An understanding of the basic physical and psychological factors involved in marriage: is definitely a great help towards a more satisfactory adjustment. To determine fitness for marriage, make a thorough study of the individual. But remember, there arc not any absolute criteria of suitability.
Three Main Objectives
Say Hannah Stone and Abraham Stone: "Men and women may marry for any number of individual reasons. naeica1Jy. however, they seek in marriage three main objectives stable permanent association based on mutual affection., on love and companionship; the freedom and privilege of a sexual relationship; and the establishment of a home and a family. Love and companionship, sexual Intimacy and recreation are, then, in our culture at least, the main motives for marriager Love is a mixture of sentiment and sensuality und the sexual relation is a fundamental factor in marriage. Where a strong attraction exists there will also be the desire for It close physical intimacy and marriage provides the social, legal and moral sanctions for a sexual relationship. Biological1y, again. the object of a marriage is not to legalize a sexual union, but rather to ensure the survival of the species and of the race. From this point of view, marriage is not merely' a sexual relationship, but a parental association. It is the union of a male and female for the production and care of offspring, and reproduction is therefore another fundamental object of marriage."
The economic factor also plays a vital role in the determination of marriage relationship. Economic stability creates marriage ability Then there is a need for emotional integration for compatibility. The basis of all adjustment lies in the neurotic personality. Neither husband nor wife should have exaggerated attachment to something in the outside world. If the husband is a habitual drunkard like Emperor Jehangir, he may prefer a bottle of wine to a woman, if he reaches the brink of only one alternative. That is how Emperor Jehangir handed over the reins of empire to his beloved Nur Jahan and stuck to his cup of wine. Nur Jahan wisely ruled in the name of her drunkard husband and even got her name engraved on the coins.
Hindu Scientific Approach
Although Hindus did not know (Did. they really not?) much about the modern sciences, their approach to many problems of life was highly scientific. Marriage was one much problem. Thus write Drs. Stone:
"Lack of sufficient potency on the part of the man) however, is a much more frequent condition, and one suffering from this disorder may be unable to consummate the physical union in marriage. It is a serious mistake for anyone who is sexually inadequate to marry without first having his disability corrected, or at least without receiving competent medical advice. As a matter of fact, Hindu law-givers decreed over a thousand years ago that before marriage, 'a man must undergo an examination with regard to his virility.' Only after the fact of his virility had been established beyond doubt was' he privileged to marry. "
According to Kinsey. sexual activity begins in adolescence. A man is well fairly aware of his sexual adequacy. But this is not always correct. If you do not question your sexual potency. you may experience unexpected difficulties after marriage.
Potency And Fertility
Potency-that is, the ability to have sex relations-is not the same as fertility, which is the ability to reproduce. A man may be highly potent. ed1d yet not be fertile, or he may be very fertile and not be sexually potent."
The husband should be fit for reproduction. He should have the, ability to beget healthy children. . He should be free from any disease or disability. Man's fresh seminal fluid should be microscopically examined to determine his fertility. In case of a congenital abnormality, he should rather not marry. Similarly, female fertility can be investigated. But the combined fertility of a husband and wife cannot be determined by the existing method and machines of modern science.
Blood That Kills The Baby
Rhesus monkey and men have some similarity of blood. It is known as the "Rh factor:' It has been discovered that 85 per cent of white people carry Rh factor in their blood. They arc "Rh positive". The other 15 percent of white people lack this blood and are "Rh negative."
"When an Rh positive man marries an Rh negative woman, which IS approximately thirteen out of a hundred white marriages, the 9tTspring of such a couple may. in some cases, develop at birth or shortly thereafter a serious condition known as erythroblastosis, which is characterized mainly by anemia, jaundice, and swelling of the body. This condition may occasional1y even cause the baby's death before birth. Recent figures indicate, however, that of an infants born only one out of one hundred and fifty to two hundred develops erythroblastosis and newer methods of blood transfusion immediately after birth have now made it possible to save the lives of a large number of affected infants."
