Category Archives: Sexuality

1686: Unnatural sex position leads to unnatural birth

Cornelis Stalpart van der Wiel (1620–1702) was an esteemed Dutch surgeon. He had a busy practice in The Hague that received well to do patients from all over the Low Countries. Stalpart was also a prolific writer, recording new illness, injuries and physical anomalies. His brother was also a physician.

Writing in 1686, Slapart describes the curious case of Elisabeth Tomboy, one of his brother’s patients. Tomboy was a Dutch housewife who in January 1678 gave birth to a normal and quite healthy baby daughter. However on September 27th 1677, 14 weeks beforehand, Tomboy had gone into premature labour. Attended by Dr Stalpart Jnr and a midwife, Mrs Tomboy gave birth to a stillborn puppy:

“..being a bitch, about a finger long and having all its limbs.”

Bestiality was the usual explanation for deformed births of this kind, however Stalpart, drawing on the investigations of his brother, offered an alternative explanation. He penned this part in Latin, to keep it from “common readers” and to spare Mrs Tomboy further embarrassment:

“Her husband was a coarse, crude drunk, shameless and utterly inhuman… from time to time he took her from behind, threatening her with clubs and iron pipe so that she would have to comply…”

Elisabeth Tomboy, Stalpart said, became so convinced that she would conceive a dog that she did. This story was repeated (though never corroborated) by other early modern medical writers, as evidence of maternal impression.

Source: C. Stalpart van der Wiel, Hondert zeldzame aanmerhngen, zoo in de genees-als heelkunst, 1686. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1722: Joseph Moody gives spicy weather reports

Joseph Moody was born in York, Massachusetts (now in Maine) in 1700. Moody belonged to a prominent family: his father was a reverend, his great uncle a chief justice of Massachusetts. At age 14, Moody was sent off to attend Harvard. He graduated four years later and returned to York as the local schoolmaster.

Moody kept a diary for the duration of his adult life. Much of it is concerned with his courtships and marriage, work, his religious beliefs and cursory observations about the weather – but Moody’s chronicle also contains some quite frank references to masturbation. Many of these self-pleasuring episodes occurred after romantic flirtations with women. Several follow liaisons with his future wife, Lucy White.

In November 1721, Moody kissed and fondled a 17-year-old girl, the appropriately named Patience Came. He later wrote that “I defiled myself” after she had left. A sampling of similar entries from Moody’s diary follows:

Thursday July 19th 1722
This morning I got up pretty late. I defiled myself, though wide awake. Where will my unbridled lust lead me?

Wednesday November 28th 1722
…We called on Captain Allen. I sat quietly with my beloved. Certain people are here at midnight. I defiled myself.

Thursday February 28th 1722
Raw south wind at night. I lay in bed late… David Storer lodged with me. At first we talked obscenely. Thereafter I defiled myself.

Wednesday March 13th 1722
Raw, cold. Snow at night. I polluted myself without any foregoing lust, and from mere desire…

Thursday April 25th 1723
…I called on Mrs Harmon. I was in a measure, frightened by a thunder storm; nevertheless, when half awake, I polluted myself.

Wednesday June 12th 1723
Very hot. Fresh W. wind. After I had got up, I knowingly and intentionally defiled myself…

Saturday June 16th 1723
Cloudy and cool. My anxiety, as on several occasions before, brought on a diarrhea… Nonetheless, at night, while awake, I defiled myself.

Friday July 5th 1723
Cloudy and Cool, few drops of rain… I spent only one hour with my beloved. I did not defile myself.

Saturday August 31st 1723
Pretty Calm and Warm. Hazy… Last evening, lying in bed, I knowingly and intentionally defiled myself after I had looked into the girls’ chamber.

Monday April 13th 1724
I stayed up with my love, not without pleasure, but I indulged my desire too freely, and at night the semen flowed from me abundantly.

Monday July 6th 1724
Not hot. Flying clouds. N. W. Breeze. Last night, at first, I handled my member, planning as I thought, nothing evil. In the end, though, I defiled myself…

Moody married Lucy White in November 1724. In 1732 he became a pastor but became notoriously unstable, once delivering an entire sermon with his face covered by a handkerchief. He died in 1753.

Source: Diary of Joseph Moody, York, 1723-24. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1773: Mrs Goadby’s brothel is “laying in a stock of virgins”

Jane Goadby was an enterprising brothel-owner in 18th-century London. After working for several years as a run-of-the-mill bawd, Mrs Goadby travelled to France, where she spent weeks studying several Parisian brothels, courtesans and clients.

