Sound and vigorous
at the time of her marriage, she could remain so if given advice as to
by what means she could space her children and limit their number.
When she is not given such information, she is plunged blindly into
married life and a few years is likely to find her with a large
family, herself diseased and damaged, an unfit breeder of the unfit,
and still ignorant!
What are the fruits of this woeful ignorance in which women have been
kept? First, a tremendous infant mortality--hundreds of thousands of
babies dying annually of diseases which flourish in poverty and
neglect.
Next, the rapid increase of the feebleminded, of criminal types and of
the pathetic victims of toil in the child-labor factories. Another
result is the familiar overcrowding of tenements, the forcing of the
children into the street, the ensuing prostitution, alcoholism and
almost universal physical and moral unfitness.
Those abhorrent conditions point to a blunder upon the part of those
to whom we have entrusted the care of the health of the individual,
the family and the race. The medical profession, neglecting the
principle involved in preventive medicine, has permitted these
conditions to come about.
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