The radical remedy in social science, or, Borning better babies through regulating reproduction by controlling conception : an earnest essay on pressing problems / by E.J. Foote, Jr.

  • Foote, Edward B. (Edward Bond), 1854-1912.
Date:
[1886], ©1886
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The radical remedy in social science, or, Borning better babies through regulating reproduction by controlling conception : an earnest essay on pressing problems / by E.J. Foote, Jr. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    an unmitigated evil, both because of its own sickly and painful life and early death, and because of the demor- alization of the family which thus becomes hardened to criminal neglect of its own progeny? In my experience as a student amoDg the dispensary patients of this city I once met a woman who had had and lost seven children, and who spoke of the loss with as little feeling as Artemus Ward did of his wife's relations. '' The Lord had given them and the Lord had taken them away; blessed be the Lord. There is too much of this sort of resignation, and far too little appreciation of the respon- sibilities of parentage. Too Frequent Chllu-Bearins. When it is announced by the Daily Graphic that the farmers of this country use up on the average two and a half wives each, by the too great strain to which they are subjected in the effort to do a woman's work about a farm-house, in addition to the cares and contingencies of maternity; when we hear a physician who makes a specialty of diseases of women (in the Medical Kecord), declare that one of the most marked and important causes of insanity in women was clearly traceable to frequent child-bearing and lactation among the poorer classes, that there was too little in our literature on the subject of mania caused by the exhaustion of the ner- vous system by child-bearing and nursing; when we discover in reports of insane asylums that a large pro- portion of the inmates are farmers' wives, we may put these facts together and discover that reckless propaga- tion (frequent child-bearing) is largely responsible for the breaking down of women in body and mind, and it becomes a pretty safe conclusion that it would be wise to conserve the health and sanity of the mothers of the land by affording them a means of protection against excessive and untimely maternity. H£^== =~0*