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CHAPTER X.

The Social Evil.

Rev.Dr. Muhlenberg in one of his sermons, gave a withering reproof to fashionable woman church goers as follows: --"One of the great inducements to women to ply an immoral trade, is a fondness for finery, copying their sisters in higher life, who, by their example of vain show in dress, have more to answer for in the matter than they suspect."

Nothing could be truer, and when once in the vortex, they find they can live easier and more idly than in other ways, not knowing that they will soon lose the mental power to concentrate their energies on anything that would be honorable supporting, unless endowed with an unusual amount of will power. They do not understand that there is anything to be thought of in the case but a loss of the respect of people, an avoidance of child-bearing, and precautionary measures against venereal diseases.

They do not know that their passions will not always hold out, and they know nothing about the fearful drain upon their nerve forces.

But one of the great motives in yielding in the first place, with the masses of unfortunate women, is a curiosity that is intensified with the inducements,

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and with the natural instincts of everything that has life.

We have failed to find any men speakers or writers that understand this, for the most abandoned will not acknowledge this to men who undertake to peer into their lives.

Men cannot deal with this question properly, because they do not understand women. The best of writers on this subject are full of false theories, and false conclusions that the mass of women who read the same assent to, because it is considered something quite creditable among women generally to speak of the sexual relation as simply a marital acquiesance on the part of women who are married, and of great passions on the part of any woman who is having such relations out of marriage.

The best of men writers, whose researches on these subjects have been great, will assert with all the assurance possible, that "women's passions are not as strong an men's." And they will bring what they term proof to bear them out in such assertions, but nothing could possibly be more radically false. On the other hand the sexual passions of women are stronger than those of men, but the early training of self control, make the habits of continence so strong that men mistake self control for weak passional natures.

There are times in every month of menstruating

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women that only the moral sentiments save them, this is a perversion of the love of posterity that a combination of causes have produced.

When the minute placenta is formed in the uterus and the ovum awaiting the arrival of the sperm cells to unite with the germ cells, there cannot be a louder call than is made with the nerves of the vagina, all intensified with menstrual flow that every month gives new power to the vaginal nerves. The very formation of woman ought to teach a scientific man that her excitement as a natural consequence would be far more intense than his. This is seen in the confessions of women whose husbands or lovers were using precautionary measures to prevent conception, and were not permitted to do so. It is seen in abundant cases where women marry men far beneath them, and some widows resort to all sorts of measures to gratify the sexual passions, and retain the respect of people by a chaste appearance if they can but gratify at all hazards. The greater strength of women's passions as compared with men is seen in their willingness to take all risks of passing through the agonies of abortions that are often greater than those of full grown child bearing.

We must take human nature as we find it, and then try to make the world better by lessons of history, observation and experience.

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or they would see that no one single effort or a single measure could do away with the monstrous evil.

There is so much to be said upon this subject, that full elaboration would be impossible in our limited space.

We must at this time enter our protest against the course of so-called "scientific men," who advise young men to "cohabit with women to improve their health." It would be no more monstrous to give such advice to young women than it is to young men.

The organs of generation are for the specific purpose of procreating, and if not used for that purpose the natural means of ridding the system of an unusual accumulation is taken by nature.

While marriage is favorable to health and longevity, because of many stimulants to exertion such as children and the accumulative interests consequent on marriage, we have abundant proof of the general good health of body and mind of those who have never married. Among such are the names of the following well known women:

Dr. Harriet K. Hunt, the first educated woman practitioner in America; charlotte Cushman, the American theatrical star; Rosa Bonheur, France's greatest artist in animal painting; Florence Nightingale, England's most prominent army nurse, and Miss Burdet Coots, the great English philanthropist. The lives of these women prove what can be achieved

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by using the powers in other directions than those of sex merely, and letting the reproductive organs rest from excitement of indulgence. Woman individually, is the only one capable of judging when, how often, if ever, she is to take measures to become a mother as all men are free to decide what is of immeasurable importance to them.

Some of the greatest men that have ever lived have chosen never to marry, and have distinguished themselves by the use of brain power, instead of draining their systems through their organs of sex. Among these are Sir Isaac Newton; Gibson, the sculptor; Pitt, the statesman; Baron Von Humbolt, the scientist; Kent(sic), the metaphysician, and Jacob Gremm (sic), the philologist.

Unless there is a stay to the social evil, the time is not distant when the world will sink back into barbarism.

The few who put on their virtuous cloaks to shield themselves from a discussion of these subjects, preferring rather to ignore evils in their own circles and let the rest of the world take care of itself, are of but little use to us or the rest of humanity. Ignoring the evils of life is not the philosophical way of treating them. They should be discussed by the deepest metaphysicians, and all should be taught their existence and consequences, as the safe method of avoidance.

