SOURCE: “Medicine, the Body and the Botanical Metaphor in Erotica,” in From Physico-Theology to Bio-Technology: Essays in the Social and Cultural History of Biosciences: A Festshrift for Mikuláš Teich, edited by Kurt Bayertz and Roy Porter, Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1998, pp. 197-223.

[In the essay below, Peakman examines eighteenth-century erotica as a means by which the public grappled with emerging scientific ideas about the body and sex.]

Arbor Vitae, or the Tree of Life, is a succulent Plant; consisting of one straight Stem, on the Top of which is a Pistillum, or Apex. … Its Fruits, contrary to most others, grow near the Root; they are usually no more than two in Number.

Arbor Vitae Or, The Natural History Of The Tree Of Life.¹

The Frutex Vulvaria is a flat low Shrub, which always grows in a moist warm Valley, at the Foot of a little Hill, which is constantly water'd by a Spring, whose Water is impregnated with very saline Particles, which nevertheless agree wonderfully well with this Shrub.

Natural History of the Frutex Vulvaria.²

In 1732, two humorous pieces of erotica, Arbor Vitae and Natural History of the Frutex Vulvaria were published, which contained detailed descriptions of the nature and functions of the male and female sexual organs. In this material, botanical metaphors for genitalia were used openly to question scientific ideas circulating during the early eighteenth century; the male form was a representation of the penis as a tree, the shrub a portrayal of the female genitalia. Although presented as titillating bawdy facetiae, these texts conveyed a certain set of attitudes towards the body and expose underlying assumptions about male and female sexual behaviour.

This ribald humour was written by way of a general homage to sexual activity, but also took up and satirised serious questions on generation, degeneration and venereal disease current amongst the medical elite. Scathing attacks were made on the virtuosi³ and their new botanical notion of attaching gender to plants. Developments in the physical sciences and the resulting propositions from preformationism and epigenesism, to ovism and homunculism,⁴ did not escape ridicule. This whimsical erotica parodied debates already taking place on scientific and medical issues, particularly disputes as to which sex provided the primal force in generation. These writings were not merely skits on scientific theories of the day, however, but public criticisms of the conflicting theories circulating, which also expressed concerns about male and female bodies. The Royal Society was to become the main butt of these satirical works, with quacks also targeted.

This paper will not look at how far sexual behaviour changed per se but will attempt to contribute to the widening debate amongst recent historians on those eighteenth-century sexual beliefs and myths which shaped attitudes to the anatomy and physiology of sex. Foucault,⁵ Stone, Weeks, Porter and others⁶ have opened up discussions on the history of sexuality, sexual behaviour and sexual attitudes. Examinations of science, gender and the body have broadened the debate.⁷ It has also been recognised that cultural perceptions of the body constitute a fundamental element in understanding that society.⁸ Discussions about the body surrounding procreation, disease and degeneration, as depicted in erotica using botanical metaphors, should therefore uncover further layers of cultural assumptions. We need to establish how far new Enlightenment ideas influenced opinions and subsequently infiltrated this popular bawdy material, and how these ideas were sifted and reinterpreted. Specifically, two sets of gendered erotica containing botanical metaphors will be examined to see how they convey certain attitudes about sex, the body, and sexual behaviour.

Caution needs to be exercised when examining this sort of material as satire inverts much of the meaning. Also, an understanding of the readership would be helpful if we are to establish how these eighteenth-century writers and their audiences perceived sexuality;⁹ this, however, is difficult to pinpoint. It is often presumed that material of a sexual nature was bought mainly by affluent men because of its high price, but not read by women on account of its immodest content. In fact, it is more probable that there was a shared appreciation of such material by both sexes,¹⁰ and that it was also read by lower ranks; young apprentices are known to have masturbated over the sex guide Aristotle's Master-Piece.¹¹ Sellers and buyers of erotica included women;¹² some women even wrote roguish poems and titillating sex guides.¹³ Second-hand sales, the loaning of erotica and the printing of cheaper pamphlets and chapbooks¹⁴ would have brought the literature within the reach of many more.

