See Dr. Grace Feder Thompson's letter appealing
for patients, Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound,
and Orange Blossom medicine, Dr. E. C. Abbey's
The Sexual System and Its Derangements, which emphasises
masturbation, as doe Dr. Pierce, and several small
boxes of old American patent medicine for women.
And, of course, the first Tampax AND - special
for you! - the American fax tampon,
from the early 1930s, which also came in bags.
See a Modess True or False? ad in The American
Girl magazine, January 1947, and actress Carol Lynley
in "How Shall I Tell My Daughter" booklet ad (1955) - Modess . . . . because ads (many dates).
 
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Dr. R. V. Pierce's patent medicine empire and hospital, often
concerned with women's diseases, cancer, digestive illness, fatigue,
headache, hysteria, female weakness, gynecology, obstetrics,
childbirth, and menstruation
"The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in
Plain English; or,
Medicine Simplified," 1895, Buffalo, New York
Introduction
I show parts from the "Spermatorrhea" section in the famous
Dr. Pierce's The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser
(63rd edition, 1895; on the title page he claims he has sold over two million copies of the then over 1000-page book)
to let you see the outlandish attitude towards masturbation
some doctors held in America 100 years ago, and necessarily many Americans
- even today. (See and read more about Dr. R. V.
Pierce's medical empire and others' writings on masturbation in the
links above this story.)
Beliefs such as athletes avoiding sex the day
before a competition date from at least Dr. Pierce's era and are
explicitly based on what you are about to read.
And even the British comedy group Monty Python
had a chorus in their movie The Meaning of Life warning listeners
to save every sperm - meant humorously, of course; Dr.
Pierce warned exactly the same thing, seriously.
As far as women's health is concerned,
compare the 30 pages Pierce devotes to mostly masturbation to the TWO pages
to "The Turn of Life" (menopause).
Remember Dr. Joycelyn Elders, the woman
President Clinton nominated for Surgeon General of the United States? Conservatives
hated her liberal views on masturbation, among other things, and rejected
her.
Dr. Pierce preaches to men, although he does fleetingly say that women should not masturbate. But he wanes eloquent
over the fact that men lose the vital fluid,
semen, through masturbation and nocturnal ejaculations.
"Its waste is a wanton expenditure,"
whereas women lose what, just an egg every month, whether they masturbate
or not? Frequent nocturnal emissions, beyond men's
conscious control, must be treated; ovulation, beyond women's control -
so what?
Another writer, whose name you'll recognize, operated
on an 11-year-old girl to stop her masturbation and wrote about it.
But just a couple decades later, in order to avoid
venereal disease, the U.S. Army told its enlisted soldiers in World War
I to avoid sex with prostitutes - and to masturbate! (I read this in John
Barry's "The Great Influenza.") How times change.
Doctors and midwives masturbated patients
By the way, in America (and elswhere) in the late nineteenth century, some mainstream doctors masturbated
patients, men and women, as a treatment
for certain illnesses, in spite of Pierce's and probably most Americans'
views. And midwives and doctors throughout European history have masturbated
patients. Rachel Maines wrote an eye-opening book
about this: The Technology of Orgasm: "Hysteria,"
the Vibrator, and Women's Sexual Satisfaction (Johns Hopkins Press,
1999). The New York Times published a special book review on its science
page when the book appeared. The Pulitzer-Prize winning reviewer, Natalie
Angier, seemed as amazed as any of her readers.
Go to the first page!
Below:
To show this gender difference in discussing
male masturbation and women's problems, Dr. Pierce's satisfied women patients
chatter on in their testimonials about their wombs and periods next to their pictures
in his Medical Adviser, whereas not one of
the 74 no-longer-masturbating men, but ashamed, dares show his face! ("Seminal weakness", below, means masturbation
and/or unwilled, mostly nocturnal, seminal ejaculations.) The man writes
from Lynn, Massachusetts, home of Lydia E.
Pinkham's patent medicines.
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© 1999 Harry Finley. It is illegal to reproduce or distribute any
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