By Thomas P. Lowry, MD
In the 1800s, as America became less of a collection of religious colonies and more of a secular nation, a new prophet arose, who redefined masturbation as a medical problem, rather than a purely religious issue. Sylvester Graham, inventor of the graham cracker, published his magnum opus, Lectures to Young Men, in 1834. In this tome, Graham warned that the solitary vice would lead to physical decay, insanity, and death.
The intrepid researcher, Edward S. Milligan, has called to my attention the records of St. Elizabeth's Hospital at Washington, DC, which was for decades the nation's only Federal psychiatric institution. In the six years before the Civil War, twelve men were admitted to the hospital with a mental disorder "caused by masturbation". Their average age was twenty-five. During the war itself, thirty-eight men were admitted with conditions attributed to masturbation. In the decade following the war, fifty-five men were admitted as insane secondary to masturbation. Thus from 1855 to 1875 a total of 108 psychiatric patients at St. Elizabeth's had their mental illness attributed to The Solitary Vice.
Excerpted from: "Onan's Revenge: Death From Masturbation", published in The Journal of Civil War Medicine, Vol. 11, No, 2.
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