Masturbation

""The victims of genital ardor,"" that is, people who masturbate, are subject to tuberculosis, consumption, loss of sight and hearing, lesions of the heart, melancholia, hysteria, death and numerous other dangers, according to texts from various ages. In Masturbation: The History of a Great Terror (trans. by Kathryn Hoffman), Jean Stengers and the late Anne Van Neck, Belgian scholars, attribute Western society's long-standing antimasturbatory fervor to ""certain ideas... launched by several men"" not, like many cultural phenomena, to broad social tendencies. The earliest opponent was the anonymous English author of a widely distributed pamphlet; the Swiss Dr. Samuel-August Tissot was the next loud voice. The authors follow a string of successors in this rigorous, well-turned and enlightening study. ( July)