Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1921-03-15
DOCTORS AND DIVORCE
By H. Addington Bruce


MI Hfe-mates feel too often that the one
course open to them is to see law
yer and start divorce proceedings. They
might better consult doctor first
For, again and again, the troubles out of
which divorces grow are essentially medical
problems. Ignorance of sex hygiene, nervous
irrtability due to faulty living habits, morbid
jealousy springing from psychasthenic weak
ness-these provide the starting points for
innumerable divorces.
Repeatedly 1t happens, in fact, that doctors
all unknoWingly avert divorces by correcting
conditions, which, if left uncorrected, would
soon or late eliminate in court action.
Here for example, is a woman who seeks
medical treatment because of an extreme
nervousness. She cannot sleep, she cannot
digest her food, everything seems to be wrong
with her.
The doctor, investigating, finds that abso-
lutely nothing is wrong so far as her physical
organism is concerned. Questioned, the pa
tient denies that she has any cause for worry
that might account for her condition.
But the doctor is sKeptical. He probes
deeper, until eventually he perhaps ascertains
that the patient is mot exactly happy" in her
home life. Meantime he perhaps ascertains
also that she is colossally selfish and that her
5efishness is responsible alike for the friction
at home and for the extreme nervousness.
Treatment by psychic re-education then is
in order. It's success means both better health
and greater ease and happiness in the home
relations. The husband, if he has been think
ing of divorce, thinks Of it no longer.
Or, it may be, the patient has been rem
dered nervous by gross selfshness, not on her
own part, but on her husbands; or by mis-
treatment due to some defect in the husband s
psychic makeup of which both husband and
wife are unaware.
Securing opportunity to study the husband
as we'll as the wife, the doctor may again
score distinct anti-divorce triumph by per-
suading the husband to submit to much
needed treatment.
This, I say, is what frequently happens
now, when people as a rule do not appreciate
the medical implications in family discord.
1t would happen far more frequently if the
greatly to be desired appreciation were, uni
versal. Edwin Ash the English nerve special
list, does not exaggerate one whit when he
affirms:
|'There are thousands of cases which are
now dealt with in the public courts the
proper place for which is the consulting room
of the specialist
"There are hundreds of instances in which
separations and divorces are sought on the
ground of fncompatibility of temperament,
or similar circumstances, in which the right
course of action would have been for the
parties concerned to consult a doctor before
resorting to drastic measures.
"Why should not an irritable husband or
a nagging wife take such reasonable step
before seeking legal advice which may lead
to irreparable misery and disaster for them
both?"
Divorce, statistics show, is on the increase.
In these years of growing enlightenment as
to the psychology and psychopathology OF
human behavior, 1t should be steadily de-
creasing.
But it will not decrease until we have
real education for marriage, and until mar
riages that threaten to fail be made subjects
for medical investigation prior to court in
tervention.
Copyright 1921, by The Associated News
papers)