THE

Journal of Health and Disease.

JUNE, 1846.

PHYSIOLOGY IN REGARD TO THE LAWS OF INCREASE AND THE INFLUENCE OF PARENTS ON OFFSPRING.

CHAPTER IV.

SECTION III.-Early marriages necessarily physically injurious.-Productive of Scrofula. The law in Bavaria.-Unequal marriages, the evils resulting therefrom.-The age proper for marriage.

ANOTHER series of conditions, under which the influence of parents upon offspring is exhibited, consists of what may be designated as EARLY and UNEQUAL marriages.

"A tree does not perfect its fruit in the first years of bearing. It is only after its roots have been firmly implanted, and the woody fibre has acquired its full development, that the fruit obtains the size and the flavour of its species."'58

The excellence of the apples of England is to a considerable extent dependent upon the old and venerable orchards that abound. A wander from Tunbridge to Maidstone in the month of August will exhibit a demonstration in relation to this, amply repaying the cost and the trouble. The trees in these ancient orchards have attained maturity, and the fruit produced, being mature, can be preserved through the winter.

This law extends to the animal kingdom. The lower animals never unite until their development is nearly or quite completed; and, thus, they are placed by their instinct in obedience to the law, THAT TO PRODUCE A MATURE BEING, THE BEINGS PRO

DUCING MUST THEMSELVES BE MATURE.

Man is a being of reason. He has the same animal impulse as the beast, but not so periodically active as the instinct of the beast is. It has an almost continual activity; and the man has reasoning powers and moral faculties to regulate the impulse,

arising from its activity. To his reason, therefore, the facts must be presented, to enable the judgment to be arrived at, in order to guide him as to the time when he shall enter into marriage.

It is a fact which rests on indubitable evidence, that " a man must have passed the age of puberty by several years, before he will have the power of producing healthy children."59

It is an additional fact, also equally well established, that "he must have arrived at his full strength and development, to be able to impart the elements of constitutional vigour to his offspring."60

Many are the evidences of the former fact.

The first few children of two young people, married, say the man twenty, and the woman eighteen or nineteen, almost invariably die off within the two first years of their existence.

It is true the children may be lovely; for the first year they grow and look well, but when the double teeth begin to appear, then the suffering commences. The symptoms indicate affection of the head; but all is ascribed to teething, and they die of effusion on the brain. It is clear, however, that all children were intended to teethe. Why, then, the described result? The process of teething is one connected with considerable action in the nervous and the vascular systems, the teeth being supplied abundantly with nerves and blood vessels. The process of developing a tooth through the gums is connected with a manifestation of a power, at least equal to that which the plumule of a plant in the spring of the year exhibits, in lifting up the earth, so as to make its way through the solid clod, which rested upon it. The brain sympathizes with this action of the jaw and the parts adjacent, and the increased action, thus induced, becomes in a child, born of immature parents, an irritation; this irritation is a disease, and the brain of the child, not having the necessary perfection of structure to go through this irritation, manifests its inability in the effusion of fluid, which causes death.

Thus the immature beings are removed, and the world is protected against the ignorance, and often unruled sensuality of the parents.

As a further corroboration that such deaths are connected with the immaturity of the child, dependant upon the immaturity of the parents, is the fact, that these very parents, after having lost their three or four first children, save those that follow after; in other words, by this period, namely, in the process of four or five years, the parents have attained maturity, and they now can impart that, which, previously, they could not. And their children, now begotten, go through the period of teething without fatal consequences.

It seems that it would have been much wiser if the parents had abstained from marriage, till they had attained the required maturity, and they would then not have had the pang of losing their beloved offspring; and, what is more, the mother would not have exhausted her constitution in this premature and consequently constitution-exhausting bearing of children.

Lugol believes that precocious marriages are a very frequent cause of scrofula. He relates a case, which strikingly illustrates the truth of the remarks just made.

