Men's Sexual Health in Early Modern England

Abstract

How did men cope with sexual health issues in early modern England? This vivid and engaging history investigates how sexual, reproductive, and genitourinary conditions were understood between 1580 and 1740. Drawing on medical sources and personal testimonies it reveals how men responded to bouts of ill health and their relationships with the medical practitioners tasked with curing them. In doing so, the book restores men’s health to medical histories of reproduction demonstrating how men’s sexual self-identity was bound to their health. Charting genitourinary conditions across the life cycle, the book illustrates how fertility and potency were key to medical understandings of men’s health. Men utilised networks of care to help them with supposedly embarrassing and shameful conditions like hernias, venereal disease, bladder stones, and testicular injuries. The book thus offers a historical voice to modern calls for men to be alert to, and open about, their own bodily health.