Early Modern

“She was both Poxt and Clapt together”: Confessions of Sexual Secrets in Eighteenth-Century Venereal Cases

“She was both Poxt and Clapt together”: Confessions of Sexual Secrets in Eighteenth-Century Venereal Cases

By Early Modern, Medicine and Sexuality 1 comment

Olivia Weisser Furtive trysts. Regretful dalliances. Fleeting affairs. Sexual secrets were nothing new in the 1700s, but confessing them to a doctor became surprisingly common in published medical cases of venereal disease. In one instance, a woman consulted a surgeon for a common reproductive ailment known as “the whites.” She […]

Bestiality in a Time of Smallpox

By Early Modern, Medicine and Sexuality 0 comments

Rob Boddice The news is rife with fearful accounts of disease — influenza is epidemic and measles is re-emergent — and debates about how to inoculate against them. Opponents of vaccination, meanwhile, are fanning the flames of fear. Measles, for example, is entirely preventable, but remains among us because of […]

Carnivalesque #107

By Early Modern, Medieval 0 comments

Katherine Harvey Welcome to Carnivalesque #107! Carnivalesque is an interdisciplinary blog carnival dedicated to pre-modern history (to c. 1800 C.E.), and NOTCHES is delighted to be hosting the final edition of 2014.  If you are already a NOTCHES reader, then fear not, there is plenty of material on the history […]

‘A Temporary Member’: ‘Hermaphrodites’ and Sexual Identity in Early Modern Russia

By Early Modern, Medicine and Sexuality 4 comments

Marianna Muravyeva Russian history of sexuality is very problematic. We have yet a lot to discover about same-sex relationships, sexual variations and attitudes to various sexual practices on the Russian pathway to modernity. The little we know suggests that one’s sexual identity was subject to close scrutiny from the community, the […]

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