The First Necessity : Part 3

Woman and Womanhood: A Search for Principles
by C. W. Saleeby, M.D.

(Page 17 of 24)

It is known by all observers - but it is a very meager "all" - of the realities of politics that in Great Britain, at any rate, there is an increase of drinking amongst women and girls. This is doubtless in considerable measure due to the increase of work in factories, and the greater liberty enjoyed by adolescence - liberty too often to become enslaved. This bears directly upon our present subject. In a very large number of cases, the first lapse from self-restraint in young people of both genders occurs under the influence of alcohol, the most pre-eminent character of whose action upon the nervous system is the paralysis of inhibition or control. Not only is alcohol responsible in this way, but also in any given case it renders infection more probable for more reasons than one. This abominable thing - in itself the immediate cause of many evils and, except as a fuel for lifeless machines and for industrial purposes, of no good - i. Therefore the direct ally of the venereal diseases as of consumption and many more. We must return to this important subject later: meanwhile let it be noted that the influence of alcohol upon youth of both genders greatly favors not only immorality but also venereal disease.

The girl, therefore, who would protect herself directly will avoid this thing, and the girl who desires that neither she nor her children should be destroyed after marriage, will exact from the man she chooses the highest possible standard of conduct in this matter. A friendly critic has told me that my books would be all very well, but that I have alcohol on the brain, and I am inclined to reply, Better on the brain than in the brain. But a subject so serious demands more serious treatment, and the due reply is that there is no human prospect for which I care, no public advantage to be advocated, no good I know, of which alcohol is not the enemy; no abomination, physical, mental or moral, individual or social, of which it is not the friend.

Further, words like these will stand on record, and may be remembered when there has been achieved that slow but irresistible education of public opinion, to which some few have devoted themselves, and of which the triumph is as certain as the triumph of all truth was in the beginning, is now, and ever should be. To the many charges against alcohol made by the champions of life in the past, let there be added that on which all students of venereal diseases are agreed - that it is the most potent ally of the most loathsome evils that afflict mankind.

This chapter is not yet complete. In many cases it may be read not by the girl who is contemplating marriage, but by one or both of her parents. If the reader be such an one I here charge him or her with the solemn responsibility which is theirs whether they realize it or not. You desire your daughter's welfare; you wish her to be healthy and happy in her married life; perhaps your heart rejoices at the thought of grand-children; you concern yourself with your prospective son-in-law's character, with his income and prospects; you wish him to be steady and sober; you would rather that he came of a family not conspicuous for morbid tendencies. All this is well and as it should be; yet there is that to be considered which, while it is only negative, and should not have to be considered at all, yet takes precedence of all these other questions.

If the man in question is tainted with either or both of these diseases, he is to be summarily rejected at any rate until responsible and, one may suggest, at least duplicated medical opinion has pronounced him cured. Microscopic examination of the blood or otherwise can now pronounce on this matter with much more definiteness than used to be possible. But even so, there are possibilities of error, for experts are more and more coming to recognize the existence and the importance of latent gonorrhea, devoid of characteristic symptoms but yet liable to wake in the individual and always dangerous from the point of view of infection. No combination of advantages is worth the dust in the balance when weighed against either of these diseases in a prospective son-in-law: infection is not a matter of chance but of certainty or little short of it. Everything may seem fair and full of promise, yet there may be that in the case which will wreck all in the present; not to mention destroying the chance of motherhood or bringing rotten or permanently blinded children into the world.

It follows, therefore, that parents or guardians are guilty of a grave dereliction of duty if they neglect to satisfy themselves in time on this point. Doubtless, in the great majority of cases no harm will be done. But in the rest irreparable harm is often done, and the innocent, ignorant girl who has been betrayed by father and mother and husband alike, may turn upon you all, perhaps on her death-bed, perhaps with the blasted future in her arms, and say "This is your doing: behold your deed."

"But if ye could and would not, oh, what plea,
Think ye, should stead you at your trial,
when The thunder-cloud of witnesses should loom,
With Ravished Childhood on the seat of doom
At the Assizes of Eternity?"

These pages may disgust or offend nine hundred and ninety-nine readers out of a thousand. They may yet save one girl, and will have justified themselves.

One final word may be added on the relation of this subject to Eugenics, to which this pen and voice have been for many years devoted. The subject of venereal disease is one of which we eugenicists, like the rest of the world, fight shy; yet just because the rest of the world does so, we should not. Nevertheless I mean to see to it that this subject becomes part of the Eugenic campaign which will yet dominate and mold the future. For surely the present spectacle has elements in it which would be utterly farcical if they were not so tragic. Here we have life present and life to come being destroyed for lack of knowledge. These horrible diseases, ravaging the guilty and the innocent, equally and indifferently, are at present allowed to do so with scarcely a voice raised against them. Every day husbands infect their wives, who have no kind of protection or remedy, and the wicked, grinning face of the law looks on, and says "She is his wife; all is well." If we had courage instead of cowardice - the capital mark of an age that has no organ voice but many steam whistles - we could accelerate incalculably the gradual decrease of these diseases.

The body of eugenic opinion which is being made and multiplied might succeed in allying the Church and Medicine and the Law, with splendid and lasting effect. But we spend thousands of pounds in estimating correlations between hair color and conscientiousness, fertility and longevity, stature and the number of domestic servants, and so forth, meanwhile protesting against too hasty attempts to guide public opinion on these refined matters; and this tremendous eugenic reform, which awaits the emergence of some courage somewhere, is left altogether out of account. There was no allusion to the existence of venereal disease, far and away the most appalling of what I have called dysgenic forces, in any official eugenic publication until April, 1909, when in the Eugenics Review we dared to make a cautious and half-ashamed beginning; half-ashamed to stand up against syphilis and gonorrhea. When one thinks of the things that we are not ashamed to do, as individuals or as nations, it is to reflect that perhaps we have "let the tiger die" too utterly, and that just as woman is ceasing to be a mammal, man is perhaps ceasing to be even a vertebrate. Is there no Archbishop or Principal of a University or Chief Justice or popular novelist or preacher or omnipotent editor, boasting a backbone still, who will serve not only his day and generation but all future days and generations, by devoting himself and his powers to this long-delayed campaign wherein, if it be but undertaken, success is certain, and reward so glorious?

Press of J. J. Little & Ives Co., New York.
Copyright 1911 by Mitchell Kennerley.