Folie_, p. 91; Harriet Alexander, "Malthusianism and Degeneracy,"
_Alienist and Neurologist_, Jan., 1901). It has,
indeed, been
shown by Heron, Pearson, and Goring, that not only
the
eldest-born, but also the second-born, are specially
liable to
suffer from pathological defect (insanity,
criminality,
tuberculosis). There is, however, it would seem, a
fallacy in the
common interpretation of this fact. According to Van
den Velden
(as quoted in _Sexual-Probleme_, May, 1909, p. 381),
this
tendency is fully counterbalanced by the rising
mortality of
children from the firstborn onward. The greater
pathological
tendency of the earlier children is thus simply the
result of a
less stringent selection by death. So far as they
show any really
greater pathological tendency, apart from this
fallacy, it is
perhaps due to premature marriage. There is another
fallacy in
the frequent statement that the children in small
families are
more feeble than those in large families. We have to
distinguish
between a naturally small family, and an
artificially small
family. A family which is small merely as the result
of the
feeble procreative energy of the parents, is likely
to be a
feeble family; a family which is small as the result
of the
deliberate control of the parents, shows, of course,
no such
tendency.
These considerations, it will be seen, do not modify
the tendency
of the large family to be degenerate. We may connect
this
phenomenon with the disposition, often shown by
nervously unsound
and abnormal persons, to believe that they have a
special
aptitude to procreate fine children. "I believe that everyone has
a special vocation," said a man to Marro (_La
Pubertà_, p. 459);
"I find that it is my vocation to beget superior
children." He
begat four,--an epileptic, a lunatic, a dipsomaniac,
and a
valetudinarian,--and himself died insane. Most
people have come
across somewhat similar, though perhaps less marked,
cases of
this delusion. In a matter of such fateful gravity
to other human
beings, no one can safely rely on his own
unsupported
impressions.
The demand of national efficiency thus corresponds with the demand of
developing humanitarianism, which, having begun by
attempting to
ameliorate the conditions of life, has gradually begun to realize that it
is necessary to go deeper and to ameliorate life itself.
For while it is
undoubtedly true that much may be done by acting
systematically on the
conditions of life, the more searching analysis of evil environmental
conditions only serves to show that in large parts they are based in the
human organism itself and were not only pre-natal, but pre-conceptional,
being involved in the quality of the parental or
ancestral organisms.
Putting aside, however, all humanitarian considerations, the serious error
of attempting to stem the progress of civilization in
the direction of
procreative control could never have occurred if the
general tendencies of
zoölogical evolution had been understood, even in their elements. All
zoölogical progress is from the more prolific to the
less prolific; the
higher the species the less fruitful are its individual members. The same
tendency is found within the limits of the human
species, though not in an
invariable straight line; the growth of civilization
involves a
diminution in fertility. This is by no means a new
phenomenon; ancient
Rome and later Geneva, "the Protestant Rome," bear witness to it; no doubt
it has occurred in every high centre of moral and
intellectual culture,
although the data for measuring the tendency no longer exist. When we take
a sufficiently wide and intelligent survey, we realize that the tendency
of a community to slacken its natural rate of increase is an essential
phenomenon of all advanced civilization. The more
intelligent nations have
manifested the tendency first, and in each nation the
more educated
classes have taken the lead, but it is only a matter of time to bring all
civilized nations, and all social classes in each
nation, into line.[429]
This movement, we have to remember--in opposition to the ignorant outcry
of certain would-be moralists and politicians--is a
beneficent movement.
It means a greater regard to the quality than to the
quantity of the
increase; it involves the possibility of combating
successfully the evils
of high mortality, disease, overcrowding, and all the
manifold misfortunes
which inevitably accompany a too exuberant birthrate.
For it is only in a
community which increases slowly that it is possible to secure the
adequate economic adjustment and environmental
modifications necessary for
a sane and wholesome civic and personal life.[430] If
those persons who
raise the cry of "race suicide" in face of the decline of the birthrate
really had the knowledge and intelligence to realize the manifold evils
which they are invoking they would deserve to be treated as criminals.
