Sexperts:
Amorous Antics
of Dubious Docs
Throughout the
Centuries
by
Barry Baldwin
(Reprinted
with the kind
permission of:
Stitches,
The Journal of
Medical Humour)
(From
Brian Johnston's
I Say, I Say,
I Say: A young
woman said to
her dentist, I
don't know which
is worse, having
a tooth done or
having a baby.
Well, he said,
make up your mind
before I adjust
the chair.) Greek
doctors were a
randy lot. Otherwise,
Hippocrates would
not have devoted
space in his Oath
to promoting chastity
in physicians
and the ban on
taking sexual
advantage of their
patients, female
or male. The Oath
is taken to Apollo
- how many modern
medics actually
believe in this
deity, one of
the most bisexually
libidinous of
Olympians, a suitable
role model?
Sexual misdemeanours
helped account
for Hippocrates'
lament in his
Canon that medicine
had become the
most disreputable
of the professions,
the root cause
being that its
practitioners
were not subject
to malpractice
penalties. This
may console modern
ones as they gloomily
shell out their
insurance premiums.
Doctors presumably
ignored their
Master's statement
in his Aphorisms
(whence our word)
that young men
only get gout
after intercourse.
Still, he had
more encouraging
advice for geriatrics
in cold climates:
"sexual intercourse
should be more
frequent in winter,
especially for
older men"
- as a sexagenarian
in Canada, I'm
happier to follow
this rather than
Hesiod's instruction
to avoid your
wife in summer
because she is
then too lecherous.
Pliny rants about
Roman doctors'
adulteries in
high places, e.g.
Eudemus with the
dowager Livia
and Vettius Valens
with the empress
Messalina. In
our age, he would
have been sniffing
around the physicians
of Diana and Fergie.
Martial penned
this cutting epigram
on the folly of
competing with
your doctor in
a love triangle:
When patient and
doctor want the
same wife,
This is what befalls:
The doctor wins
by using his knife,
The patient loses
his balls.
The
latter would be
unconsoled by
Hippocrates' assurance
that eunuchs suffer
neither gout nor
baldness. What,
though, would
the Father of
Medicine make
of the journal
Pediatrics' (July
2000) labelling
of ambiguous genitalia
as "a social
emergency?"
Another glimpse
of the Roman doctor's
erotic role is
afforded by this
Pompeian graffito
extolling a gladiator's
macho image: "Crescens
is a real doctor,
he takes care
of the morning
girls, the night
girls, and all
the others."
One item in the
ancient jokebook
Philogelos has
an onlooker call
to a doctor massaging
a girl, "Stay
on the outside,
don't go inside,"
ancestor of modern
schoolboy pleasantries
about the dentist
filling the wrong
cavity.
Dubious docs were
part of the 18th
Century's classical
heritage. Pride
of place goes
to James Graham
(1745-1794). Despite
failing medicine
at Edinburgh,
he called himself
Doctor, prudently
flitting first
to America where
he set up as an
eye specialist,
then back to London
in 1775, to galvanise
high society with
his 'Electric
Medicine', delivering
jolts through
crowns and chairs.
In 1779, he opened
his Temple of
Health, where
for two guineas
people could inspect
his electrical
paraphernalia,
buy his medicines,
and ogle the skimpily-dressed
'nurses,' one
of whom was Lord
Nelson's future
Lady Hamilton.
For fifty pounds
a night, couples
could use his
Celestial Bed,
guaranteed to
boost potency
and promote conception.
These miracles
resulted from
the electrified
headboard's production
of "a magnetic
fluid calculated
to give the necesary
degree of strength
and exertion to
the nerves."
A suitably erotic
aura was created
by the tiltable
bed's dimensions
(12x9 feet), flower-stuffed
mattress, background
live music, and
overhead mirror
- eat your heart
out, Hugh Hefner.
Despite initial
éclat,
the debt-ridden
Graham fled back
to Edinburgh in
1784, abjured
electrical erotica,
and now promoted
mud baths as nutritious
panacea, claiming
their use allowed
you to live without
food, a sale's
pitch well designed
for canny Scots.