Although the eighteenth century is known as a licentious era, new sexual anxieties surfaced, raising male concerns about women's bodies.¹⁵ Notions of female insatiability were prevalent,¹⁶ as were speculations around nymphomania, hysteria and adolescent disorders. These sexual worries were frequently voiced in erotica and ribald humour. Porter has noted that popular bawdy material embodied anxieties around the body, particularly male fears of cuckoldry, castration, impotence and the insatiability of women.¹⁷ Although scientists and medics were developing new ideas about the workings of the body, readers did not necessarily believe these assertions.¹⁸ The authors of erotica were often surprisingly disparaging about such ‘progress’, and frequently condemned it. In reality, there was no one coherent attitude to sex in the eighteenth century; the body was the subject of both scientifically professed fact, imagination and experience in daily life.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Erotica emerged against a backdrop of a rapidly developing society. Enlightenment ideas filtered through essays, fiction and coffee houses but how far they permeated society, and how far they were fully understood, is difficult to assess. A plethora of quasi-medical erotica was already being published, the writers of such works were quick to cash in on public eagerness to consume literature which combined sex, taboos and conjectures in science, science serving as a mask under which sex could be discussed.¹⁹ Popular sexual guides aimed at ordinary readers proliferated and conveyed advice on sexual etiquette, fertility, pregnancy and warnings of venereal disease. Many such books regurgitated older scientific suppositions, particularly about the need for the emission of seed from both sexes to effect conception. Teachings dating back to Hippocrates, Aristotle and Galen, and medieval humoral medicine were incorporated into the material, which only added to the confusion. An example of this can be seen in the writings of Nicolas Venette, who wrote in Conjugal Love Reveal'd (1712):²⁰

It is also highly necessary, that in their mutual embraces they meet each other with equal ardour; for if the spirit flag on either part, they will fall short of what nature requires, and the woman must either miss of conception or else the children prove weak in their bodies, or defective in their understanding and therefore I do advise them, before they begin their conjugal embraces, to invigorate their mutual desires, and make their flames burn with a fierce ardour, by those ways that love teaches better than I can write.²¹

Venette viewed women as no less libidinous than men, and incorporated Hippocrates' argument that because of the ‘intensity of pleasure involved’, the seminal fluids were emitted from both male and female and were both equally necessary for conception. Similarly, John Maubray in The Female Physician (1724) stated that both sexes contributed to ‘seminal matter’, and both writers incorporated the notion that the pleasure of women was necessary for conception.

Some physicians asserted that sexual intercourse was a cure for certain ailments. Dr Robert James (1705-76), a friend of Dr. Johnson, famous for his fever powder and pills, stated in The Ladies Physical Dictionary (second edition, 1740) that sperm was good for women's disorders: ‘Venery both alleviates and removes various Disorders incident to Women: for the male Semen, consisting of a fine elastic Lymph, rarefies and expands not only the eggs, but also, the Blood and Juices in the Vessels of the Uterus’. While too much sex might do harm to the male physique, ‘too great a Retention of the Semen induces a Torpor and languid State of the Body, and often lays a Foundation for terrible nervous Disorders’.²² Not all medics agreed that sex was good for the body and some even believed it to be potentially life-threatening. Samuel Tissot (1728-1797), author of Onanism or a Treatise upon the Disorders Produced by Masturbation (1761) believed that all sexual activity was potentially dangerous, because of the rush of blood to the head posing a potential threat to one's sanity.²³ Sexual manuals frequently posited suppositions such as those advanced by John Marten in his A Treatise of all Degrees and Symptoms of the Venereal Disease (1708), which dismissed widespread myths that intercourse during the menses could excoriate a man's glans and prepuce, and even infect him with venereal disease. However, in Gonosologium Novum (1709), he continued to follow traditional beliefs about female insatiability, asserting that the penis ‘is a Part in great Esteem among Women’ and ‘instantly inflames their Hearts with a Passion not presently assuag'd’.²⁴

Erotica highlighted metaphors for procreation which abounded in the popular medical handbooks of the day.²⁵ In The Midwives Book (1671), Jane Sharp used extended metaphors to expound theories of generation and descriptions of genitalia: ‘The Cod as it were the purse for the stones to be kept in with the seminary Vessels … the stones which are two whole kernels like the kernels of a woman's paps, their figures Oval, and therefore some call them Eggs … they feel exquisitely … those that have the hottest stones are most prone to venery … The Yard is as it were the Plow wherewith the ground is tilled, and made fit for the production of Fruit’²⁶. The ‘Yard’ is analogous to the ‘Plow’, which represents the ‘active’ male farmer inseminating the ‘passive’ female earth and deploys a device commonly used in late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, incorporating terminology of the terrain. Similar connections, in which earth was associated with fertility, were being made in early erotica such as Eρωτóπoλιs, The Present State of Bettyland (1684),²⁷ in which farmers tilling the soil serve as an analogy for sexual intercourse, the woman being depicted as the soil and the landscape. The popularity of such topographical erotica can be seen in the number of editions, reprints and reworkings available in the 1730s and 1740s, including The New Description of Merryland (1741), Merryland Displayed (1741) and The Merryland Miscellany (1742).

Techniques of describing sexual organs in a way which was inoffensive can be traced back to classical literature and form part of erotic folklore.²⁸ Sexual imagery in the form of botanical metaphors also had roots in biblical references.²⁹ However, although originally associated with fertility, in erotica the tree of life is more related to virility and female sexuality, and fecundity is to be avoided wherever possible, as will be discussed below. In much contemporary erotica, pregnancy is seen as a nuisance interfering with the enjoyment of sex, and the elimination of ‘tumours’ (abortion) is advocated.

