Diane Mason's exploration into Victorian masturbatory discourses is an intriguing interpretation of the paranoia at the heart of the nineteenth century's preoccupation with autoeroticism. From the outset she endeavours to release masturbation from the dominance of restrictive discursive frameworks centred upon the history and culture of medicine, and the privileging of material written for trained medical audiences, which have dominated discussions of sexuality. She examines the masturbatory content of widely available home medical guides and cyclopaedias by physicians such as J H Kellogg and E B Foote and from these extrapolates a symptomatology of masturbation; languor, sunken eyes and pallor are three of the highly visible signifiers of self-abuse familiar to Victorian society. An examination of the presentation of the masturbator in works of popular fiction produced by Bram Stoker, Charles Dickens and Oscar Wilde in light of such symptoms reveals the extent to which contemporary theories of autoeroticism pervaded Victorian literature. Only by casting it as a symptomological vice that could be “read” by those with an entry to the discourse does its presence become apparent. This in turn begs a reconsideration of whether masturbation had a greater cultural significance than has yet been considered. What raises The secret vice above the recent slough of works dealing with autoeroticism and sexuality is Diane Mason's adept interdisciplinary approach. By acknowledging the role of external signifiers in medical diagnosis and a reader's initial assessment of a fiction character, she highlights the importance of understanding the fluidity of the boundaries that separate medical writing from fiction. The format of the chapters makes the process of textual analysis explicit by outlining how medical texts constructed masturbation within the framework of a particular social fear, such as male impotence, non-reproductive female sexual activity, or same-sex erotic encounters, which was then made visible in literary texts through bodily and linguistic signifiers, coded language and metaphorical allusions. Because medical writings explicate a multiplicity of symptoms associated with masturbation—physical, mental, and moral—they can be mapped onto a variety of complaints, with the result that taxonomic boundaries between diseases break down. The result is a reciprocal relationship where theories of disease and masturbation reinforce one another. Masturbation, like consumption, can be caught from those already familiar with its practices; individuals such as Lucy Westenra in Dracula and Laura in J S Le Fanu's Carmilla are congenitally predisposed towards destructive female sexuality through family weakness; like opium addiction it consumes the individual with “mad hungers” (p. 123). Diane Mason's sheer tenacity in combing her texts for signifiers of autoerotic behaviour does at times give the impression that her arguments are somewhat overwrought, and it is possible to lose the thread of her argument in such detailed discussions of Victorian language and metaphor. Yet these minor quibbles are far outweighed by the issues she raises concerning the centrality of masturbation as a cultural phenomenon in the Victorian era. Too detailed for someone looking for an introduction to Victorian views of sexuality, the text would be an excellent point of reference for someone looking to continue work on the role of masturbation in cultural perceptions of sexuality. At a time when historians and practitioners of medicine are increasingly aware of the value of close textual readings, of case studies or fictional medical encounters, a work such as this is a striking example of what can be found if stories are examined thoroughly and with the right tools.