ONAN ESCHEWED - Rick Grunder

55 JORDAN, [H. J.]. MAN'S MISSION ON EARTH. A Short Treatise on Diseases of
the Genito-Urinary Organs . . . Forty-Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged . . . New
York: Isaac Goldmann Co., Printers, 1912 [c. 1902 by L. J. Kahn, M. D.
18½ cm. 175 pp. A few illustrations, including frontispiece counted in the
pagination. Black wrappers printed in white. Very good. $25
Signed in type at the end, "Dr. H. J. Jordan, 768 Main Street, Worcester, Mass."
(p. 175). OCLC shows at least nine editions, 1869-1914, locating four copies of a
"45th" edition in 1912 (but none claiming to be the 44th, as the copy here at hand).
MASTURBATION, pp. 58-80 (insanity, detriments to off-spring, etc.).
. . . the chain continues; and the organs perform their functions, in compliance
with this excitement, and that, too, frequently, at all hours of the day and night,
and from the most trivial cause. These repetitions are more than the human
frame can bear, and they produce that incapacity of the erection in the male,
which lays the foundation of impotency, and which causes in the female an
aversion to sexual intercourse. The mind . . . becomes debilitated; [p. 61 ends]
silently tortured by the bitterest agonies of remorse, the wretched victim of this
foul propensity suffers from a general lassitude of the nervous action in which
the whole system participates, but more particularly the organs of digestion; . . .
in Dr. Darwin's "Zoönomia," . . . he mentions the circumstance of a man who shot
himself, leaving upon a table a slip of paper containing these words, "I am
impotent and not fit to live." [pp. 61-62]
56 JORDAN, L[ouis]. J. THE PHILOSOPHY OF MARRIAGE, Being Four Important
Lectures on the Functions and Disorders of the NERVOUS SYSTEM, and
REPRODUCTIVE ORGANS. Illustrated with Cases. By Dr. L. J. Jordan, Member of
the Royal College of Surgeons, London, Doctor of Medicine, Edinburgh, and
Demonstrator of Anatomy and Surgery. Permanent Residence, No. 211 Geary St.
bet[ween]. Stockton and Powell opposite Union Square. San Francisco, Cal. [c. 1865,
Northern District of California, by Dr. L. J. Jordan].
17½ cm. vi, 99 pp. + wood-engraving frontispiece SHOWN BELOW, illustrating the
grand interior of the author's "Pacific Museum of Anatomy & Natural Science"
located, according to a note on page [5], at the "Eureka Theater, San Francisco,
Cal." Technically speaking, this copy actually has two identical copies of the
frontispiece, one bound immediately preceding the one facing the title page.
"PREFACE TO THE FORTY-EIGHTH EDITION," p. 3. This was a kind holiday gift
some years ago from Berkeley bookseller friend Ian Jackson, who quipped: "I'm
sure you have this in some form but perhaps not the 48th."
Original red blind-decorated cloth, gilt-lettered on front board (lettering very
dull, essentially gray). Appealing bright yellow-orange clay-based endpapers.
59