Fertility

“ It appears as if fertility depended on such a delicate adjustment of the male and female elements to each other, that, unless constantly kept up by the preservation of the most fertile individuals, sterility is always liable to arise. ”

“ The age of the husband exercises an important influence upon the fertility of the wife, as is proved by the following figures published by Körösi:
Also:
We learn from these figures that the maximum fertility is exhibited by a woman 18 years of age, when married to a man 25 years of age; less fertile is a woman 25 to 30 years of age married to a man 28 years of age; still less fertile is a woman 35 years of age married to a man 29 years of age. ”

“ Inasmuch as we learn from this table that in the case of women aged 40 and upward, the newly married exhibit a fertility of four times as great as that of married women in general, in whom pregnancy has already become rare, we can infer the influence upon fertility of abstinence and of artificial measures for the prevention of conception. ”

“ The causes of the relative infertility may be divided into two classes: (1) those which operate by killing persons before they have completed their middle life; (2) those which restrict fertility without killing. ”

“ In most of these cases the premature fertility is followed by a premature cessation of fertility. And there is more or less truth in Bruce’s statement regarding the Arab women in Africa, that those who began to bear children at the age of eleven were seldom still fertile at the age of twenty. ”

“ Or if, again, we find species presenting the peculiarity that while some of their individuals have much to do and little to eat, others of their individuals have much to eat and little to do, we may look for great fertility in these last and comparative infertility or barrenness in the first. ”

“ The fertility of women is a function beginning at an age varying in dependence on many conditions, and undergoing extinction at a definite period of life. It is, in fact, associated with the duration of the sexual life of woman, and, generally speaking, extends from the sixteenth to the fiftieth year of life. Climate, race, constitution, and morbid conditions, influence alike the first appearance of menstruation and the first pregnancy; and as they influence the duration of menstrual activity, so also do they influence the duration of fertility. ”

“ Social position, occupation, and religion, have, according to the last-quoted author, a notable influence on fertility. His investigations showed that the Roman Catholics and the Jews exhibited the greatest fertility ”

“ In its full sense, the reproductive power means the power to bear a well-developed infant and to supply that infant with the natural food for the natural period. Most of the flat-chested girls who survive their high-pressure education, are incompetent to do this. Were their fertility measured by the number of children they could rear without artificial aid, they would prove relatively very infertile. ”

“ But the whole point of my argument is, that the physiological adjustments producing fertility are so delicate that they are disturbed by almost any variation or change of conditions—except in the case of domestic animals, which have been domesticated because they are not subject to this disturbance. ”

“ Every marked and sudden change in the mode of life has an unfavourable influence on fertility. Darwin reports that mares who have for some time been stall-fed with dry fodder and are then put out to grass are at first infertile after the change. ”

“ By saving from certain barrenness the earlier part of the child-bearing period of the woman. Authorities differ so much as to the direct gain of fertility due to early marriage that it is dangerous to express an opinion. ”

“ A corresponding effort is invariably made by Nature for its preservation and continuance by an increase of fertility, and that this especially takes place whenever such danger arises from a diminution of proper nourishment or food, so that consequently the state of depletion or the deplethoric state is favourable to fertility, and that, on the other hand, the plethoric state, or state of repletion, is unfavourable to fertility in the ratio of the intensity of each state. ”

“ for what is proposed is nothing but the replacement of the old unintelligent, inevitable, almost unconscious fertility by an intelligently controlled, conscious fertility, and the elimination of the mere voluptuary from the evolutionary process. ”

“ More especially we are here concerned with external influences affecting unfavourably nutrition and innervation, and therewith also ovulation; also near kinship between the parties to the act of intercourse; and finally hereditary predisposition. In animals, captivity, exposure to cold, over-exertion, insufficient or unsuitable food, and inbreeding, have been proved to result in infertility. ”

“ In § 346 was pointed out the apparent connexion between high cerebral development and prolonged delay of sexual maturity; and in §§ 366, 367, the evidence went to show that where exceptional fertility exists there is sluggishness of mind, and that where there has been during education excessive expenditure in mental action, there frequently follows a complete or partial infertility. Hence the particular kind of further evolution which Man is hereafter to undergo, is one which, more than any other, may be expected to cause a decline in his power of reproduction. ”

“ Here we see a lower fertility associated in part with greater size, but associated still more conspicuously with greater expenditure. For the difference of fertility is more than proportionate to the difference of bulk, as shown in other cases ”

“ The number of children to which during the three decades of her sexual life, from the menarche to the menopause, a woman might theoretically give birth, is never actually born. If we assume that, during the period of active sexual life, a woman requires a period of fifteen months to two years for each pregnancy, parturition, and lactation, a woman could easily during this period have fifteen or sixteen children, and this figure would represent the normal product of the normal fertility of the human female. ”

“ Or if infertility is so associated, then the average of the whole group moves away from that condition. Eugenically, then, we should ask whether in human society there is at present any such association of superfertility or infertility with desirable or undesirable traits. ”

“ And live like Nature's bastards, not her sons,
Who would be quite surcharged with her own weight,
And strangled with her waste fertility:
The earth cumbered, and the winged air darked with plumes,
The herds would over-multitude their lords; ”

“ The menstrual function continues active from puberty to about the forty-fifth year, or during the period of fertility. When it finally disappears, the woman is no longer capable of bearing children. The time of disappearance is termed the "change of life," or menopause. Exceptional cases occur in which this period is greatly hastened, arriving as early as the thirty-fifth year, or even earlier. Instances have also been observed in which menstruation continued as late as the sixtieth year, and even later; but such cases are very rare; and if procreation occurs, the progeny is feeble and senile. ”