Potent images of the earth, its fruits and fertility were still widely circulating in the early eighteenth century. Despite the alleged meteoric shifts in ideas effected by the Scientific Revolution, perceptions of the world appear to have altered less radically than has commonly been supposed; the social, scientific, and sexual aspects of life were all intertwined,³⁰ and new ideas were grafted onto traditional themes. The separation of medicine and botany had not yet taken place, and there was ready shuttling of information between studies of nature, botany, and theories on generation.

SCIENTIFIC DEVELOPMENTS

Images linking the earth and soil with the body were not the only naturalistic metaphors being used. Specific connections were also being made in botany between the body, plants and nature. Seventeenth-century scientists had already been drawing analogies between the ovule and the mammalian foetus. R. J. Camerarius, in Epistola de sexu plantarum (1694) regarded seeds as ‘the significance of male organs, since they are the receptacles in which the seed itself, that is the powder that is the most subtle part of the plant, is secreted and collected, to be afterwards supplied from them. It is equally evident, that the ovary with its style represents the female sexual organ in the plant’.³¹ The ‘sensitive plant’ became a well-recognised metaphor taken up by writers of erotica. John Cleland's fictitious whore, Fanny Hill, made reference to it; ‘My fingers too had now got within reach of the true, the genuine sensitive plant, which, instead of shrinking from the touch, joys to meet it, and swells and vegetates under it’.³²

The development of the botanical sexual metaphor in erotica was directly associated with new developments in botany in the late seventeenth and in the eighteenth century, particularly in the work of Linnaeus (1707-1778), who made significant innovations in the classification of plants, basing this entirely on the structure of their flower and fruit parts.³³ Gender was used as the main principle in attempting to organise revolutionary views on nature, and gave rise to an emphasis on sexual difference in plant terminology.³⁴ In his descriptions of the ‘nuptials’ of living plants and ‘bridal beds’ of flower petals, Linnaeus was defining the laws of nature in the same terms as the social and sexual relations between men and women.³⁵

In his Praeludia sponsaliorum plantarum (1729), Linnaeus drew a comparison between the sexuality of plants and that of people, labelling the parts of the plant as parts of the male or female body; the filaments of the stamen were seen as the vas deferens, the anthers became testes; the stigma corresponded to the vagina, the seed to the eggs. Linnaeus' work was based on the difference between the male and female parts of flowers; and the correlation between plants, nature and the body can be seen directly through his sexualisation of plants. Such terminology allowed for erotic interpretation,³⁶ particularly because of the phallic terms he used, as is seen in the translation of his Systema naturae (1735-37).³⁷ There, the descriptions of plants have distinctly sexual overtones; leaves are described as ‘naked’, ‘erect’, ‘stemless’, ‘membranous’, ‘hairy’, ‘shrubby’ and even ‘pubescent’ and the terminology is that used in the sexual anatomy of humans: for example, ‘receptacle’, ‘fruits’ and ‘seeds’. Linnaeus' system achieved wide circulation and critics of the Linnaean system, which granted a sexual life to flowers, were quick to take up an attack on the notion as ridiculous. The very sexual nature of the language used by Linnaeus was open to ribald humour, an obvious target for lewd humorists, and gave sharp-witted satirists a chance to make an easy profit on bawdy parodies in the eroticisation of botany.

ARBOR VITAE

The botanical metaphor as seen in Arbor Vitae and Natural History of the Frutex Vulvaria was a specific response to the new developments in botany which incorporated gendered terminology and described a sexual life for plants. This erotica not only draws upon an existing tradition in which male and female bodies were seen in agricultural terms but reflects the content and style of popular medical handbooks. Similarly, Arbor Vitae gives consideration to the dimensions of a perfect penis: ‘it is produced in most Countries, tho' it thrives more in some than others, where it also increases to a large Size. The Height here in England, rarely passes nine, or eleven Inches, and that chiefly in Kent.'³⁸ The functions and growth of the genitalia are also given due attention, with a description of male youth coming to full sexual development during adolescence: ‘The Tree is of slow Growth, and requires Time to bring it to Perfection, rarely feeding to any purpose before the Fifteenth Year; when the Fruits coming to good Maturity, yield a viscous Juice or balmy Succus.’³⁹

The author indulges in the delights of a perfect member in its prime, at the same time playing on the audience's fears of impotency. Friendly advice is offered to the reader in a splendid double entendre which brings together the practices of gardeners splinting up older plants and flagellation as a means to stimulate the flagging libido, ‘Birchen Twigs’ being used for both:

