5 Insane Ways Fear of Masturbation Shaped the Modern World

It's fairly recent, too. As recently as the 1860s, circumcision was still primarily thought of as a "Jewish rite," something that for non-Jews would be done as a last resort in response to infections around the foreskin and other medical problems. But in the late 1800s and early 1900s, America wound up in a frenzy over the problem of masturbation that sounds suspiciously similar to the fears about recreational drugs a half century later -- masturbation was spoken of as a new, addictive fad among our children that doctors said could cause everything from psychosis to epilepsy.

And then, somehow, they decided that circumcision would prevent masturbation (because no Jewish man had ever been caught masturbating up to that point, we guess?). The benefits were claimed to be twofold:

First, it supposedly reduced the secretions that would get inflamed around the foreskin and thus get young boys in the habit of rubbing themselves. Seriously, books at the time treat genital itching as a gateway drug to masturbation -- a 1914 public school sex ed manual says keeping kids from scratching their junk is the only way to keep them out of the insane asylum, where all masturbators end up.

Second, many doctors thought that removing the foreskin made masturbation much more difficult (which, as about half of our readers know, it totally doesn't). By the way, that 1895 medical journal suggests that another way to prevent boys from masturbating is to sever the fucking nerves to the penis, so there just wouldn't be any feeling there at all.

Again, it makes perfect sense if you are under the impression that masturbation is a drug 10 times more dangerous than heroin. It's a telling sign of how villainous masturbation was that "Jewish penis surgery" sounded like a sensible alternative, particularly since the 1860s weren't exactly an enlightened time in Anglo-Jewish relations (it was around then that Union general and soon-to-be president Ulysses S. Grant signed the order expelling all Jews from some Southern states). And yet, by 1895 this "Jewish rite" had become the physician's "closest friend and ally" in the battle against masturbation.

Anti-masturbation crusader John Harvey Kellogg then came along and upped the ante by insisting that circumcision should be performed with no anesthesia. Why? So the kid would feel the pain and remember it the next time he was tempted to "self-abuse":

"The operation should be performed by a surgeon without administering an anesthetic, as the brief pain attending the operation will have a salutary effect upon the mind, especially if it be connected with the idea of punishment, as it may well be in some cases. The soreness which continues for several weeks interrupts the practice, and if it had not previously become too firmly fixed, it may be forgotten and not resumed."

Oh, and the follow-up to the procedure isn't creepy at all, saying the patient ...

"... should be so carefully surrounded by vigilance that he cannot possibly transgress without detection. If he is only partially watched, he soon learns to elude observation, and thus the effect is only to make him cunning in his vice."

And yes, this is Kellogg of "Kellogg's cereal" fame. Which brings us to ...

Kellogg, as you can tell, was really into keeping kids from masturbating. An entire segment of the food industry would be born as a result of this crusade.

At some point, masturbation experts decided that a major culprit in provoking the urge was diet. Certain foods were "excitants" known to fire the blood. Of course in the late 1800s "excitants" included such exotic fare as cloves, vinegar, pickles, candy, eggs and pork. Thankfully, to protect children from the evils of peppermint, anti-masturbation dietitians invented the opposite of tasty food, namely cold breakfast cereal. Grape-Nuts, and later Corn Flakes, were specially designed to be non-stimulating alternatives to "food."

So when you would see ads for cereals like Grape-Nuts back then (invented by CW Post, a competitor of Kellogg from the same era), you would see innuendos about how it won't "heat the blood" the way other foods do. The ads also boasted that it was "predigested," because if you're trying to remain cool and unexcited, clearly you should model your diet after a baby bird. Mr. Kellogg, meanwhile, believed eating his "corn flakes" would do the trick. If he was smart, he'd have advertised his cereal as the only way to prevent forceful circumcision, without anesthesia, followed by a 24-hour masturbation watch. That's some pretty strong damned motivation right there.

