A CHAPTER FOR MARRIED PEOPLE 529 



tlie organic processes within, are never alike from day 

 to day, or from hour to hour ; and it is from the aggre- 

 gate of these in the parents, but especially of those in 

 the mother immediately before and after concej^tion, 

 that the quality of the offspring is determined. Sup- 

 pose that there is every now and then an unnatural, 

 excited, and exhausted state of the nervous system pro- 

 duced in the mother by excessive cohabitation, is it any 

 wonder that the child's nervous system, which derives 

 its qualities from those of its parents, should take its 

 peculiar stamp from that of the parent in whom it 

 lives, moves, and has its being? 



''In the adult, epilepsy is frequently developed by 

 excessive venery; and the child born with such a pre- 

 disposition will be exceedingly liable to the disease 

 during its early years, when the nervous system is 

 notoriously prone to deranged action from very slight 

 disturbing causes. 



"The infringement of this law regulating inter- 

 course during pregnancy, also reacts injuriously upon 

 the mental capacity of the child, tending to give it a 

 stupid, animalized look, and, there is also good reason 

 to believe, aids in developing the idiotic condition." 



Other Limitations.— Sexual indulgences ought not 

 to occur after abortion, miscarriage, or labor at full 

 term. Dr. Parvin reports the following case: 



''A friend in the Philadelphia legal profession has 

 told me of his procuring a divorce within two years, 

 for a wife, on account of her husband's cruelty, and a 

 part of that cruelty was the driving of the nurse out 

 of his wife's room three days after her confinement, in 

 order that he might have intercourse with his wife." 



A Selfish Objection. —The married man will 

 raise the plea that indulgence is to him a necessity. 