In the latter Season [winter], they are subject to become weak and flaccid, and want Support, for which Purpose some Gardeners have thought of splintering them up with Birchen Twigs, which has seem'd of some Service for the present, tho' the Plants have very soon come to the same, or a more drooping State than before.⁴⁰

Birch twigs were frequently referred to in erotica and would have been recognised as instruments used in sexual activities.⁴¹ Flagellation was promoted as a medical cure for impotence, a good hard thrashing animating the blood supply to encourage the required effect. Indeed, Edmund Curll, the notorious publisher of erotica, had already been prosecuted for publishing a translation of John Henry Meibomius' A Treatise on the Use of Flogging in Venereal Affairs (1718),⁴² a serious medical work, which advocated flogging to raise the blood as a cure for impotence, illustrating the fine line between medical and obscene literature.

Further proposals are given in Arbor Vitae for the cure of impotence. One suggestion is removing the scrotum: ‘Some Virtuosi have thought of improving their Trees for some Purposes, by taking off the Nutmegs'—although how this was to help is not explained. It is possibly a reference to the assumed virility of the Italian opera-singing castrati, well-known for escorting women of fashion around town.⁴³ A certain Mr. Motteux had another suggestion, however—that of the practice of ligature around the penis to aid erection. This, however, was not without its hazards:

The late ingenius Mr. Motteux thought of restoring a fine Plant he had in this condition, by tying it up with a Tomex, or Cord made of the Bark of the Vitrex, or Hempen Tree: But whether he made the Ligature too strait, or that Nature of the Vitrex is really in itself pernicious, he quite kill'd his Plant thereby, which makes this universally condemn'd as a dangerous Experiment.

Popular rakes were frequently mentioned in the erotica, particularly if they were attached to some local scandal. The circumstances surrounding the death of Mr. Motteux⁴⁴ formed one such incident which had caused a stir amongst the bon ton of London.

In Arbor Vitae, a good dose of sex is proffered as an aid for curing a wide variety of female disorders, following a long tradition of such practical advice where intercourse is prescribed as a medical cure: ‘The Virtues are so many, a large Volume might be wrote of them. The Juice, taken inwardly, cures the Green-sickness,⁴⁵ and other Infirmities of the like Sort, and it is a true Specific in most Disorders of the Fair Sex. It indeed often causes Tumours in the Umbilical Region.’⁴⁶

The spread of syphilis was generally blamed on women and warnings are given about the disease. References to infamous quacks and their remedies are liberally sprinkled throughout. Prominent is a certain Mr Humphrey Bowen, a ‘judicious Botanist’ who, in his book La Quintyne, cautions against the ‘poisonous Species of Vulvaria’, which are ‘too often mistaken for the wholesome ones’. He ‘has seen a tall thriving Tree, by the Contact only of this venomous shrubs become porrose scabiose, and covered with fungous Excrescence's not unlike the Fruits of the Sylvestris:.. … these venomous shrubs have spread the Poison through a whole Plantation’.⁴⁷ Similarly, the better-known French physician, Dr Misaubin, who had settled in London and excited ridicule for his accent and manners, was ironically lauded for his wonderful cures for venereal diseases.⁴⁸

Women's bodies were at the centre of male debates about gender tensions. These bodies had power and could stand for desire, nurturance or corruption.⁴⁹ Depictions of the body-politic through the notion of degeneration can be seen in this, and other, contemporary erotica. Potent Ally (1741) refers to disease and places where whores can be found, and also includes political satire and concerns about decay, decadence and dissolution declaring, ‘It must be confessed however, that Corruption has crept in some Boroughs, but these are generally of the poorer Sort.. … the Corrupters themselves, however, anxious to conceal their wickedness, have made some Atonement, by their Readiness to wipe off stains, and rejecting the means of spreading Infection’.⁵⁰ Concerns surrounding size, function, degeneration and diseases are maintained in the Frutex Vulvaria.

NATURAL HISTORY OF THE FRUTEX VULVARIA

The reification of the female body in erotica where it is imagined in terms of the landscape, such as in Bettyland, has been recognised by Boucé.⁵¹ The depiction of woman as nature was taken a step further in the female counterpart of Arbor Vitae, Natural History of the Frutex Vulvaria, Or Flowering Shrub, where both nature and the female form were revered in florid sexual descriptions of the shrub/woman. The eroticisation of plants taking place in botany fed into erotica in a form of adulation of the female body. Furthermore, unlike in contemporary views of nature held by scientists such as Linnaeus, the female was not relegated to an inferior position to the male, but was given equal admiration and held in similar esteem.

