Karezza, Ethics of Marriage

by Alice B. Stockham

"Karezza is a book by Alice Bunker Stockham, MD (b. 1833). She was one of the first women medical school graduates in the USA and wrote a very popular book on women's reproductive health, which was translated into several languages. This later work, Karezza, elucidates "a theory of conjugal life, in which there is a love communion between husband and wife from which results a mastery of the physical." A highly-principled Quaker distressed by all the unwanted pregnancies among her patients, she also saw controlled intercourse as a way to prevent reckless procreation and raise spiritual awareness. This second edition was published in 1903."