Should anyone doubt that previous generations entertained odd, unusual, misinformed, even outright bizarre notions about what constituted a healthy mind, a healthy body and a healthy, rational attitude about matters sexual, look no farther than Henry Stanton's treatise Sex; Avoided Subjects Discussed in Plain English.

Often hilarious with it's excessive Victorian prudity, the medical and psychological advice given is sometimes downright alarming. Going blind is the least of your worries. It's safe to say that a couple completely ignorant of the intricacies of sex and marriage would fare better than young newlyweds schooled by Stanton.

Henry Brewster Stanton (June 27, 1805 - January 14, 1887) was an American abolitionist, social reformer, attorney, journalist and politician. His writing was published in the New York Tribune, the New York Sun, and William Lloyd Garrison's Anti-Slavery Standard and The Liberator. He was elected to the New York State Senate in 1850 and 1851. His wife, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, was a world renown leading figure of the early women's rights movement.