Textbooks can make for fun reading.

[theweaselking]

During the 1750s a Swiss physician Simon Tiscott develloped degeneracy theory, the central belief of which was that semen is necessary for physical and sexual vigor in men. He based this theory on observation about human eunuchs and castrated animals... A descendant of degeneracy theory, abstinence theory, was advocated in America during the 1830s by the Reverend Silvester Graham. The three cornerstones of his crusade for public health were healthy food(Graham crackers were named for him), physical fitness, and sexual abstinence. In the 1870s Graham's most famous successor, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, published a paper in which he ardently disapproved of masturbation and urged parents to be wary of signs that their children were indulging in it. He wrote about the 39 signs of "the secret vice", whiich included weakness, early symptoms of consumption, dullness of the eyes, slepplessness, ficklesness, untrustworthiness, bashfulness, love of solitude, unnatural boldness, mock piety, and round shoulders. As a physicain, Kellogg was professionaly admired and publicly influential, and he eaned a fortune publishing books discouriaging masturbation. His recommended treatments for "the secret vice" were quite extreme. For example, he advocated that especially persistent masturbation in boys be treated by sewing the foresking with silver wire or, as a last resort, by circumcision without anasthesia. Female masturbation was to be treated by burning the clitoris with carbolic acid. Besides deploring masturbation, Kellogg, like Graham, was especially concerned with dietary health. He urged people to eat more cereals and nuts and less meat(which he believed increased sexual desire). Thus, Kellogg's cornflakes were invented "almost literally, as anti-masturbation food".
--Abnormal Psychology, 12th edition, Butcher Mineka Hooley, Pearson Publishing, 2004, USA.

Comments

[thathatedguy.livejournal.com]

I ate cornflakes all the time growng up, and it never stopped me from releasing the hounds.

I'm never eating kellogs again...

[camilla-anna.livejournal.com]

or maybe even Graham crackers. How fricking awful!!!

(though I realize it was done with the best of intentions).

Further proving that the well-intetentioned individual is THE most dangerous person on the planet.

[luna-the-cat.livejournal.com]

*winces and screams*

[quotation.livejournal.com]

YOu missed the best part -- corn flakes were used by Kellogg on his patients ANALLY AS AN ENEMA.