Medical Views on Masturbation: How Doctors Shaped Shame, Science, and Sex

When doctors in the 1800s called masturbation a cause of insanity, blindness, and weakness, they weren’t just being old-fashioned—they were building a system of control. Medical views on masturbation, the historical and clinical stance of medicine toward self-pleasure. Also known as onanism, it was treated as a dangerous habit that drained vital energy, especially in women. This wasn’t science—it was morality dressed in lab coats. And for over a century, that belief shaped laws, therapies, and how people felt about their own bodies.

Behind the fear was a real tool: the vibrator, a mechanical device originally designed for medical treatment of female hysteria. Doctors used hand-cranked and steam-powered vibrators to induce "hysterical paroxysm"—what we now call orgasm—in women who couldn’t get relief any other way. The irony? Women were being treated for a condition that didn’t exist, using a device that gave them pleasure, all while being told that pleasure itself was sick. Female hysteria, a now-discredited diagnosis used to pathologize women’s sexuality and emotional expression was the excuse. The real reason? Society couldn’t handle women having control over their own bodies.

By the 1920s, the medical world quietly dropped the idea that masturbation caused disease. But shame didn’t vanish. It just moved underground. Even today, some religious or conservative medical communities still treat it as morally suspect, especially for teens and women. Meanwhile, modern research shows it’s linked to better sleep, reduced stress, and even lower prostate cancer risk in men. The sexology, the scientific study of human sexuality, including desire, arousal, and behavior movement started by Havelock Ellis in the late 1800s helped shift the conversation—but not fast enough. The gap between what science says and what people believe is still wide.

What you’ll find here isn’t just history. It’s the story of how power, gender, and medicine collided over one simple act. From Victorian doctors prescribing rest cures to modern studies on clitoral anatomy, these articles show how medical authority was used to silence, control, and sometimes—accidentally—liberate. You’ll see how the same tools used to punish desire became instruments of pleasure. How silence became a survival tactic. How women reclaimed their bodies through research, rebellion, and orgasms.