1839 EVILS OF ONANISM. Self-Pollution and Masturbation Lead to Mania, Depression, Suicide, and Crime.

Aside from some moderate foxing, a rather nice copy of the work that helped kick-off the 19th century quack medicine treatment of masturbatory illness. 

Deslandes’s work marked a decided shift in approach. Previous works published in American were largely moralistic. The present work shifted away from purely moral theology toward a quasi-systematic clinical taxonomy. It organized sexual symptoms into specific, pseudoscience-backed pathologies, categorizing distinct neurological, gastrointestinal, and physical syndromes attributed to specific sexual habits. Rather than simply preaching damnation, it reframed sexual behavior using modern clinical language, making the "disease" feel precise, diagnostic, and medically verifiable.

Crucially, the American publishers added extensive, localized additions that worked to bridge theoretical medicine with direct consumer action and saleable consumer products. This expanded edition targeted everyday readers and American practitioners, providing explicit warning signs to look for in youths, boarding schools, and domestic spaces. In doing so, it transformed a passive moral warning into an active, fear-driven sexual health culture.

The work, which became much more popular when it was retitled simply Manhood, helped open the floodgates for 19th-century quackery. Unscrupulous empirics and patent medicine vendors exploited the terrifying medical claims legitimized by such texts to sell costly, dangerous "cures," ranging from dubious tonic elixirs and restraint devices to electrical batteries, targeting vulnerable individuals terrified of "premature decline" and lost manhood.

It should be noted that Deslandes' work differed from the other popular work of the time by Tissot. Tissot's approach was biological; he understood semen as essentially a fluid of the brain. Thus, when it was compulsively lost through nocturnal emission, masturbation or lack of moderation in sexual activity, it actually "drained" the brain of a vital resource, thus leading to lethargy, etc., Lesandre instead viewed the sexual activity itself as triggering or unnaturally stimulating the nervous system. So while they both took a clinical approach to the suggested effects, the cause mechanisms they suggested were distinct from each other. 

Very rare in the original, pre-Manhood, editions. None traced at auction or in the trade.

[With]

Good + in original linen cloth, darkened original paper label to spine. Very solid with moderate foxing toward page edges throughout, more pervasive at the first few and last few leaves, as usual.