Sex efficiency through exercises : special physical culture for women / by Th. H. van de Velde ; [photos, by E. Steinemann].
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that very few men, till now, have troubled to try to understand.* Yes, there will be and must be many opponents of my aims and views. But, once these views and aims are understood, many more who will greet them with sympathy or even enthusiasm. I am not including men among these supporters whom I confidently anticipate. This book is not addressed to them. My message for them was embodied in " Ideal Marriage " ; this book is addressed to and intended for women and their special helpers. But the tenderest husband cannot help his wife in this particular field : only experts can avail here. " Ideal Marriage" was written as a guide in erotic physiology and technique for husbands. The present manual aims at making women able to receive and share all the joy their partners should be able to bestow. But neither book is meant to reveal the deprivations or deficiencies of a possibly inadequate partner, for it is useless and cruel to emphasise losses and defects that cannot be cured. Nevertheless, some such defects are curable, and the present work may con- ceivably prove of great help to any husband who learns how to suggest to his wife the possibility of retaining her attrac- tions, through those ordeals of pregnancy and birth, which she had previously thought spelt the death of beauty and married intimacy. Of course, the husband himself may learn too late " what might have been," and the marriage may be impaired or ruined thereby. But, for such a drastic result of knowledge there must surely have been previous " rifts within the lute." A marriage that has mentally and emotionally triumphed over specifically sexual inadequacy and disillusionment may certainly survive the knowledge of such sexual and technical inferiority. And the risk of some harm through knowledge should not prevent the benefit and help it may bring to many more struggling human beings, both in the pre- vention of needless suffering and the positive achievement of happiness. * See " Ideal Marriage," passim, and especially Chapter I., pp. 6-9, and Chapter IX., pp. 172-193.