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They will learn, it is impossible to prevent their gaining knowledge from the basest standpoints, and through the most vulgar kind of language. How much better to be taught correctly and fill the minds with correct ideas and the true uses of all things. Science knows no false modesty. Much of the social evil is far beyond the sphere of legislation, but can be reached and the wrongs thereof righted through knowledge in youth.

The effects of tobacco on the organs of generation are well known to the profession as excitants, and also as having an effect on the early decay of the generative functions of both sons and daughters, as well as parents. Fe. E. E. Phelps, Professor for many years in Dartmough College; Dr. Napheys, the medical author; Dr. Pidduck of London; Dr. C. McDougal, Dr. Wells, Dr. Trall, Drs. Fowler, Dr. Gardner, Dr. Smith, and a host of others leraned in the profession, are convinced of the social evils that are aggravated by the noxious weed ---tobacco.

S. Weir Mitchell, M.D., of the Philadelphia Infirmary for Nervous Diseases, in a recent paper, says that "tobacco is of all causes the most potent in giving rise to general nervousness."

We hope the Doctor will give a learned essay upon the effects on wives of men who use the noxious poison by portraying at length how the lungs, the kidneys, the skin, and especially the prostate gland

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surrounding the urethra, gather up and throw out the poisons that are introduced into the system.

The social evil among the married prevails to an extent that is appalling. The very influence of sexual variety that the husband carries to his wife through his nerves in his sexual relation with her, impresses her with the idea of indulging in a variety also, and so the pure girl that he married with no other thought but of faithfulness to him, his own course of life has changed, and made her unable to resist a variety life. Her husband seduces young girls, and brings to her in his sexual relations with her the spirit of seduction of the innocent, and so she reasons that if there is something desirable in initiating young girls in sexual relations, that it must be equally so to initiate young men and so she pursues her course.

And just so long as men are unfaithful to themselves before or after marriage, will young men be seduced by married women. Such cases are increasing at a fearful rate, and will continue to increase until men who are stronger physically than women will refrain from degrading themselves by taking on the vile magnetism of illicit intercourse that once imbibed is ever after a part of the man, as much as his hand, and is a part of the inheritance of posterity.

Popular ignorance on these points will not affect

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the great laws, and while we have been able to make some discoveries and application of laws and principles of the science of life, we should consider silence upon such important matters a crime of great magnitude, when we contemplate that millions are living, and billions unborn that are to be benefited by such knowledge.

Both men and women suffer aside from the usual diseases of body and mind, who are actors in the social evil wrongs. Among the same are two that are fearful results, the prolapsus of the scrotum in man, and the terrible hemorrhages of the uterus in the change of woman's life. There are no reprieves from the prison of the soul. And no remitting of the penalties of outraged nature.

Even in animal life there are marked instances of the great law. Somewhere there is a rebellion against such wrongs in the shape of a mare having but two legs; a heifer having an extra foot growing from the shoulder; a calf having six feet, etc.

A woman so degarded(sic) that not even the lowest attaches of Barnum's shows would associate with her sexually, was hired by them for a pony. The animal was fixed in a frame, but as soon as she was touched, he fell back dead. The same experiment was tried with another woman and another pony by these men, with the same result. These women submitted to the degradation to get their bread, and for the pittance paid. Barnum lost his valuable ponies.

Will men never see that in a thousand ways their oppression of women are visited upon themselves? The above case is but a financial retribution while the following is a physical one of a poignant character:

One of the young queens in the South Sea Islands married a prince who died while in the first act of coition. In due course of time the next brother married her with the same result. The third brother, according to the custom of every brother marrying his brother's widow until an heir was born, reluctantly married her, knowing that both his brothers had died from the effect of having the head of the penis entirely severed. He was cautious, and declared she had a little knife concealed inside of her, and as his mutilated condition was testimony in the case, she was killed and examination revealed the attachment to the uterus of three small bones with sharp edges.

Nature has strange freaks in her efforts to enforce her law of the rights of woman to her own person; we say freaks, because we have not yet delved into the mysteries that envelop unusual cases.

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There are instances where the daughters born from marital rape, have inherited such a power of vagina resistance, that the coition grasp in orgasm has caused a man the most excruciating pain. There are two instances in this city that are known to be such. One is a case of a woman in good social position, who has all the fierceness of passion of the father and the resistance of the mother, making her just the character she is.

No man ever has but one sexual relation with her and considers himself fortunate to be able to escape alive. It is utterly beyond her power to control in any degree the muscular tissues of the vagina, and the bruised condition of her victims are occasions of apologies and regrets.

The woman has property, and when she fails to win a victim through ordinary arts, she pays a consideration for whoever she can get, but no amount of money can make a second purchase.

