\u201cWhen he came home she gave him Kisses, It\u2019s an amusing image: the guilty wife feeding her cuckolded husband with treats intended to \u201ckindle Cupid\u2019s fire\u201d \u2013 stoke amorous affection and increase arousal \u2013 to make him enamoured anew and even, perhaps, more sexually appealing. But it\u2019s her choice of foods that is most interesting: a taste of the diverse range of putative aphrodisiacs in early modern England.<\/p>\n Caudle, a warm drink of thin gruel mixed with wine or ale and sweetened or spiced, was believed to be arousing, as was sweet-posset, another mildly alcoholic confection. But the array of aphrodisiacs also included some surprises. Along with produce from kitchen garden and hedgerow (such as parsnips, carrots and nettles), warming spices including cinnamon, anise seed and coriander were high on the list. So were birds like pheasants and sparrows, as well as animal genitalia \u2013 the pizzle (penis) and testicles of bulls, boars, goats and stags. Yet, perhaps most surprising was the belief that flatulent foods such as beans and pulses increased libido.<\/p>\n For early modern men and women, though, these foods were more than just sexual curiosities. They were inherently understood to be treatments for infertility, not just stimulants for increasing arousal.<\/p>\n This understanding drew upon the medical idea that sexual desire and pleasure were fundamental to fertility \u2013 without them, conception was unlikely to occur, not least because men and women would be less likely to engage in intercourse. As the early 18th-century surgeon and medical writer John Marten argued: \u201cGod Almighty has\u2026endured each [sex] with natural Instincts, prompting them to the use thereof with desire, in order to perpetuate the Species, by producing new Creatures to supply the room of those who are gone; without which desire, what rational Creature would have taken delight in so filthy, so contemptible and base thing as Venery [sexual intercourse] is?\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Aphrodisiacs were believed to act in several different ways. They could heat the body; they could provide nutrition for the production of seed (sperm); and they could provide salt, to make the seed more titillating. Pulses, beans and other flatulent foods were thought to mainly affect men, and to function by creating wind and inflating the body.<\/p>\n Angus McLaren, a historian of reproduction, noted that in the early modern period men were frequently recommended flatulent foods such as apples to stimulate lust. Audrey Eccles, in her work on Tudor and Stuart obstetrics and gynaecology, identified these as a category of stimulants widely known as \u2018windy meats\u2019.<\/p>\n Medical authors of this era explained that erection of the male genitalia was caused by a combination of factors: blood, imagination, muscles, pressure, seed and wind. Helkiah Crooke\u2019s 1616 book, Mikrokosmographia: A Description of the Body of Man,<\/em> vividly invoked the roles of blood, spirits and wind in this process: \u201cWhen as in venerious appetites, the bloud & the spirits do in great quantity assemble themselves out of the veines and arteries, that member is as it were a gutte filled with winde, presently swelling and growing hard.\u201d<\/p>\n Though Crooke used wind as a metaphor for the biological processes occurring during arousal, he also noted later in his treatise that \u201cthe efficient cause [of an erection] is heate, spirites and winde, which fill and distend\u201d the hollow parts of the penis. Medical writers agreed that foods releasing wind into the body enabled men to get and sustain an erection.<\/p>\n This was important not just for the act itself, but also for ensuring that impregnation resulted. Medical doctrine explained that male seed was potent and fertile because it was hot, as well as being spirituous and salty. The heat of the seed was maintained during intercourse because it remained insulated inside the man\u2019s body until it was placed directly into the womb or neck of the womb.<\/p>\n As Alessandro Massaria\u2019s medical book for women from the turn of the 17th century explained: \u201cAnother cause of barrenness, by the defect of the yard [penis], is too much weakness and tenderness thereof, so that it is not strongly enough erected, to inject the seed into the womb; for the strength and stiffness of the yard, very much conduces to conception, by reason of the forcible injection of the humane seed into the womb.\u201d<\/p>\n In other words, more wind meant a stiffer erection, more direct placement of seed and\u00a0a better chance of conception.<\/p>\n Wind also made seed more stimulating and more potent. Medical writers asserted that seed titillated and irritated the sensitive skin of the reproductive organs as it passed through them, causing arousal.