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‘It is caused of the womans part or of the mans part’: the role of gender in the diagnosis and treatment of sexual dysfunction in early modern England

2011; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 20; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/09612025.2011.567056

1747-583X

Jennifer Evans,

Historical Economic and Social Studies

Abstract Philip Barrough wrote in 1590 that barrenness ‘is caused of the womans part or of the mans part’. By the eighteenth century, however, barrenness was perceived as a female disorder distinguished from male impotence. Few historians have addressed the uncertainty surrounding early modern definitions of infertility, choosing instead to adopt set terms that fit comfortably with modern ideas. This article will highlight the difficulties surrounding the gender distinction of the terms ‘barrenness’ and ‘impotence’ during this period. Moreover, the discussion will examine the role of gender in diagnosing these disorders to sufferers. The article will argue that ideas of gender were more central to diagnosis of poor sexual health than to effectual treatment. Although it appears that barrenness and impotence were treated with separate remedies, many treatments were described as effectual for both sexes. Additionally, the ingredients used in such recipes were often sexual stimulants explained without reference to gender. Notes Information on first publication and personal background taken from the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Online, ‘Philip Barrow’ article. http://www.oxforddnb.com (accessed 5 November 2008). Philip Barrough (1590) The Method of Phisick, Conteining The Causes, Signs and Cures of Inward Diseases in Mans Bodie from the Head to the Foote … (London: Richard Field, dwelling in the Blacke-friers by Lud-gate), p. 201. Ibid., p. 182. Patrick Wallis (2006) Apothecaries and the Consumption and Retailing of Medicines in Early Modern London, in Louise Hill Curth (Ed.) From Phisick to Pharmacology: five hundred years of british drug retailing (Aldershot: Ashgate), p. 15. Ibid., p.16. Louise Hill Curth (2002) The Commercialisation of Medicine in the Popular Press: English almanacs 1640–1700, Seventeenth Century, 17(1), pp. 48–69, at p. 49. Elaine Leong (2008) Making Medicines in the Early Modern Household, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 82 (1), pp. 145–168. This may have been related to the rise of the man-midwife in this period; however, it is outside of the scope of this article to examine the effects of this trend. The increased competition between midwives and their male counterparts encouraged the study of the female generative anatomy and so may have fostered a greater degree of gender distinction and differentiation in understanding sexual and generative dysfunction. For further information on the conflict of male anatomical knowledge and female experience see Jean Donnison (1977) Midwives and Medical Men: a history of inter-professional rivalries and women's rights (London: Schocken). Jakob Rueff (1637) The Expert Midwife, Or An Excellent and Most Necessary Treatise of the Generation and Birth of Man … (London: E. G[riffin] for S. B[urton]), pp. 11–12. Following irregular pagination at p. 192. (First published in 1554.) Robert Carroll & Stephen Prickett (Eds) (1998) The Bible; Authorized King James Version with Apocrypha (Oxford: Oxford University Press), p. 12. Ibid., p. 35. In this version Sarah is written as Sarai. Ibid., p. 701. Thomas Laqueur (1992) Making Sex Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (London: Harvard University Press), p. 25. Use of the term one-sex model. Ibid., pp. 5–6. Ibid., p. 5. Karen Harvey (2004) Reading Sex in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). For a discussion of the incorporation of Laqueur's work and its critiques see ibid. See also Michael Stolberg (2003) A Woman Down to Her Bones: the anatomy of sexual difference in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Isis, 94, pp. 274–299. Mary Fissell (1995) Gender and Generation: representing reproduction in early modern England, Gender and History, 7(3), pp. 433–456. Cited in Harvey, Reading Sex, p. 79. Nicholas