The history of masturbation: An essay review

Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences

Volumn 59, Issue 1, 2004, Pages 112-121

  Singy, Patrick ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY; HISTORY; HUMAN; MASTURBATION; MORALITY; RELIGION; SEXUALITY; SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY;

CHRISTIANITY; CULTURE; HISTORY, 18TH CENTURY; HISTORY, 19TH CENTURY; HISTORY, 20TH CENTURY; HUMANS; MASTURBATION; MORALS; SEXUALITY; SOCIAL VALUES;

EID: 85047693659     PISSN: 00225045     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/jhmas/jrg044     Document Type: Review

References (29)

1. Théodore Tarczylo, Sexe et liberté au siècle des Lumières (Paris: Presses de la Renaissance, 1983);
2. Jean Stengers and Anne van Neck, Histoire d'une grande peur: la masturbation (Brussels: Editions de l'Université de Bruxelles, 1984);
3. Karl Heinz Bloch, Masturbation und Sexualerziehung in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1989);
4. Karl Braun, Die Krankheit Onania (Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag, 1995);
5. Michael Stolberg, "Self-Pollution, Moral Reform, and the Venereal Trade: Notes on the Sources and Historical Context of Onania (1716)," J, Hist. Sexuality, 2000, 9, 37-61;
6. Michael Stolberg, "An Unmanly Vice: Self-Pollution, Anxiety, and the Body in the Eighteenth Century," Soc. Hist. Med., 2000, 13, 1-21.
7. Compare Samuel Auguste Tissot, Dissertatio de febribus biliosis... Accedit tentamen de morbis ex manustupratione (Lausanne: Marci-Mic. Bousquet and Soc., 1758).
8. Laqueur believes he has solved the question of the authorship of Onania and claims that the surgeon John Marten wrote it (pp. 31-32). For several reasons that would be too long and tedious to explain in the context of this review, I am convinced that he is mistaken, so I will keep treating Onania as an anonymous book. Let's just say that Laqueur never carefully compares the content of Onania with the content of Marten's books. Had he done so, he would have seen many fundamental differences-both stylistic and conceptual-and would probably have been much more cautious in his conclusions.
9. In fact, the first two editions of Onania are lost, which makes the dating of the first edition difficult. Laqueur justifies his recurring expression "in or around 1712" in the following way: "the first mention we have of [Onania] in a reliable contemporary catalog of pamphlets is 1716. Some scholars have suggested that it appeared as early as 1708. 'Around 1712' splits the difference" (p. 179). But as Stolberg has convincingly shown, the 1708 suggestion is clearly a mistake, and 1716 is by far the most likely date, supported both by internal and external evidence; Stolberg, "Self-Pollution," pp. 38-40.
10. Onania (8th ed., London: Eliz. Rumball for Thomas Crouch, 1723; reprint, New York: Garland Publishing, 1986), p. 137.
11. See Thomas Aquinas's discussion of nocturnal pollutions in his Summa theologica (New York: Benziger Brothers, Inc., 1947),
12. trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, pt. II of pt. II, q. 154, art. 5, vol. 2, 1819-20.
13. On John Cassian, see Michel Foucault, "The Battle for Chastity," in Foucault, Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth (New York: New Press, 1997), pp. 185-97.
14. Onania, p. 120.
15. Supplement to the Onania (London: T. Crouch, n.d.; reprint, New York: Garland Publishing, 1986), p. 62. The Supplement was bound together with Onania and has been reprinted in the same modern edition.
16. The number of pages varied depending on the edition. I am counting the pages of the edition I am using for this essay, as cited in note 5.
17. Supplement, p. 64.
18. Onania, pp. 108-9.
19. Ibid., p. 109.
20. Ibid., p. 120.
21. Ibid., e.g., pp. 1, 2, 16, 21, 23, 24, 56, 77, and so on.
22. Jean Benedicti, Abbregé de la somme des pechez (Liège: Imprimerie Christian Ouvverx, 1595), p. 113.
23. Supplement, p. iv.
24. I discuss in much greater detail the issue of the secularization of morality in Onania and Onanism in "Friction of the Genitals and Secularization of Morality," forthcoming, J. Hist. Sexuality.
25. Onania, p. 88.
26. Ibid., p. 155.
27. Ibid., pp. 52-58. The Bible is by far the text that is quoted the most often and St. Paul the name that occurs most often.
28. For instance, Tissot's Onanism certainly makes masturbation a problem of excess, which is one of the three elements specific to modern masturbation according to Laqueur. However, imagination, which Laqueur claims to be the most crucial of these elements, plays but a minor role for Tissot. It is clearly subordinate to questions of excessive retention and excessive loss of semen, since it is healthful when responsible for an ejaculation of superfluous semen, and harmful when it leads to an excessive loss of semen.
29. See Tissot, Onanism: Or, a Treatise upon the Disorders produced by Masturbation, trans. A. Hume (3rd ed., London: W. Wilkinson, 1767), especially pp. 155-6.