…wives are more healthful then Widowes or Virgins, because they are refreshed with the mans seed, and ejaculate their own”

(Fonteyn, 1696, p. 4).

Medical texts wrote about sex and the female body in order to regulate this act to the benefit of procreation and healthy pregnancies. There is some tension between the understood necessity of this act and the perceived shame inherent to it.

Present mostly in our 17th century works is the mention of intercourse and its requirement for ‘mutual pleasure’ to ensure a successful conception. Sexual intercourse, or copulation, was never explicitly discussed in our sources and most of the language used was metaphorical or clinical. Copulation was also viewed as an act done to engender children, and not promoted outside of that intention. When women became pregnant they were to abstain from intercourse to not damage the foetus, and their ‘husbands’ were admonished for not leaving her alone.

 Culpeper conforms to the idea that “copulation doth [women] good” (1651/1662, p. 21). However, he urges women not to “allow copulation in times of their terms, least any monstrous Birth should be [formed]” (Culpeper, 1651/1662, p. 153). Sharp repeats this information in her discussion on monstrous births, writing that these conceptions occur due to the presence of “menstruous blood and the disposition of the Matrix” (1671, p. 117).

For a full breakdown of copulation, we turn to Mauriceau:

This ‘Pleasure’ and ‘Desire’ to copulate is an Early Modern acknowledgement of female sexuality, alive and present in medical texts. Barret focuses on the changes that the female body undergoes during sex, writing that “the Clitoris encreases to an over great measure […] in the act of Venery” (Barett, 1699, p. 38). We can also trace this idea that female pleasure is required for procreation in The Midwives Book, both from Sharp’s description of the “wings [that compass the Clitioris give] great pleasure in Copulation” (Sharp, 1671, p. 42) and from her elaboration that the lack of mutual pleasure in sex is a reason for which “women seldom or never conceive when they are ravished” (1671, p. 99). She also connects sexual intercourse with changes to the physical female body, where “too frequent use makes the womb slippery” (1671, p. 180). Pleasure in copulation surfaces in A General Treatise where the female mind can be “a great hindrance […] at the time of Copulation” (Pechey, 1696, p. 54) if there is a lack of mutual affection between the couple, suggesting positive inter-marital relations were important to society.