ated at a period of ill-humour, bodily indisposition,
or nervous debility, may carry with it, during its whole existence, some
small particles of these evils. When there exists any contagious
disease, refusals are of course valid, and often a duty to the unborn.
Poverty, or the wish to have no more children, can only be exceptionally
allowed as a reason for the denial of all conjugal privileges.

The opinion that sexual relations practised during the time of the
menses engender children liable to scrofulous disease, is a mere popular
prejudice. But there are other and better-founded reasons for continence
during these periods.

The question of intercourse during pregnancy and suckling will come up
for consideration when speaking of these conditions hereafter.

CONDITIONS WHEN MARITAL RELATIONS ARE PAINFUL.

Nature has not designed that a function of great moment to the human
race--one involving its very existence--should be attended with pain.
The presence of pleasure is indicative of health, its absence of
disease. But to a woman who has systematically displaced her womb by
years of imprudence in conduct or dress, this act, which should be a
physiological one, and free from any hurtful tendencies becomes a source
of distress and even of illness. The diseases of the womb which
sometimes follow matrimony are not to be traced to excessive indulgence
in many cases, but to indulgence _to any extent_ by those who have
altered the natural relation of the parts before marriage. A prominent
physician, Prof. T. Gaillard Thomas, of New York, has said that 'upon a
woman who has enfeebled her system by habits of indulgence and luxury,
pressed her uterus entirely out of its normal place, and who perhaps
comes to the nuptial bed with some marked uterine disorder, the result
of imprudence at menstrual epochs, sexual intercourse has a _poisonous_
influence. The taking of food into the stomach exerts no hurtful
influence on the digestive system; but the taking of food by a
dyspeptic, who has abused and injured that organ, does so.'

When excessive pain exists, and every attempt occasions nervous
trepidation and apprehension, it is absolutely certain that there is
some diseased condition present, for which proper advice should be
secured at once. Delay in doing so will not remove the necessity for
medical interference in the end, while it will assuredly aggravate the
trouble. Prompt intelligent aid, on the contrary, is usually foll