In Frutex Vulvaria, the proportions of the female genitalia were of major consideration in consideration of its beauty, a small-sized vagina being one characteristic of the English woman which was obviously well-prized. Moreover, the English version is considered far superior to its European counterparts because of this very fact:

Contrary to the Arbor Vitae, which is valued the more the larger it is in Size, the Vulvaria that is least is most esteem'd; for which Reason our English Shrubs are priz'd vastly more than those grown in Italy, Spain, or Portugal, and indeed, those that are above five inches in Diameter, are worth little or nothing.⁵²

Despite this veneration of the female genitalia, attitudes to mercenary sex and venereal disease continued to apportion blame for the spread of disease to female prostitutes. Women were presumed to infect more men than vice versa, and the pox was thought more difficult to cure in a woman; we find ‘more bad Symptoms in the Shrub than in the Tree, but are more difficult to be remedied, and will diffuse their Poison a great deal farther; since, for the one Shrub that the Tree can hurt, the Shrub, when infected may spoil twenty Trees’.⁵³ The idea that women were responsible for the spread of venereal disease chimed with contemporary views. The quackish surgeon, John Marten, offered advice to men to withdraw as soon as possible to avoid catching the pox from women, warning that if ‘the Man made long stay in the Women's Body, and through excessive Ecstasy, Heat and Satiety, welter and indulge himself in that Coition, [that] is much sooner way to attract the Venom, than quickly withdrawing’.⁵⁴ However, although women had frequently been castigated for their role in sexual degeneracy, in Frutex Vulvaria, men are seen to be as much to blame. Attacks on men were iterated in mocking criticism of the withering plants of the realm, while women were lauded for their attempts to stir the failing members.

‘Anxiety-making’ and trading in fear of the pox was the hallmark of the quack VD doctors, and adverts for wonder treatments were even carried in such respectable magazines as The Female Tatler.⁵⁵ The proliferation of medical charlatans did not go unnoticed by the writers of erotica, who were quick to launch an attack, warning the reader about the side-effects of alleged medical ‘cures’. Incorrect treatments given to women suffering venereal infections were criticised for their detrimental effects. Uneducated quacks were vilified for their misdiagnoses in Frutex Vulvaria in a link which united women and plants through insect infestation; ‘Some unskilful Botanists, who have not been apprised of the Nature of these Insects, have imagin'd that their Shrubs have been infected by the Contact of a poisonous Arbor Vitae, and have accordingly applied a Remedy proper only for that Disorder, which instead of doing any Good has quite spoil'd the Shrub’.⁵⁶ In this particular instance, the treatment of lice with preparations for the pox had a notable harmful effect, and reflected the fear of worthless medical treatment for venereal disorders and the widespread ignorance of the nature of sexual diseases and contagion.

Contemporary medical arguments resulting from investigations in anatomy and physiology were taken up by the erotica. Curiosity about the body gave rise to extended discussion on embryology and procreation. Attitudes to the body were increasingly diverse and chaotic, and perceptions of the body had become problematic. Theories queried ranged from whether or not the vagina produces its own juices, to the necessity of orgasm in sexual reproduction. More specifically, female orgasm had been seen to be necessary for pregnancy, but this idea was changing with William Harvey contending that the ‘violent shaking and dissolution and spilling of humours’ which occurs ‘in women in the ecstasy of coitus’ is not required for the real work of making babies.⁵⁷

Fresh developments in science contradicted old ideas on generation. Galen's theory that both sexes contributed equally to conception and both had to experience pleasure, was countered by the ideas of Harvey who followed the epigenetic line and held that the egg was the product of conception, not the cause. But the writers and readers of erotica were more interested in the idea of heightening women's sexual pleasure rather than abandoning its necessity, and hence satirised the medical views;

It has long been warmly contested by the great Botanists, whether the Vulvaria is not a succulent Plant. Hippocrates and Galen, two eminent Virtuosi of former Ages, with abundance of their Followers, very obstinately contended that it was so; and that it has a balmy Succus, or viscous Juice, which distilled from it, upon being lanced, and at certain times, of the same Nature with that discharged at the Pistillum of the Arbor Vitae, which was absolutely necessary in order to its bearing. But the celebrated Harvey, with many other modern Botanists, famous for their useful Discoveries and Improvements, absolutely deny this, and affirm that it is impregnated solely by the Succus of the Arbor Vitae, without contributing any Juice thereto itself, in so much as this Opinion is now entirely exploded.⁵⁸

Female orgasm was now seen by some medics as surplus to requirements in the matter of procreation, since it was no longer believed that her ‘seeds’ were essential in the creation of the new foetus.

Despite the fact that female enjoyment was increasingly deemed unnecessary for procreation, the erotica recognised women's desire for sexual gratification. Indeed, the theme of uncontrollable female desire is expressed in the feigned concerns about nymphomania:

Some Vulvaria are troubled with a very unaccountable Disorder … continual Opening of the Fissura, or Chink above mention'd, and which is not to be remedied but by the Distillation therein of the balmy Succus of the Arbor Vitae. In this Case, one Tree seldom or never discharges a quantum sufficit to answer the Intent of Cure.