In Paris, Mrs Goadby was surprised to find the more successful establishments employed prostitutes trained in elocution, deportment, music and conversation. These brothels were not entirely for sex: they were also places where men could spend an afternoon or evening in the relaxed company of entertaining women. The drunkenness, bad language, fighting, abject groping and grimy decor common in English brothels were apparently absent from these venues.

Convinced brothels on the French model would flourish in London, Mrs Goadby acquired a stylish house on Berwick Street (1751) and furnished it in “an elegant style”.

Goadby then recruited “some first-rate fille de joys” and a physician to ensure they remained free from syphilis, consumption and other diseases. Her employees were outfitted in “the most sumptuous finery” and trained in the delicate skill of entertaining men of the upper classes. She pithily referred to her business as ‘the Nunnery’, to its employees as her ‘Nuns’, and to herself as ‘the Abbess’.

In February 1773, the Covent Garden Magazine advertised her business thus:

“Mrs Goadby, that celebrated Abbess, having fitted up an elegant Nunnery in Marlborough Street, is now laying in a stock of Virgins for the ensuing season.”

As might be anticipated, the prices at Mrs Goadby’s ‘nunnery’ were exorbitant – but her clientele was affluent, regular and appreciative so the money rolled in. Mrs Goadby expanded her premises twice and became wealthy enough to purchase a large house in the country, to which she retired around 1780.

Source: Various, inc. Covent Garden Magazine, February 1773. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1051: Dodgy clerics to be whipped, shaved, spat on and fed grain

Petrus Damiani was an influential Benedictine monk, born in Ravenna in the middle of the 11th century. Damiani was widely respected for his piety, devotion and self-discipline, as well as his attempts to eradicate clerical corruption.

Around 1051, Damiani wrote Liber Gomorrhianus or ‘Book of Gomorrah’, in effect an open plea to Pope Leo IX to do something about licentiousness and perverted behaviour among members of the clergy. Of particular concern to Damiani was the sexual mistreatment of boys by some monks and priests. In this extract he calls for stiff penalties for transgressors:

“A cleric or monk who seduces youths or young boys or is found kissing… is to be publicly flogged and lose his tonsure. When his hair has been shaved, his face is to be foully besmeared with spit and he is to be bound in iron chains for six months…”

Furthermore:

“He shall never again associate with youths in private conversation nor in the counselling of them. [And he should be] be denied bread but fed only barley, as whoever acts like a horse and a mule [should] not eat the food of men”.

Liber Gomorrhianus caused a stir until around 1062 when the original manuscript was ‘borrowed’ from Damiani by Pope Alexander II – who locked it away and refused to return it.

Source: Pietro Damiani, Liber Gomorrhianus, c.1051. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1704: English doctor solves large penis dilemma with a cork

Writing in 1704, English surgeon John Marten claimed that the “bigness of a man’s yard” seldom causes problems – “it very rarely happens that any woman complains of it”. Marten did report one case of marital sexual incompatibility, allegedly brought on by the husband’s excessively large penis:

“I knew a very lusty man that married a very small woman, and by means of yard being of almost the longest size, his wife could not suffer him… without a great deal of pain.”

The unhappy couple had been married for four years without painless intercourse or conception. They had consulted other physicians, who prescribed “styptic and astringent fomentations” to reduce the size of the offending organ, but these treatments had failed.

After examining both, Marten concluded that:

“..’twas the length of it that did the mischief… To remedy it I advised him… to make a hole through a piece of cork, lined with cotton on both sides, of about an inch-and-a-half in thickness, and put his yard through the hole, fastening the cork with strings round his waste (sic).”

According to Marten, his device worked perfectly: the couple reported a greatly improved sex life and conceived a child soon after. In 1709, five years after the publication of his book, Marten was prosecuted for producing obscene literature and trying to “corrupt the subjects of Our Lady the Queen”. The charges against him were dismissed.

Source: John Marten, Gonosologium Novum, or a New System of All the Secret Infirmities and Diseases: Natural, Accidental, and Venereal in Men and Women, 1704. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

c.79AD: Menstrual blood doubles as handy pesticide

Pliny the Elder, writing in the 1st century AD, lists the manifold dangers of menstrual blood – which can spoil meat, sour wine, dull sharp knives and send tame dogs mad. He also warns that men will die if they copulate with a menstruating woman during an eclipse:

“If the menstrual discharge coincides with an eclipse of the moon or sun, the evils resulting from it are irremediable… the congress with a woman [is] noxious [and will have] fatal effects for the man.”

