The Girdle of Chastity: A Medico-Historical Study
Paris: Le Divan, 1923.
First Edition. Paperback. This medical, historical, legal, and literary study of the chastity belt is the work of Eric John "Dirty Ding" Dingwall (1890–1986), a respected anthropologist, skeptical psychical investigator, and sexologist who earned his nickname from his research interests in erotica and sexual customs. Dingwall had an illustrious and diverse career, writing well-received treatises on male infibulation, artificial cranial deformation, sexual mores in ancient and medieval times, and women, as well as his investigations of well-known "paranormal" events and personages. A well-preserved first printing of this formative and foundational study of the history and mythology of the chastity belt, which, despite current scholarship's more sceptical view of the actual use of such items, remains in service today as a resource on the subject, illustrated throughout in ten informative and provocative plates.
6 1/2" X 5". 164pp, plus 4 pages index. Mild edgewear to pictorial paper wraps, showing a naked woman wearing a chastity belt from both anterior and posterior views, with light toning, crease to corner, very faint dust soiling, and light crease to spine. Binding is sound. Pages are clean and unmarked. Very good. Item #9672
Price: $125.00