The social purity movement that sprang up in the late nineteenth century crusaded against many vices in society. One of their primary concerns was male chastity. In the lecture on Tuesday, we saw an image of a male chastity device dating from the late Victorian period. The science museum has a similar device, shown below.
Male anti-masturbation device, late 19th century. From the Wellcome collection.
I thought of doing a research project on this device. Unfortunately, it’s on loan to Japan at the moment. And as it turns out, these belts weren’t really used that much by the average Victorian teenager. Nevertheless, the Victorian reformers did consider “onanism” a serious problem. Many believed that the practice led to illness, and even to the degeneration of the species. This belief has its origins in part in ancient humoral theory. Semen was believed to be the most refined of bodily fluids, and any loss of it would be detrimental to health. The image below, published in London in 1845, shows the results of self-pollution.
Male displaying the effects of onanism, 1845. From the Wellcome collection.
The social purity movement was also active in America. Two Americans doctors advocated a strictly regulated diet as the best way to avoid unchaste urges. Those doctors were John Harvey Kellogg and Sylvester Graham, namesakes of the cereal giant and the cracker, respectively. Graham explained the virtues of plain foods in his 1838 book, A Lecture to Young Men on Chastity.
All kinds of stimulating and heating substances, high-seasoned food, rich dishes, the free use of flesh, and even the excess of aliment, all, more or less—and some to a very great degree—increase the concupiscent excitability and sensibility of the genital organs, and augment their influence on the functions of organic life, and on the intellectual and moral faculties.
Graham emphasized that the digestive and reproductive systems are closely linked. This whole-body approach to medicine was common in early Victorian medical thought. The theory of self-pollution causing general illness also fits in perfectly with the whole-body model, which emphasizes generalized ailments with generalized treatments. By the end of the Victorian period, new understandings in anatomy and germ theory would give rise to specific medicine, focused on individual organs and tissues. Eventually, medicine no longer advocated a bland diet to promote chastity, but the crackers and cereals live on.
