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Article: Masturbation: The History of the Great Terror.(Reviews)(Book Review)
- Article from:
- Journal of Social History
- Article date:
- June 22, 2004
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 Journal of Social History. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Masturbation: The History of the Great Terror. By Jean Stengers and Ann Van Neck. Translated by Kathryn Hoffmann (New York: Palgrave, 2001. ix plus 232 pp.).
In Masturbation, Stengers and Van Neck document the fears about masturbation that reached crisis proportions during the nineteenth century. Although most historians are familiar with the exhortations against "onanism," the volume will provide much new information for specialists and generalists alike, such as the relatively late emergence of that term, the debilities associated with it, and the medical model upon which those debilities were based.
Stengers and Van Neck demonstrate that religious ...