Some of America’s most prominent health reformers of the nineteenth century were preoccupied with curtailing sexual activity. They believed changes in diet could and should stop adolescent boys from...

Some of America’s most prominent health reformers of the nineteenth century were preoccupied with curtailing sexual activity. They believed changes in diet could and should stop adolescent boys from masturbating, which would weaken their bodies and drain their brains. No one was more obsessed than J. H. Kellogg, who invented the corn flake to reduce sexual impulses among young American men. In his advice manual, Plain Facts for Old and Young (1888), he warned parents of 39 signs that young men might be masturbating. (These included acne, slouching posture, using tobacco, desire for solitude, confusion, and talking back to one’s parents.) Worried parents were counseled to take some rather chilling steps to stop their children, including bandaging the genitals, covering the sex organs with small cages, tying their children’s hands to the bedposts, or, more drastically, circumcising the boys “without administering an anesthetic” or, for girls, applying carbolic acid directly on the clitoris. “It is better to endure any physical discomfort than to sacrifice one’s chastity,” wrote one physician (Kellogg, 1888; see Kimmel, 1996, pp. 129–131).