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Did you know that you can get automatic notfication when someone replies to you or when new articles are posted? Set up auto-notification now!First, Self Pollution as recorded in Eugenics by T.W. Shannon. Actually the title of this one is ambiguous. On the spine it says The Science of Human Life and on the title page it says:
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NATURES SECRETS REVEALED Scientific Knowledge of The Laws of Sex Life and Heredity or EUGENICS Vital
Information for the Married and Marriageable of Together
with Important Hints on Embracing the Story of Life and How to Tell It; Also a
Department |
If you thought the early 1900's were crazy, you're sure to find total insanity in the late 1800's. Apparently logic and reason had evaporated somewhere along the way, and medicine was still very intertwined with religion during this time. An anonymous physician of the time wrote a book called Satan in Society which discussed, at length, the evils of pretty much everything fun. We present to you the third chapter, Male Masturbation, which tells the grusome tale of how masturbation (or more commonly Onanism of that time) will kill you a lot. The author is employing a common logical fallacy called Cum Hoc Ergo Proptor Hoc (because two events happened concurrently, they must be causally related) which is a special case of Non Causa Pro Causa (something has been identified to be the cause of an event without having clearly been shown to be the cause). There's probably some Non Sequitur action going on here. Essentially what seems to have happened is the following:
Another great stinkbomb of the Eugenics movement was Safe Counsel or Practical Eugenics by J.L. Nichols. If you've ever wondered what a bigoted, racist, sexist, stereotyped book looks like, look no further. This one outdoes many of the other books in our collection with its great illustrations, such as a woman's traditional place and your turn next. A headline in the preface boasts, STERILIZATION OF DEFECTIVES LEGAL. Take a look at Self Abuse, which, in the same section, talks about how the evils of masturbation have been misrepresented, and how masturbation will make you impotent, sterile, and prone to nervous breakdown, while all the time denouncing "quack" doctors and using too damn many commas.
Winning the award for most vague condemnation of masturbation is Chapter 7 of What a Young Man Ought to Know.
If a long tirade is what you crave, check out this excerpt from Sexual Debility in Man, which took forever to format on account of its excessive use of italics.
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