The worldwide prevalence of erectile dysfunction is estimated to impact 20% of men. The evaluation of the male with erectile dysfunction can serve as an opportunity to screen men for a variety of important cardiovascular risk factors. A typical visit consists of a detailed and comprehensive patient history and a focal physical exam. Patients should be put at ease and a therapeutic relationship established to move forward with a shared decision-making process regarding treatment. Considerations during the evaluation should be toward screening for underlying risks factors for erectile dysfunction, a detailed sexual history, utilization of validated questionnaires, determination of lifestyle and social history factors, basic laboratory testing, and a psychological assessment. The goal of the evaluation is to identify the underlying causes of erectile dysfunction that will allow the clinician to develop the best therapeutic strategy.

This chapter investigates how Donne’s ‘To His Mistress Going to Bed’ and Thomas Nashe’s Choice of Valentines make cultural use of Amores 1.5 and 3.7. Framing the analysis through articulations of power and impotence, we see how literary representations of sexual performance or failure reveal covert engagements with questions of politicised myth-making and story-telling. Sex is read here as a vocabulary which has a potent place in the support and subversion of the Augustan and Elizabethan regimes.