Читать книгу Put What Where?: Over 2,000 Years of Bizarre Sex Advice - John Naish - Страница 12

From the early 1700s onwards, the innocent practice of self-love became synonymous with crippling illnesses, moral decay and hideous death. Why?

We can thank an anonymous quack from about 1710 for first pointing the finger of suspicion at the hairy palm of lone vice. Whoever the author was, snappy titles were not their strong point. Their pamphlet was called Onania, or the heinous sin of self-pollution, And in all its frightful consequences, in both sexes, considered with physical and spiritual advice to those who have already injur’d themselves by this abominable practice. And seasonable admonition to the youth of the nation [of both sexes] and whose tuition they are under, whether parents, guardians, masters or mistresses. In it, the author simply invented a new cause of widespread diseases by making a spurious connection between masturbation and the biblical story of Onan.

In Solitary Sex: a cultural history of masturbation, the historian Thomas Laqueur alleges that Onania’s author was an amateur doctor and surgeon called Dr Marten (not he of footwear fame). Once Marten had invented the scourge of Onanism-related illnesses, claims Laqueur, he started to offer a range of steeply priced cures, such as ‘strengthening tincture’ and ‘prolific powder’. If that is true, it makes Marten an early pioneer of the widespread modern pharmaceutical company marketing trick of creating a new disease, scaring people about it in the press, and then launching (fortuitously) a costly cure. Newly minted health problems such as Social Anxiety Disorder and Information Fatigue Syndrome may thus be merely latter-day versions of masturbation.

The biblical Onan gets a bad press from here onwards. It’s not justified: in the Old Testament story, he was instructed by God to impregnate the widow of his recently dead brother – an ancient Hebrew tradition that aimed to ensure there were family heirs. Onan wasn’t keen on perpetuating his brother’s bloodline, so he pulled out of his sister-in-law at the last minute. God struck him dead ‘for spilling his seed on the ground’ but he had committed coitus interruptus, not masturbation. Society was not prepared to let the facts ruin a good scare story, though, and masturbation mania swiftly began to take off. Marten’s pamphlet became wildly popular, disseminating the belief across Europe that Onanism was the cause of diseases ranging from tuberculosis to third-stage syphilis. By 1750, it had been published in 19 editions and sold 38,000 copies.

Soon came the copycats. In 1717, a hugely popular free handout, Practical Schemes for the Secret Disease and Broken Constitutions, was published with a new section on self-abuse by the most popular contemporary advisor on painkillers in Great Britain, the self-styled Mr Anodyne Necklace. He subsequently published similar rants: The Crime of Onan, Eromania and a further follow-up, Eromania; on the crimes of those two unhappy brothers Er and Onan. Other publishers’ titles included Onania displayd, in which the word Onanism was originally coined.

In 1758, Samuel Tissot, a Swiss doctor, threw more fuel on the fire by publishing, L’Onanisme, ou dissertation physique sur les maladies produites par la masturbation, which, through its hundreds of editions, variations and imitators spread further fear of the evils of self-pleasure and ‘postmasturbatory disease’ throughout the Continent. He argued from the perspective of ‘medical science’ that the unnatural loss of semen weakened mind and body and led to insanity. The book was still in print as recently as 1905. Along with Marten’s work, Tissot’s writings moved like some terrible contagion across the Atlantic to America. Their influence there, as we shall see, was of another magnitude entirely.

Loose Women

Blondes

Giovanni Sinibaldi, Rare Verities, the Cabinet of Venus Unlock’d (1658)

ALL women are Lascivious, but auburn blondes the most ... A little straight forehead denotes an unbridled appetite in Lust.

Actors’ wives

Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana (3rd century), translated by Sir Richard F. Burton and F.F. Arbuthnot (1883)

The following are the women who are easily gained over:

Women who stand at the doors of their houses

Women who are always Looking out on the street

Women who sit chatting in their neighbour’s house

A woman who is always staring at you

A woman who looks sideways at you

A woman whose husband has taken another wife without any just cause

A woman who hates her husband, or who is hated by him

A woman who has nobody to look after her, or keep her in check

A woman who has not had any children

A woman whose family or caste is not well known

A woman whose children are dead

A woman who is very fond of society

A woman who is apparently very affectionate with her husband

The wife of an actor

A widow

A poor woman

A woman who likes fun

The wife of a man with many younger brothers

A vain woman

A woman whose husband is inferior to her in rank or abilities

One who is proud of her skill in the arts

A woman mentally disturbed by her husband’s stupidity

A woman who has been married in her infancy to a rich man, and not liking him when she grows up, desires a man possessing a disposition, talents, and wisdom suitable to her own tastes

A woman who is slighted by her husband without any cause

A woman who is not respected by other women of the same rank or beauty as herself

A woman whose husband is devoted to travelling

The wife of a jeweller

A jealous woman

A covetous woman

An immoral woman

A barren woman

A lazy woman

A cowardly woman

A humpbacked woman

A dwarfish woman

A deformed woman

A vulgar woman

An ill-smelling woman

A sick woman

An old woman

Women only want one thing

Perfumed Garden of Sheik Nefzaoui (16th century), translated into English by Sir Richard F. Burton

The woman loves the man only for the sake of coition. His member should, therefore, be of ample dimensions and length. Such a man ought to be broad in the chest, and heavy in the crupper; he should know how to regulate his emission, and be ready as to erection; his member should reach to the end of the canal of the female, and completely fill the same in all its parts. Such a one will be well beloved by women.