Medical Common Sense: Applied to the Causes, Prevention and Cure of Chronic Diseases and Unhappiness in Marriage

Medical Common Sense: Applied To The Causes, Prevention And Unhappiness In Marriage by Edward Bliss Foote is a 19th-century medical-sociological treatise that argues marriage should be guided by science. It surveys marriage practices worldwide and advocates reform through licensing boards of phrenologists and physiologists to assess mental and physical compatibility before licenses, and to regulate divorce. The work grounds marital happiness in two kinds of compatibility—mental and physical—and ties sexual pleasure to electrical theories, drawing on phrenology, temperament theory, and magnetism. It critiques traditional marriage norms, elopements, and relatives unions, and includes sections on essays for married people about prevention of conception, sexual excess, and child-marking. The author situates his program within sensational didactic rhetoric, mixing anecdote, historical references, and controversial social ideas, aiming to reorder private life and public policy. The text places Foote as a physician-prophet promoting a holistic, electricity-centered approach to health and marriage, reflecting the reformist, eclectic medical culture of his era.