Aphrodisiacs, Fertility, and Medicine in Early Modern England, by Jennifer Evans, Woodbridge, The Boydell Press for The Royal Historical Society, 2014, x + 215 pp., £50.00 (hardback), ISBN 978-0-86193-324-2

Abstract

Aphrodisiacs, Fertility, and Medicine in Early Modern England, by Jennifer Evans, Woodbridge, The Boydell Press for The Royal Historical Society, 2014, x + 215 pp., £50.00 (hardback), ISBN 978-0-86193-324-2The subject of aphrodisiacs often emphasizes passion and sexuality in isolation; pleasure and intimacy are provoked for their own sakes. Evans challenges this perspective regarding the use of aphrodisiacs in early modern England, demonstrating instead that these stimulants are evidence of the fundamental relationship between desire and conception, and serve as evidence for deep social concerns about fertility and children. She argues that provoking pleasure was in itself a key element of increasing fertility due to the tight linkage between emotions and the early modern body, and to beliefs about the necessity of arousal for conception. This thesis allows a broad reexamination of the role of aphrodisiacs in society, and in so doing questions many of the assumptions that inform historical literature on fertility and sexual desire. The task is at times herculean, as Evans balances multiple elements of investigation in her reconstruction of sexual desire and reproduction. Her argument encompasses the wide range of coexisting and occasionally contradicting medical beliefs in early modern England, including humoural, chemical, sympathetic, and empirical frameworks. She also utilizes a broad timeframe, demonstrating continuity and change between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. In order to demonstrate the social relevance of the medical texts, Evans also utilizes a range of sources to refer both to medical and personal concerns which informed the significance of aphrodisiac treatments.Evans devotes her opening chapter to explaining her source material, which is comprised primarily of medical texts but also engages in more popular or lay literature such as erotica, ballads, and household collections. This establishes the grounds for her argument about the widespread access to knowledge about aphrodisiacs, demonstrating the persistence of old ideas alongside new medical theories, and the absence of gendered ideas about the use of aphrodisiacs. In turn, this foundation allows her to argue that the information in medical texts engaged with and reflected popular beliefs about reproduction and aphrodisiacs. Following this, the book charts how aphrodisiacs were understood in early modern England through attention to the construction of reproductive bodies (Chapter 2), and the definition of aphrodisiacs and explanations of medical explanations for their function and efficacy (Chapter 3). The final two chapters demonstrate the pervasive nature of aphrodisiacs: first demonstrating their role as a cure for witchcraft rather than magical cures, and second exploring the relationship between aphrodisiacs and the reproductive acts of menstruation and miscarriage. …