<\/p>\n And in his Secret Miracles of Nature<\/em> (1559), L\u00e6vinus Lemnius explained that seed was made from the \u201cwindy superfluity of blood\u201d and that foods that \u201cwill make men lusty\u201d should create \u201cplenty of seed, and a force of\u00a0a flatulent spirit, whereby the seed may be driven forth into the Matrix [womb].\u201d So wind enhanced both the amount and potency of the seed and the function of the male reproductive organs.<\/p>\n Unlike categories of aphrodisiacs recommended for consumption by both men and women, these \u2018windy meats\u2019 were promoted only for men. In fact, wind and flatulence were thought to be particularly damaging to women.<\/p>\n Philip Barrough\u2019s 16th-century medical treatise warned that \u201cwindinesse ingendered in the wombe, doth let the fertilitie or conception, & causeth barennesse\u201d. Jane Sharp, 17th-century author of the first female-authored midwifery manual, suggested that women should take juniper berries every morning to prevent wind from collecting in the womb and damaging fertility.<\/p>\n Beans and pulses, particularly chickpeas, were among a host of foods identified by early modern medical authors as \u2018windy meats\u2019. Barrough, for example, argued that when a man could not fulfil his marital duties (sexually satisfy his wife and make her a mother) \u201cwindie meates are good for him, as be chiche peason, beanes, scallions [onions], leekes, the roote and seed of persneppes, pine nuttus, sweet almonds\u2026 and other such like\u201d.<\/p>\n The English translation of Jacques Ferrand\u2019s 1623 treatise Erotomania<\/em> similarly listed various foods he believed would, through their heat and flatulence, provoke lust, including soft eggs, pine nuts, pistachios, carrots, parsnips, onions, oysters, chestnuts and chickpeas.<\/p>\n Herbals produced by botanical writers offered similar ideas. John Parkinson\u2019s Theatrum Botanicum<\/em> of 1640 stated that: \u201cCicers [chickpeas], as Galen saith, are no lesse windy meate than Beanes, but yet nourish more, they provoke venery, and is thought to increase sperme.\u201d<\/p>\n Another flatulent food described by botanical treatises as an aphrodisiac was the aubergine, or \u2018mad apple\u2019. \u201cThey breed much windinesse, and thereby peradventure bodily lust,\u201d commented Parkinson. Likewise, William Salmon wrote in the early 18th century that \u201cthey yield but little Nourishment, and breed much Wind, whereby \u2019tis possible they may provoke\u00a0Bodily Lust\u201d.<\/p>\n Read more on the history of food<\/a>:<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p><\/div> However, not all medical writers agreed that \u2018windy meats\u2019 boosted fertility. Even Lemnius stated that: \u201cSome of our lascivious women will say, that such men that trouble their wives to no purpose, do thunder, but there follows no rain, they do not water the inward ground of the matrix. They have their veins puffed up with wind, but there wants seed.\u201d<\/p>\n This insinuated that wind, though allowing men to engage in sexual activity, did not enhance the quality of a man\u2019s seed and,\u00a0thus, did not improve fertility.<\/p>\n Similarly, a late 17th\u2011century medical tract by Swiss physician Th\u00e9ophile Bonet confidently dismissed windy meats, stating: \u201cIt is commonly reported of Aphrodisiacks, that Flatus or wind is necessary to Venery:\u00a0but though in Boys erection or distension of the Penis may seem from Flatus, and these may concur by accident, yet they cannot nor ought not to be reckoned among Aphrodisiacks; those things indeed that excite the Spirits stir up Venery, and so make the Seed turgid, but so do not those things that breed or excite wind.\u201d<\/p>\n Bonet, again, did not discount the idea that wind could cause the penis to swell, but observed that \u2018windy meats\u2019 did not improve the quality of a man\u2019s seed, so did not deserve to be classified as sexual stimulants.<\/p>\n These criticisms became more common as the period progressed and, by the 18th century, windy meats had lost their prestige. New understandings of the anatomy of the penis revealed that wind did not inflate the penis or enhance male potency and attention shifted to the role muscles and blood flow played in sexual abilities.<\/p>\n For early modern men and women, though, these foods were more than just sexual curiosities. They were inherently understood to be treatments for infertility <\/blockquote> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n<\/div>
Windy meats<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Beans and pulses, particularly chickpeas, were among a host of foods identified by early modern medical authors as \u2018windy meats’ <\/blockquote> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n<\/div>
![\""Photo\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2019\/11\/171.GettyImages-856791582-9db14a5-e1573054007370.jpg?quality=45&resize=556,556"\" "\\"\"Why\\"")
<\/div><\/div> <\/div> <\/section>Thunder but no rain<\/strong><\/h3>\n