life, by which we realize the prayers of paid priests and the pains of unpaid clod-hoppers by the road-side; the folly of fashion-rangers and the sorrows of wasted homes; all in vivid contrast with the wisdom of angel hosts and the grateful joys of the pure in heart.

At the center of this wondrous combination we gladly live, and move, and perform our mission. To this center come innumerable letters from the wealthy, the weary, and the weak -from the exceedingly poor-also, from the robbed, the spoiled, the hunted, the broken-down, and the very sorrowful. The bodily bonds and distresses of many mothers surpass the liveliest imagination. Thousands of young women, too, take their places in the legion army of invalids, all marching-slowly -sadly-steadily marching toward the insatiable cemetery, just behind yon trees or beneath the dark shadow of the village church. Not less than fifty descriptive letters, received from suffering women living in homes or huts all the way from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast, await an early answer-appealing tearfully for strength of health and the grace of harmony; and in almost all cases we observe a sort of chronic ignorance concerning physiological truths the most simple and important. In view of this condition among the young women and diseased mothers of our earth, we propose an unfettered utterance to the multitude. Let all men listen, for our discourse is to them not less.

HUMAN REPRODUCTION.-This term is derived from reproduco, meaning to produce again. It is the general term for that sacred function by which living, organized beings, reproduce their like. Anatomical details and physiological particulars are deemed unnecessary to correct government of such functions. But we consider a knowledge of the underlying principles absolutely essential to every human mind. Physicians do not pre

sume to fully comprehend the inceptional phenomena of reproduction. Of all secondary processes and progressive transformations, however, the students of embryological science may be said to be familiar, and their definite knowledge in these respects has augmented the practitioner's power over the diseases of women.

But to affirm that physicians can cure the reproductive diseases of either men or women, is to assert what innumerable facts will hopelessly invalidate. Only a small proportion of American women are healthy. Almost all fashionable ladies are reproductively debilitated; they suffer periodically, and eighteen-twentieths are incapacitated for the divine office of reproduction. The working women in our farming counties, like the less industrious mothers of large towns and cities, are about equally diseased in the holiest functions of their being. All along the border regions of this continent, as upon the sugar, rice, and cotton plantations of the entire South, the women, "irrespective of age or color," are generally afflicted with uterine misplacements and prostrations exceedingly painful.

To teach the philosophy of prolification, in this connection, would be of little service. The finest memory would ere long forget the detail, and with the loss of memory would depart the salutary lessons. We will not write useless facts on this subject. Neither young nor matured mothers would make much progress by reading a learned description of muscular cavities, hypogastric arteries, ganglionic nerves, uterine veins, fallopian tubes, ovaries, &c., &c., because it is wisely and beautifully ordained, and it is so written in the Bible of Nature, which is God's only infallible revelation to mankind, that living organizations shall reproduce their like as it were without thought. It is an act to which both body and soul instinctively consecrate and unrestrainedly abandon the deepest vitality of their exist

ence. Hence it will ever remain philosophically and theologically impossible to regulate the act of reproduction by intellectual statutes or scientific commandments. In truth, and to be plain, the reproductive office is exalted far beyond and above the stoical plane of intellectualism. It is Father God and Mother Nature in spontaneous conjunction, evolving, as from the unfathomable riches of their fountainous heart, the ascending forms of endless duration. What, then, shall be deemed the true standard by which to govern and regulate the process of reproduction? The only possible standard is a true knowledge of its principles, and a reverential regard for its sacred office. (We do not now speak of social and statute laws regulating the marriage relation, remember, but only as a physician of the reproductive functions in living organisms.) These principles are very simple and divinely beautiful. They consist of the highest and holiest proximity of exactly opposite embodiments, resulting in metempsychosis of mutually attractive forces, and eventuating in the complete organization of their inmost "image and likeness." Human offspring is formed for an immortal duration, and the parental vital bestowments are, in consequence, characteristic peculiarities of the spiritual body, during long periods after death, be the same good, bad, or indifferent. For it is very long before a living stream can rise higher than its vital source. We say all these things with the overflowing conviction that the people generally will receive some adequate conception of the almost eternal importance to be attached to the act of reproduction.

REPRODUCTIVE DISEASES. Of all the hydra-headed forms and evils of syphilitic maladies we will not now write anything, reserving the sad and disgusting subject for a more suitable opportunity. But all men may expect a voice from us ere long, in behalf of the miserable and melancholy multitudes of every civilized country.

Let us mercifully and sympathetically roll up the curtain of feminine misfortunes. What are they termed? Their name is legion. The suffering sisters and the modest mothers cannot hide them from public observation. "Female Pills" are cunningly advertised in every city and country paper. "Uterine Tinctures" meet the eye of every child who stops to look at fancy articles displayed in drug-store windows, or within the show-cases against the wall. Medical charlatans everywhere

sound the trumpet of quackery and pretension. They devote their entire genius and scientific experience to the treatment of "Female Derangements." They portray the most distressing maladies, the most aggravating cases of "Prolapsus Uteri," vaginal tumefactions, barrenness, suppressions, menstrual hemorrhages, &c., &c. Every disease of the female organism, is marvellously within the power of the mountebank's remarkable pills, pastes, pessaries, and powders. Merciful heavens! Holy angels of Light! Save and exalt our good and beautiful women! Shield them from the assaults of medical pretenders, and from the mal-practices of scientific vampires! Save them! When and by what method? Now! from this moment. By what means? By methods and practices hereafter to be specified. Of course, in these sweeping statements regarding "scientific vampires," we do not mean to reflect dishonorably upon any well-educated and gentlemanly physician.

In order to better appreciate woman's organal sufferings, we will glance at the many and various diseases to which, between the tenth and forty-eighth year, her reproductive constitution is more or less liable, under the potency and action of existing causes. Let us give them the hard names which they deserve: Leucorrhoea, Fluor Albus, Dysmenorrhæa,Sterility, Menorrhagia, Terine Hemorrhage, Amenorrhea, Hysteria, Ovarian Dropsy,

Neuralgia, Metritis, Ovaritis, Vaginitis, Hydrometra,

Polypus Uteri, Cancer in the Womb, or Scirrhus, Physometra, Enlargement, Catalepsy, Epilepsy, Emaciation, and prostration of the general system.

These names are employed to convey an idea of most frightful and formidable maladies. But the pure English of them all is, that a great number of conditions and changes exist and occur, at different times, in the reproductive organism. A true philosophy of disease will classify these several and distinct affections as the different forms and modifications of one derangement. The original and primal disturbance is confined to the principal organ-namely, the uterus, or womb. This organ is subject to diverse misplacements. One is called Introversion," or the turning of the womb inside out; another, Oliquity," or a sidewise falling; another, "Retroversion," or a falling backward; another, "Anteversion," or a forward falling; all which, with still more particular modifications, are referable to one principal and primary cause-namely, to a prostration of the reproductive organism; and this effect never exists without a predetermining cause, which it is the moral duty of every mind to fully comprehend and promptly over

come.

CAUSES OF REPRODUCTIVE DISEASES.-It would seem that the most of woman's physiological sufferings are unavoidable. This appalling doctrine is inculcated, by our orthodox brethren, both from the popular pulpit and in all the literature over which they preside. They teach the theology of ancient India, of Egpytian darkness and bondage, that woman's menstruational diseases and child-bearing pains are the logical consequence of an “original sin." We read the Book of Nature with a different light beaming through its thought-laden pages. We discern that our Sisters need not suffer, and that our young Mothers are not called upon to pass the ordeal of twenty deaths in reproducing