Karezza, Ethics of Marriage (Forgotten Books)

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. (Quote from sacred-texts.com)

About the Author

Alice Bunker Stockham (1833 - 1912)
Alice Bunker Stockham (1833-1912) was an obstetrician and gynecologist from Chicago, and the fifth woman to be made a doctor in the United States. She promoted gender equality, dress reform, birth control, and male and female sexual fulfillment for successful marriages.

A well-traveled and well-read person who counted among her friends Leo Tolstoy and Havelock Ellis, she also visited Sweden and from her trips to schools there she brought back the idea of teaching children domestic crafts, thus single-handedly establishing shop and home economics classes in the United States.

Stockham lectured against the use of corsets by women, made public endorsements of the healthiness of masturbation for both men and women (still controversial when echoed by US Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders more than 100 years later), advocated complete abstinence from alcohol and tobacco, and believed in women's rights.

Stockham was very concerned with the economic plight of divorced women with children and prostitutes who wanted to get off