ONAN ESCHEWED - Rick Grunder

end. I could tell you of the finest physical constitutions, which, after twelve
months' tampering with this perilous fascination, have become pitiable wrecks of
disease. I could tell you, on medical authority, of men now dragging out a
useless existence, with reason dethroned, and drivelling in idiotcy [sic]. And the
punishment once done to the flesh does not depart. Life ends in early death, or is
a long suffering of humiliation; yea, worse still, the suffering is perpetuated in
the third and fourth generations. Young men starting in life have none to tell
them these things, therefore I have forced myself to the hateful task. The
displeasure of God against this sin is awful. What would you think of a man
who should pluck a flower from a yawning chasm, when there were ninety-nine
chances to one that he would fall into the abyss below, and even if extricated, be
scarred and begrimed to the end of his days? [p. 27n.]
38 HALL, W[illiam]. W[hitty]. SLEEP: Or the Hygiene of the Night. By Dr. W. W.
Hall, Editor of Hall's Journal of Health . . . New York: Published by Hurd and
Houghton. Cambridge: Riverside Press, 1870 [c. 1870 by W. W. Hall].
18½ cm. [2]ff.; 352, iv (Index) pp. Scattered stains and light foxing. Original
Red and green cloth (red roan spine). Extremities wearing; printed front-free
endpaper torn with loss (endleaves printed with ads); first flyleaf partially cut
away. $35
Earliest year of publication shown on OCLC, which also finds editions in
Montreal (1870) and London (1871). Discreet in the extreme, but clearly referring
to masturbation on pp. 333-34; with related implications elsewhere as well. Wet
dreams, ("those 'losses' which result from early habits learned from evil
associations . . .") two or three times a month, are not physically harmful and
cannot really be stopped medically without endangering the system (p. 333). But
the author goes on to bemoan the irrepressible habits [of masturbation, though
never so named] contracted at early age, and he alludes to reports in "standard
medical journals" of "two cases in California of eleven and twelve years, where
only a terrible surgical operation could (but did) break up the habit, and save
from clearly approaching idiocy." (p. 334)
39 HALL, Winfield S[cott]. FROM YOUTH INTO MANHOOD. Winfield S. Hall.
Ph.D., M.D., Professor of Physiology, Northwestern University Medical School;
Lecturer on the Physiology of Exercise, Institute and Training School of the Young
Men's Christian Association, Chicago. Introduction by George J. Fisher, M.D., M.P.E.
EIGHTEENTH EDITION. New York: Association Press, 1927.
17 cm. 106 pp. Orig. maroon cloth lettered in black on spine and front board. A
very good copy. $45
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