Abstract
Throughout the middle decades of the nineteenth century, few elements of Catholic rite attracted as much condemnation as ecclesiastical celibacy. Opponents of Catholic celibacy began with the blunt assertion that the sexual instinct was a legitimate and powerful element within the human constitution which could never entirely be contained. Speaking in 1856 to the Pennsylvania Assembly, the future Republican congressman and Minister Resident to Turkey, E. Joy Morris, declared in a speech opposing the establishment of monastic orders on American soil that “the natural passions are not to be suppressed by mere vows and the formal restraint of rules and regulations.”1 Worse than futile, the attempt to remain celibate was held to intensify sexual desire, leading to a desperate battle between body and mind with only two possible outcomes. The victim might suffer a mental breakdown. But in what seemed to many a more likely outcome, enforced celibacy would create a build-up of desire which could only be alleviated through a sudden erotic frenzy. This vision of the celibate Catholic as either deranged or lustful was contained in a pamphlet published by the Presbyterian Board of Publications. The author claimed to have been acquainted with many Catholic priests whose desire “long resisted, seized them at length, like madness. Two I knew who died insane: hundreds might be found who avoid that fate by a life of settled systematic vice.”2
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Notes
Cited in F.W.J. Hemmings, Emile Zola (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), 105.
Antoine Jay, cited in Ce qu’on a dit du mariage et du célibat, ed. Larcher and P.J. Jullien (Paris: Éditions Hetzel, 1858), 187.
Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1, An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage Books, 1985).
Jacques Léonard has noted the resentment of physicians at the competition provided by Catholic religious women. See La medicine entre les pouvoirs et les savoirs (Paris: Aubier Montaigne, 1981), esp. 74–79. The same rivalry was evident in the psychiatric profession. See Jan Goldstein, Console and Classify: The French Psychiatric Profession in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), esp. 210–230.
Jan Goldstein, “The Hysteria Diagnosis and the Politics of Anticlericalism in Late Nineteenth-Century France,” Journal of Modern History 54, no. 2 (June 1982): 209–239
Jack D. Ellis, The Physician-Legislators of France: Medicine and Politics in the Early Third Republic 1870–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
Théodore Perrin, Nature et virginité, considérations physiologiques sur le célibat religieux, par Jean-Ennemond Dufieux. Rapport fait à la Société de Médecine de Lyon (Lyon: A. Vingtrinier, 1855), 16.
For testimony of the appeal of the French medical system for American doctors, see G. de Bertier de Sauvigny, La France et les Français vus par les voyageurs Américains 1814–1848, Vol. 2 (Paris: Flammarion, 1985), esp. 154.
John H. Warner, Against the Spirit of the System: The French Impulse in Nineteenth-Century Medicine (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998)
R.M. Jones, “American Doctors and the Parisian Medical World 1830–1840,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 47, no. 2 (1973): 177–204.
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Dr. Menville de Ponsan, Histoire philosophique et médicale de la femme, Vol. 1 (Paris: J.B. Baillière, 1858), 336.
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The popularity of such works is difficult to establish with precision. In the United States, many scholars have concluded that despite legislative prohibition and the efforts of public prosecutors, guides to contraception circulated widely. In her study of contraceptive practices in the United States, Janet Farrell Brodie has identified a “boom” in the publication and sale of guides to contraception after 1850. See Janet Farrell Brodie, Contraception and Abortion in Nineteenth-Century America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994)
Carl N Degler, At Odds: Women and the Family in America from the Revolution to the Present (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 210–220.
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Frederick Hollick, The Marriage Guide, or Natural History of Generation (New York: T.W. Strong, 1850), 362.
Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, Rereading Sex: Battles over sexual knowledge and suppression in nineteenth-century America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002)
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Claude-Francpis Lallemand, A Practical Treatise on the Causes, Symptoms and Treatment of Spermatorrhoea (Philadelphia: Blanchard & Lea, 1861), 246.
Dr. Hector Landouzy, Traité complet de l’hystérie (Paris: Baillière, 1846), 186.
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Auguste Debay, Hygiène et physiologie du mariage (Paris: E. Dentu, 1859), 18.
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Dr. Louis Seraine, De la santé des gens mariés, ou Physiologie de la génération de l’homme (Paris: F. Savy, 1865), 233.
