ONAN ESCHEWED - Rick Grunder

simple gilt lettering on spine. Wearing at extremities and somewhat shaken; text
printed on glossy paper and generally very good. $50
OCLC shows editions in 1906 (but only 228 pp.); 1908 (2nd through 4th eds.),
1909 (5th ed.), 1910 (6th ed.), and 1912 (7th ed.). Of the third edition offered here,
OCLC locates only one copy, at a Maryland institution. No copy of any edition is
shown at URMC.
Masturbation, pp. 92 (girls aged eight months to twenty-four years), 113-23 and
183-88.
In Lombroso's case, a girl of three years of age masturbated openly and almost
constantly until marriage, and even afterwards. She bore twelve children, and
did not stop masturbating even during pregnancy. Of her twelve children, five
died in infancy, four were hydrocephalous, and all three surviving children were
confirmed masturbators, the oldest at seven, the youngest at four. [p. 92]
Chapter LVI, "MASTURBATION," offers a dizzying variety of case studies and
examples throughout history of female means and manners of masturbation,
finally commenting that woman seems to suffer more permanent effects from
early masturbation than man, p. 120, and "becomes excessively prudish, despises
and hates the opposite sex, and forms passionate attachments for other women,
p. 121. Nonetheless, . . .
If masturbation is practiced with moderation, it can not be considered
pathological. According to Paget masturbation causes no more nor less harm
than the normal coitus, if practiced with the same frequency and under the same
conditions with regard to health, age and circumstances.
Cohn says: Masturbation is such a frequent manipulation that out of a
hundred young men and girls ninety-nine are addicted to it, and the hundredth
is concealing the truth.
Moderate masturbation seems to be almost a natural phenomenon. For even
among animals various forms of spontaneous solitary sexual excitement occur.
[p. 115]
Among the ancients the Lesbian women are said to have used ivory-penises or
golden ones, covered with silken stuffs and linen, in solitary sexual gratification.
Aristophanes relates the use by the Milesian women of the "olisbos," an artificial
leather penis. [p. 117]
After such clinical and dispassionate treatment, we may be surprised by Chapter
LXXVII, "PREVENTION OF MASTURBATION," which begins by saying that, "The
greatest and most important problem of sexual hygiene is the prevention of
masturbation in children and young women." (p. 183). The author then rehearses
all the standard causes and potential cures seen in the more conservative
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