Book Description

?From 1847 through the 1860s Henry Clarke Wright, a Presbyterian minister turned abolitionist lecturer in the 1830s, and in the 1840s a fervent advocate of the water cure and marital and sexual reforms, spoke to sizable audiences about their duties in ?parentage,? ?the crime of undesigned maternity,? and the ?unwelcome child.? Wright probably provided no direct advice on reproductive control, but his repeated message that couples should plan and regulate reproduction was impassioned. . . . Wright?s biographer, historian Lewis Perry, found little evidence about the contents of Wright?s lectures in his diary, but believed that his books were an important clue to the lectures. If Wright did not explicitly speak of contraception to the audiences attending his lectures he may well have done so quietly to smaller more informal groups after the actual lecture. He was especially interested in coitus reservatus, the method associated with John Humphry Noyes and the Oneida Perfectionists?