ONAN ESCHEWED - Rick Grunder

14½ cm. 190, [2 ("Notice to Patients and Invalid Readers"] pp. Original bluegreen
cloth gilt-lettered on the front board; bright yellow endpapers. A
stunning copy: bright, fine and attractive. $100
OCLC shows three editions, 1870, '76 and '97 (all New York). Despite the claim
in the title, the are no illustrations - at least not in the pristine copy here at hand.
MASTURBATION, pp. 30-52. The usual schlock, but delivered here with
unwarranted moralizing and audacious imposition, well calculated to draw in
patients. Of course, the masturbator exhibits unmistakable external signs:
. . . his sunken, haggard, pale, unmeaning, inexpressive face; his dull, lack-lustre eye; his
thin and tremulous form, which all betray him to the [p. 46 ends] practised observer.
FOR, SELF-POLLUTION ENTAILS UPON ITS VICTIM MARKS AS LEGIBLE, TO THE EYE
THAT CAN UNDERSTAND THEM, AS THE SCARS OF SMALL-POX; and thus proves a
striking fulfilment of the prophetic warning—"There is nothing done in secret
that shall not be revealed," nor hidden, even from the recognition of mortals, that
shall not ultimately be made, even to them, evident as noon-day. Shall we not
therefore raise our testimony against these vices? [pp. 46-47, emphasis in the
original]
Dr. Kahn's office hours are from 10:00 a.m. until 2:00 in the afternoon, and from
five until eight o'clock in the evening; Sundays until 2:00 p.m. He charges $5.
Patients corresponding from a distance should send a bottle of their urine by
train, taken in the morning and "carefully packed to prevent breakage . . ."
59 [another edition] KAHN, L[ouis]. J., and ________ JORDAN. NERVOUS
EXHAUSTION. A Series of Lectures on Diseases of the Genito-Urinary Organs. By
Drs. Kahn and Jordan. Authors of "The Skin and Its Diseases," "Man's Mission on
Earth," Etc., Etc. [New York: c. 1897 by Drs. Kahn and Jordan, 1 East 9th Street,
New York City . . .].
15 cm. 128 pp. A few illustrations, including frontispiece counted in the
pagination. Black wrappers printed in gold. Fore-edges of wrappers and
preliminary leaves worn, with chipping to front and back wrapper. $25
Of this 1897 edition, OCLC locates two copies (NY Historical Society; Center for
Research Libraries), but does not speculate on which of the various Drs. Jordan
co-authored this version. Chapter VI, Self-Abuse, etc.," pp. 45-57. "His
imagination burning with filthy, unnatural flow; his bodily organs, taxed to the
utmost, weary and jaded, refuse to obey the stimulus of that never-slumbering
depravity, which goads his fancy in the darkness of night, in the dreams of his
broken rest, and in the worse than dreamy abstractions of the cheerless day.
Tormented with desires he can never gratify; . . ." (p. 55)
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