Intermarriage, or, The mode in which, and the causes why, beauty, health and intellect, result from certain unions, amd deformity, disease and insanity, from others ... / by Alexander Walker.

  • Walker, Alexander, 1779-1852.
Date:
1838
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Intermarriage, or, The mode in which, and the causes why, beauty, health and intellect, result from certain unions, amd deformity, disease and insanity, from others ... / by Alexander Walker. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    though he be almost all bare, yet they will not buy him, unless the saddle and all the harness be taken off—lest under those coverings be hid some gall or sore. And yet in choosing a wife, which shall be either pleasure or displeasure to them all their life after, they be so rechless, that all the residue of the woman's body being covered with clothes, they esteem her scarcely by one hand- breadth (for they can see no more but her face), and so to join her to them, not without great jeo- pardy of evil agreeing together—if anything in her body afterwards should chance to offend and mis- like them, For all men be not so wise as to have respect [merely] to the virtuous condition of the party. And the endowments of the body cause the virtues of the mind more to be esteemed and regarded: yea, even in the marriages of wise men. Verily, so foul deformity may be hid under those coverings, that it may quite alienate and take away the man's mind from his wife, when it shall not be lawful for their bodies to be separate again. If such defor- mity happen by any chance after the marriage is consummate and finished, well: therein is no re- medy but patience: every man must take his fortune w^ell in worth. But it were well done that a law were made whereby all such deceits might be eschewed and avoided beforehand.