Excerpt from The Conquest of Death
Nearly twenty years ago the fact was brought to my attention that two of the sovereign States of our Union had lost population between the years 1860 and 1870. These States were Maine and New Hampshire. The loss in one case was over six thousand persons, and in the other over sixteen thousand. This loss occurred in the face of a considerable immigration from Canada, Ireland, etc. It occurred in two of our most intelligent communities. The two States named have indeed increased in population during the last census, but only as to their cities. The rural population has fallen off four per cent, in Maine, and in Vermont there is in the whole State an absolute loss of some four hundred inhabitants. Similar conditions now appear in the West. Thirty-two counties of Illinois, for instance, show a large absolute decrease of population.
This may not seem alarming without further knowledge of the conditions existing among us. When, however, we see items like the following taken from serious publications:
Instruction in Abortion. - The Medical and Surgical Reporter says that it has received a pamphlet which is evidently being widely distributed. This pamphlet offers for sale a translation of a book by Velpeau, in which instructions may be found how to produce abortion in a variety of ways, some of which are "not known to the medical world," and also "valuable hints as to the best means by which evasion of the law can be accomplished when a physician is so unfortunate as to be 'suspected' of having been guilty of the step." - Dec. 27, 1890.
The Prevention of Conception. -T he Detroit Medical and Literary Association recently discussed the question as to the justifiability of preventing conception. Almost every speaker contended that the practice was proper and right, and many said that prevention could be accomplished mechanically without injury to either the man or the woman. There were apparently but few members of the society who opposed this view, or at any rate there were but few who expressed their opposition. - Med. Record, Nov. 29, 1890.
When we see in every daily paper advertisements of nostrums to bring on the menses, or in other words cause abortion, and when we see in our own acquaintance the few children to a marriage or those totally sterile, we may well conclude that American breeding is not, as a rule, done by its intelligent and dominant families.
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