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of the womb. We have high authority for the statement that this loathsome disease has this cause for its origin more frequently than any other. Indeed, if the constitutional proclivity to cancer exist in an individual, the practice of this vice is almost sure to develop it.
If the ejection of the seminal fluid upon the mouth of the womb and within the vagina be necessary to the attainment of pleasure in the sexual act, as we have already stated, it is absolutely indispensable to safety. There is in this fluid a certain specific property which, as it were, remedies the otherwise dangerous condition in which the womb and vagina are placed by the venereal excitement. And this property is something peculiar, outside of and beyond the mechanical effect already referred to; consequently nothing can be devised to take its place, and, consequently, whenever the genital function is not completed physiologically, direct injury results. The explanation is this: the generative organs, both male and female, are invariably congested, that is to say, the vessels are unduly filled with blood during copulation. Now, while in man this congestion subsides with the stimulus which occasioned it, in woman it persists to a considerable extent, and new congestions being successively added to the preceding, there result, at first, what are termed engorgements, then inflammations, then follow ulcerations, and then, if there be the least predisposition to cancer, those frightful malignant degenerations succeed which carry so many victims to premature graves.
Marital intercourse during pregnancy is a question on which theologians and moralists are, as yet, divided in opinion. The former contend that, while there are certain periods—embracing the first days and last month of pregnancy—when marital approaches are prohibited by reason
