The Masturbation Terror.

_Masturbation: The History of a Great Terror_ is an odd book about a collective medical, moral and religious fear from the 1700s until the second half of the 20th century. Before the 18th century, masturbation was more or less ignored in moral debate by philosophers and theologians. The Greek Cynic Diognes practiced masturbation in order to relieve himself of semen, not for sensual pleasure. The authors cite a tract about Diognes by the physician Galen who noted that Diognes arranged to meet with a courtesan but then sent her away because his "hand was faster than you [the courtesan] in celebrating the bridal night." However, masturbation stands officially condemned as a mortal sin in the Roman Catholic catechism and moral theology because it uses the sex organs for self-gratification rather than procreation. The 1723 publication of a pamphlet in England, "Onania," ascribed numerous moral and physiological disorders associated with masturbation. The author likened masturbation to the sin of Onan in Genesis. Onan "spilled his seed" on the ground when he was to impregnate his dead brother's wife, which refers more to a violation of the levirate marriage arrangement and coitus interruptus than actual self-stimulation. "Onania's" influence was expanded in decades afterward in the work of the Swiss physician Tissot. Tissot wrote at length of the supposed medical dangers of masturbation and his ideas were expounded upon later in the Victorian Era. The Victorians were notoriously uptight about sexual matters and quack doctors invented a plethora of anti-masturbatory devices such as penis rings, electric shockers and alarms to forcefully discourage the practice. By the middle of the twentieth century the masturbation scare died off, as the authors note, as suddenly as it began. I recommend this book, despite its liberal and anti-religious bias, as a strange read on a quack medical phenomenon.

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