, all born within ten years. These were puny,
scrofulous, nervous and irritable. She herself was a fit subject for
doctors and drugs. Every organ in her body seemed diseased, and every
function perverted. She was dragging out a miserable existence. Like other
physicians, I had prescribed in vain for her many maladies. One day she
chanced to inquire how she could safely prevent conception. This led me to
ask how great was the danger. She said: 'Unless my husband is absent from
home, few nights have been exempt since we were married, except it may be
three or four immediately after confinement.'

"'And yet your husband loves you?'

"'O, yes, he is kind and provides for his family. Perhaps I might love him
but for this. While now--(will God forgive me?)--_I detest, I loathe him_,
and if I knew how to support myself and children, I would leave him.'

"'Can you talk with him upon this subject?'

"'I think I can.'

"' Then there is hope, for many women cannot do that. Tell him I will give
you treatment to improve your health, and if he will wait until you can
respond, _take time for the act, have it entirely mutual from first to
last_, the demand will not come so frequent.'

"'Do you think so?'

"'The experience of many proves the truth of this statement.'

"Hopefully she went home, and in six months I had the satisfaction of
knowing my patient was restored to health, and a single coition in a month
gave the husband more satisfaction than the many had done previously, that
the creative power was under control, and that my lady could proudly say 'I
love,' where previously she said 'I hate.'

"If husbands will listen, a few simple instructions will {259} appeal to
their _common sense_, and none can imagine the gain to themselves, to their
wives and children, and their children's children. Then it may not be said
of the babes that the 'Death borders on their birth, and their cradle
stands in the grave.'"

2. WIVES! BE FRANK AND TRUE to your husbands on the subject of maternity,
and the relation that leads to it. Interchange thoughts and feelings with
them as to what nature allows or demands in regard to these. Can maternity
be natural when it is undesigned by the father or undesired by the mother?
Can a maternity be natural, healthful, ennobling to the mother, to the
child, to the father, and to the home, when no loving, tender, anxious
forethought presides over the relation in which it originated?--when the
mother's