'Bewitched in their privities' : Medical Responses to Infertility Witchcraft in Early Modern England

Abstract

For much of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries medical writers accepted that both infertility and sexual dysfunction, which were intimately connected disorders, in men and women could be caused by the devil and witchcraft. Across the period there were only two published cases of infertility witchcraft in England. Although this suggests that discussions about infertility bewitchment were a mostly theoretical exercise, it is apparent that readers of medical texts believed that witchcraft could be to blame for infertility and that medical writers encouraged these readers to respond to this ailment with natural remedies, alongside prayer. In particular, medical writers emphasised the efficacy of aphrodisiacs in curing sterility of this nature