ONAN ESCHEWED - Rick Grunder

I have not transcribed some more extreme (and particularly hateful) passages
which Walling shares from his various sources. His hands now washed of male
masturbators, he can hardly surprise us with his treatment of "MASTURBATION,
FEMALE." – or can he? . . .
Alas, that such a term is possible! O, that it were as infrequent as it is
monstrous, and that no stern necessity compelled us to make the startling
disclosures which this chapter must contain! We beseech, in advance, that every
young creature into whose hands this book may chance to fall, if she be yet pure
and innocent, will at least pass over this chapter, that she may still believe in the
general chastity of her sex; that she may not know the depths of degradation
into which it is possible to fall. [p. 41]
WALLING'S RIGHTEOUS CANT belies itself six pages later, however, when he
prescribes insistent interrogation of any girl who is even so much as suspected of
masturbation. "It were far better to acquaint even pure-minded and perfectly
innocent girls with the existence of such a vice, while teaching them its horrible
consequences, than, through a false modesty or mistaken motives of delicacy, to
fail in imparting the requisite information in a single case." (p. 47) WE must not
suspect such a gynecologist of secretly enjoying his subject too much, but he does
go to a bit of trouble to translate a passage from a "Dictionnaire des Sciences
Medicales" about girls creeping into bed with one another at boarding schools.
Walling then continues on his own (though sounding very much indeed as if
these expressions were originally written in the French language) . . .
With them [girls], as with boys, the genital organs may be constitutionally
endowed with excessive predominance of action, which masters all the
affections, all the movements of the economy, and causes them to titillate
incessantly that part of those organs which is the seat of the keenest sensibility.
Very little girls are often thus borne along, by a kind of instinct, to commit
masturbation. The famous Dr. Deslandes makes the astounding statement,
which can only be true of the French nation, that "a great number of little girls,
and the majority of adolescents, commit this crime!" [p. 42]
Walling then quotes a case in which a girl, after failed treatments, was finally
sent to the country, away from her old nurse, and there questioned severely by
the doctor – who pretended to know for fact what he could not know in
substance, and thereby extracted from her a confession that her nurse had indeed
taught her to masturbate, pp. 43-44. The possibly-innocent servant's career now
destroyed, Walling exults in ironic misogyny: "After this, trust women, trust
nurses, trust governesses, believe mothers [i.e., never] ! Nolite confidere in mulieribus."
(p. 44) He lists the external signs by which you can tell that a girl is a
masturbator, and he follows with sober advice:
Have an eye, then, upon those who prefer darkness and solitude; who remain
long alone without being able to give good reasons for this isolation. Let
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