Married Woman's Private Medical Companion, The.
[Health issues]. Mauriceau, Dr. A.M. The Married Woman’s Private Medical Companion. Embracing the treatment of menstruation, or monthly turns, during their stoppage, irregularity, or entire suppression. Pregnancy, and how it may be determined; with the treatment of its various diseases. Discovery to prevent pregnancy; the great and important necessity where malformation or inability exists to give birth. To prevent miscarriage or abortion. When proper and necessary to effect miscarriage. When attended with entire safety. Causes and mode of cure for barrenness or sterility. New York: Self-published, 1848.
12mo.; foxed throughout; brown cloth; lightly worn. In a specially made cloth slipcase.
First edition, second printing of one of the first books printed in the U.S. to mention the use of condoms as an acceptable means of birth control. In his introductory remarks, Dr. Mauriceau writes that the book will prove extremely relevant for all females, whether “married or about to be married” (introductory remarks, p. xi), and the men who love them and wish to protect their health. With sections dedicated to menstruation, pregnancy, and labor, Mauriceau addresses possible reasons behind everything from irregular menstruation to miscarriage to sterility in women.
In the chapter entitled “Prevention to Conception,” she devotes nearly fifty pages to examining the moral and social implications of birth control and why for many women it is crucial to their health that pregnancy be prevented. Mauriceau does not use the word “condom,” but in a lengthy footnote describes a covering for the penis used in Europe: the “baudruche,” or as it is known in some countries, the “French Secret” (p. 144). Mauriceau notes that the primary purpose for this contraceptive device is the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases which may be contracted from prostitutes, but that it is also a very effective means of blocking contraception. The efficiency of condoms is unparalleled in its success when compared to other methods, such as what Mauriceau refers to as “complete withdrawal on the part of the male previous to emission,” which is usually met with “insurmountable difficulties” (p. 143). The European device can be purchased for the price of $5 per dozen from the author and there is an address listed where readers can mail payment.
Though most scholars agree that “A.M. Mauriceau,” identified as a “Professor of Diseases of Women” on the title page, is a pseudonym, the true identity of the person who wrote under that name remains uncertain. Most evidence suggests that the name “A.M. Mauriceau” was adopted by Ann Trow Lohman (1812-1878), who also used the alias Madame Restell. With her husband Charles Lohman, Restell advertised contraceptive devices and abortions in many New York publications in the mid-nineteenth century. Though city officials made numerous attempts to put Restell out of business and arrested her on several occasions for performing abortions, she and her husband continued to operate their mail-order contraceptive business even when Restell was serving jail time. However, after her husband’s death in 1876, and facing yet another trial after being entrapped by a city official posing as a customer, Restell committed suicide by slitting her own throat with a carving knife on April 1, 1878. There was no funeral, and Anthony Comstock, secretary of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, referred to the event cynically as “a bloody ending to a bloody life.”
(http://www.assumption.edu/whw/done/webquest/lohman.html)
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