When these bogged
down, Graham founded
the New Jerusalem
Church (total
membership: one),
ended all pronouncements
with the slogan
Oh, Wonderful
Love, and died
in 1794 after
being arrested
for going naked
in the streets,
poor policy in
a climate that
Robert Louis Stevenson
dubbed "the
vilest under heaven's
fair dome."
Graham earned
his four columns
in the Dictionary
of National Biography.
Nowadays, he would
be CelestialBed
dot.com. How savvy
were 18th-Century
punters? Contemporary
cartoons and literature
were full of quack-exposures
and gibes at their
sex-capades, e.g.
Rowlandson's Doctor
Double Dose is
depicted taking
a comatose crone's
pulse with one
hand while fondling
a pretty wench
with the other,
the bedside table's
opium and Composing
Draught boding
further ill for
the patient. One
big-name doctor
denounced his
colleagues, Bernard
Mandeville in
his Fable of the
Bees: "Physicians
valued fame and
wealth/Above the
drooping patient's
health,/Or their
own skill..."
The hardest of
hearts, though,
would be melted
by Sam Johnson's
doctor-protégé
Robert Levet,
tricked into marriage
by a mercenary
("she regarded
him as a physician
already in considerable
practice")
tart after sexual
congress in the
coal-bunker where
he lived, then
running off leaving
him saddled with
her debts before
being tried and
acquitted at the
Old Bailey for
pick-pocketry,
foiling Levet's
expressed hope
that she be hanged.
Not surprisingly,
"a separation
between the ill-starred
couple took place."
Vendors of aphrodisiacs
and nostrums for
sexual problems
from impotence
to venereal diseases
found no shortage
of suckers. The
Morning Post (1776)
trumpeted a 'Bath
Restorative' as
"admirable
for those worn
out by women and
wine. Where persons
are not early
happy in their
conjugal embraces
it will render
their intercourse
prolific. Those
who have impaired
their constitution
by self-abuse
will find themselves
a certain remedy."
Knocks the hell
out of Viagra.
Similar promises
to worn-out wankers
were made by Solomon's
Balm of Gilead
and Brodium's
Cordials.
Veronese doctor
Girolamo published
(1530) an elegant
commercial, his
poem Syphilis,
in which the eponymous
hero is punished
by Apollo (dodgy
behaviour for
the God of Healing)
with a "pestilence
unknown"
producing sores
that only quicksilver
(whence 'quacksalver')
could wash away.
This became the
proverbial ("a
night with Venus,
a lifetime with
Mercury")
remedy; Boswell's
doctors prescribed
it for his constant
claps. London
surgeon Thomas
Taylor countered
with Leake's Patent
Pills which (he
claimed) had healed
a seaman blind,
deaf, and paralysed
by VD. His newspaper
ads promised "inviolable
secrecy, with
back door and
lights in the
passage at night"
- ancestor of
our All Goods
Shipped In Plain
Brown Envelope.
A competitor,
Dr Richard Rock,
ostensibly pulled
teeth in Goose
Lane to mitigate
the embarrassment
of customers seen
going in to get
his "Cure
without the knowledge
of a bedfellow."
In 2000, a London
exhibition, Women
Under The Knife,
stressed 19th-Century
gynaecology's
"unnecessary
operations and
mutilations done
in the belief
that all female
maladies originated
in the reproductive
organs."
Such thinking
was exemplified
by Dr Charles
D. Meiggs (1792-1869)
of Philadelphia,
proud that "in
this country there
are women who
prefer to suffer
the extremity
of danger and
pain rather than
waive those scruples
of delicacy which
prevent their
maladies from
being explored."
Conan Doyle (1881)
encountered "a
frightful horror
of a patient -
she won't let
me examine her
chest" -
in modern jargon,
Patient Autonomy.
Ladies like her,
and Harriet Wynne
who (1803) complains
"Dr Williams
made me undergo
a BLUSHING examination,"
will have approved
Dr William Goodell
(1829-1894) of
Pennsylvania,
who taught his
students to keep
their eyes fixed
on the ceiling
while making vaginal
examinations.
