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Article: The enlightenment as genesis of 18th-century masturbation degeneracy hysteria.(Solitary Sex: A Cultural History of Masturbation)(Book Review)
- Article from:
- The Journal of Sex Research
- Article date:
- August 1, 2004
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. 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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Solitary Sex." A Cultural History of Masturbation. By Thomas W. Laqueur. New York: Zone Books, 2003, 496 pages. Cloth, $34.00.
Why did social hysteria about masturbation appear so dramatically in Europe at the beginning of the 18th-century? Thomas W. Laqueur examines the history of masturbation in search of the answer to this question in Solitary Sex: A Cultural History of Masturbation. Scholars researching the history of masturbation in the West usually point to the early 18th-century anonymous publication of Onania: or the Heinous Sin of Self Pollution, and all its Frightful Consequences, in Both Sexes Considered, as the first significant published source of ...