Put What Where? by John Naish Read Free Book Online Page A

urine because of the rupture of the aforementioned skin, and male sperm appear at the bottom of this urine.
    There are still other ways to tell if a virgin has been corrupted. If a girl’s breasts point downwards, this is a sign that she has been corrupted, because at the moment of impregnation the menses move upwards to the breasts and the added weight causes them to sag. If a man has sexual intercourse with a woman and experiences no sore on his penis and no difficulty of entry, this is a sign that she was first corrupted. However, a true sign of the woman’s virginity is if it is difficult to perform the act and it causes a sore on his member.

    If it’s too late, how to restore virginity
    The Book of Women’s Love , a medieval Hebrew women’s health guide
    Take myrtle leaves and boil them well with water until only a third part remains; then, take nettles without prickles and boil them in this water until a third remains. She must wash her secret parts with this water in the morning and at bedtime, up to nine days.
    And if it’s an emergency
    Take nutmeg and grind to a powder; put it in that place and virginity will be restored immediately.
    ----

Seven
MASTURBATION MANIA

    From the early 1700s onwards, the innocent practice of self-love became synonymous with crippling illnesses, moral decay and hideous death. Why?
    We can thank an anonymous quack from about 1710 for first pointing the finger of suspicion at the hairy palm of lone vice. Whoever the author was, snappy titles were not their strong point. Their pamphlet was called Onania, or the heinous sin of self-pollution, And in all its frightful consequences, in both sexes, considered with physical and spiritual advice to those who have already injur’d themselves by this abominable practice. And seasonable admonition to the youth of the nation [of both sexes] and whose tuition they are under, whether parents, guardians, masters or mistresses. In it, the author simply invented a new cause of widespread diseases by making a spurious connection between masturbation and the biblical story of Onan.
    In Solitary Sex: a cultural history of masturbation , the historian Thomas Laqueur alleges that Onania’s author was an amateur doctor and surgeon called DrMarten (not he of footwear fame). Once Marten had invented the scourge of Onanism-related illnesses, claims Laqueur, he started to offer a range of steeply priced cures, such as ‘strengthening tincture’ and ‘prolific powder’. If that is true, it makes Marten an early pioneer of the widespread modern pharmaceutical company marketing trick of creating a new disease, scaring people about it in the press, and then launching (fortuitously) a costly cure. Newly minted health problems such as Social Anxiety Disorder and Information Fatigue Syndrome may thus be merely latter-day versions of masturbation.
    The biblical Onan gets a bad press from here onwards. It’s not justified: in the Old Testament story, he was instructed by God to impregnate the widow of his recently dead brother – an ancient Hebrew tradition that aimed to ensure there were family heirs. Onan wasn’t keen on perpetuating his brother’s bloodline, so he pulled out of his sister-in-law at the last minute. God struck him dead ‘for spilling his seed on the ground’ but he had committed coitus interruptus, not masturbation. Society was not prepared to let the facts ruin a good scare story, though, and masturbation mania swiftly began to take off. Marten’s pamphlet became wildly popular, disseminating the belief across Europe that Onanism was the cause of diseases ranging from tuberculosis to third-stage syphilis. By 1750, it had been published in 19 editions and sold 38,000 copies.
    Soon came the copycats. In 1717, a hugely popular free handout, Practical Schemes for the SecretDisease and Broken Constitutions , was published with a new section on self-abuse by the most popular contemporary advisor on painkillers in Great Britain, the