Unmasked, or the Science of Immorality. To Gentlemen

In 1878, a Civil War surgeon, Medal of Honor recipient, and radical feminist wrote a sex manual for men. That alone should make you pause. Mary Edwards Walker, who dressed as a man, advocated for women's dress reform, and fought for abolition, turns her scientific eye on male sexuality in this startling Victorian document. The book offers itself as a moral guide disguised as medical advice, blending physiological information with puritanical warnings about 'immorality' while somehow also being remarkably explicit about topics other doctors wouldn't name. Walker approaches her male readers with a female physician's authority, deconstructing myths about women's bodies and male 'needs' with a forthrightness that would have shocked her contemporaries. The result is an uncomfortable, contradictory text: conservative in its moralizing yet radical in its insistence on female expertise over male assumptions about sex. It endures as a fascinating artifact of what a brilliant troublemaker could slip past the gatekeepers of respectable publishing.