ONAN ESCHEWED - Rick Grunder

vigilance attach itself principally to the moments which follow the retirement to
bed, and those which precede the rising. It is then especially that the
masturbator may be surprised in the act. [p. 46]
110 WARNER, I. De Ver, and Lucien C. WARNER. A POPULAR TREATISE ON
MAN, IN HEALTH AND DISEASE, With Illustrations. By I. De Ver Warner, M.D.,
and Lucien C. Warner, M.D. SOLD BY SUBSCRIPTION. New York: Manhattan
Publishing Company, 1873.
19 cm. [1 (recto blank, ads on verso, facing title)]f.; [3]-13, [23]-337, 3 (ad;
testimonials dated 1872-73) pp. Index, pp. [317]-37. Small engraved illustration
of "Dr. Warner's urethral syringe" in the text adjacent to the outer margin of page
207. Original rust-colored cloth decorated in gilt lettering and black border.
Fairly scuffed and with medium wear. Trifle shaken with one gathering sprung.
$85
First of two editions on OCLC, locating 7 copies (including URMC). The other
edition shown by OCLC is a third, revised & enlarged edition of 361 pages by
L. B. Sperry (NY: Warner Brothers, 1879; 2 locations: Oberlin; New York
Academy of Medicine).
"CHAPTER VIII. MASTURBATION," pp. [154]-85. Indeed, the index includes nine
entries for masturbation, between pp. 154 and 214. Boys in town, subject to the
theater, exciting novels, obscene pictures and vulgar stories are more likely to fall
into masturbation than their more quiet and natural country cousins, pp. 158-59.
Some learn without a teacher, discovering the vice through accident. "In the
majority of cases," however, the art is taught:
Boys learn it of each other as they play together at the same sports, or sleep
together in the same bed. [p. 159 ends] Nurses have frequently been known to
teach the children under their charge to play with their private parts in order to
keep them quiet, and thus have sown the seeds of the future practice of
masturbation. Even full-grown men have been found so lost to all sense of
decency and shame as to instruct the youths of their acquaintance in the secrets
of this vice. . . . [pp. 159-60]
I wish by no means to assert that every boy unable to look another in the face is
or has been a masturbator, but I believe this vice is a very frequent cause of
timidity. These boys have a dank, moist, cold hand, very characteristic of great
vital exhaustion; . . . they may gradually waste away . . . [p. 161]
"Experience of Rousseau . . . who was himself a victim of this vice . . . ," pp. 167-
73, attributing even difficulty in writing to the practice, etc. The cure involves
the ubiquitous cold sponge bath (no pleasant showers), followed by brisk
rubbing of the body with rough towels, p. 178. The most important thing, of
116