The very atmosphere is filled with wrongs of man to woman of more or less aggravated character. Women are oppressed because they will not sink into the immoralities of the age, or even sanction the same. Woman is denied legislative justice because she has so much logic that she cannot see any reason why she has not as good a right to help to make and to administer laws that govern both men and women as men have, and because she dares to dress in

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as time saving, health saving, strength saving and money saving manner as man.

One class of men oppress because woman lives up to the purest ideas of the grandeur of earth life, while another class oppress woman because she goes to the extreme of immoralities. The question might arise which class of men are the better of the two?

An eye witness informed us of an instance of the latter that all men ought to know of. Sixteen men in one evening cohabited with one woman, and after the same, without one of them having given the degraded woman a penny, took a large dog and, with one accord, compelled her to submit to another degradation!!! While grand and cultured women are oppressed in high places, the very atmosphere is filled with oppression that is meted out to other women by men of lower grades, in ways that would shock the former oppressors. Thus the sentiment of oppression carries with it no safety valve. The very sentiment preached, lived or even cherished will return to your daughters through men of degraded habits, to sting like a viper, although you may have sung them as a bird before your reverses of station and of fortune.

It is a hard matter to decide where the greater crime exists, whether in debasing a pure and true soul with brilliant attainments, or taking advantage of one with little mind and meager attainments.

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Who shall decide which injures society the more? No canvas is of sufficient dimensions to delineate the features of these cases. But in the great future the canvases will be unrolled to view. Let imagination paint its own picture to every man according to life. One such will be related here:

A young girl is the victim of a promising young man. He deserts her and she sinks lower and lower until she is a filthy blear-eyed monster, sinking out of life in a below stairs den, from which she is boxed up and sent to "potter's field." The brilliant young man has so covered his various conquests that he has been called respectable all through life. He has wealth, position, a fine family, and finally dies in his palatial residence, and is conveyed to the family vault with public honors. Voice and press are loud in extolling his virtues, while he is taking up his quarters in the realm of the disembodied.

The first object that meets his eyes, grasps his hand, and speaks his name, is the degraded woman that is now one of the component parts of his "Hell." He starts in consternation, he tries to speak a begone, he attempts to wrench his hand from her grasp, but finds himself powerless. He then takes a retrospective view of his life and goes into all the labyrinths of labyrinths through which his victim and victim of victims has passed, and with every thought and shadow of a thought, comes

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home to him the dreadful realization that he has been the grand mogul of the pure creatures destiny before him. The company he sought in earth life, and robbed of their magnetic power, rush to him in spirit life, with all the bad magnetism that are far worse than a literal fire and brimstone.

A son of a wealthy and prominent gentleman in a northern city, who was boarding at a fashionable hotel, took a woman in bed with his wife who had been a friend of hers. The shock of misplaced confidence in both of them was so great, (and what of abuse was meted to the wife in other regards we may never know,) that wife became so demented that she almost entirely lost the power of speech, and scarcely knows enough to feed herself. This occurred several years since, and at last accounts she was still living and in the same condition.

How the mental and physical could be so affected, just what process of action on both through the nerves was the cause of the result, is a study for the metaphysician, and until it shall be solved, will come under the head of the "unknowables."

As the lower classes are so badly conditioned, we can only hope to right the wrongs of the social evils, through science in the better classes of society as regards wealth and general culture. Not better as regards morals, save that there is less of the posi-

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tive brutality towards woman, and more of wooing into evil.

A case occurred in Washington as follows: A gentleman who was addressing a lady with the avowed intention of marriage, did, by positive force, succeed in violating her person. He married her soon after. But he so shocked her sense of the proprieties of life, the selfhood of woman and rights of woman to her won person, he so disgusted her with the sexual relation that she told him before marriage that she should never be party to such a relation again.

They have been living together for near twenty years, and no influence could be brought to bear to induce her to change her resolution. She has been uniformly kind and attentive to him except when the sexual relation has been suggested in any way, and then she has been endowed with superhuman power of resistance. He was not out of the borders of civilization and could not do as one of the Indian Agents did in Wisconsin a few years since, which was to hire two men to hold a squaw whom he had repeatedly failed to violate alone. How long will it take to prove to white squaws that "men are women's protectors," and to dark squaws that the whites are a noble race sent by a great government to "civilize them."

How many prayers will it take to wash the soul of social evils gathered up in earth life? With many

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gathered up in ignorance of their permanence , but gathered for eternity.

We have said many times in our lectures, that much of the failure to do justly to woman was more a misfortune than a fault, because man does not understand woman, and never will while there is one iota of barbarism relics over women, preventing the largest freedom in thought and act. Imperfect laws must ever exist until there is perfect freedom for all the governed to make full statements regarding cause and effect in thousands of matters that men have no conception of, and never have even thought deeply enough to think it possible that there is a side beyond man's possible comprehension.

