A Treatise on the Diseases Produced By Onanism, Masturbation, Self-Pollution, and Other Excesses.

by L. Deslandes

But a horrid inclination soon appeared: she now desired to see her parents dead, and even to murder them. This wish she expressed freely, and also her regret at not being able to satisfy her wishes. She promised herself to embrace any opportunity which presented. The only motives which induced her to do this, were to possess her mother’s jewels, and then to go with the men. Things soon came to such an extent, that the parents, for their own safety, were obliged to lock up their daughter every night, as she did not conceal her intention of assassinating them during sleep. The child, being in this manner less exposed to observation, abandoned herself to her habits without constraint, it being the only wish she could gratify. She never laughed, nor cried. She sat the whole day in a very small chair, with her hands crossed, and she abused herself as soon as her mother’s back was turned. Punishments succeeded no better than presents or caresses. One day, her father tied her to the bedstead: she said, “You may kill me; but I will not change.” These facts gave rise to a judicial investigation, from the minutes of which this statement is taken. (Arch. d’hygiene et de med. legale, January, 1832.)

This young girl certainly had inclinations which were the result of her organization. She never became attached even to the grandmother who brought her up; and whom also she would have destroyed for her jewels. She was not animated by the wish to kill, as by that of acquiring a desired object. One day, while a man was talking with her, she looked attentively at his breast-pin: when questioned on the subject, she admitted that she would kill this man for the sake of this jewel. Her passion for venereal pleasures also came from an organic arrangement: she had never been led into these enjoyments by men or women. When four years old, she sought after little boys; and it was not till she was deprived of them, that she resorted to onanism. She admitted that she preferred the boys.

Now, I would ask, if this primitive exaltation of a sense, which masturbation excited still more every day, could govern a disposition which caused her to regard homicide as the best mode of satisfying certain desires? Could that state of fatigue, which is constantly felt in those individuals who are addicted to onanism, excite in this young girl the sympathies which unite each individual to his fellows, and give strength to those bonds which she was always ready to break? Was it possible for her to love her parents, who constantly thwarted her desires? Would not the irritation she constantly felt at not being able to give herself completely up to venereal pleasures, react on her other inclinations? Would not the obstacles she encountered tend to make her think herself surrounded with enemies? Governed by one sense, was she in a state to listen to and understand all that was said to her, to modify her bad inclinations? Did not her state resemble that of animals, who, although mild and amiable, become dangerous and wicked, when the genital sense is excited? Finally, does not this case prove that deviations of character may result from onanism—that good feelings may be changed by this habit—or, at least, that bad ones may be called into action?

Moral depravity of another kind may result from onanism. The mind, accustomed to seek pleasure in a certain circle of ideas, or a peculiar series of sensations, cannot find any in any other manner. The enjoyments of onanism are then the only ones which the onanist can realize. The union of the sexes has no attraction for him: he indulges with repugnance, and thinks the sensations much less agreeable than those arising from self-pollution. The genital sense, the power of proceeding to the act of venery, and of procreating, remain: but depraved tastes have taken the place of the legitimate desires. Tissot regards this perversion as more frequent in females than in males: he remarks upon the case of a female as stated by Bekkers, over whose mind self-pollution had taken such possession, that she detested the legitimate modes of gratification.

We believe, that if there are females who prefer onanism to coition, it is because the sensual results of the latter are generally very uncertain. Besides, Tissot does not exclude the male sex from this kind of depravation: the same author states the history of a man, who, in being taught onanism by his preceptor, experienced, when first married, so great a disgust for the natural relations which result from it, added to the exhaustion caused by his manipulations, that he became melancholy; which state, however, yielded to appropriate remedies.

