We may be sure, a woman answering this description, is extremely lecherous; and one who, in the act of coition, fulfils her desire greatly to the content and pleasure of the many having carnal knowledge of her ... Let me add that the libidinous woman smells not so rank when she perspires as other women do.
Hefty and breastless: mmm
Fang Nei Chi (Records of the Bedchamber), Sui Dynasty (AD 590–618)
A man should select for his sexual partners young women whose breasts have not yet developed and who are well covered with flesh. They should have hair as fine as silk and small eyes in which the pupil and the white are clearly separated. Face and body should be smooth and speech harmonious. All her joints should be well covered and her bones should not be large. She should either have no pubic and axillary hair at all or such hair should be fine and smooth.
Is she a virgin? Four tests
Albertus Magnus, De Secretis Mulierum (The Secrets of Women) (c. 1478)
If you want to determine if a virgin has been corrupted, grind up the flowers of a lily and the yellow particles that are between the flowers, and give her this substance to eat. If she is corrupt, she will urinate immediately.
Another way to tell is to have her urinate on a certain kind of grass which is commonly known as ‘papel de mane’. If it becomes dry she is corrupt. You can also take the fruit of a lettuce and place it in front of her nose, and she will urinate immediately.
The signs of chastity are as follows: shame, modesty, fear, a faultless gait and speech, casting eyes down before men and the acts of men. Some women are so clever, however, that they know how to resist detection by these signs, and in this case a man should turn to their urine. The urine of virgins is clear and lucid, sometimes white, sometimes sparkling. Corrupted women have a muddy urine because of the rupture of the aforementioned skin, and male sperm appear at the bottom of this urine.
There are still other ways to tell if a virgin has been corrupted. If a girl’s breasts point downwards, this is a sign that she has been corrupted, because at the moment of impregnation the menses move upwards to the breasts and the added weight causes them to sag. If a man has sexual intercourse with a woman and experiences no sore on his penis and no difficulty of entry, this is a sign that she was first corrupted. However, a true sign of the woman’s virginity is if it is difficult to perform the act and it causes a sore on his member.
If it’s too late, how to restore virginity
The Book of Women’s Love, a medieval Hebrew women’s health guide
Take myrtle leaves and boil them well with water until only a third part remains; then, take nettles without prickles and boil them in this water until a third remains. She must wash her secret parts with this water in the morning and at bedtime, up to nine days.
And if it’s an emergency
Take nutmeg and grind to a powder; put it in that place and virginity will be restored immediately.
From the early 1700s onwards, the innocent practice of self-love became synonymous with crippling illnesses, moral decay and hideous death. Why?
We can thank an anonymous quack from about 1710 for first pointing the finger of suspicion at the hairy palm of lone vice. Whoever the author was, snappy titles were not their strong point. Their pamphlet was called Onania, or the heinous sin of self-pollution, And in all its frightful consequences, in both sexes, considered with physical and spiritual advice to those who have already injur’d themselves by this abominable practice. And seasonable admonition to the youth of the nation [of both sexes] and whose tuition they are under, whether parents, guardians, masters or mistresses. In it, the author simply invented a new cause of widespread diseases by making a spurious connection between masturbation and the biblical story of Onan.
In Solitary Sex: a cultural history of masturbation, the historian Thomas Laqueur alleges that Onania’s author was an amateur doctor and surgeon called Dr Marten (not he of footwear fame). Once Marten had invented the scourge of Onanism-related illnesses, claims Laqueur, he started to offer a range of steeply priced cures, such as ‘strengthening tincture’ and ‘prolific powder’. If that is true, it makes Marten an early pioneer of the widespread modern pharmaceutical company marketing trick of creating a new disease, scaring people about it in the press, and then launching (fortuitously) a costly cure. Newly minted health problems such as Social Anxiety Disorder and Information Fatigue Syndrome may thus be merely latter-day versions of masturbation.
The biblical Onan gets a bad press from here onwards. It’s not justified: in the Old Testament story, he was instructed by God to impregnate the widow of his recently dead brother – an ancient Hebrew tradition that aimed to ensure there were family heirs. Onan wasn’t keen on perpetuating his brother’s bloodline, so he pulled out of his sister-in-law at the last minute. God struck him dead ‘for spilling his seed on the ground’ but he had committed coitus interruptus, not masturbation. Society was not prepared to let the facts ruin a good scare story, though, and masturbation mania swiftly began to take off. Marten’s pamphlet became wildly popular, disseminating the belief across Europe that Onanism was the cause of diseases ranging from tuberculosis to third-stage syphilis. By 1750, it had been published in 19 editions and sold 38,000 copies.
Soon came the copycats. In 1717, a hugely popular free handout, Practical Schemes for the Secret Disease and Broken Constitutions, was published with a new section on self-abuse by the most popular contemporary advisor on painkillers in Great Britain, the self-styled Mr Anodyne Necklace. He subsequently published similar rants: The Crime of Onan, Eromania and a further follow-up, Eromania; on the crimes of those two unhappy brothers Er and Onan. Other publishers’ titles included Onania displayd, in which the word Onanism was originally coined.
In 1758, Samuel Tissot, a Swiss doctor, threw more fuel on the fire by publishing, L’Onanisme, ou dissertation physique sur les maladies produites par la masturbation, which, through its hundreds of editions, variations and imitators spread further fear of the evils of self-pleasure and ‘postmasturbatory disease’ throughout the Continent. He argued from the perspective of ‘medical science’ that the unnatural loss of semen weakened mind and body and led to insanity. The book was still in print as recently as 1905. Along with Marten’s work, Tissot’s writings moved like some terrible contagion across the Atlantic to America. Their influence there, as we shall see, was of another magnitude entirely.
Loose Women
Blondes
Giovanni Sinibaldi, Rare Verities, the Cabinet of Venus Unlock’d (1658)
ALL women are Lascivious, but auburn blondes the most ... A little straight forehead denotes an unbridled appetite in Lust.
Actors’ wives
Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana (3rd century), translated by Sir Richard F. Burton and F.F. Arbuthnot (1883)
The following are the women who are easily gained over:
Women who stand at the doors of their houses
Women who are always Looking out on the street
Women who sit chatting in their neighbour’s house
A woman who is always staring at you