Pathology of the Reproductive Organs (1862)

AUTHOR: Trall, Russell Thacher

KEYWORDS: food, health, sexuality, water-cure

SUMMARY (Ridvan Askin, edited Deborah Madsen)

Trall promotes veganism as a curative for sexual diseases and a countermeasure to sexual excitation, particularly the practice of masturbation. He begins the book with observations about the “incomparably superior safety and efficacy” of the water-cure compared to “the principles of drug-medicine” (v). This is particularly evident in the case of sexual diseases (vi). He emphasizes that the water-cure is not merely confined to various applications of water but “embraces the regulation and adaptation of air, food, exercise, water, temperature, clothing, rest, sleep, passional influences, &c, to suit the particular circumstances of every case of disease” (viii). The first chapter is extracted from Trall's Water-Cure for the Million (1860) and provides an outline of water-cure applications, before focusing on specific sexual diseases. 

Trall begins with observations about the “incomparably superior safety and efficacy” of the water-cure compared to “the principles of drug-medicine” (v). This is particularly evident in the case of sexual diseases (vi). He emphasizes that the water-cure is not confined to various applications of water but “embraces the regulation and adaptation of air, food, exercise, water, temperature, clothing, rest, sleep, passional influences, &c, to suit the particular circumstances of every case of disease” (viii). The first chapter is excerpted from Trall's Water-Cure for the Million (1860) and provides a general outline of water-cure applications, before zooming in on various specific sexual diseases. 

Trall's ideal diet is vegan. He reprints the relevant sections of his earlier work, to promote “a vegetarian diet” that consists of “fruits and farinacea” (13). He is particularly averse to “milk, and its products” such as “butter and cheese” (13). In his short history of venereal diseases the Middle Ages is identified as the age most “sensuous in the indulgences of appetite.” During this era, “the people literally rioted in the abundance of flesh-food and alcoholic beverages,” which resulted in “[i]mpure blood, foul secretions, and a miasmatic atmosphere” with an increase in sexually transmitted diseases (40). His dietary recommendations in the case of gonorrhea apply generally: “The dietary should be exceedingly simple and very abstemious. Flesh-food of all kinds, milk and all of its products, with seasonings and condiments of all sorts, should be prohibited” (79). This is particularly important in the case of spermatorrhea and, particularly, masturbation: “Among the indirect or predisposing causes of precocious sexuality and self-abuse,” Trall writes,

few writers give sufficient prominence to the dietetic habits of children and youth. Stimulating beverages, irritating condiments, gross food, and especially everything which induces constipation of the bowels, are among the most common and most efficient causes. The free use of animal food is very objectionable, while pork, ham, sausages, lard, and salted meats of all kinds are especially execrable (128-129).

Trall also notes the detrimental influence of “pestilent literature” and “sensation fictions,” which in its “demoralizing effects on society” he likens to “liquor and tobacco” (129), quoting Orson Squire Fowler in this context.