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suits. The phenomena known as female weaknesses are produced oftener by this than by all other causes combined. Derangements of the bladder, rectum, and womb arising from this cause are well-nigh intractable. But these things rarely kill; we do not read that God slew Thamar.
A consideration which should operate most powerfully with generous natures, against this practice, is the fact that in every instance the most cruel injustice is practiced upon the woman in the incompleteness of the act. It is impossible for a woman, however passionate and loving she may be, to reach the true crisis of the sexual act when conjugal onanism is practiced. It is well known to physiologists that the contact of the seminal fluid with the neck of the womb is a positive necessity, not only for the proper reduction of the local congestion, but for the realization on her part of the pleasure to which the woman is justly entitled. But few repetitions of these incomplete approaches are requisite to well-nigh obliterate all ideas of enjoyment on the part of the wife so defrauded, and, therefore, another and very powerful cause of conjugal unhappiness is added to those already enumerated. But these considerations can have but little weight with most men—to their shame be it spoken. The gratification of their own lust — we cannot term it pleasure—is, with the majority of men, the leading idea connected with the marriage bed.
Man is, by his very nature, hard, selfish, and tyrannical toward woman we have elsewhere sufficiently proved. "We have also shown the causes and cure of this oppression. Christianity, however, while vastly ameliorating the condition of woman in all other respects, has shown a surprising diffidence in dealing with the brutality to which she is subjected in the marriage chamber. "Wives submit
