The Sexual Organism (1862)

AUTHOR: Jackson, James Caleb

KEYWORDS: food, health, masturbation, sexuality, Temperance

SUMMARY (Ridvan Askin, edited Deborah Madsen):

In this book Jackson focuses on sexuality, sexual desire, and how to control it, from infancy to adulthood. Among other things, he discusses masturbation, venereal diseases, sexual intercourse, menstruation, pregnancy, and abortion. For Jackson, a proper diet is both a preventative and cure in sexual matters. He promotes “the avoidance of all stimulating food and drinks” from an early age (22) and, conversely, recommends food that is “simple, nutritive, and unstimulating” (81). Such a diet is particularly important in counteracting masturbatory desires, in both boys and girls. Jackson recommends, specifically:

foods made of grains and fruits. The habit with us, as a people, of giving to our children animal food largely, cannot be too severely criticized. A vegetarian myself, I am willing that the reader should make due allowance in his own mind for what he may suppose to be a prejudice of mine in respect to the use of flesh-meats as food. That they contain nutrient properties I do not, of course, deny; and that they may be eaten by adults with less injury to health than by children, I also do not deny. That they are, however, as staple articles of food, unfit for children to eat, I do most resolutely and stoutly affirm. Their effects upon the organism, as respects both the rapidity and quality of its development, are palpably injurious, and tend directly to the subversion of the relations that constitutionally exist between the organs of nutrition and the nervous system (82).

Jackson believes that children whose “entire business is to grow, want nutrient food, free from stimulating elements, and do not need, nor should they have, animal foods” (84). His preference is for grains and fruits in this context, defining what makes them particularly beneficial:

[L]et their food be made of grains, with fruits thrown in as a complement. I have no special objections to the use of vegetables, but I do not think they are as good as either grains or fruits; first, because, as a general fact, they are not as nutrient; and, second, because nothing that grows in the soil, and ripens under its surface, is as good for food as that which, growing in the soil, ripens above its surface. And of foods that grow above the soil, those are the best which grow upon upland, on the mountain-side (85).

Jackson also contends that the use of animal manures significantly diminishes the quality of our food (85-86). Milk, salt, spices, meat, but also stimulating vegetables like “horse-radish, onions, water-cresses, leeks” should be particularly avoided in the case of masturbation and involuntary nocturnal emissions (86, 105). A similar diet is prescribed in the other cases that Jackson discusses, from venereal diseases to pregnancy, from menstruation to sexual intercourse. “Simple food simply cooked, and eaten in moderate quantities at long intervals, certainly not oftener than three times, and as a general thing not oftener than twice, in twenty-four hours”  is the dietary suggestion not only for dyspeptics (187), but Jackson's general recommendation for everyone.