the solitary virtue @solitaryvirtue@mastodon.social

Hello new users! I post excerpts from old books that say silly things about masturbation. That's all.

#introduction #introductions

"Read this treatise, therefore, Ye Children of the Lonely Sin, ye who have wasted the sap of life in solitary excess, who have underminded your health in secret till your attenuated form tells too plainly that nature has nothing left to destroy." (1848)

"One who is guilty of such an unnatural practice as to deliberately irritate any portion of her body, especially the very important generative organs, always secretly despises herself." (1911)

He gives the details of a few other patients. I'm sharing this one for the line

"As soon as I am sure that my dear mother is sound asleep, I yield to my deadly habits".

Here are the details of Dr Baraduc's madcap theory that ulceration in healing wounds is caused by masturbation, or "onanistic maneuvers" as he puts it. (1896)

This doctor believes that if you masturbate while a wound is healing, it causes ulcers. Here he's telling a patient that he knows what she's been doing.

"You can never get well, for you have a bad habit that will prevent it: you carry your hands where you should not." (1896)

"He must keep his hands from meddling with his secret parts, except when the necessities of nature require it; and that any emotions he may experience in those members must not be encouraged, and all thoughts which originate them must be avoided." (1875)

"She was subject to fits in the night only. Upon asking if she had ever been in the habit of this vice, she frankly confessed... nor had she, according to her own statement, the least idea that there was anything wrong or injurious about it." (1865)

"...pruritus vulvae almost inevitably leads to habits of masturbation, amounting in some cases to furor uterinus... the act was repeated so frequently that the health was seriously undermined." (1851)

pruritus vulvae = genital itching
furor uterinus ("womb fury"!) = nymphomania

"Enfeebling to the body, enfeebling to the mind, the incarnation of selfishness, it effaces from its victim his fondness for the other sex, unfits him for true love, and likens him in very fact to... the ape." (1875)

"Representing the debilitated state of the body from the effects of Onanism or Self-Pollution" (1845, same book)

"Representing the last stage of mental & bodily exhaustion from Onanism or Self-Pollution" (1845)

"...sadism, masochism, narcmissism [sic], cannibalism, cunnilingualism, sodomy, necrophilia, and all the other rot they peddle which... causes premarital intercourse, perversion, masturbation in boys, wantonness in girls, and weakens the morality of all its contacts. (1960)"

"Is it any wonder, then... that the orgasm experienced in the indulgence of the sexual passion induces in many persons an exhaustion of every faculty of body and mind?... It is, therefore, in the orgasm that the greatest evil lies." (1872)

"Those who are too robust should be occasionally confined to a more meager diet; and all exciting substances... should be carefully shunned, such as chocolate...

An important subject of observation is clothing and the necessity of habituating young people to cold." (1844)

Also, what is bucco-lingual copulation? Do they just mean French kissing?

Three more pages from this 1896 book. This unfortunate woman is being divorced by her husband, who is a doctor, because she is mad, as evidenced by her habitual masturbation, her suicide attempts, and her claims that he's being cruel to her.

Dear God.

This book goes on to discuss how you can detect masturbation. It claims that masturbating makes your vaginal secretions so acidic that it would burn a penis, and that this is grounds for divorce. Also, the acidity will eventually cause anal fissures.

** NONE OF THIS IS TRUE **

"...in keeping with what is found throughout all medical literature for all time; that is, the detection of masturbation in many females, when the latter are of a mind to conceal it, is one of the most difficult tasks that can confront the practitioner." (1896)

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Off topic, but worth seeing: the frontispiece has an illustration of "The Perfection of Female Form".

Ladies, now you know what to aim for. :)