Population : its law of increase / by Nathan Allen.

  • Nathan Allen
Date:
1870
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Population : its law of increase / by Nathan Allen. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    18/36 page 16
    It is now generally believed to be in accordance with the laws of hereditary descent, that the mother, not the father, transmits the vitality, the stamina, the strength of the physical system to the child. It becomes, then, a question of the highest importance that women especially should have sound and well-balanced organizations. If the law of human. increase is based upon physiology, it becomes doubly important that the organization of women should be as per- fect as possible. For it is a law, running through the whole animal and vegetable creation, that an organization badly diseased or imper- fectly developed, has a direct tendency to decline both in vitality and fruitfulness. And can a law that is here of so general application be made an exception in the case of the human race ? Now, the evidences of the general ill-health of the American— and particularly of the New England women—as gathered from travelers, newspapers, journals, medical works, and physicians, are so abundant, that they have nowhere been called in question. Many of the causes and effects of this ill health have been more or less discussed, but in no place has its connection with the increase of population been carefully considered. When the nature and peculiar character of these complaints are fully considered—and that many of them are not found so prevalent in any other part of the world— it is clearly evident that they interfere seriously with the laws of increase. And there are reasons to believe that these-peculiar dis- eases and weaknesses are every year multiplying, so that, in process of time, they will have a still more powerful effect upon the increase of population. . It has long been the opinion of medical writers that married women on the whole, have better health and live longer than those in single life. And very recently Dr. J. Stark, of Edinburgh, proved this fact most conclusively from an examination on a large scale, of the Registration Reports of Scotland. It should be observed, that this fact is here demonstrated among a class of women somewhat distinguished for having large families, and might not hold good in a community where large numbers of married women have no children. The organization of woman, the history of her diseases, and the rate of mortality, demonstrate that married life and the production of children are one of the primary objects of her creation. Physiology, pathology and all history upon the great laws of life and health prove this beyond controversy as a general law. There may be exceptions to this general rule, but it is a law which God has made applicable to all races and nations; and whatever institutions, habits or practices
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