Culpeper (1676) Culpeper's Directory for Midwives: Or, A Guide for Women… (London: George Sawbridge, at the sign of the Bible on Ludgate-Hill), p. 22. Originally published in 1651. Robert Barret (1699) A Companion for Midwives, Child-Bearing Women, and Nurses Directing them how to Perform their Respective Offices … (London: Tho. Ax, at the Blue Ball in Duck-Lane), p. 59. Mrs Jane Sharp (1671) The Midwives Book Or the Whole Art of Midwifery Discovered. Directing Childbearing Women how to behave themselves in their Conception, Breeding, Bearing and Nursing of Children … (London: Simon Miller, at the Star at the West End of St. Pauls), p. 60. Felix Platter (1662) A Golden Practice of Phisick in Five Books and Three Tomes … (London: Peter Cole, printer and book-seller, at the sign of the Printing-press in Cornhill, near the Royal Exchange), p. 173. However, Platter does proceed to acknowledge that one cause of barrenness may be a deficiency in the quality of a man's seed. Barrough, The Method of Phisick, p. 182. Theophile Bonet (1684) Mercurius Compitalitius: Or, A Guide to the Practical Physitian … (London: Thomas Flesher). (The British Library holds a copy from 1682, although it is not clear whether this is the first edition.) Ibid., pp. 256, 546. Ibid., pp. 545–546, 256. Nicholas Venette (1720) Conjugal Love Reveal'd: In the Nightly Pleasures of the Marriage BED, and the Advantages of that Happy STATE. In an ESSAY Concerning Humane Generation … (London: Tho. Hinton, at the White-Horse in Water-Lane, Black-Fryars), pp. 58, 55. Anon. (1739) The Ladies Physical Directory: Or, A Treatise of all the Weaknesses, Indispositions, and Diseases Peculiar to the Female Sex … (London: Nonesuch press), p. 60. John Ball (1770) The Female Physician: Or, Every Woman Her Own Doctress. Wherein is Summarily Comprised, All that is Necessary to be Known in the Cure of Several Diseases to which the Fair Sex are Liable … (London: L. Davis, near Gray's-Inn-Gate, Holborn), p. 71. Laura Gowing (2003) Common Bodies: women, touch and power in seventeenth-century England (New Haven and London: Yale University Press), p. 3. Ibid., p. 3. Thomas Raynalde (1552) The Byrth of Mankynd, Otherwyse named the Womans Boke. Newly Set Forth, Corrected and Augmented … (London: T. Ray[nald]). Ibid. Alessandro Massaria (1657) De Morbis Foemineis; The Womans Councellor: Or the Feminine Physitian, Modestly Treating such Occult Accidents, and Secret Diseases, as are Incident to that Sex … (London: John Streater), p. 119. Similarly, Nicholas Culpeper and Jane Sharp related an experiment to test fertility of both partners based upon urine. Culpeper, A Directory for Midwives, p. 135. Venette, Conjugal Love Reveal'd, p. 41. Roy Porter (1989) Health for Sale: quackery in England 1660–1850 (Manchester: Manchester University Press), p. 147. Curth, ‘The Commercialisation of Medicine in the Popular Press’. For more information on the medical marketplace and trade in medications see Mark S. R. Jenner & Patrick Wallis (Eds) (2007) Medicine and the Market in England and Its Colonies, c.1450 –c.1850 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). John Marten (1709) Gonosologium Novum: Or, A New System of all the Secret Infirmities and Diseases, Natural, Accidental and Venereal in Men and Women … (London: N. Crouch in the Poultry, S. Crouch, in Cornhil, J. Knapton, and M. Atkins in St. Paul's Church-Yard, A. Collins at the Black Boy in Fleet-Street P. Varenne at Seneca's Head in the Strand, C. King, Westminster-Hall), pp. 49–50. The British Journal (London, Saturday 24 October 1724, Issue cx), p. 4. Ibid., p. 4. P. S. Brown (1975) The Venders [sic] of Medicines Advertised in Eighteenth Century Bath Newspapers, Medical History, 19(1), pp. 352–369. Ibid. Following an earlier presentation of a version of this article, I am grateful to Dr Jonathan Barry for highlighting that advertisements were sometimes republished to fill a newspaper's advertising section. British Library Ms Add 579944: Lady Cantile Culinary and Medical Recipes, 1688. Lady Cantile acknowledged that her knowledge of treating the king's evil had come from Nicholas Culpeper's works. Rueff, The Expert Midwife, pp. 29–48, deals with various remedies to rectify humoral imbalances of