Human element in sex : being a medical inquiry into the relation of sexual physiology to Christian morality.

  • Elizabeth Blackwell
Date:
1894
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Human element in sex : being a medical inquiry into the relation of sexual physiology to Christian morality. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of disease^ tlirougli ignorance of physiological law and fanlty hygienic conditions on the one hand, or throngh impure thoughts and bad habits acting through the nervous system on the other. When these natural functions are either injured or unduly stimulated through the brain and nervous system^ then only they become diseased^ producing menor- rhoca or leucorrhoea in the female^ and spermatorrhoea in the male. It is impossible to overrate the wide importance of this law of self-adjustment^ under which human func- tion is carried on. The abuses of sex and the mis- understanding of actual facts, which have led to wide-spread error on this subject^ will be dwelt on later. Every parent, however, who has been able to fulfil the true parental relationship to the child will realise the beneficence of this law. The obligatory and premature marriage of daughters, so largely the custom abroad, is one result of error on this subject. A still more dangerous error is the cruel advice fre- quently given to young men to degrade a wotnan, and sin against his own higher nature by taking a mistress or resorting to harlots. I have often been consulted by anxious mothers who have observed or been told by their boys of fourteen or fifteen that an unusual dischar<2-e had taken ])lace. it is of vital im])ortance to the ]Kirent to know that such action is as natural and healthy in the growing lad as in the growing girl, but that in ])oth it is a time recpiiring guidance, both moral and physical. J^espectful, earnest words of hygienic