Another inventor of "food to make you stop jerking off" was Reverend Sylvester Graham, of Graham cracker fame. His cold breakfast option to suppress sexual urges was originally called Honey Biscuits (which ironically would be a great porn name). It was specifically recommended as an important part of the diet for those recovering from masturbation for the same reason as the cereals: a bland taste and ease of digestion designed to provide nutrition without any hint of stimulation.

Graham crackers were also sold as the perfect food to help children gain weight and thus have the strength necessary to resist temptation (and this was even before kids started eating them with chocolate and marshmallows).

And given that chocolate was thought to be an aphrodisiac, this made s'mores an existential battle for a Boy Scout's soul. But more on the Boy Scouts later.

But the tide turned in favor of baths by the end of the 19th century. Yep, the same time period we keep returning to, the very climax of the War on Masturbation. It's not a coincidence.

It was the fear of masturbation that drove doctors and preachers alike to recommend daily baths, particularly for children. The theory was similar to the one behind circumcision -- if you didn't keep the genitals clean, they would itch, and soon little Billy would be scratching a little too much. Guess who weighed in on the subject? Why, it's John Harvey Kellogg again. In Plain Facts for Old and Young:

"A daily bath is indispensable to health under almost all circumstances; for patients of this class it is especially necessary ... Sun baths, electric baths, spray, plunge and other forms of bath, are of greatest value to those suffering from the effects of indiscretions."

But he certainly wasn't the only one. Sylvanus Stall's What a Young Man Ought to Know (1904) says:

"But we must here make some helpful suggestions to those who seek to avoid this form of sexual weakness ... First, cleanliness of heart, of thought, imagination and of purpose must be reinforced also by cleanliness of body. Every man, woman and child should bathe at least once or twice a week. In addition to the ordinary weekly bath, there should also be added the daily morning sponge or hand-bath."

The 1909 YMCA manual From Youth into Manhood added:

"Here are a few rules that will help the young man who wishes to overcome the habit just described ... Arise three-quarters of an hour before breakfast every morning, take a cold sponge or shower bath."

Meanwhile, the Boy Scout manual Scouting for Boys mentions a cold shower or bath as a good masturbation cure. Bathing wasn't just in again, it was now being thrown around as a preventative medical treatment that one avoided at his own masturbatory risk.

Wait, why were the YMCA and Boy Scouts writing about masturbation? Well ...

Now, we can't prove beyond all doubt that these two organizations were started purely as tools to beat back the masturbation menace -- that's not the sort of thing the organizers of either group would come out and admit. But it seems to have been a big part.

Let's start with the Boy Scouts.

First, you have to understand that in this late-19th/early-20th-century period when the masturbation panic was at its apex, exercise was considered another reliable weapon for slaying the wank dragon. Doctors at the time had already observed that people in sedentary jobs like merchants, students or shoemakers (and presumably writers) were far more prone to masturbation-based insanity. So not only did vigorous exercise strengthen the mind and body and give your hands something else to do, it effectively diverted "superfluous nervous energy" away from the sexual organs. You know, it's hard to argue; you've seen how pro athletes and soldiers both have no sex drive whatsoever.

Anyway, the whole scouting movement goes back to around 1907 -- right in the middle of all this -- and was started by Lord Baden-Powell. And as much as anyone from that era, he was obsessed with stopping boys from masturbating.

Oh, and he was sort of crazy. Baden-Powell seemed to struggle with his own sexuality, spending a lot of time admiring the physical form of men and obsessing over the development of boys. When he finally married at age 55, he refused to sleep in the same bed as a woman, choosing to sleep out on his balcony instead. When it came to his advice about sex and the ultimate destructive evil of self-abuse, he, uh, had a way of phrasing things. He advised that young men should "bathe the racial organ in cold water daily." In the landmark scouting manual Scouting for Boys: A Handbook for Instruction in Good Citizenship, Powell included warnings against masturbation so graphic that the publisher forced him to cut them (they were restored in later editions).

