Masturbation

This good old doctor Tissot

Being inspired by previous "Onania", The doctor Tissot publishes in 1760 a book entitled " the Onanism " (republished in 1991 Publisher: éditions La Difference, Paris). He wants to convince that the masturbation is a dangerous practice and, so he uses two redoubtable methods. Scientific demonstrations (based on widely accepted believes in this time) and narratives intended to frighten the readers.
He asserts that the masturbation appeals to the imagination and not to the nature. It "thus gets tired" more, becomes a custom he considers as "morbid", and worse still is followed by " the horror of the regrets" … When the troubles that masturbation provokes have opened the eyes on the crime and its dangers. " We can thus say that Doctor Tissot secularized the sin so that the medicine could appropriate it. He writes in the foreword of the1774 publishing : " I describe diseases produced by the masturbation, and point of the crime of the masturbation: isn't it enough to prove the crime and thus demonstrate that it is an act of suicide? " The Doctor Tissot wrote that the masturbation could return deaf person, blind person and apathetic, even lead to mental deficiencies . The women, as for them were threatened with hysteria, disease then treated by confinement, straitjacket and ablation of the clitoris … This "therapy" will be the custom till the end of the 19th century.