“ Statistics and physicians from their observation agree in this, that the bearing of children by normal women, so far from being injurious to health, is as healthful, stimulating, and invigorating a function as the blooming of a flower, or the shedding of fruit, and a mother is no worse for the experience of maternity than is the plant or the tree for the fruit it bears. ”

“ It is a familiar observation that the mothers of large families of ten and even twice that number are not less healthy nor shorter lived because of the children they have borne. Pregnancy is a stimulus to vitality. ”

“ This life-form, thus started, grows according to the laws of its becoming more and more, until, at the expiration of a fixed period, which varies greatly in different animals, it becomes a complete young individual, of the nature and kind of its parents. The fertilization of the ovum in the female is called conception; its growing state is called gestation, and its birth, on becoming a separate being, is called parturition. In its growing condition, and before its birth, the new young life form is known as the foetus. ”

“ From the moment of conception, during the months of gestation, at the time of childbirth and after, changes of great interest take place in the germ of human life and in the body of the mother. Her body is marvelously fitted for the reception and development of the ovum, the embryo and the fetus through the various stages of fertilization, germination, development, maturity, to the time of the eventual exit of the child into the outer world to begin its own independent life. ”

“ In our every-day way of speaking, fertilization means conception; it is the instant in which a living being begins its existence. There is no longer the slightest excuse for confusion regarding the period at which the life of the unborn child begins. Before the significance of fertilization was understood, it was perhaps not unreasonable to believe that life began with quickening or about the time the fetal heart-sounds could be heard. ”

“ After the ovum has reached the womb it remains there for a period of about ten days, after which, if it is not fertilized during that time, it passes out of the womb into the vaginal passage, and so out of the body. But if, at any time after it is ripe for fertilization, that is, from the time it begins its journey from the ovaries to the womb, and while it is in the womb, the ovum is met by the male sperm, it is liable to become fertilized—conception is possible. ”

“ But as the object of the present work is to illustrate abortion, and not the complete life-circle of the fœtus, I shall stop the number of my propositions at the fifth iiimonth of its intro-uterine existence. After that period, the various phenomena of fœtal gestation are so uniform, that they afford less matter of interest to the philosopher.
13. Conception, or that result which follows sexual congress, in virtue of which one, or more individuals, of the same species is called into being, takes place in the ovarium of women. ”

“ After the act of procreation, the sexual passion in both subsides, and the reproductive function is not again called into exercise until after the intervening weeks or months of repose have passed and nature again responds to the necessity of procreation for the purpose of perpetuating the species. Where the periods of ovulation and fecundity recur at brief intervals in the female, the reproductive nature of the male is in a more continuous state of activity, so that a fruitful union may be secured when the reproductive nature of the female is in readiness ”

“ Young women of mature years should be made familiar with the physiological conditions which attend conception and maternity, and they need to know that from the [Pg 172] moment of conception life exists in the embryo, and that from the moment the spermatozoön enters and assimilates with the ovum a separate individual life is really begun, and that she is, at that very moment, the mother of this life within her as truly as when, in the later months, she feels the quickening within her, or after its birth experiences the joy of a mother who clasps her newborn infant in her arms. ”

“ There is some uncertainty respecting the exact length of the period of gestation, which grows out of the difficulty of determining, in many cases, the exact time when conception takes place.
Uterine Life.—The uterine life of the new individual begins with the impregnation of the ovum, which occurs the instant it is brought in contact with the zoösperms of the male. While in the uterus, the young life is supported wholly by the mother. She is obliged to provide not only for her own sustenance, but for the maintenance of her child. ”

“ The function of becoming a mother does not explain it, for the reason that perfect womanhood may be attained and maintained in the single life. The explanation lies in the fact that the sexual glands of a woman, breasts and ovaries, each have two functions—a periodic and special function and a continuous involuntary function. After the dawning of puberty the ovaries, once every twenty-eight days, produce an egg or ovum. This is their periodic function. Should she become a mother and nurse her child, this function of lactation would be the periodic function of the breasts. ”

“ With other women, however, unions on any day of the month may lead to conception, but this depends, possibly, not only on the woman herself but on the vitality and probable length of life of the sperm cells of her husband. ”

“ Physiology of women.
With regard to the physiology of the female organs, the following topics should be considered: The meaning of puberty as the beginning of a long fertile period of about thirty years; the nature of menstruation as a periodical process preparing the lining of the uterus for reception and attachment of an embryo if a sperm-cell meets a liberated egg-cell near an ovary, and not as a season of illness invented by the powers of [154] darkness; the possibility of fertilization following sexual relations at any time during the fertile life of a woman ”

“ But there are other cogent reasons for discountenancing early marriages, also drawn from the physiology of reproduction, to say nothing of the many reasons which might be urged on other grounds.
1. During the development of the body, all its energies are required in perfecting the various tissues and organs. There is no material to be spared for any foreign purpose.
2. The reproductive act is the most exhaustive of all vital acts. Its effect upon an undeveloped person is to retard growth, weaken the constitution, and dwarf the intellect. ”

“ The elaboration of both ovules and sperm in the same individual is wasteful of vital energy. The concentration of vital energy on one reproductive element secures that one product in a higher degree of perfection. Thus better sperm and better ovules combine to produce better ova and a stronger embryo. This is in accordance with the effect of differentiation of functions and organs of all kinds. 2. Again, in all cross-fertilization different individual characteristics are inherited by the common offspring. ”