Diane Mason. The Secret Vice: Masturbation in Victorian Fiction and Medical Culture. Manchester and New York: Manchester UP, 2008. Pp. [i]-viii + 184. $74.95, 50.00 [pounds sterling]. Usually referred to by the Victorians as self-abuse, self-pollution, or onanism (a misreading of Genesis 38.3-10), masturbation is, so far as I know, the earliest instance of the medicalization for commercial purposes of an aspect of normal human behavior. The fons et origo of the bizarre and often hysterical anti-masturbation crusade that was to last for more than 200 years and reach its height in the mid-nineteenth century was a slight 60-page pamphlet published anonymously in 1708 by an English clergyman turned quack medicine purveyor. The title set the admonitory tone echoed in countless later works: Onania, or the heinous sin of self-pollution, and all its frightful consequences in both sexes, considered. With spiritual and physical advice to those who have already injured themselves by this abominable practice.
