Woman's chronicle. (Little Rock, Ark.) 1888-1???, 1890-02-08

"Bd they said too of him
He was happier using the knife than in trying the
the limb"
On the other hand, there has intensified the SOL
emn belief in the validity of the healing art. The
materia medica is trusted above the butchers
knife. The fine the delicate, the patient remedy,
the prophyactio or the tonic, or the curative, be-
comes the material of absorbing study such as the
medical world has never known before The doc
trine of mercy the theory of prevention, rule the
medical conscience and the heaers intellect re-
fines as the sensbihty is saved-thus, please
Heaven, the patient too.
Divorce, at best, is pure surgery; nothing more
nor less; necessary at the extremity, never to be
tolerated when the milder measure will save the
life.
The truly scientific, and therefore the hopeful,
treatment of this social disease must, believe,
consist more and more, and must some time con-
sist entirely, in the preventive and what we might
call attentive, means of cure. What is the use
what is the use-in wearing out our brains to in
vent scalpe and probes, to cut, and sew, and
carve and bury, when careful course of the right
remedy would heal the patient?
In brief, so long as we are allowed to marry as
we do what right have we to expect anything else
than unmarryng and remarrying to the end of this
weak and wicked world?
As our laws stare us in the face there is no man
so drunken so immoral, so brutal, so cruel that
he may not take to himself the purest, the most
refined, the most sensitive of women to wife, if he
can get her. There is no woman so paltry, so
petty so vain, so inane, so enfeebled in body and
mind by corsets or chloral, Irritation, or worse,
that she may not become the wife of an intellec-
tual honorable man and the mother Of his doomed
children. There is no pauper who may not wed
pauper and beget paupers to the end of his story.
There is no feon returned from his prison, or loose
upon society uncondemned, who may not make
base play at wedlock, and perpetuate his diseased
soul and body In those of his descendants, without
restraint There is no member of what we call
our respectable classes who may not, if he
choose make mock of the awful name of mar
riage, in sacrege to which we are so used that we
scarcely lift eyeld to express surprise or aver
sion at the sickening variety of the offence.
Where is the law that prevents titled roue from
becoming the husband of pure American girl?
Where is the law that saves rich woman from the
designs of mercenary spendthrift sutton? Where
is what Sophoces called "the unwritten law that
other supremacy, unselfshly, permanently, and we
might almost say divinely, from daring to take
upon themselves the sacred marriage-vow
Where is the public sentiment which calls ma
riage de CONVEYANCE by its true name? LOCALIZED
prostitution are two ugly words; but nothing less
will fit the case. Where is the drift of high emo
ton which scorns loveless marriage as disgrace
full, makes foolish one unpopular, and wicked
one impossible? Give us the public opinion which
will make it indicate for man to marry for
housekeeper or woman for home Give us the
average of judgment which shall stamp it social
blot to marry 'for position and call it crime to
merry for money Give us the great ideal which
shall create the noble fact. Give us such com
prehension of the feeling which ought to draw men
and women into the marriagetie that anything less
than almighty love should invalidate marriage as
much as the absence of witness to the oath.
Give no such a vision of the purity the unseliSh-