The extreme attitudes of sexual repression practiced by some religious fundamentalists continue to disturb me - apparently this guy from the 19th century went beyond advocating circumcision and actually advocated sewing the foreskin onto the penis to prevent masturbation. Not only is this borderline psychotic but it's especially damaging to masculinity - while on the flip side I'd say that there's overly libertine attitude toward sex today due to the "materialist culture" that Hollywood promotes, a man living with such irrational guilt of toward these innate drives and urges is bound to become psychologically disturbed. This might be one of the reasons that Islamists are so violent - and why the promise of 72 virgins is enough to get them to fly planes into buildings. "Scientific" declarations like these inspired Dr. John Harvey Kellogg (brother of the Corn Flakes Kellogg) in his campaign to eradicate masturbation from the United States. Though widely considered to be one of the leading sex educators of his day, Kellogg proudly claimed never to have had intercourse with his wife in over four decades of marriage. As a medical doctor, Kellogg claimed the moral authority to instruct parents on the proper sexual education of their children. If you're unfamiliar with the writings of Kellogg and others like him, their gloating disdain for basic human eroticism is chilling and unmistakable. In his best-selling Plain Facts for Old and Young (written on his sexless honey- moon in 188, Kellogg offered parents guidance for dealing with their sons' natural erotic self-exploration in a section entitled "Treatment for Self-Abuse and its Effects:" A remedy which is almost always success- ful in small boys is circumcision. . . . The operation should be performed by a surgeon without administering an anaesthetic, as the brief pain attending the operation will have a salutary effect upon the mind, especially if it be connected with the idea of punishment. . . . [emphasis added] If circumcising a struggling, terrified boy without anesthesia wasn't quite what a parent had in mind, Kellogg recommended "the application of one or more silver sutures in such a way as to prevent erection. The prepuce, or foreskin, is drawn forward over the glans, and the nee- dle to which the wire is attached is passed through from one side to the other. After drawing the wire through, the ends are twisted together and cut off close. It is now impossible for an erection to occur. . . ." Parents were assured that sewing their son's penis into its foreskin "acts as a most powerful means of overcoming the disposition to resort to the practice [of masturbation]." https://www.psychologytoday.com/blo...ession-the-malady-considers-itself-the-remedy
Kind of strange to link Dr. Kellogg with modern fundamentalist Christians, as he was a vegeterian Seventh Day Adventist, who most fundamentalists would view as cultish.
