Aeon magazine is just a grand cornucopia of interesting facts. My knowledge of medieval sexual practices has been doubled if not trebled by just reading the one article I’ve quoted here. :)
It is fascinating how well we actually did without the scientific method to back up our ‘facts’/ Admittedly there is some wack-a-loonery to be had when it came to medieval medicine, but sometimes they got it right (for the wrong reasons usually though). Katherine Harvey writes:
“Although the most famous cases of death by celibacy relate to male clerics, women were, in their own way, equally vulnerable to this medical problem. According to contemporary medical theory, both sexes produced seed that was necessary for conception – and just like semen, the female seed needed to be expelled from the body during regular sexual intercourse. In a woman who was not sexually active, the seed would be retained within her body; as it built up, it would cause suffocation of the womb. The symptoms of this condition included fainting and shortness of breath, and in the most serious cases it could be fatal. For women, as for men, the best way to avoid death by celibacy was to get married and have regular, Church-sanctioned intercourse with one’s spouse. If this was not possible, there were a range of useful remedies, including restricted diets and vinegar suppositories. Some physicians, however, recommended a rather startling alternative: masturbation.
Unsurprisingly, the medieval Church took a rather dim view of this practice: most medieval penitentials (handbooks for confessors) identified masturbation as a sin, and imposed heavy penances for it – typically around 30 days of fasting, but sometimes as much as two years. On the other hand, masturbation was usually placed towards the bottom of the hierarchy of sexual sins, and confessors were permitted to make some allowance for those (including unmarried youths) who lacked another outlet for their desires. This caveat reflects the Church’s awareness of contemporary medical teachings: it was impossible to ignore the fact that medical authorities from Galen onwards had recommended masturbation as a form of preventative medicine for both men and women.
Later medieval physicians were rarely as explicit as Galen and other ancients. Late medieval medical books rarely mentioned male masturbation. For women lacking regular sexual relations, they offered a variety of treatments, including, stimulation of the genitals (either by the patient or by a medical professional). Such treatments were particularly suitable for women who were suffering from suffocation of the womb. If such a woman could not marry (for example, because she was a nun), and if her life was in genuine danger, then genital massage might be the only solution, and could even be performed without sin. The 14th-century English physician John of Gaddesden thought that such a woman should try to cure her condition through exercise, foreign travel and medication. But ‘if she has a fainting fit, the midwife should insert a finger covered with oil of lily, laurel or spikenard into her womb, and move it vigorously about’.”
It must have been quite the controversy as the medical solution meant you were going to hell. It makes me glad that we can now laugh at people who use terms like “the devil’s doorbell” earnestly. :)
6 comments
December 31, 2018 at 6:40 am
john zande
Didn’t this “idea” live on into the 20th Century? If I remember correctly, vibrators were prescribed treatment for something, hysteria, I think.
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December 31, 2018 at 7:22 am
Bob Browning
Hilarious. “where’s Sister Mary?” “She’s having a treatment w the priest… again.”
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December 31, 2018 at 11:08 am
The Arbourist
@ JZ
The works of sexologist Alfred Kinsey during the 1940s and 1950s, most notably the Kinsey Reports, insisted that masturbation was an instinctive behaviour for both males and females, citing the results of Gallup Poll surveys indicating how common it was in the United States. Some critics of this theory held that his research was biased and that the Gallup Poll method was redundant for defining “natural behavior”.
In the US masturbation has not been a diagnosable condition since DSM II (1968).[38] The American Medical Association consensually declared masturbation as normal in 1972.[39]
Thomas Szasz states the shift in scientific consensus[40][41][42] as “Masturbation: the primary sexual activity of mankind. In the nineteenth century it was a disease; in the twentieth, it’s a cure.”[43]
In the 1980s Michel Foucault was arguing masturbation taboo was “rape by the parents of the sexual activity of their children”:
To intervene in this personal, secret activity, which masturbation was, does not represent something neutral for the parents. It is not only a matter of power, or authority, or ethics; it’s also a pleasure.[44]
In 1994, when the Surgeon General of the United States, Dr. Joycelyn Elders, mentioned as an aside that it should be mentioned in school curricula that masturbation was safe and healthy, she was forced to resign,[45] with opponents asserting that she was promoting the teaching of how to masturbate.
Wank Week was a controversial season of television programming that was due to be broadcast in the United Kingdom by Channel 4, expected to consist of a series of three documentary programmes about masturbation. However, plans to broadcast it were cancelled in March 2007.[46]
Depends where you live I guess JZ. The US is still fairly puritanical.
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December 31, 2018 at 1:50 pm
john zande
Tis’ an odd pocket, to be sure.
Happy New Years, Arb!
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December 31, 2018 at 1:51 pm
The Arbourist
@ JZ
Happy New Year’s JZ. Its been a rough 2018, let’s hope 2019 is marginally better. :)
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December 31, 2018 at 1:53 pm
john zande
If we don’t lose any of our animals, it will be.
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