Masturbation is the act of obtaining pleasure from manipulation of the genital organs.

Before Sigmund Freud shed light on infantile sexuality, masturbation was exclusively viewed from the extremely negative perspective of religion and morality, rather than being seen as a social and medical problem. This is attested by Dr. Samuel Auguste David Tissot's L'onanisme: Dissertation sur les maladies produites par la masturbation (Onanism: Dissertation on the illnesses produced by masturbation; 1778), which for more than a century and a half remained the standard reference on the issue. In 1576 Michel de Montaigne, in his Essays (II, 12), was the first to introduce the term masturbation into the French language; its etymological origins are controversial. In 1835 the word appeared in the sixth edition of the dictionary of the French Academy, where onanism was given as a synonym.

In his Three Essays...