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Hollick, The Marriage Guide, 363; James Ashton, The Book of Nature: Containing Information for Young People who Think of Getting Married (New York: Brother Jonathan Office, 1865; reprint New York: Arno Press, 1974), 36.
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Edward Bliss Foote, Plain Home Talk (Boston: Thayer and Eldridge, 1860), 167.
Isabel V. Hull, Sexuality, State and Civil Society in Germany, 1700–1815 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997), 241.
Mark E. Kann, A Republic of Men: The American Founders, Gendered Language, and Patriarchal Politics (New York: New York University Press, 1998)
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Jean Borie, Le célibataire français (Paris: Le Sagittaire, 1976).
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For the American figures, see Degler, At Odds, 181. The French figures are based on a study by the historian Emile Lavisseur, cited in Peter Gay, The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Freud, Vol. 1, The Education of the Senses (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 266.
See Angus McLaren, Sexuality and Social Order (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1983), 11
Dr. Edward M. Dixon, Scenes in the Practice of a New York Surgeon (New York: DeWitt & Davenport, 1855), 186.
Catharine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe, The American Woman’s Home (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2002), 25.
Thomas Low Nichols, Esoteric Anthropology (New York: Stringer and Townsend, 1853), 407.
Thomas Low and Mary Gove Nichols, Marriage (New York: T.L. Nichols, 1854), 315.
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Stephen Nissenbaum, Sex, diet and debility in Jacksonian America (Chicago: Dorsey Press, 1988), 161.
Jean Silver-Isenstadt, “Passions and Perversions: The radical ambition of Dr Thomas Low Nichols” in Charles Rosenberg, ed., Right-living: An Anglo-American tradition of self-help medicine and hygiene (Baltimore: John Hopkins Univ. Press, 2003), 186–205.
Augustus K. Gardner, The French Metropolis: Paris; as Seen during the Spare Hours of a Medical Student (New York: CS. Francis & Co, 1850), 93–94.
Dr. Xavier Bourgeois, Les passions dans leurs rapports avec la santé et les maladies (Paris: J.B. Bailiière, 1863), 35.
William Alcott, The Physiology of Marriage (Boston: John P. Jewett, 1856), 71.
Ibid., 116–117. Graham was, of course, the inventor of the Graham cracker, which he intended as an aid to abstinence. See Jayme A. Sokolow, Eros and Modernization: Sylvester Graham, Health Reform, and the Origins of Victorian Sexuality in America (Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1983).
Dr. Nicholas Cooke, Satan in Society, by a Physician (Cincinnati: CF. Vent, 1876; reprint New York: Arno Press, 1974), 202.
Dr. Alfred Becquerel, Traité élémentaire d’hygiène privée et publique, 6th edition (Paris: P. Asselin, 1877), 795.
Dr. Pierre Briquet, Un traité clinique et thérapeutique de l’hystérie (Paris: J.B. Bailiière, 1859), 132.
Augustus K. Gardner, Conjugal Sins Against the Laws of Life and Health (New York: J.S. Redfield, 1870; reprint New York: Arno Press, 1974), 41.
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Cited in Dio Lewis, Chastity, or Our Secret Sins (Philadelphia: George Maclean & Co., 1874; reprint New York: Arno Press, 1974), 246.
Angus McLaren, “Doctor in the House: Medicine and Private Morality in France, 1800–1850,” Feminist Studies 2, no. 2 /3 (1975): 45–47.
Francis Devay, De la physiologie humaine et de la medicine (Paris: Pitois, 1840), 170.
J.B.F. Descuret, La médicine des passions, ou les passions considérées dans leurs rapports avec les maladies, les lois et la religion (Paris: Labé, 1860), 473.
Horatio Robinson Storer, Why Not? A Book for Every Woman (Boston: Lee & Shepard, 1866), 64.
Dr. Paul Diday, Examen de l’ouvrage de m. le docteur dufieux, intitulé nature et virginité, considérations physiologiques sur le célibat religieux (Lyon: Aimé Vingtrinier, 1855), 8.
O.S. Fowler, Sexual Science, Including Manhood, Womanhood and Their Mutual Interrelations (National Publishing Company, Philadelphia, 1870), 278.
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© 2010 Timothy Verhoeven
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Verhoeven, T. (2010). Natural or Unnatural? Doctors and the Vow of Celibacy. In: Transatlantic Anti-Catholicism. Palgrave Macmillan Transnational History Series. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230109124_4
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