title: Safe sex in the era of AIDS.
abstract: The term masturbation entered the English language in 1776 in the translation of Tissot's Treatise on the Diseases Produced by Onanism. Tissot linked semen conservation theory from antiquity with degeneracy theory and attributed degeneration and death from the social disease (syphilis and gonorrhea) to semen wastage not only in the social vice of promiscuity and prostitution, but also in the secret vice of masturbation. Nocturnal semen loss became designated as spermatorrhea, a new disease requiring treatment. In the nineteenth century the campaign against masturbation became a medical mania. It reached its apogee under John Harvey Kellogg, M.D., who invented Corn Flakes and other cereal and nut foods as meat substitutes to reduce all carnal desire and, hence, masturbation. The stigma on masturbation remains. It prohibits rational discourse on masturbation, and nourishes the perpetuation of fallacies regarding its effects. The imagery of a masturbation fantasy is also the imagery of the personal lovemap, which may be unorthodox, warped and distorted paraphilically. Masturbation might become societally endorsed as a public health policy to help contain the HIV epidemic of AIDS. Nonetheless, the President of the United States in 1995 dismissed his Surgeon General, Dr. Jocelyn Elders, for advocating so sane a policy.
mesh_terms: D001294:Attitude to Health; D005260:Female; D015658:HIV Infections / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000517:prevention & control* / Q000635:transmission; D006291:Health Policy; D006716:Homosexuality; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008418:Masturbation