On the practical side a knowledge of the possibility of preventing
conception has, doubtless, never been quite extinct in civilization and
even in lower stages of culture, though it has mostly
been utilized for
ends of personal convenience or practiced in obedience to conventional
social rules which demanded chastity, and has only of
recent times been
made subservient to the larger interests of society and the elevation of
the race. The theoretical basis of the control of
procreation, on its
social and economic, as distinct from its eugenic,
aspects, may be said to
date from Malthus's famous _Essay on Population_, first published in 1798,
an epoch-marking book,--though its central thesis is not susceptible of
actual demonstration,--since it not only served as the starting-point of
the modern humanitarian movement for the control of
procreation, but also
furnished to Darwin (and independently to Wallace also) the fruitful idea
which was finally developed into the great evolutionary theory of natural
selection.
Malthus, however, was very far from suggesting that the control of
procreation, which he advocated for the benefit of
mankind, should be
exercised by the introduction of preventive methods into sexual
intercourse. He believed that civilization involved an increased power of
self-control, which would make it possible to refrain
altogether from
sexual intercourse, when such self-restraint was
demanded in the interests
of humanity. Later thinkers realized, however, that,
while it is
undoubtedly true that civilization involves greater
forethought and
greater self-control, we cannot anticipate that those
qualities should be
developed to the extent demanded by Malthus, especially when the impulse
to be controlled is of so powerful and explosive a
nature.
James Mill was the pioneer in advocating Neo-Malthusian methods, though he
spoke cautiously. In 1818, in the article "Colony" in the supplement to
the _Encyclopædia Britannica_, after remarking that the means of checking
the unrestricted increase of the population constitutes
"the most
important practical problem to which the wisdom of the politician and
moralist can be applied," he continued: "If the superstitions of the
nursery were discarded, and the principle of utility
kept steadily in
view, a solution might not be very difficult to be
found." Four years
later, James Mill's friend, the Radical reformer,
Francis Place, more
distinctly expressed the thought that was evidently in Mill's mind. After
enumerating the facts concerning the necessity of self-control in
procreation and the evils of early marriage, which he
thinks ought to be
clearly taught, Place continues: "If a hundredth, perhaps a thousandth
part of the pains were taken to teach these truths, that are taken to
teach dogmas, a great change for the better might, in no considerable
space of time, be expected to take place in the
appearance and the habits
of the people. If, above all, it were once clearly
understood that it was
not disreputable for married persons to avail themselves of such
precautionary means as would, without being injurious to health, or
destructive of female delicacy, prevent conception, a
sufficient check
might at once be given to the increase of population
beyond the means of
subsistence; vice and misery, to a prodigious extent,
might be removed
from society, and the object of Mr. Malthus, Mr. Godwin, and of every
philanthropic person, be promoted, by the increase of
comfort, of
intelligence, and of moral conduct, in the mass of the population. The
course recommended will, I am fully persuaded, at some period be pursued
by the people even if left to themselves."[431]
It was not long before Place's prophetic words began to be realized, and
in another half century the movement was affecting the birthrate of all
civilized lands, though it can scarcely yet be said that justice has been
done to the pioneers who promoted it in the face of much persecution from
the ignorant and superstitious public whom they sought to benefit. In
1831, Robert Dale Owen, the son of Robert Owen,
published his _Moral
Physiology_, setting forth the methods of preventing
conception. A little
later the brothers George and Charles Drysdale (born
1825 and 1829), two
ardent and unwearying philanthropists, devoted much of their energy to the
propagation of Neo-Malthusian principles. George
Drysdale, in 1854,
published his _Elements of Social Science_, which during many years had
an enormous circulation all over Europe in eight
different languages. It
was by no means in every respect a scientific or sound work, but it
certainly had great influence, and it came into the
hands of many who
never saw any other work on sexual topics. Although the Neo-Malthusian
propagandists of those days often met with much obloquy, their cause was
triumphantly vindicated in 1876, when Charles Bradlaugh and Mrs. Besant,
having been prosecuted for disseminating Neo-Malthusian pamphlets, the
charge was dismissed, the Lord Chief Justice declaring that so ill-advised
and injudicious a charge had probably never before been made in a court of
justice. This trial, even by its mere publicity and
apart from its issue,
gave an enormous impetus to the Neo-Malthusian movement.