Pliny does suggest harnessing menstruation for practical ends, such as eradicating pests from food crops:

“If a woman strips herself naked while she is menstruating and walks round a field, the caterpillars, worms, beetles and other vermin will fall from off the ears of corn… This discovery was first made in Cappadocia [where] it is the practice for women to walk through the middle of the fields with their garments tucked above the thighs.”

Source: Pliny the Elder, Natural History, c.79AD. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1932: Australian musician enjoys whipping, fish hooks in breasts

Percy Grainger was an Australian musician, best known for his esoteric and inventive compositions, in particular his popular arrangement of the English folk tune Country Gardens.

Something lesser known is that Grainger was also into sado-masochism and sexual activities involving violence and cruel fantasies. Grainger’s favourite hobby was whipping, both as a ‘giver’ and a ‘receiver’. He owned a large collection of leather whips of all sizes and often took them on tour.

Writing about his sexual proclivities in 1932, Grainger described himself as:

“..a sadist and a flagellant… my highest sexual delight is to whip a beloved woman’s body. Her screams, her struggles to evade the whip, the marks of the whip arising on her body, all give me a feeling of male power and exultation that swells my love and devotion towards my sweetheart a hundredfold, and makes our love-life more intense and impulsive.”

Grainger’s impulses were apparently worse in his youth. Again writing in the 1930s he recalled a recurring fantasy from his teens that involved:

“..sticking two fishhooks, slung on four pulleys, one into each of a woman’s breasts, and then pulley-raising the fishhooks till the weight of the woman’s body caused the fishhooks to rip thru (sic) the breast flesh…”

Source: Misc. letters and essays by Percy Grainger, including “Read this if Ella Grainger or Percy Grainger are found dead, covered with whip marks” (1932), “Notes of whip lust” (1948) and letter to Karen Holten, March 19th 1909. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1884: Masturbators cured with electric shocks to the genitals

Dr Joseph Howe was a professor of surgery at New York University and one of many 19th century specialists in ‘self-pollution’. He claimed to have had success ‘treating’ habitual masturbators with a course electric shocks to the genitals. The Howe method involved an electrode inserted into the urethra while the other was held behind the scrotum.

In this extract from an 1884 book, Howe claims to have cured a 29-year-old book-keeper, ‘J.S.’. of the “foul habit” with electricity:

“He had indulged in onanistic exercises during his school boy days… His memory was not so good as in former years and his ability to endure mental and physical labour comparatively small. He received applications of electricity every other day for two months, took cold water sponge baths and tonics… He was discharged at the end of the period mentioned and entered the marriage state, feeling well and competent to perform all his functions properly.”

Despite Howe’s claims, he admits there are some ‘lost causes’ for whom masturbation is a daily occurrence; they are “nearly always beyond the reach of moral or medical treatment”:

“Use the baths, tonics and electricity for a few weeks, and then if there is no good result, the patient should be castrated without delay, and the penis, pubes and perineum covered with cantharadal collodion… If these measures fail, I see no objection to removing the whole of the external genital apparatus.”

Source: Dr Joseph Howe, Excessive Venery, Masturbation and Continence, 1884. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1852: Dr Beach on satyriasis or nymphomania

Wooster Beach was a New York doctor who pioneered the use of natural and herbal remedies in the first half of the 19th century. He was also a prolific author of medical guidebooks. In one of his texts, published in 1852, Beach describes the symptoms and effects of satyriasis or “uterine fury”, more recently known as nymphomania.

According to Beach, this affliction is most common among:

“Virgins who are ripe for husbands; women living in gratification of their lusts and in luxury; widows or those who are married to frigid old men.”

At its worst, this “filthy disease” produces women who are:

“..seized with fury; they solicit all whom they meet to venereal embraces, and attack those that refuse with fists and nails. [They are] perpetually handling their privates with their wanton fingers, until they become maniac and are forced to be confined with chains.”

Beach’s suggested treatment for satyriasis involves a bland diet, regular doses of laxative, avoidance of the opposite sex and ice-cold applications to the genitals.

Source: Wooster Beach, The American Practice of Medicine, 1852. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

c.1390: Flatulence to blame for lusty monks

Written around the turn of the 14th century, the Italian medical text Breviarium Practice suggests that flatulence is the cause of lustful behaviour among members of the clergy, particularly monks:

“In different monasteries and religious places, one comes across numerous men who, sworn to chastity, are often tempted by Satan. The principal cause for this is that every day they eat food that leads to flatulence. This increases their desire for coitus and stiffens their member. That is why this passion is called satyriasis.”

The belief that male erections were fueled by ‘hot winds’ emanating from the bowels was quite common in the late Middle Ages.

Source: Cited in Opera Arnaldi de Villanova, 1504. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.