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In Lausanne, a Swiss physician, inventor of the term Nervenkrankheit or maladie des nerfs, M. Samuel Auguste André David Tissot, Professor of medicine at Lausanne and Pavia, Member of the Royal Societies of London, Paris, Milan, and Stockholm, published in the year , his thirtieth year, a work in Latin which in his own French translation in is called L'Onanisme: Dissertation sur les maladies produites par la masturbation. This work appeared within a few years in all major European languages, and more than thirty editions were published within a century.
Tissot was a knowledgeable writer on nearly every aspect of medicine, and in the latter half of the eighteenth century enjoyed an international reputation. He has been recognized as one of the most famous physicians of his time. His word became a household authority—an eighteenth-century Dr Spock—and his book on masturbation the standard work on the subject. Since its publication, it has been the main influence on Western attitudes, and therefore still influences our work today.
Before we turn to Tissot's arguments against masturbation and the theoretical model of his physiology on which those arguments are based, let us review briefly the modern and contemporary view of the ‘masturbation question’.
Jewish and Roman Catholic traditions rigorously condemn masturbation. It is rarely mentioned, however, in writings on medicine, on the ars amatoria, or on education in Western society until the eighteenth century, i.e. the period of Tissot. Anthropological evidence from other societies shows that masturbation is one of the least punished of sexual practices. It is generally