It is well known
that the steady decline in the English birthrate begun in 1877, the year
following the trial. There could be no more brilliant
illustration of the
fact, that what used to be called "the instruments of Providence" are
indeed unconscious instruments in bringing about great ends which they
themselves were far from either intending or desiring.
In 1877, Dr. C.R. Drysdale founded the Malthusian
League, and
edited a periodical, _The Malthusian_, aided
throughout by his
wife, Dr. Alice Drysdale Vickery. He died in 1907.
(The noble and
pioneering work of the Drysdales has not yet been
adequately
recognized in their own country; an appreciative and
well-informed article by Dr. Hermann Rohleder, "Dr.
C.R.
Drysdale, Der Hauptvortreter der Neumalthusianische
Lehre,"
appeared in the _Zeitschrift für
Sexualwissenschaft_, March,
1908). There are now societies and periodicals in
all civilized
countries for the propagation of Neo-Malthusian
principles, as
they are still commonly called, though it would be
desirable to
avoid the use of Malthus's name in this connection.
In the
medical profession, the advocacy of preventive
methods of sexual
intercourse, not on social, but on medical and
hygienic grounds,
began same thirty years ago, though in France, at an
earlier
date, Raciborski advocated the method of avoiding
the
neighborhood of menstruation. In Germany, Dr.
Mensinga, the
gynæcologist, is the most prominent advocate, on
medical and
hygienic grounds, of what he terms "facultative
sterility," which
he first put forward about 1889. In Russia, about
the same time,
artificial sterility was first openly advocated by
the
distinguished gynæcologist, Professor Ott, at the
St. Petersburg
Obstetric and Gynæcological Society. Such medical
recommendations, in particular cases, are now
becoming common.
There are certain cases in which a person ought not
to marry at
all; this is so, for instance, when there has been
an attack of
insanity; it can never be said with certainty that a
person who
has had one attack of insanity will not have
another, and persons
who have had such attacks ought not, as Blandford
says (Lumleian
Lectures on Insanity, _British Medical Journal_,
April 20, 1895),
"to inflict on their partner for life, the anxiety, and even
danger, of another attack." There are other and
numerous cases in
which marriage may be permitted, or may have already
taken place,
under more favorable circumstances, but where it is,
or has
become, highly desirable that there should be no
children. This
is the case when a first attack of insanity occurs
after
marriage, the more urgently if the affected party is
the wife,
and especially if the disease takes the form of
puerperal mania.
"What can be more lamentable," asks Blandford (loc.
cit.), "than
to see a woman break down in childbed, recover,
break down again
with the next child, and so on, for six, seven, or
eight
children, the recovery between each being less and
less, until
she is almost a chronic maniac?" It has been found, moreover, by
Tredgold (_Lancet_, May 17, 1902), that among
children born to
insane mothers, the mortality is twice as great as
the ordinary
infantile mortality, in even the poorest districts.
In cases of
unions between persons with tuberculous antecedents,
also, it is
held by many (e.g., by Massalongo, in discussing
tuberculosis and
marriage at the Tuberculosis Congress, at Naples, in
1900) that
every precaution should be taken to make the
marriage childless.
In a third class of cases, it is necessary to limit
the children
to one or two; this happens in some forms of heart
disease, in
which pregnancy has a progressively deteriorating
effect on the
heart (Kisch, _Therapeutische Monatsheft_, Feb.,
1898, and
_Sexual Life of Woman_; Vinay, _Lyon Medical_, Jan.
8, 1889); in
some cases of heart disease, however, it is possible
that, though
there is no reason for prohibiting marriage, it is
desirable for
a woman not to have any children (J.F. Blacker,
"Heart Disease in
Relation to Pregnancy," _British Medical Journal_, May 25, 1907).
In all such cases, the recommendation of preventive
methods of
intercourse is obviously an indispensable aid to the
physician in
emphasizing the supremacy of hygienic precautions.
In the absence
of such methods, he can never be sure that his
warnings will be
heard, and even the observance of his advice would
be attended
with various undesirable results. It sometimes
happens that a
married couple agree, even before marriage, to live
together
without sexual relations, but, for various reasons,
it is seldom
found possible or convenient to maintain this
resolution for a
long period.
