Hemophilia, or Bleeders' Disease

Hemophilia is a peculiar disease, consisting in frequent and often uncontrollable hemorrhages. The least cut or the pulling of a tooth may cause a severe or even dangerous hemorrhage. The slightest blow, squeeze or hurt will cause ecchymoses, or discolorations of the skin. The peculiarity of this hereditary disease is, that it attacks almost exclusively the males, but is transmitted almost exclusively through the female members. For instance, Miss A., herself not a bleeder, comes from a bleeder-family. She marries and has three boys and three girls; the three boys will be bleeders, the three girls will not; the three boys marry and have children; their children will not be bleeders; the three girls marry, and their male children will be bleeders.

What is the lesson? The lesson is, that boys who are bleeders may marry, because they will most likely not transmit the disease; but girls who come from a hemophilic family, irrespective of whether they themselves are hemophilics or not, must not marry, because most likely they will transmit the disease.

Anemia

Anemia is a poor condition of the blood. The blood may contain an insufficient number of red blood cells or an insufficient percentage of the coloring matter of the blood, that is, hemoglobin. A special kind of anemia affecting young girls is called chlorosis.
Anemia and chlorosis cannot be considered contra-indications to marriage, because they are usually amenable to treatment. In fact, some cases of anemia and chlorosis are due to the lack of normal sexual relations, and the subjects get well very soon after marriage. But it is best and safest to subject anemic patients to a course of treatment and to improve their condition before they marry.

Epilepsy

While epilepsy—known commonly as fits or falling sickness—is not as hereditary as it was one time thought to be, its hereditary character being ascertainable in only about 5 per cent. of cases, nevertheless, it is a decidedly dysgenic agent, and marriage with an epileptic is distinctly advised against. Where both parents are epileptics, the children are almost sure to be epileptic, and such a marriage should be prohibited by law. Under no circumstances should parents who are both epileptic bring children into the world. It should be the duty of the State to instruct them in methods of preventing conception.

Hysteria

Hysteria is a disease the chief characteristics of which are a lack of control over one's emotions and acts, the imitation of the symptoms of various diseases, and an exaggerated self-consciousness. The patient may have extreme pain in the region of the head, ovaries, spine; in some parts of the skin there is extreme hypersensitiveness (hyperesthesia), so that the least touch causes great pain; in others, there is complete anesthesia—that is, absence of sensation—so that when you stick the patient with a needle she will not feel it. A very frequent symptom is a choking sensation, as if a ball came up the throat and stuck there (globus hystericus). Then there may be spasms, convulsions, retention of urine, paralysis, aphonia (loss of voice), blindness, and a lot more. There is hardly a functional or organic nervous disorder that hysteria may not simulate.

Of late years our ideas about hysteria have undergone a radical change, and we now know that most, if not all, cases of hysteria are due to a repression or non-satisfaction of the sexual instinct or to some shock of a sexual character in childhood. Only too often a girl who was very hysterical before marriage loses her hysteria as if by magic upon contracting a satisfactory marriage. On the other hand, a healthy girl can become quickly hysterical if she marries a man who is sexually impotent or who is disagreeable to her and incapable of satisfying her sexually.

While hysteria, in itself, is not hereditary, it, nevertheless, is a question whether a strongly hysterical woman would make a satisfactory mother. The entire family history should be investigated. If the hysteria is found to be an isolated instance in the given girl, it may be disregarded, if not extreme; but if the entire family or several members of it are neuropathic, the condition is a dysgenic one. Marriage may be contracted, provided no children are brought into the world until several years have elapsed and the mother's organization seems to have become more stable. In some cases, a child acts as a good medicine against hysteria. In short, every case must be examined individually on its merits, and the counsel of a good psychologist or psychoanalyst may prove very valuable.