ONAN ESCHEWED - Rick Grunder

each successive year through 1857, the final one published at Saratoga Springs,
New York. I find one copy of this edition listed for sale on the Internet
(November 1, 2010) described in "fair" condition, in need of rebinding, for $389.
The latter portion of the book (it is not easy to say exactly where this begins) is
highly self-promotional, advertising Root's lectures, place of practice, lectures,
remedies, and the man himself . . .
. . . a seventh son, a natural physician—gifted both with qualifications to become
renowned in the great art of healing the sick, and appointing length of days unto
the despairing. He was born with two veils over his face—and gifted with a rare
and peculiar insight into the causes, character, modes of prevention, and cure of
diseases of the human frame, and with a natural controlling power over them.
To this natural gift he has added the results of long study and practical
observation—having probed the very secrets of disease . . . [p. 377]
Indeed, our wondrous author is shown in his frontispiece portrait supported by
allegorical females above a spread of scholarly tomes and elaborate medical
apparatus. Then on page 375, we are treated to a more crudely-engraved and
smaller (but full-length) portrait of Dr. Root surrounded by little portraits of
Washington, Franklin, Shakespeare, Luther, Archimedes, Noah Webster, Jenny
Lind and Mrs. Hemans, the poet.
Overwhelmed by such high qualifications, we hasten to our all-important subject
of "ONANISM OR MASTURBATION," pp. 144-150. Having noticed, along the way,
a version of the wonderful illustration of "THE ONANISTS AND THEIR CHILD" taking
a walk (here rendered on page 148) - not to mention pictures elsewhere of prevs.
post-Garden ADAM & EVE (the latter indicted by a crowned skeleton and the
Grim Reaper) - we need not expect to encounter any attitudes about
masturbation such as will appear in a few, more liberal books in this collection.
"The semen," we now learn, "cannot be emitted, from either sex, except by
artificial friction of the procreative organs, a concentration of the mind upon
subjects of an amatory character, . . . or by animal magnetic heat through the
connection of the sexes. Sexual intercourse, then, is magnetic, and produces an
electric emission." (p. 144). Circumcision, we learn (on this page, and again on
pages 150-51) makes masturbation more difficult [?], and it was instituted by
God for that very reason, in large measure.
The remedy for masturbation is to GET MARRIED AS EARLY AS AGE FIFTEEN, if
necessary, rather than to fall prey to self-abuse or prostitution (the language is
quite dramatic, even surprising, pp. 145-46). And now to the requisite discussion
of "Involuntary Seminal Emissions" (which, as we all know by now, are caused by
masturbation):
93