The depositing of an over-sexed woman in a brothel is seen as one way of curing nymphomania, or at least a way of containing female sexual desire, and constitutes an attack on the attempts at the regulation of sexuality currently in vogue: ‘it has often been found necessary to remove the Shrubs to a Hot-house where there are several Trees provided, in order to compleat the Cure.’⁵⁹ He continues, ‘Several of these Hot-houses are to be met with in and about the hundred of Drury;’ specifically mentioning those around St James and Westminster, St George's Fields, Vauxhall and Mother Needham's,⁶⁰ the latter given the title ‘Female Botanist’. Female insatiability is conveyed through lunar symbolism which reflects not only life-rhythms of change and renewal but also female sexual inconstancy. The menstrual cycle is referred to as a disorder ‘which makes it believ'd that this Shrub is under the Dominion of the moon.’

Distinguishing between genuine medical practitioners and quacks was increasingly difficult for the patient, and it is hard to divide eighteenth-century medical practitioners into professionals and opportunists, solely on the basis of performance.⁶¹ In Natural History of the Frutex Vulvaria, reference is made to Sir Richard Manningham (1690-1759), a celebrated accoucheur of the period, who was involved in the unusual case of Mary Toft, a woman who in 1726 alleged she had given birth to many rabbits; ‘Accordingly, some Years ago, the Town was amus‘d for a considerable Time with the Report of a Vulvaria that yielded Rabbits as fast as a tolerable Warren …’. However, the secret is here uncovered in the surprising revelation that the woman put the rabbits into her own vagina; ‘it was discover'd that the Owner has found out the Secret to make it open as naturally for the introducing a Rabbit, as is generally does for the Inoculation of the Arbor Vitae.’ Manningham narrowly escaped being duped by Toft and such gullibility amongst those in the medical profession was eagerly seized upon.

Risk of pregnancy was ever present, and abortion forefronted as a means of contraception with female abortionists prepared to do the deed. Such ‘tumours’ could be removed and Female Botanists were available who claim to do this but the author warns us, ‘I would advise no Person, who have a Value for the Wellfare of their Vulvaria, to trust them in extraordinary Cases, but immediately to apply to the Botanists above mentioned …’.⁶²

The excitement derived from botanical metaphors for the body is evident from the sheer volume of similar material; on the male model, Wisdom Revealed; Or The Tree Of Life (1725)⁶³ had been published earlier, and other pieces would follow: The Manplants: Or, a Scheme for Increasing and Improving the British Breed (1752)⁶⁴ and Mimosa, Or A Sensitive Plant (1779).⁶⁵ In a similar vein, parodies of the female model, connecting nature and sexual organs in the same metaphorical stance, can be seen as early as 1725 in Edward Ward's poem The Riddle Or A Paradoxical Character Of An Hairy Monster, reprinted in 1741 along with Little Merlin's Cave (1741),⁶⁶ another metaphor for female genitalia. The height of indulgence in foliation was reached in Erasmus Darwin's Botanic Garden, a work made up of two poems, Love of the Plants (1789) and The Economy of Vegetation (1791), which were widely read.⁶⁷

CONCLUSION

The gendering of plants and the sexual overtones of botanical terminology afforded too good an opportunity to miss for these quick-witted satirists, and new theories on generation were thus incorporated within erotica. The ‘discoveries’ of the scientists were frequently questioned, as the theories were either too contradictory or too unbelievable. Furthermore, well-known botanists and scientists were satirised in mock dedications, and cited in reference to gossip and scandal.

Most importantly, indulgence in botanical metaphors allowed concerns around the body to be raised. Although essentially this erotica is a celebration of sexuality which parodied the morals of the day, fears about male and female bodies come to the fore. Three concerns seem prominent: First, men's anxieties about women's bodies are prevalent, as is shown in the need to know more about the workings of the female's internal organs, and fear of pregnancy and ensuing medical problems attached to the sexually active woman. Abortionists (‘botanists’) could deal with unwanted side-effects of sex, and such ‘tumours’ were to be avoided. Discussions on fertility and questions surrounding new scientific theories of the body are more concerned with female sexual desire and enjoyment, rather than actual fertility, although virility, potency and female sexuality are glorified. It was recognised that women enjoyed sex as an end in itself and not merely as a means to procreation.

Second, apprehension of women's sexual inconstancy was heightened by the continued belief in female insatiability. Women still appear to be an enigma, an unknown quantity and a mystery yet to be unveiled. Theorists of generation had merely clouded the issue with their conflicting conjectures about the necessity of female sexual pleasure in the act of procreation.

