From: lip@s1.gov (Loren I. Petrich)
Subject: Re: sex in the good ol' days
Organization: LLNL
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1992 01:13:47 GMT

In article <1992Nov17.054314.4673@netcom.com> barry@netcom.com (Kenn Barry) writes:
>In article <1992Nov16.202344.25055@midway.uchicago.edu> mec6@midway.uchicago.edu writes:
>>Maybe Kayembee will post some quotes from the 
>>material he has?  We could compare it then.  Will he be so generous?

>	Hmm, two requests for this, one by email, one on the net - I
>call that popular demand! Anyway, this is fun stuff, in a weird way.

>	The following quotes are from _What A Young Man Ought To Know_,
>by Sylvanus Stall, D.D., a 1904 edition of a book copyrighted 1897. ...

>	This first is an anecdote of an anxious father taking a young
>son to a physician:

	On discovering that a child neither knew the value of money
nor knew how to pray, the doctor stated:

>	'Young gentlemen, the absence of these two qualities, the one
>	intellectual and the other moral, are clear indications of idiocy,
>	and the absence of either one makes the sanity of a child a
>	question of grave doubt. [...] to pray is as natural to a child
>	as the desire for food.'

	Speaking as someone without any religious upbringing (thank
whatever deities there are), I wonder why I didn't pray ;-)


>	On the subject of novels:

	[On how they are so defiling, in the fashion of masturbation,
that nobody below 25 should be allowed to read one...]

>	And the arts:

	[Get rid of any nudity, even if it (dis)graces the walls of
art galleries and rich people's mansions...]

>	Premarital sex with one's bride-to-be:

	[Why one should not have sex with a woman so whorish as to be
willing to have sex with a man she isn't married to...]

>	Dancing:

	[How raunchy and stimulating it is...]

>	[Hmmm, score one for Dr. Stall :-)]

	I agree.

>	Theatre:

>		Here the low, the drunken, and the sensual hiss at what
>	is pure and holy, and applaud that which appeals to their basest
>	passions.

>	Card-playing (with or without betting):

	[How one will become degraded in various ways...]

	I once looked inside the commentary inside a Bible, and I saw
a list of questions and Bible answers from it. Aside from the usual
theological boilerplate, like "How can I know that the Bible is true",
there was something on why card playing was supposed to be so wicked.
I looked at the indicated Biblical reference, and all I found was some
vague reference to rejecting the "things of this world". Well,
card-playing is nowhere mentioned in the Bible...

>	Overall, the book spends most of its length on the horrors of
>venereal disease, and of masturbation, to which it attributes mental and
>physical illness.

	And I always thought it only caused hairy palms :-)

It is not frank enough to discuss details of the
>marriage bed, as the other recently-posted excerpt did. Another reason,
>perhaps, to doubt the authenticity of that excerpt. But it is as vivid
>in its description of the effects of syphilis as any army training film.

	It's worth noting that this little book was written before
antibiotics were discovered, when syphilis was as feared as AIDS is
today. But syphilis did not stop people from having a lot of sex, and
one probably should not expect AIDS to.

	I wonder if this doctor considered syphilis a punishment for
the sins of those afflicted with it. I know that there are some who
view AIDS in that same light.

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