Expectant motherhood; its supervision and hygiene - Softcover

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1914 Excerpt: ...there would be some chance of legislation being accepted; for instance, the health of the contracting parties might be made a condition for the issuing of a first-class marriage licence. But let me repeat that I think we are far from the position in which any such enactments would be tolerated. We have not yet reached the stage when the question, "How much health has he or she?" is esteemed more important than that other which relates to wealth. As I have already hinted, I am not concerned so much with health questions which relate to hereditary maladies in the strict sense of the term heredity, or to such things as family tendencies to tuberculosis and diabetes and even insanity, for many of these are little more than pathological bogies which never assume reality; but I am profoundly exercised about the venereal disease which a husband may pass on to his wife (or, much less commonly, which a wife may give to her husband), and so transmit to the children of her body and of his begetting, to the encompassing of their death, deformity, or disease. To me the most pressing question is whether anything can be done by law to check these terrible scourges, and with them I would place alcoholism, and so to reduce the risks of the innocent partner in marriage being made to suffer for the offences of the guilty one. To me syphilis insontium (syphilis of the guiltless) is one of the most pathetic and tragic of all the phrases in the terminology of medicine. In this connection let me mention two suggestions made by Dr. E. L. Keyes, of New York, which are related to this subject. He writes: "Let legislation be called upon to suppress the appearance of all advertisements promising a safe and speedy cure of the venereal diseases, and let quacks, treating e...