The Mechanism of Heredity
Each child inherits two sets of genes - one from the father and one from the mother. The characteristics of a child depend upon these genes and their combinations. If a child inherits a gene for brown eyes both from .the father and the mother, his eyes will be brown. He will transmit to his children only genes for brown eyes. If he inherits a gene for brown eyes from his father and blue eyes from his mother, his eyes will be brown, because brown dominates the blue, but there will be genes for blue eyes in his blood and he will be able to pass them on to his children who may }eve blue eyes even if both of their parents have brown eyes. This is how children may have quite different characteristics from their parents. These qualities or defects may have been inherited from their grandparents. These have become potential after lying dormant for a generation. Thus both parents and grandparents should be studied for the logical explanation of characteristics in children.
Environment And Heredity
"Today the belief is becoming general that heredity and environment constantly interact, and that the two can never be separated since environmental differences start even before birth. The noted biologist. Jennings, in his book, The Biological Basis of Human Nature, ably analyses the relative in influence of environment and heredity, and concludes that intelligence, behaviour, temperament and disposition\can be modified by either of these. Even identical twins with exactly the same heredity, for instance; will, if placed in different environments, show some variations in mental development. personality and character. In other words, marked differences between individuals can be produced by varying either the heredity or the environment.
"The relation of heredity to environment is perhaps most simply expressed as the relation of the seed to the soil, a comparison which has frequently been made. The seed has potentialities to develop into a certain type of plant, but whether these potentialities will be realized will depend to a 'very large degree upon the kind of soil into which it is planted; in poor soil it will be stunted, in good soil it will develop to its fullest capacities. On the other hand, no matter how good the soil, it can only bring out the qualities which were already present in the seed at the time it was sown. Nature and nurture constantly interact and they are perhaps equally important in determining the character of an individual."
Venereal Diseases
There arc two important venereal diseases - gonorrhoea and syphilis. Gonorrhoea is a local infection of the sex and the urinary organ. It rarely enters the blood Stream and spreads to other parts of the body. At any rate, it is not transmitted to the children as an inherited influence.
''A new-born child may develop gonorrhoea, but not because the disease is inherited. The child contracts it by being infected with the germs-at the time of its birth; if the gonorrhoea germs are present in the birth-canal of the mother, the infant may become infected during its passage through the canal. Usually the germs lodge in the eye of the infant and produce- a very serious inflammation which may result in blindness. That is the reason why the eyes of a baby are treated by a doctor soon after its birth with an antiseptic solution as a routine measure. This application has proved to be an effective prophylactic against the transmission of the disease to the newborn, and has greatly reduced the amount of infant blindness."
Syphilis is not a local disease but a generalizcd infection. It starts as a local sore on the genitals or other parts of the body. Then the germs enter the blood stream and the infection is carried through the entire system. They may lodge in any organ and produce serious consequences. Sometimes the germs lie dormant for years and then wake up into serious results.
If not adequately treated. the disease may be transmitted to the offspring, although it is really not hereditary. What happens is that during the early months of pregnancy the germs pails from the mother to the developing child and infect it with disease. The embrvo may either die early as a result of the infection. or it may continue to live for several months and die just before birth. the pregnancy ending in miscarriage or stillbirth; or. if the fetus is strong enough to survive the initial attack, the infant will be born with the infection present in its body. In other words, syphilis in the new born is a congenital rather than a hereditary disease."
Both syphilis and gonorrhoea can be cured by the use of sulfa drugs and penicillin. Gonorrhoea can be completely cured in a week. Syphilis is rather difficult to cure. It may take months of active and intensive treatment to rid the blood of this deadly infection. The sooner the treatment is begun, the better the chances of an early cure.