A fact published by Alibert is very analogous to the preceding. He states, that a young man, brought up in a boarding-house, contracted the habit of onanism in his childhood. Tissot’s book was put into his hands, which frightened, but did not entirely cure him. After reading it, however, he was more moderate, and indulged only at long intervals, and when he was excited by very violent desires. Hence, his temperament did not change; but he continued robust, and his moral faculties preserved their energy: but the frightful habit which he had contracted, prevented the development of any desire for the other sex. Even when thirty years old, he had never been excited by the sight of a female; and his feelings were called into action only by vain images, or by the phantoms of his depraved imagination. He had early studied drawing, which he had always pursued with ardor. The beautiful forms of men, in this beau-ideal of painters, which nature has never realized, affected him, and finally inspired him with an extraordinary emotion—a vague passion, for which he could not account. It is necessary, however, to remark, that this passion had no connexion with the tastes of sodomy, and that it could not be excited by the sight of any man. Such was his strange situation, when he came to ask my advice. He then presented, as I said before, no physical symptom of impotence. He was healthy and well-made, and nature had not been unkind to him; but he had so abused the use of her gifts, that it was difficult to restore to him their proper use. The patient was perfectly acquainted with his situation. “There is no effort,” said he, “that I am not willing to make, to free myself from my ignominious situation—to drive away from my thoughts the infamous images which haunt me. They have deprived me of the legitimate enjoyments procured by the union of the sexes—of the power possessed by the lowest animals of reproducing their species. I am dying of chagrin and shame.”

I considered his disease as a perversion of the venereal appetite. I thought that the most urgent indication was to restore nature to its true type. In fact, the individual was very robust, at the period of consulting me; and farther, as I have said, the beauty of the ideal forms of man excited in him voluptuous sensations, during the continuance of which the genital organs became excited, and there was a discharge of semen: this favored the supposition that he still retained some stamina. Hence, there was neither destruction nor essential alteration in his physical sensibility; but rather a false direction of this faculty of the organism. The following course of treatment was proposed. I have already said, that the patient was very fond of drawing, and that he applied himself to it with that ardor which is the sure guaranty of success. I required him to study carefully the female form, and to make drawings of it—to break through his habits, and to renounce the Belvidere Apollo for the Venus de Medicis. He did so. Nature gradually resumed her rights: he soon preferred a round and delicate arm to that which was strong and masculine; and when he contemplated the elegance and softness of contour in the female form, he began to be cured. After constructing an imaginary model, he sought for it in the physical world. Time was required, and perseverance; but he was perfectly restored.

§ 2. DISEASES ARISING FROM VENEREAL EXCESSES.

There are but few diseases which have not been observed as occurring after venereal excesses. The influence of the genital organs is so great, and extends so perfectly to all points of the organism, that the slightest morbid disposition of the latter is favored by its action. Capable of fecundating all the germes of the diseases which occur, the abuse of the genital organs produces all those which may happen in the body. Hence, we must not be astonished to see venereal excesses mentioned in enumerating the direct or indirect causes of most of them. We should certainly sometimes be embarrassed to justify this indication by positive proofs; for we do not know all that exists, and written science does not represent all that has been seen: but, as we know that a powerful influence only requires to exist with a morbid arrangement, to make of it a disease, the knowledge of this fact alone authorizes us to place venereal excesses, which have so injurious an effect, among the productive causes of most affections of the body.

Those diseases which are the consequence of this cause generally have a special mark, which depends not only upon the fact, that in a great many cases it continues to act when they are developed, and therefore deranges their course; but which results also particularly from the presence among their symptoms of those which belong particularly to venereal excesses. Hence, if, in consequence of these excesses, an individual should be affected with phthisis, epilepsy, a chronic disease of the brain, spinal marrow, caries of the vertebræ, &c., the patient will present, besides the special symptoms of these different affections, the signs of consumption already mentioned by us, and which are generally the consequences of the prolonged abuse of masturbation, or of coition; he will become thin, his strength will be exhausted, his eyes will be sunken, and present a dark ring beneath them; his countenance will be melancholy and suffused; his digestion will be deranged; he will suffer from wandering pains, from trembling, and from spasms; his mind will become enfeebled; and, finally, he will show many of the phenomena which we have described as general symptoms of venereal excesses. In these cases, there is, properly speaking, a complication of the special disease which they have produced, and of this other disease resulting as we have seen before, from the abuse of the genital organs. There are, at the same time, the general effects of this abuse, which may be seen in all those who are the victims of it, and the special characters of diseases which might have arisen from some other cause. The practitioner who should be unacquainted with these facts, in regard to which we find nothing precise in authors, would be liable to mistakes which would render him liable to errors of prognosis and of treatment.