It is the recognition of these and similar
considerations which has
led--though only within recent years--on the one hand, as we have seen, to
the embodiment of the control of procreation into the
practical morality
of all civilized nations, and, on the other hand, to the assertion, now
perhaps without exception, by all medical authorities on matters of sex
that the use of the methods of preventing conception is under certain
circumstances urgently necessary and quite
harmless.[432] It arouses a
smile to-day when we find that less than a century ago it was possible for
an able and esteemed medical author to declare that the use of "various
abominable means" to prevent conception is "based upon a most presumptuous
doubt in the conservative power of the Creator."[433]
The adaptation of theory to practice is not yet
complete, and we could not
expect that it should be so, for, as we have seen, there is always an
antagonism between practical morality and traditional
morality. From time
to time flagrant illustrations of this antagonism
occur.[434] Even in
England, which played a pioneering part in the control of procreation,
attempts are still made--sometimes in quarters where we have a right to
expect a better knowledge--to cast discredit on a
movement which, since
it has conquered alike scientific approval and popular practice, it is now
idle to call in question.
It would be out of place to discuss here the various
methods which are
used for the control of procreation, or their respective merits and
defects. It is sufficient to say that the condom or
protective sheath,
which seems to be the most ancient of all methods of
preventing
conception, after withdrawal, is now regarded by nearly all authorities
as, when properly used, the safest, the most convenient, and the most
harmless method.[435] This is the opinion of Krafft-
Ebing, of Moll, of
Schrenck-Notzing, of Löwenfeld, of Forel, of Kisch, of Fürbringer, to
mention only a few of the most distinguished medical
authorities.[436]
There is some interest in attempting to trace the
origin and
history of the condom, though it seems impossible to
do so with
any precision. It is probable that, in a rudimentary
form, such
an appliance is of great antiquity. In China and
Japan, it would
appear, rounds of oiled silk paper are used to cover
the mouth of
the womb, at all events, by prostitutes. This seems
the simplest
and most obvious mechanical method of preventing
conception, and
may have suggested the application of a sheath to
the penis as a
more effectual method. In Europe, it is in the
middle of the
sixteenth century, in Italy, that we first seem to
hear of such
appliances, in the shape of linen sheaths, adapted
to the shape
of the penis; Fallopius recommended the use of such
an appliance.
Improvements in the manufacture were gradually
devised; the cæcum
of the lamb was employed, and afterwards, isinglass.
It appears
that a considerable improvement in the manufacture
took place in
the seventeenth or eighteenth century, and this
improvement was
generally associated with England. The appliance
thus became
known as the English cape or mantle, the "capote
anglaise," or
the "redingote anglaise," and, under the latter name, is referred
to by Casanova, in the middle of the eighteenth
century
(Casanova, _Mémoires_, ed. Garnier, vol. iv, p.
464); Casanova
never seems, however, to have used these redingotes
himself, not
caring, he said, "to shut myself up in a piece of dead skin in
order to prove that I am perfectly alive." These
capotes--then
made of goldbeaters' skin--were, also, it appears,
known at an
earlier period to Mme. de Sévigné, who did not
regard them with
favor, for, in one of her letters, she refers to
them as
"cuirasses contre la volupté et toiles d'arraignée contre le
mal." The name, "condom," dates from the eighteenth century,
first appearing in France, and is generally
considered to be that
of an English physician, or surgeon, who invented,
or, rather,
improved the appliance. Condom is not, however, an
English name,
but there is an English name, Condon, of which
"condom" may well
be a corruption. This supposition is strengthened by
the fact
that the word sometimes actually was written
"condon." Thus, in
lines quoted by Bachaumont, in his _Diary_ (Dec. 15,
1773), and
supposed to be addressed to a former ballet dancer
who had become
a prostitute, I find:--
"Du _condon_ cependant, vous connaissez l'usage,
* * * * *
"Le _condon_, c'est la loi, ma fille, et les prophètes!"The difficulty remains, however, of discovering any
Englishman of
the name of Condon, who can plausibly be associated
with the
condom; doubtless he took no care to put the matter
on record,
never suspecting the fame that would accrue to his
invention, or
the immortality that awaited his name. I find no
mention of any
Condon in the records of the College of Physicians,
and at the
College of Surgeons, also, where, indeed, the old
lists are very
imperfect, Mr. Victor Plarr, the librarian, after
kindly making