Evils of Inter-Breeding
Marriages between near relatives should be avoided. The reason is, since the parents will have the same characteristics, the qualities will be strengthened, no doubt, but tl1e defects will not be remedied. If both are intellectual but deaf, the children will be deaf intellectuals. Defects are transmitted more quickly than the qualities. When an actress proposed to Bernard Shaw for marriage, saying, "The child will have my beauty and your brain," Shaw was right in replying, "The child may have your brain and my beauty." In other words, the child may well be an ugly idiot.
Researches on Sex
There is no relation between the size of the penis and sexual capacity. Many men are sexually very active despite a small-sized organ. On the other hand, many men with large penile dimensions have a low degree of potency.
A man with undescended testicles of both bides is very apt to be sterile. Such men are quite normal otherwise, physically and sexual1y, If one testicle is descended, the man can produce children.
"The testes do not change in size, but the scrotum, or the pouch in which they lie, is subject to expansions and contractions. In warm weather, for instance, or after a hot bath. the scrotum becomes relaxed and the testicles are lower; in cold weather, the muscles of the scrotum contract and bring the testes higher up nearer to the body, so that it may seem as if the glands have actually grown smaller in size. The object of this mechanism is to maintain the testes in the most suitable temperature, for they are very sensitive to heat and cold and require protection from environmental changes."
Circumcision consists of the removal of the foreskin which covers the greater part of the penis. The operation, common among Muslims and Jews, is quite unnecessary. There is no difference in the degree of sexual desire or sexual capacity between the circumcised and the uncircumcised.
Hormone is a ,chemical substance produced by certain glands and carried by the blood to various organs of the body. The differences between a man and a woman are controlled largely by their sex hormones. If the testes are removed at birth, the boy will not develop the features and traits of his sex. Castrated animals fatten faster and lose their sexual desire and drive.
Eugcn Steinach removed the sex glands from female animals and substituted for them the testes of a male. He reported that the females became masculinized. The American surgeon, Lydston, in 1914, obtained the testicle of a man who had committed suicide and transplanted it into his own scrotum. He claimed that the operation benefited him greatly. It improved his health and increased his vigour. Voronoff transplanted testes of simian monkeys into men and gave a glowing picture of the results, turning old people into youth again. Brown-Sequad in 1889 injected himself with extracts from the testicles of a dog and claimed that his general health and his mental activity were amazingly stimulated.
A medicine known 3S "testosterone" is male hormone synthetically produced from various chemical substances. It Is given either by injection or by mouth. In female animals it is apt to produce changes typical of the male. Also, it cures men of sexual deficiencies.
"The process of aging. however, involves not merely the genital system but the entire organism and it is questionable whether the injection of any hormones can arrest or reverse these general systematic changes. Men and women are subject to so many psychic and emotional influences that it is often very difficult to evaluate the results of therapeutic measures."
Frank Female Formulas
The rote of the female in reproduction is very much more complicated than of the male. It is in her body that the fertilized egg nests and develops into its mature form. Her sex organs are diversified and playa great role in her general biological activities.
"Under ordinary circumstances only one egg is released every twenty-eight days, and the number of eggs which may develop during a year would be only about twelve or thirteen. As a woman's reproductive life lasts approximately thirty years, the total number of matured eggs would range between three and four hundred. This is in marked contrast to the male, whose every ejaculation contains millions of sperms.
Menstruation occurs about fourteen to sixteen days after the creation of the life-eggs in the women.
The egg cell is spheroidal or rounded in shape. It has no power of locomotion. It is stationary and passive. It is about 1/2000th of an inch in diameter, and just visible to the naked eye. The outside is surrounded by a jellylike shell. The inside is filled with a large number of minute fat droplets. It is quite analogous to a bird's egg.
If the egg is not fertilized, it is broken down and comes with menstruation. The average 4uantity of blood lost during the days of the flow is about two to four ounces, or approximately half a cupful. It comes out in irregular spurts squeezed by the contractions of the uterine muscles.
