Non-Natural Love: Coitus, Desire, and Hygiene in Medieval and Early Modern Spain

Abstract

This chapter explores the representation of love and coitus in the vernacular medical writing from late medieval and early modern Spain. It points to the way nonprofessionals exploited, conflated, or ignored conflicting hygienic imperatives that emerged from medical works on love and coitus. Non-natural hygiene required individuals to control six exogenous phenomena: air and environment, food and drink, motion and rest, sleep and vigilance, the excretion of superfluous matter, and control of the emotions. Love, however was a completely different hygienic concern and pertained to the more elusive category of movements of the soul, phenomena that traditionally associate with the emotions. The chapter examines each of these in their nonnatural context followed by a discussion of the way these distinct hygienic imperatives converged in popular thinking about amorous desire.Keywords:coitus; desire; hygiene; love; Spain