Even as late as 1787, the subject was discussed regarding the complete evidence of rape.

The thought never occurred to men judges or juries that a child or even a matured girl was ignorant of what an "emission" was, that she must swear to in order to prove rape.

The common law would not take penetration as sufficient evidence of rape, until the eyes of men were opened by the testimony of a woman who had borne several children that "she could not swear that emission had ever taken place."

(Forcible penetration whether in marriage rapes or in any other, at any time, more frequently than otherwise, causes more or less homorrhage. In any

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case the vagina seeks to protect itself from the injury of friction by lubricating with the natural secretions, if possible, but if not able to do so then it is assisted by help from the uterus in an ill-timed menstrual discharge.)

There were no women on the dignified benches nor in the ignorant boxes, for the age was not blessed by Justice Esther Morriss, Lawyer Belva A Lockwood, Jurymen Mrs. Amelia B Post and Mrs. Editor Hayford, and a Law Journalist, Mira Bradwell.

Forced contact of the genital organs should be met with the severest penalities of rape, since such an act is but premonitory to and with carnal intentions, and is prevented only by some circumstances connected with the case, such as being frightened by other parties appearing, or impossibility of penetration without seriious results, etc,etc.

Infants but two and three years of age are often raped, by men of all ages, not only for present gratification, but to familiarize girls of immature ages with carnal matters, and to excite, so that seduction may be easy in future. We could mention many instances of this kind of outrage, but one will suffice.

A case occurred in New Orleans, eight years since, where a young man of nineteen years of age took his employer's little daughter of three years and gave her venereal disease. The attending doctor gave the author a history of the treatment of the case with

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the minute vagina and urethra, that made treatment so difficult and so uncertain regarding her future condition.

The only just way to deal with a man guilty of rape is to castrate him, for a man who has once been guilty in the face of all the influences against what is worse than murder, a term in prison will not make respectable.

The time is coming when a respectable lawyer will not defend such a man for filthy lucre--he or she will not draw up every point of law and twist it so as to defeat justice.

It is a lamentable fact, that nearly every case of rape, gives a ruined victim to the world, for the vile magnetism that is imparted by the fiend, is so infused in the system of the victim that vice of the various grades is irresistible, (see the Language of the Nerves.) Let judges and attorneys hereafter look upon and talk up to juries the metaphysical injuries as no counts have ever heard before -- let no lawyer plead an after life of an injured girl as a reason why there should be no verdict against him.

So long as children are begotten by force, so long as boys have the example that physical strength shall rule over women of any age or under any circumstances in life, will the outrage of rape be committed.

More children are begotten in marital rapes than

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in any other way. If the ovum is in a proper condition and is met by the spermatozoa conception must result, for the laws of conception cannot be controverted by anger or hatred on one side and outraged womanhood on the other.

The ordinary dress of women of all ages makes the facilities for rapes complete, and until the moral reform undersuits, and indeed the whole reform dress is worn, the best of girls and even women will be raped by certain classes of men.

The first step towards making the world better morally, is comprehended in not only a full knowledge of the effects of vice as seen in the Language of the Nerves, but in all womanhood being properly protected by dress in its best style.

The ordinary dress of woman by debilitating her body causes her mind to be also weakened. Woman is if not in absolute misery from dress, so uncomfortable that she cannot think gravely and deep0ly. If a man has but a sliver in his finger, he cannot write a fine article or do himself justice in a speech. That is as nothing compared with the enervating effects and miseries of woman caused by dress.

In order to have a sound moralist, one able to cope with life as it is and leave pure examples as well as precepts, the dress question is of practicable importance.

How much of immorality id directly chargeable

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to woman's dress, we cannot pretend to elaborate in this work. This much we will affirm, that there will be scarcely any perceptible difference in the tone of morals--difference for the better, until both immature and mature woman is protected by dress, as no women are who dress in the ordinary styles. This is so well known that it needs no mention, only to remind the better class of men, that while there are all around us women dressed so that the facilities of vice are perfect, we can expect nothing better than street rapes occasionally and parlor rapes without number.

We cannot too strongly impress upon the fathers of daughters their duty in seeing that their little girls are instructed in regard to the certainty of protecting themselves against rapes, by grabbing the testicles. So sensative(sic) are they that a man is at once weakened and made powerless to injure woman.

A case occurred in Pennsylvania, where a young girl learned that her seducer was about to marry. When she saw him again he renewed his immoral attentions to her with a response from her hands in the shape of actually fracturing the muscles of the penis. The best of medical attention was procured but he was forever crippled and disabled, but the injury to the testicles is an effective a protection and much easier. And when women generally understand their power of protection, by knowing how

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sensitive is the scrotum, rapes will be fewer. But sexual wrongs will not cease until the reform dress becomes general. The underclothes are so constructed that a rape would be impossible.