid of it ourselves. No man thinks his morality will suffer by it. Each feels certain that his virtue can stand any degree of knowledge. ”