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Onania, an anti-masturbation tract, was published in London by a man who claimed
to be a Doctor, and reprints quickly spread its message to
the American Colonies. The anonymous author warned
that onanism, as
masturbation was then called, threatened men's moral and
physical health. Ostensibly intended to prevent the
imagined ills resulting from "self-pollution," the
booklet also served to advertise quack medicines its author
endorsed.
Citing Biblical injunctions
against sexual sin, Onania is written in a high moral
tone and even equates masturbation with sodomy,
the most heinous sexual sin its author could imagine.
Later medical writers like Tissot in France and
Acton in
England would forego Onania's religious tone, but
repeated its hysterical warnings that masturbation can have
deadly consequences.
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