So what did he think would save his boys from such a horrific vice? Powell's advice followed the thinking of the day, saying that bathing and "exercising the upper part of the body by arm exercises, boxing, etc." would make the urge go away, along with the practice he referred to as "rovering," which was keeping yourself busy with hiking and other outdoorsy things. In his book Rovering to Success, he goes on the usual screed against the health effects of masturbation, then says:

"Young fellows in the rutting stage are apt to get together and tell smutty stories and look at lewd pictures ... If you carry out Rovering, you will find lots to do in the way of hiking and the enjoyment of the out-of-door manly activities. To get rid of the bad you must put something good in its place."

Yes, you'll recognize his anti-masturbation program as pretty much everything Scouts do other than tying knots. No doubt he thought all of those things had other benefits, too, but make no mistake: This was a guy with masturbation on the brain.

And then we have the YMCA. The Young Men's Christian Association came about earlier than the Scouts, but started getting big into exercise and fitness in the 1880s. So, in this 1901 YMCA report we get talk of how "The chief preventive measure to sexual vice is physical training," and by 1909 their manuals were saying outright that "vigorous exercise" was a way to fight "the sin of masturbation" (along with, you guessed it, a nice bath and some bland foods).

By 1913, medical books recommended that if a young man was struggling with sexual purity, he go to the YMCA to get that shit cured.

And then you have the penis piercings. The ancient Romans would pierce the foreskin of gladiators with a piece of metal to prevent both masturbation and sex. This then made a comeback in the Victorian era, when penile piercings, or "infibulation," was introduced. They'd take a young boy, pierce both sides of his foreskin and then connect the piercings with either a ring or wire that passed over the top.

The Victorians also had less intrusive methods, fortunately. You could buy all sorts of elaborate attachments for preventing masturbation. Some used electricity, some had cooling systems, and others, like Dr. Moodies' Apparatus for Boys, were essentially bike locks for the privates. Now this would actually be a great invention if you were part of a culture that believes in penis theft, but, no, it was just cockblock ex machina.

Many of these devices were designed so that they could be worn for months without needing to be taken off, which is good because you wouldn't want several pounds of leather and metal strapped to your penis to become inconvenient.

By the way, since many of these devices were made from silver and were remarkably ornate, today they've gone from symbols of celibacy to highly valuable collectables.

But none of these solved the terrible problem of masturbation in women. And, at the turn of the century, it was clear that the dark cloud of masturbation was threatening to overtake our lady folk. Many women were diagnosed with "hysteria," a mental disorder that happened when their genitals got out of control.

This nervous disorder was defined as "a loss of control over the nervous system, expressed in innumerable ways as by convulsions, weeping, laughing, random talk ... and sometimes by indecent words and acts." It was this final symptom that raised particular concern, described more explicitly by leading psychiatrist George Henry Savage in his medical manual Insanity and Allied Neuroses, saying that one symptom was "marked eroto-mania and tendency to masturbation."

Masturbation was said to be both a debilitating symptom and, confusingly, a cause of hysteria. Thankfully, however, there was an thrilling new invention to help cure women of this disease. By combining the exciting innovation of electricity with the amazing powers of vibration, i.e., "the greatest curative force known to the medical profession," doctors/electricians invented the vibrator.

The treatment was surprisingly simple and could be done either in a doctor's office or in the comfort of one's own home.

The instruction manual for the New-Life vibrator, after already stating that "hysteria is related most intimately and peculiarly with the sexual organs of woman," somewhat coyly goes on to recommend that when using the vibrator, "the disease is sure to manifest itself in some part of the body more decidedly than elsewhere -- treat the nerves and muscles of that part... vibration with the 'New-Life' vibrator is always sure to afford relief."

And as we pointed out recently, the fine manufacturers of kitchen appliances Hamilton Beach soon made a vibrator that any woman could buy over the counter.

Problem solved! Great job, science!

For more reasons why our ancestors were insane, check out 8 Terrifying Instruments Old-Time Doctors Used on Your Junk and 6 Depraved Sexual Fetishes That Are Older Than You Think.