The latest chapter of my thesis has brought me in contact with many medical writings about masturbation and I thought I might share a few of these tidbits.
Elizabeth Blackwell, the first female doctor, wrote a sizable amount on this particular topic during the 1870s and 80s when the moral masturbation panic took hold of Victorian society. Blackwell believed that masturbation, particularly in children, led to the breakdown of moral integrity and in the adult could result in suicide. Here are some excerpts from her text The Human Element in Sex (1884):
It will thus be seen that there are two grave dangers attending the practice of masturbation.
The first evil is the effect upon the mind, through the brain and nervous system. The mind is thus prematurely awakened to take in and dwell upon a series of impressions, which awaken precocious sexual instinct. This precocity gives an undue and even dominating power to this instinct over the other human faculties.
Thus the precocious stimulus of childhood, even if it has not undermined the individual health, becomes a direct preparation for the selfishness of lust in the adult.
The other grave danger incurred by the practice of masturbation, is the risk of its becoming an overmastering habit, from the ease with which it can be indulged; also from the insidious and increasing power of the temptation when yielded to, and from its association with the times when the individual is along, and particularly in the quiet hours of the night.
In the adult, nature’s marked distinction between the beneficent effect of voluntary healthy relief, and the injurious action of self-induced irritation, is lost sight of. Individual self-control, the highest distinctive mark of the human being is abandoned. In this way the evil habit may become a real obsession leading to destruction of mental and physical health, to insanity, or to suicide.
Now, this may seem farfetched, but we need to remember that medical opinions concerning illness at this time were influenced by the idea that there was a moral element to disease. The poorer classes were deemed morally and physiologically deficient.
Blackwell plays into this idea of the morally degraded lower classes when discussing how masturbation affected the middle classes. It was believed that masturbation was introduced to middle class homes and children by servants, nursery maids and nurses:
Medical observation proves such injury to infancy is not confined to the lower or to the criminal classes. The habits formed by unrefined or exposed women are brought by servants into our homes. The ignorance or viciousness of nurses, often veiled by respectable demeanour, has injured and even destroyed the children of many a well-to-do nursery.
Of course, people were appalled at the idea of children masturbation (and probably are still today). There is a particular quote that sticks with me from Blackwell’s text when she explores the dangers of child masturbation. When asked why they masturbated they responded “it feels nice”. She explains why this association between masturbation and pleasure may exist for a child (besides the obvious):
[it has] attributed it to the practice which had been innocently pursued of lulling the child to sleep, by laying it face downwards over the lap, and thus with continued movement of hand knee producing unconsciously a long continued pressure upon the genital organs.
It is a fact, also, which deserved most serious consideration, that many ignorant women purposely resort to vicious sexual manipulation to soothe their fractious infants. The superintendent of a large prison for women informed me that this was a common practice, and one most difficult, even impossible entirely to break up
What is fascinating here is that it appears to have been a common practice for women to use genital manipulation or masturbation to soothe their children, or children in their care. Obviously this is not a fact widely advertised by the history books but does make us challenge the Victorian stereotype of prudish toffs!
Some literature (if you happen to be interested):
Boyd, Julia. The Excellent Doctor Blackwell: The Life of the First Female Physician (Sutton Publishing, Thrupp, 2006)
Counter, Andrew. J. “Bad Examples: Children, Servants, and Masturbation in Nineteenth-Century France”, Journal of the History of Sexuality, Vol. 22, No.3 (2013), pp. 403-425
Hall, Lesley. “Forbidden by God, Despised by Men: Masturbation, Medical Warnings, Moral Panic, and Manhood in Great Britain, 1850-1950”, Journal of the History of Sexuality, Vol. 2, No. 3 (January 1992), pp. 365-87
Hunt, Alan. “The Great Masturbation Panic and Discourses of Moral Regulation in Nineteenth-and Early Twentieth-Century Britain”, Journal of the History of Sexuality, Vol. 8, No. 4, (April 1998), pp. 575-615
Laqueur, Thomas. Solitary Sex: A Cultural History of Masturbation (Zone Books, New York, 2003)
Mason, Diane. The Secret Vice: Masturbation in Victorian fiction and medical culture (Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2009)
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