Excerpts from The Transactions of the Medical Society of the State of California, 1898: Relation Existing Between the Sexual Organs and Insanity, With Especial Reference to Masturbation.

“Of all sexual conditions complicating insanity, none occupy the importance either in the professional or lay mind that masturbation holds. It is a vice of most frequent occurrence amongst our sane population, and it is almost universally practiced by the insane. That masturbation alone, in the normal individual, produces insanity is certainly not true; for were this the fact, the accommodations of our asylums would have to be so increased as to hold at least 500,000 rather than the 5,000 insane credited to our State.” “There should be a sharp distinction drawn between the masturbation of insanity and insanity produced by masturbation, or the so-called masturbational insanity. Even when masturbation is most persistent, there is no ground for positively claiming it as a causative factor; this we term the `masturbation of insanity.' It is frequently merely the first symptom observed.” “Dr Hoisholt, of Stockton, said that he heartily agreed with Dr Robertson in what he had said as to the popular belief in masturbation being a cause of insanity, and also as to the many mutilations that had been made with the excuse of helping to remedy the condition of alienation by removing the ovaries, clitoris, etc. He was of the opinion that more education on the part of the general practitioner of medicine, as to the proper relation existing between insanity and the sexual organs, in the question of cause and effect, was certainly desirable. While, as stated by Dr Robertson, we very commonly find masturbation accompanying insanity, we very rarely can say that the vice has been to any extent the cause of the insanity itself. It is more often the result than the cause, popular superstition to the contrary.”