Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Note on the text
- Glossary
- Introduction
- 1 Texts, readers and markets
- 2 The reproductive and the infertile body
- 3 Provoking lust and promoting conception
- 4 Enchanted privities and provokers of lust
- 5 Aphrodisiacs, miscarriage and menstruation
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
4 - Enchanted privities and provokers of lust
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 November 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Note on the text
- Glossary
- Introduction
- 1 Texts, readers and markets
- 2 The reproductive and the infertile body
- 3 Provoking lust and promoting conception
- 4 Enchanted privities and provokers of lust
- 5 Aphrodisiacs, miscarriage and menstruation
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Readers of the English edition of Mattheus Gottfried Purmann's surgical treatise (1706) were regaled with the story of a twenty-eight old year clothier, whose penis had swelled with water, making it difficult for him to urinate and to engage in sexual activity with his new wife. Purmann wrote of this unfortunate man that ‘the Patient would not be perswaded but his Wife had Bewitch'd him’. He described how the patient received treatment that released the water from his swollen genitalia and returned everything to its natural proportion:
Thus he continued three Weeks together, and as it may be guessed made use of his Young Wife as formerly; whereupon the swelling returned as before, and to add to his Affliction, he was again tormented with the apprehension that his Wife had bewitched him, and would not be perswaded to the contrary, by all the Arguments we could use against so Foolish an Opinion.
The clothier died after receiving further treatment. Although this observation was ostensibly about a watery swelling, it is clear that this patient turned to witchcraft to explain his inability to engage in sexual intercourse – his resumption of these activities following his first treatment suggests that he had been unable to do this prior to seeing the surgeon. What is also evident from this case is that the medical practitioners from whom he sought help did not acknowledge bewitchment as a reason for his ailments.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Aphrodisiacs, Fertility and Medicine in Early Modern England , pp. 131 - 159Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2014