title: The genealogical descent of sexual psychoneuroendocrinology from sex and health theory: the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries.
abstract: In the aftermath of the inquisition, secular health theory became separate from sacred health theory. Both assimilated vital spirits or sympathies as explanatory concepts. Sympathies were progressively transformed into internal secretions and the hormones of endocrinology. The sexual genealogy of psychoneuroendocrinology traces back to the sexual transplantation experiments of John Hunger (1728 - 93). Sexology, the science, has the same genealogy, whereas sexosophy, the philosophy, does not. In sexosophy, the theory that vital spirits or sympathies lost by masturbation caused debility or degeneracy became, along with health-food and exercise theories, popular in 19th-century health doctrine. Graham crackers and kellogg's cornflakes were by-products of the diet/abstinence doctrine. With police power under the Comstock Law (1873), 19th-century sexosophy negated sexuality so effectively that human sexual psychoneuroendocrine research remains muffled and deprived of funds in 1983.
mesh_terms: D000428:Alcohol Drinking; D001519:Behavior; D004704:Endocrinology / Q000266:history*; D004739:England; D005260:Female; D012739:Gonadal Steroid Hormones / Q000502:physiology; D006262:Health; D049671:History, 18th Century; D049672:History, 19th Century; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006728:Hormones / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008418:Masturbation; D009462:Neurology / Q000266:history*; D012068:Religion and Medicine; D012723:Sex; D012725:Sexual Behavior; D013564:Sympathetic Nervous System / Q000502:physiology; D014481:United States
chemical_list: D012739:Gonadal Steroid Hormones; D006728:Hormones