Our attitudes about
have changed a lot over the years, so much so that we often see huge strides made towards equality in our lifetimes. So when you head back 300 years, you can bet that a lot of opinions are going to be a little outdated. What you may not have known is that some of the ideas thrown around were straight-up bonkers.
Recently, a rare 'sex manual' from 1720 was put up for auction, containing within it some truly bizarre beliefs from Georgian England. The book, which is also laced with elements of religion, old wives' tales and astrology, mostly focuses on reproduction, but the ideas it gives its readers are very strange indeed.
There are some that are kind of charming in their simplicity, such as the idea that women who want to have a boy should lie on their right side after sex, or on their left if they want a girl - but some are a little harder to pull off. For one, apparently men should be eating plenty of blackbirds and sparrows to "make the seed abound" (if you catch the drift).
And just to firmly remind you what century this was written in, it claims that men are "the wonder of the world, to whom all things are subordinate" and his seed should be seen as a "divine gift abundantly endued with vital spirit".
"The first edition of this book was published in 1684 and it was as good as banned until the 1960s," Jim Spencer, the books and manuscripts valuer at Hanson's Auctioneers, said. "There were several reasons for that."
"It includes woodcut illustrations of 'monsters' that 'are begot by Women's unnatural lying with Beasts' – an example being a woman 'generating with a dog'.
"There are several illustrations of beast-like creatures including a man sporting a bushy dog's tail and a monster being born in Ravenna, Italy, in 1512. This is blamed on 'filthy and corrupt affection'. But you have to bear in mind that this book was written when people were still being burnt for witchcraft in Georgian England."
This bizarre myth-making extends into how you can decide what your future son or daughter will look like, as Spencer explains:
"The book even claims parents' imaginations produce a child's features, and includes an illustration of a 'maid all hairy and an infant that was born black by the imagination of the parents'.
"In fact, if women cast their eyes on ill-shaped bodies, 'the force of imagination' could produce a child with 'a hairy lip, wry mouth or great blubber-lips'.
"Instead, during sex woman were urged to 'earnestly look upon the man and fix her mind upon him.' Then 'the child will resemble its father'."
The ways in which the book talks about puberty and its effects on women are pretty out-there too, as apparently when "their natural purgations begin to flow", the lack of blood "fires up their minds to venery (sexual indulgence)". But it's not just puberty that women in this period had to fear, but certain foods too.
"If they eat hard, fat things and spices, the body becomes more and more heated," the book reads, "whereby the desire to veneral embraces is very great".
Things don't get much better once you're
, either. We all know that pregnant women can have strong cravings for certain foods, but did you know that this includes "coals, rubbish, chalk, hob-nails, leather, man's flesh and horse flesh"? Thankfully we've come a little way since the day this was published.
