When Samuel-Auguste Tissot published Onanism: A Treatise on the Maladies Produced by Masturbation in 1758, little did he know that it would have an impact on the history of masturbating and sexual practices for several centuries. In this catchily-titled tome, Tissot suggested that semen was a vital bodily fluid, a sort of finite life force, and that excessive loss of it through masturbation would result in the body and mind simply wasting away. Women who indulged were equally prone to frailty and hysteria. If Tissot was to be believed, a healthy lifestyle was only achievable by abstaining from masturbation in all its forms. To be fair to Tissot, his ideas were not completely new and there was at least one earlier pamphlet on the subject, Onania, Or the Heinous Sin of Self Pollution, and all its Frightful Consequences in both Sexes Considered, published c.1712-16. It was Tissot’s book, however, that helped to popularise the supposed dangers of masturbation and it was seen as an authoritative work on the subject. It is from these two texts that the vast majority of masturbation rhetoric of the 18th and 19th centuries is drawn.
History of masturbating males
These texts caused a bit of a social about-turn. In the century prior, men had been happily knocking one off whenever they felt like it. Scot, William Drummond, for instance, recorded being “fattall” every time he masturbated in the late-1650s, usually without further comment. Around a decade later, Samuel Pepys discovered he could masturbate without the use of hands (by the power of thought alone) and then did so in a range of increasingly inappropriate public places. This is his diary entry for Christmas Eve 1667:
I was afeard of my pocket being picked very much. But here I did make myself to do the thing by mere imagination, looking at the pretty girl and with my eyes open, which I never did before – and God forgive me for it, it being in the Chapel. Their musique very good indeed…
Likewise, in the first half of the 18th century, The Beggar’s Bension, a Scottish sex club, were so into beating their meat that it formed a core tenet of their club. Their initiation ceremony saw new recruits bashing one out in front of other members and meetings often included all those present masturbating at the same time. The club minutes for 1735, record one such instance, “St. Andrew’s Day. 24 present. Every Penis exhibited and compared by erection and frig-discharge. 3 Novices were tested.”
History of masturbating females
As with so much sex history, direct accounts of women’s habits are harder to find. However, there are enough satirical poems, theatrical references and even medical texts and midwifery guides that mention the history of masturbating females to suggest that it was an equally widespread practice. Some late-17th century examples include the saucy ballad, The Maid’s Complaint for Want of a Dil Doul; the cover image of porn novel, The School of Venus, which shows women shopping for dildos and Diemerbroeck’s Anatomy of Human Bodies which recounts that:
I my self formerly knew a woman, of no mean quality, that made her Complaints to me, that when she was young, and feeling the Itch of Lechery, she was wont often to run her Clitoris with her finger and so was wont to provoke her self to spend her seed with great delight.
This is not to say that masturbation was completely without censure; the Church had some strong feelings about wasting time and semen on anything that didn’t directly lead to children, but there is little evidence of any 17th-century public campaigns on the subject or of any punishments being meted out. Men and women, it seems, were practising self-love with very little sense of guilt and no serious consequences.
This all changed in the mid-18th century. The result of Tissot’s text (and others like it) was a sustained campaign against masturbation, particularly, male masturbation. Children and adolescents were carefully policed and doctors attributed a range of illnesses to self-love, everything from epilepsy and gout to “pulmonary consumption… cramps in the stomach, muscular debility [and] weakness of sight”. Women, too, were discouraged from masturbating, but the campaigning was less aggressive. This may have resulted from the idea, that emerged in the 19th century, that women were less prone to sexual feelings and were more interested in romantic rather than erotic love.
Image: Illustration from The Secret Companion, A Medical Work on Onanism, 1845 showing the effects of repeated masturbation
It wasn’t just physical sickness that was blamed on masturbation, mental illness, too, was linked to the habit. This applied to both sexes, but for women, it sometimes went hand-in-hand with diagnoses of nymphomania. There are many instances throughout the history masturbation being quoted on patient admission forms to hospitals and asylums and at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital, 15 female and 16 male patients were diagnosed with “Insanity of Masturbation” in the four years between 1862 and 1866.
As masturbatory panic took hold in the 19th century, quack cures and devices to prevent self-love emerged. These cringe-inducing items ranged from inventions that sought to prevent an erection through electric shocks or physical discomfort to restraints to prevent people from masturbating in their sleep.
Image: Toothed urethral ring for the treatment of masturbation, 19th century
Ways to suppress sexual urges were also discussed with medical practitioners and social reformers promoting cold water, hard beds, exercise and plain diets. Amongst these doctors was John Harvey Kellogg, author of Plain Facts for Old and Young: Embracing the Natural History and Hygiene of Organic Life (1877) which includes a hefty section on “solitary vice” and its alleged results. In this, he dramatically states that:
…neither the plague, nor war, nor small-pox, nor similar diseases, have produced results so disastrous to humanity as the pernicious habit of Onanism; it is the destroying element of civilised societies, which is constantly in action, and gradually undermines the health of a nation. The sin of self-pollution… is one of the most destructive evils ever practised by fallen man.
Kellogg goes on to advocate for a range of preventatives and cures, some of which were, at best, uncomfortable and, at worst, actively damaging, including surgical interventions. Although few of his ideas persist today, Kellogg has left us with one famous legacy, Kellogg’s cereals. John and his brother pioneered the development of cornflakes as part of attempts to create a bland diet to help people avoid sexual stimulation.
The condemnation of masturbating
This continued into the 20th century and was perpetuated through youth organisations such as the Boy Scouts and institutions, particularly some boys’ public schools. These sought to educate boys morally and socially, but clung to outdated notions. This is exemplified in Baden-Powell’s Scouting for Boys from 1914, when he addresses the issue in a section headed “Notes for Instructors”:
You can warn him that “indulgence” or “self-abuse” is a temptation more likely to assail him than any other vices, such as drinking, gambling, or smoking, and is more harmful than any of them, since it brings with it weakness of heart and head, and, if persisted in, idiocy and lunacy…The temptation may arise from physical causes, such as eating rich foods, sleeping on the back in a soft bed with too many blankets on, or from constipation, or it may come from suggestions through pictures, stories, or dirty talk of others.
Although attitudes began to change around the First World War, there is still plenty of evidence of people believing masturbation to be dangerous in the Interwar period and beyond. Of course, this didn’t stop people masturbating, it just caused an enormous amount of fear and shame around the subject.
Despite concerns, 18th-century writer, James Boswell records the history of masturbating several times in his diaries, always accompanied by feelings of guilt and remorse. On 26 December 1764, for instance, he wrote that “Yesterday… at night, low lasciviousness. Have a care. Swear with drawn sword never pleasure but with a women’s aid”. Similarly, 19th-century poet, Edward Lear was taught at a young age that his epileptic fits were caused by masturbation and he continued to believe this for much of his life, blaming his medical condition on his boyhood experimentation.
There have been drastic improvements in the discussion of masturbation in recent years, but the idea that it is shameful or taboo still persists and this can be seen as a direct legacy of the medical fear-mongering of the 18th and 19th centuries. Whilst I’m not sure we should be advocating for a return to Pepys’ unusual choice of locations, there’s nothing to stop us being a little bit more Drummond and a little bit less Tissot, Kellogg and their ilk. Not only is masturbation not bad for you, but there is plenty of modern evidence of its significant health benefits.