Essays and notes on the physiology and diseases of women, and on practical midwifery / by John Robertson.

  • Roberton, John, 1797-1876.
Date:
1851
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Essays and notes on the physiology and diseases of women, and on practical midwifery / by John Robertson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    and but some, of the polluted sources from which the youthful imagination of the Hindu draws its imagery.1 State of Widowhood. The condition of widows is much the same in the Arctic regions as it is found wherever the feelings have not been softened by the Christian religion. From Captain Lyon we learn that widows, who have friends [i.e. grown up children], and good health, fare equally well as those females who have husbands; but illness, or want of friends, seals their fate; and if they are unable by prostitution to support themselves, they are left to starve with their children.2 Still more deplorable is the widow's fate among the Hindus. On the authority of Professor Webb we are informed, that children are married at the tender age of 8, 9, or 10 years; that by law they cannot marry again upon the death of the boy-spouse; and, he adds, unless the Government should vindicate Nature's laws, and do as much to sup- press polygamy as polyandry, there seems no hope for them. Thousands of women are thus living in hopeless celibacy, surrounded by institutions and practices, if not wholly subversive of chastity, at least very unfavorable to it; indeed it has no other safeguard than the dread 1 For a singular and illustrative trait of manners among the Otaheitians, hardly fit to be copied, see J. R. Forster's « Observa- tions made in a Voyage round the World,' p. 472. 2 Lyon, p. 353. See a shocking instance of this, p. 391. Also, Parry's ' Second Voyage,' 4to, p. 544. Among the small tribe of Boothians Sir John Ross did not notice this inhumanity to widows.