A non-surgical
alternative to
mutilation was
offered by Lydia
Pinkham (1873)
of Massachusetts
in the shape of
her Pinkham's
Vegetable Compound,
marketed as The
Greatest Remedy
In The World for
"female weaknesses."
There can be no
two greater contrasts
than Dr John Harvey
Kellogg's (1852-1943)
invention of the
cornflake "to
numb all tastebuds
from tongue to
toe" as part
of his anti-sex
campaign, and
English medic
George Witt's
(1803-1865) Sunday
morning 'Sermons'
on his collection
of 434 phallic
artefacts.
Marcel Proust's
father penned
several tomes
on fitness and
hygiene. His younger
brother, having
survived being
run over by a
five-ton coal
wagon, wrote The
Surgery of the
Female Genitalia,
while his penchant
for prostatectomies
was such that
they were nicknamed
Proustatectomies.
Marcel's own taste
for aphoristic
laws of human
nature and diagnostic
narratives of
minutiae recall
Hippocrates; A
La recherche du
Temps Perdu has
been characterised
as the recovery
of the often sexual
past as cure for
the universal
malady, Time.
In
Proust's Paris,
arsenic was a
doctor-recommended
aid to maintaining
erections. Their
mediaeval colleagues
had counselled
wives to put salt
on their husbands'
genitals to increase
their virility:
Vive La France.
As background
to his Cider House
Rules, John Irving
published (1999)
a memoir that
celebrates his
obstetrician grandfather,
Frederick Irving,
whose writings
ranged from a
laconic case history
("Mrs Berkeley
contributed nothing
to the world except
her constipation")
to the Ballad
of Chambers Street
describing the
catastrophic abortion
of promiscuous
Rose's unwanted
pregnancy by Harvard
gynaecologist
Charles Green.
John Irving dared
print only "the
two least offensive
stanzas"
of "this
poem of astonishing
lewdness and vulgarity,
both anti-Semitic
and deeply obscene:
High in a suite
in Chambers Street,
Ere yet her waters
broke,
From pregnant
Rose they took
her clothes
And ne'er a word
they spoke.
They laid her
head across the
bed,
Her legs they
had to bend 'em.
With sterile hands
they made demands
To Open her pudendum.
The introitus
admits my fist
Without the slightest
urgin'.
Therefore I ween,
said Charlie Green,
That Rose is not
a virgin.
And I would almost
dare declare
That she has had
coition,
Which in the main
would best explain
Her present sad
condition.
Golfing doctors
may seek solace
in Golf and the
Spirit by psychiatrist-therapist
M. Scott Peck,
whose aphorisms
include "a
perfect drive
feels orgasmic,
when I hit one
I get a great
erection"
- evidently the
good doctor has
got sex down to
a tee. He has
a rival in psychiatrist
Phil Lee's golf
manual Shrink
Your Handicap
- this doctoral
duo should play
a round.
We must have some
Canadian content,
so step forward
Dr Robert Stubbs
(Maclean's, 12
June 2000) with
his vaginal rejuvenations
and penile enlargements,
to which I offer
this doggerel
tribute:
Men, if your dongs
are not very long,
If your pricks
are mere little
grubs,
Cheer up, you
can look like
King Kong,
After just one
visit to Stubbs.
Girls, if you're
from Saudi Arabia,
Stubbs can re-jig
your labia.
If your boy-friends
are urgin'
That you prove
you're a virgin,
Then for your
wedding-bed
Wear a Stubbs
maidenhead.
If Hippocrates
(whose name was
assumed in the
1960s by a 'hip'
MD dispensing
sexual tips in
an underground
newspaper) is
looking down (or
up), what does
he make of the
award (National
Post, 13 June
2000) of $30.000
damages to exotic
dancer Mary Gale
who sued Dr Elliott
James for ruining
her career by
using breast implants
to enhance her
buttocks? - clearly
a case of Arse-on.
(From I Say, I
Say, I Say: Kiss
me, Doctor. Kiss
you? That would
be quite unethical.
Strictly speaking,
I shouldn't even
be in bed with
you.)
©
2006 by Barry
Baldwin
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