"In 1829, we had a patient in the Hospital of St. Louis with tubercular neck glands, and white swellings of the right shoulder. His sister was tall and of weekly constitution. Their parents were scarcely twenty years of age at the time of their birth. A brother and sister, who were born after their parents had attained a reasonable age, were healthy and well developed."61 The writer knows a lady, who was married when she was in her fifteenth year, to a gentleman of fortune, about ten years older than herself. She was then a fine, handsome, full grown woman, so far as size was concerned; but the natural change had not as yet arrived. She had several children; some died in infancy; but all that grew up died of scrofula.

Little doubt can exist had this lady married the same husband when she was older, the children which she then would have had would not have so suffered.

The question here occurs, what is a mature age for marriage? Twenty-five years for a man, and twenty-one for a woman. It being "essential, in the production of a healthy offspring, that the husband should be some years older than the wife." At these ages each party may be regarded as possessing the con

ditions both mental and bodily, in which they will enjoy the conditions of the married state; and, in such enjoyment, will not be the instruments of producing beings, whom they will have to look upon as sacrifices made at the shrine of passion on the altar of immaturity.

It is important to get this truth established in the public mind. The understanding convinced will constitute a law, and guarantee its observation. The mind-will despotism is the only sway that an enlightened people will need, or will submit to. It may do for the despotic government of Bavaria to pass a law, enforcing marriage at such an age, but a thinking man would prefer the accidental evils of liberty to act, rather than the forced benefits of obliged obedience, knowing that liberty to act is connected with liberty to convince the understanding.

The Bavarian law is that, "it is illegal for any young man to marry before he is twenty-five, or any young woman before she is eighteen; and a young man, at whatever age he wishes to marry, must show to the police and the priest of the commune where he resides, that he is able, and has the prospect, to provide for a wife and family."62

This government, and other despotic governments, treat the people as if they were children—as babes. Physiology appeals to the understanding of mankind, and seeks to base obedience on consent.

While too early, precocious, marriages are an evil, UNEQUAL marriages are a still greater evil.

The absurdity of a marriage of a man of sixty with a woman of twenty, or under thirty, is so great, that the ridicule therewith connected forms frequently a barrier against its occcurrence. Still such unions do take, and they may with propriety be designated unequal.

As parents, who have not attained vigour, cannot impart it, equally true is it, that parents, from whom vigour has departed, cannot impart that which is departed.

"The productive faculty commences its decadence about the of age forty-five years: it is not very evident at first, but becomes sufficiently apparent after the lapse of a few years."

The critical period in a woman commences about forty-two, and is completed in the course of a few years. "After this period, pregnancy is frequently an illusion, or their infants perish before, or a few days after their birth; and, if one be reared, he is endowed with a debility of constitution, which sooner or later assumes the character of SCROFUla.”

Lugol relates the case of a family, of which four of the children were healthy, but the fifth, born after his mother was fifty-two, is scrofulous. He relates the case of a scrofulous youth, aged eighteen, having been begotten when his father was fifty-two. This youth has a brother, a tall robust man, he having been begotten when his father was thirty-nine.

Scrofula, Lugol maintains, appears in the children when the husband is younger than the wife.

If such inequality in marriage is productive of this dire disease, how opposite must it be to the law of nature, thus to unite old age with young age?

The writer knew a gentleman in Edinburgh, a man of strong constitution, and a well educated mind. He married and had children by his first wife, who still live. He was, when upwards of sixty, married a second time to a lady of the highest accomplishments, of fine figure, and handsome features. He had ten children by this wife. These children grew up handsome and interesting girls till they attained their eighteenth year, when one died off after the other.

They had not the stamina in their constitution necessary to perfect their frames: they sank in the struggle.

This gentleman was in good health though old. He lived to be upwards of eighty.

These children, till they attained their puberty, would have been, from their beauty and their youth, arguments in defence of age marrying youth, but when the history is traced a little further, the truth stands forth.

CONCLUDING REMARKS.

The important facts and views, brought under view in these Essays on the Influence of Parents on Offspring, will form a basis, upon which, it is believed, much useful practice may be founded.