the womb; John Saddler (1636) The Sick Woman's Private Looking Glasse … (London: Printed by Anne Griffin, for Philemon Stephens, and Christopher Meridith, at the Golden Lion in S. Pauls Church-yard), pp. 112–122 also exclusively looked at treating the womb, although this is to be expected in a work aimed predominantly at women; Culpeper, The Directory for Midwives, pp. 22–30 detailed remedies for various deficiencies of the womb which resulted in barrenness. Yet in Culpeper's work remedies are also suggested which are described as being for women and yet may have been used to treat men. Massaria, De Morbis Foemineis, p. 118. Ibid., pp. 124–125. Peter Shaw (1753) A New Method of Physic: Wherein the Various Diseases Incident to the Human Body are Described (London: printed for T. and T. Longman, in Pater-Noster Row). Ibid. Culpeper, The Directory for Midwives, p. 137. Ibid., p. 137. Sharp, The Midwives Book, pp. 180–181. Nicholas Culpeper (2007) Culpeper's Complete Herbal (London: Wordsworth Editions), and Nicholas Culpeper (1655) Pharmacopoeia Londinensis: Or, The London Dispensatory Further Adorned by the Studies and Collections of the Fellows, Now Living of the Said College … Sixth Edition (London: Peter Cole in Leaden-Hall). Ibid. Ibid., p. 26. These substances were closely linked to seed strengtheners. Often the boundary between the two is unclear as the same descriptive tropes were used for both. Thus, these substances could also be employed to treat men whose seed was too thin or waterish, by improving its humoral consistency. Similarly, heating herbs could also be used to alter the constitution of the seed. Anon. (1684) Aristotle's Masterpiece (London: J. How.), p. 11. Platter, A Golden Practice of Phisick, p. 170. Sarah Toulalan (2007) Imagining Sex: pornography and bodies in seventeenth-century England (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Culpeper, The Directory for Midwives, p. 137. Sharp, The Midwives Book, pp. 180–181. Culpeper, Pharmacopoeia Londinensis, p. 46. Rueff, The Expert Midwife, p. 57. Following irregular pagination. John Quincy (1730) Pharmacopoeia Officianalis and Extemporanea: Or, A Complete English Dispensatory, in Four Parts…The Eighth Edition Much Enlarged and Corrected (London: J. Osborn and T. Longman, at the Ship in Pater-Noster-Row), p. 82. London Wellcome Library, M.S. 373: Jane Jackson, A Very Short and Compendious Method of Phisicke and Chirurgery, fols. 73v, 74r. Ibid., fol. 74r. Later in the period Margaret Baker recorded a remedy for barrenness which could have been based upon the doctrine of signatures. She recorded a ‘cocke broth for to stranthen a woman for consepsione’. London British Library, M.S. Sloane 2485: Cookery and Medical Receipts of Margaret Barker 1672, fol. 48r. Audrey Eccles (1982) Obstetrics and Gynaecology in Tudor and Stuart England (London: Croom Helm), p. 36. Ibid. Helkiah Crooke (1651) Mikrokosmographia A Description of the Body of Man: Together with the Controversies and Figures Thereto Belonging, Collected and Translated out of all the Best Authors of Anatomy, Especially out of Casper Bauhinus and Andréas Laurentius (London: R.C.), p. 157. Barrough, The Method of Phisick, p. 182. Ibid., p. 203. Bonet, Mercurius Compitalitius, p. 694. Ibid. London British Library Ms Additional 579944: Lady Cantile Culinary and Medical Recipes, 1688, fol. 138r. Ibid., fol. 138r. Thomas Elyot (1595) The Castell of Health, Corrected and in Some Places Augmented by the First Author Thereof (London: The Widdow Orwin), p. 21. John Gerard (1633) The Heball or Generall Historie of Plantes … (London: Adam Islip Ioice Norton and Richard Whitakers), p. 207. Gerard also include a similar description for Great Chervil or Myrrh which ‘hath a certaine windinesse, be meanes whereof it procureth lust’. Ibid., p. 1039. Harvey, Reading Sex, p. 8. Additional informationNotes on contributorsJennifer Evans Jennifer Evans was a second-year Ph.D. candidate when she was awarded the Clare Evans Prize. She completed her doctoral studies at the University of Exeter, UK in January 2011. Her thesis examines ‘Procreation, Pleasure and Provokers of Lust in Early Modern England 1550–1780’ and is supervised by Dr Sarah Toulalan and Professor Alexandra Walsham.