the sexual purpose, the disease often assuming the
magnitude of incapacity to give birth and to nurse the child, even of
danger to life itself. "Should this degeneration of our women continue
to increase in the same measure as before, the time may not be far away
when it will become doubtful whether man is to be counted among the
mammals or not."[90] Instead of a healthy, joyful companion, of a
capable mother, of a wife attentive to her household duties, the husband
has on his hands a sick, nervous wife, whose house the physician never
quits, who can stand no draught, and can not bear the least noise. We
shall not expatiate further on this subject. Every reader--and as often
as in this book we speak of "reader," we mean, of course, the female as
well as the male--can himself further fill the picture: he has
illustrations enough among his own relatives and acquaintances.

Experienced physicians maintain that the larger part of married women,
in the cities especially, are in a more or less abnormal condition.
According to the degree of the evil and the character of the couple,
such unions can not choose but be unhappy, and, they give the husband
the right, in public opinion, to allow himself freedoms outside of the
marriage bed, the knowledge of which throws the wife into the most
wretched of moods. Furthermore the, at times, very different sexual
demands of one party or the other give occasion to serious friction,
without the so much wished-for separation being possible. A great
variety of considerations render that, in most cases, out of all
question.

Under this head the fact may not be suppressed that a _considerable
number of husbands are themselves responsible for certain serious
physical ailments of their wives, ailments that these are not
infrequently smitten with in marriage_. As consequences of the excesses
indulged in during bachelorship, a considerable number of men suffer of
chronic sexual diseases, which, seeing these cause them no serious
inconvenience, are taken lightly. Nevertheless, through sexual
intercourse with the wife, these diseases bring upon her disagreeable,
even fatal troubles of the womb, that set in, soon after marriage, and
often develop to the point of rendering her unable to conceive or to
give birth. The wretched woman usually has no idea of the cause of the
sickness, that depresses her spirits, embitters her life, and uproots
the purpose of marriage. She blames herself, and accepts blam