Impotence and suing for sex in eighteenth-century England.
OBJECTIVE
To explore the individual and social experiences and meanings of impotence in 18th-century England.


METHODS
Close reading and period contextualization of various primary source records about impotence, including legal documents from lawsuits for nullity of marriage by reason of impotence, bestselling medical texts, and cheap pornographic pamphlets was done.


RESULTS
Contemporary, humoral and mechanical medicine and physiology characterized impotence by various etiologies and patient presentations. This left room for laymen, and especially women, to diagnose and interpret the condition according to their own devices. A matter of public, as well as private, concern, impotence carried with it the meanings of failed masculinity, neglected civic responsibility, foreignness, and Catholicism.


CONCLUSIONS
Impotence in 18th-century England served as a catch-all diagnosis for sexual dysfunction and a vehicle through which to address anxieties about the stability of patriarchal power, female deceit, religion, and politics. Today, medicine, physiology, and the disease itself are very different, but the individual and social meanings of impotence remain influential and worthy of consideration.
Chubak
Barbara
B
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, USA. barbara@jhmi.edu
D004739:England; D007172:Erectile Dysfunction / Q000266:history*; D049671:History, 18th Century; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008393:Marriage / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*