The Jugum Penis
The Jugum Penis
was intended to cure "spermatorrhoea", a Victorian-era name for
nocturnal emissions. The device was fashioned out of a metal ring, which
would fit at the base of the penis and was attached with a clip.
Sylvester Graham was a Victorian philosophy that was the
antithesis of the 20th century's “Playboy philosophy”: if it feels good, Graham
might have said, don't do it! Those who did do it, who ate meat, drank whisky,
or chewed tobacco, were condemned to suffer stimulation-induced inflammation in
the immediately affected organ that could pass through the nervous system to
all other parts of the body. Because sex was the most stimulating activity of all
(even Graham knew that), it was considered the most dangerous. Some forms of
sex, nevertheless, were more dangerous than others. Least risky was the marital
variety, the form established by the Creator for replenishing the earth. If
enjoyed no more than once a month, connubial commerce was free of threat—so
long as the partners were young and in robust health. There was such a thing as
“marital excess,” and it led to injury. Even so, it entailed less danger than
the “social vice” of premarital or extramarital sex. Lest his readers foolishly
suppose that 1 orgasm was much like another, Graham reminded them that adultery
involved additional excitements. Both in the violation of a social taboo and
the prolonged anticipation and final realization of coupling with a new body,
one experienced stimulation far beyond anything to be found in the marital bed;
to Graham's mind, the great virtue of marital sex was that it so soon became
boring.
Far more treacherous was the “solitary vice,” masturbation,
which had been thought of as somewhat less rousing than the real thing. Graham,
however, pointed out that as a solitary activity, the practice of masturbation
was likely to start at an earlier age and to occur more often than partnered
sex. Most important, the lack of a partner meant resorting to fantasy and the
conjuring of erotic scenes and lewd images that surely stirred the brain to a
fever pitch. (By this analysis, lusting in the heart was physiologically
equivalent to lusting in the flesh.) Because the brain's inflamed state could
be transmitted to any organ or tissue of the body through the nervous system,
all manner of disease could follow. But with sexual solitaire, the climax—rather
the culmination—was insanity:
“This general mental decay,” Graham warned,
“continues with the continued abuses, till the wretched transgressor sinks into
a miserable fatuity, and finally becomes a confirmed and degraded idiot, whose
deeply sunken and vacant glassy eye, and livid, shriveled countenance, and
ulcerous, toothless gums, and fetid breath, and feeble broken voice, and
emaciated and dwarfish and crooked body, and almost hairless head—covered,
perhaps, with suppurating blisters and running sores—denote a premature old
age—a blighted body—and a ruined soul!” Graham S. A Lecture to Young Men on Chastity. Providence, RI: Weeden and
Cory; 1834. (pp.25-26)
Yes, Dr. Sylvester Graham created Graham crackers to help stop masturbation.
Yes, Dr. Sylvester Graham created Graham crackers to help stop masturbation.
Well this is interesting.
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