ONAN ESCHEWED - Rick Grunder

INSCRIBED in pencil on verso of front wrapper, "Mr. R. Rockwood, With respects
from the Author." Only edition on OCLC, which locates four copies (British
Library, Harvard Divinity School, American Antiquarian Society, Massachusetts
Historical Society).
Warning the young men of Medway against all the follies and pitfalls of youth,
from drinking to bad business practices. Sanford particularly emphasizes the
importance of preserving health, and mentions that this sermon was prepared
"with feeble health and in great haste," p. [2].
Possible allusion here to masturbation is so fleeting and vague that its principal
interest in this collection is to remind us of the delicacy of that age, particularly in
religious circles, regarding anything of sexual nature . . .
Young men are not careful enough of health. . . . they expose themselves to
danger unnecessarily; sometimes they do it by intemperate habits; sometimes
by indulgence of appetite in other forms; sometimes by unhallowed
gratifications; sometimes by the want of care, by unnecessary exposure to heats
and colds and storms, or by incessant toil.
. . . Labor, then, to cultivate and develop most fully your physical powers. This
is requisite to develop your intellectual, your moral powers, and your spiritual,
most successfully. Take care of your body; not to pamper it, not to indulge its
unhallowed calls; but to preserve and invigorate it, to continue its strength
unimpaired, that it may minister to higher purposes and secure more important
objects. [p. 8]
90 SCHLESINGER, Miroslav. DIE ONANIE im
Lichte der modernen Seelenkunde . . . Druck und
Verlag von Dr. Madaus & Co., Radeburg (Bez.
Dresden), 1925.
21½ cm. 48 pp. Ads, pp. 45-48, one with a curious
and idealized engraved illustration of a muscular
man holding a boy and girl in his arms, the
children aged perhaps ten; all are nude if discretely
posed - promoting "Endokrin Kraftsalz."
Printed light blue wrappers. Very good; a light
stain to front wrapper. A few pencil marks in the
margins of the text could be erased easily. $90
OCLC locates only two copies in the United States
(both at Yale) plus one other, at the British Library;
showing no other edition or work by this author.
96