Thesis ID: CBB612482789

Sexual Medicine in the Roman Empire (2022)

unapi

This dissertation investigates the relationship between sexual intercourse and medicine during the Roman imperial period (c. I-IV CE). Whereas previous scholarship has tended to view that relationship through the lenses of historical progress and/or ethics, I adopt the concept of sexual medicine as an organizational scheme in order to better analyze what ancient medical texts say about the body's sexual functions (such as desire, arousal, and the ability to experience pleasure). Rather than affirming an influential narrative in which imperial medical thinkers developed austere attitudes towards sex, I demonstrate that ethicizing interpretations misportray the relevance of intercourse to medicine during the Roman Empire and unduly narrow the available evidence to dietetic discussions. I argue that the ability to engage in sex was deemed worthy of preservation and therapeutic intervention whenever compromised because sex was considered an integral component of health in Greco-Roman medicine. Moreover, I show that imperial authors devoted considerable attention to sexual diseases, infertility, genital dysfunction, and the use of materia medica to enhance sexual performance. These underexplored topics are dealt with at length in their respective chapters.

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Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB612482789/

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Authors & Contributors
Carlo Gelmetti
Giovanni Lo Scocco
Shinnar, Shulamit
Yilmaz, Secil
Baron, Beth
Franco Rongioletti
Concepts
Sexually transmitted diseases
Medicine
Sexuality
Sexual hygiene
Skin diseases
Sexual behavior
Time Periods
19th century
Ancient
20th century
18th century
17th century
Early modern
Places
Italy
Roman Empire
South Africa
Germany
East Asia
Weimar Republic (1919-1933)
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