Third, the fear of catching the pox was paramount: The sheer amount of space, not only in these erotica, but elsewhere, dedicated to discussion of causes of the spread of the disease, and potential cures and effects, highlight the dread which was instilled in the sexually active. However, considering the lack of effective cures, it is unsurprising that male writers of erotica concentrated extensively on the possibilities of the spread of ‘vermin’ or the catching of crabs or the pox.

The writers of botanical erotica, indulging in scientific metaphors, provided another layer of sexual interplay. Despite attacks by science on women's fertility and attempts to reconceptualize the biological roles, in these erotica we see a celebration of female sexuality, a rude efflorescence and the maintenance of the traditional idea of female desire. Significantly, the tree or sensitive plant is important only in its relationship to the vulvaria or shrub.

Women do seem to shoulder some of the blame for the spread of the pox, as depictions frequently attack the quality of the ‘shrubs’, its fruits and flowers, its wayward courses and allusions to the disease therein. Men, however, do not escape blame for this decline, as they are castigated for their lack of due care and attention and are equally apportioned blame for degeneration of the body.

Traditional metaphors together with the current botanical developments were incorporated into these erotica in order to raise questions about new scientific propositions. However, although medical opinion was changing, many of the new conceptions of the body, when not completely rejected, were grafted onto traditional themes which still held sway. Fears surrounding pregnancy, the menstrual cycle, nymphomania, and other ‘female’ disorders were explored while simultaneously doubles entendres, puns and skits were directed at the latest opinion given by popular quacks and medics. Through the adaptation of existing terminology, questions about sex and the body could be aired under the guise of the botanical metaphor. This device allowed for formulations on previously taboo subjects by creating a space where the body could openly be discussed. Furthermore, these erotica contributed to the wider sexual culture in providing both a focal point where appraisals of new issues could be made, and by venturing into areas where others were unwilling to speak out.

Notes

1. Anon, Arbor Vitae Or, The Natural History of the Tree of Life (London: W. James, 1732). Arbor Vitae was originally published as a poem and frequently emulated. It was regularly reprinted along with prose, and Natural History of the Frutex Vulvaria. Both sets of material were probably written by Thomas Stretser, or Stretzer, one of Edmund Curll's hacks, and are in a collection of tracts held in the Private Case material at the British Library. Curll was well-known for his publications of erotica and often used false imprints, including fake dates to avoid detection; see Roger Thompson, Unfit for Modest Ears: A Study of Pornographic, Obscene and Bawdy Works Written or Published in England in the Second Half of the Seventeenth Century (London: Macmillan, 1979) and Ralph Straus, The Unspeakable Curll (London: Chapman and Hall, 1927). ‘Roger Pheuquewell’ is given as the pseudonym in the 1741 edition and was also responsible for A New Description of Merryland (see below).

2. ‘Philogynes Clitorides’, Natural History of the Frutex Vulvaria (London: W. James, 1732).

3. The virtuosi were generally from a genteel background, having time and leisure to indulge in experiments or their promotion, and having the money to travel to establish a rare plant collection. Their alleged lack of knowledge of basic science together with their gullibility made them an easy target for the satirists. Mary Astell in her description of the ‘Character of a Vertuoso’ summed up his traits: ‘He Trafficks to all places, and has his Correspondents in every part of the World; yet his Merchandizes serve not to promote our Luxury, nor increase our Trade, and neither enrich the Nation, nor himself.’ Essay in Defence of the Female Sex (London: A. Roper and R. Clavel, 1697).

4. For a history of generation theories see Angus McLaren, Reproductive Rituals: The Perception of Fertility in England from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century (London and New York: Methuen, 1984); Nancy Tuana The Less Noble Sex (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1983); Elizabeth B Gasking, Investigations into Generation, 1651-1828 (London: Hutchinson, 1967); Joseph Needham, History of Embryology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1934; 2nd edn., 1959); William Harvey (trans. R. Willis), The Works of William Harvey (London: Sydenham Society, 1847).

5. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality. Volume I. An Introduction (London: Penguin, 1990), 34; Foucault states, ‘Rather than the uniform concern to hide sex, rather than a general prudishness of language, what distinguishes these last three centuries is the variety, the wide dispersion of devices that were invented for speaking about it, for having it be spoken about, for inducing it to speak for itself, for listening, recording, transcribing, and redistributing what is said about it: around sex, a whole network of varying, specific, and coercive transpositions into discourse.’ This ribald material was used in exactly this way, employing botanical terminology as a means of continuing discourse on, and around sex, particularly in the public arena. But also see Colin Jones and Roy Porter (eds.), Reassessing Foucault: Power, Medicine and the Body (London & New York: Routledge, 1994), for criticisms of Foucault for his neglect of class and gender issues.

6. Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500-1800 (London: Penguin, 1990); Roy Porter and Mikuláš Teich, Sexual Knowledge and Sexual Science. The History of Attitudes to Sexuality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Jeffrey Weeks, Sex, Politics and Society; The Regulation of Sexuality since 1800 (London: Longman, 1981).

7. Ludmilla Jordanova, Sexual Visions; Images of Gender in Science and Medicine between Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1989); Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature and the Scientific Revolution (London: Harper & Row, 1980), 6, states, ‘The Renaissance view of nature was based on the organic analogy between the human body, or microcosm, and the larger world, or macrocosm. Within this framework, however, a number of variants on the organic theme was possible. The primary view of nature was the idea that a designed hierarchical order existed in the cosmos and society corresponding to the integral part of the body—a projection of the human being onto the cosmos’; Evelyn Fox Keller, Secrets of Life, Secrets of Death. Essays on Language, Gender and Science (London: Routledge, 1992) and Reflections on Gender and Science (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985); C. Gallagher and T. Laqueuer (eds.), The Making of the Modern Body: Sexuality and Society in the Nineteenth Century (Berkeley and LA: University of California Press, 1987); Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex, Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990).

8. Lyndal Roper, Oedipus and the Devil. Witchcraft, Sexuality and Religion in Early Modern Europe (London and New York: Routledge, 1994).

9. Kathryn Shevelow, Women and Print Culture (London: Routledge, 1989): Shevelow perceives shared knowledge between the writer and readers of their material, and readers would necessarily understand the set of codes being transmitted in order to render it comprehensible.

10. Tim Hitchcock, English Sexualities, 1700-1800 (London, Macmillan, 1997), 11.

11. Roy Porter and Lesley Hall, Facts of Life. The Creation of Sexual Knowledge in Britain, 1650-1950 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995), 7.

12. Robert Darnton, The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France (London: HarperCollins, 1996), 37: Darnton has identified female booksellers of erotic and pornographic material; one particular woman, Madame Charmet, obviously read material before ordering. In 1784, she wrote to her suppliers about Turgot's ‘Oeuvres Posthumes’, commenting on the power and energy of the book, displaying savvy of the trade and a nose for a best-seller.

13. A certain Mrs. H. wrote racy poems and a sex manual, Guide to Joy. Mary Lyons (ed.), The Memoirs of Mrs. Leeson (Dublin: The Lilliput Press, 1995), 170.

14. M. Spufford, Small Books and Pleasant Histories: Popular Fiction and its Readership in Seventeenth Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). Spufford, in her study of early-modem English chapbooks, claims that plebeian women read risqué stories and shared a raucous sense of humour with men.

15. Roy Porter, Health for Sale: Quackery in England 1650-1850 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989), chapter six. Also see Edward Shorter, A History of Women's Bodies (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983) on fear of women's bodies. However, fear of women's bodies has a long history; see Patricia Crawford, ‘Attitudes to Menstruation in Seventeenth-Century England’, Past and Present, xci (1981), 47-73. Menstruating women were not allowed to pickle beef or salt bacon. Contemporaries believed that the breath of a menstruating women would stain a looking-glass, shrivel crops and drive dogs mad: see John Maubray quoted by Paul-Gabriel Boucé, ‘Some Sexual Beliefs and Myths in Eighteenth Century Britain’, in Paul-Gabriel Boucé (ed.), Sexuality in Eighteenth-century Britain (Manchester and New Jersey: Manchester University, 1982), 37.

16. For discussions on the nature of female sexuality, see Vivien Jones (ed.), Women in the Eighteenth Century. Constructions of Femininity (London and New York: Routledge, 1990); Bridget Hill (ed.), Eighteenth-Century Women. An Anthology (London: Allen & Unwin, 1984).

17. Roy Porter, ‘Mixed Feelings: the Enlightenment and Sexuality in Eighteenth Century Britain’, in Boucé (ed.), Sexuality in Eighteenth-century Britain, 1-27.

18. See Peter Wagner, Erotica and the Enlightenment (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1991). Wagner also claims that ‘the enlightened discourse of the ‘philosophes’ was contradicted if not rendered useless by the sexual clichés and stereotypes at the level of popular erotica’, 4.

19. For studies discussing aspects of ‘medical’ erotica see Peter Wagner, ‘The Discourse on Sex—or Sex as Discourse: Eighteenth-century Medical and Paramedical Erotica’, in G. S. Rousseau and Roy Porter (eds.), Sexual Underworlds of the Enlightenment (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1987), 46-69; Roy Porter, ‘Spreading Carnal Knowledge or Selling Dirt Cheap? Nicolas Venette's Tableau de l'Amour Conjugal in Eighteenth Century England’, Journal of European Studies, xiv (1984), 233-55.

20. N. Venette, Tableau de l'Amour Conjugal (reprint, New York: Garland, 1984); English trans., The Mysteries of Conjugal Love Reveal'd (London: s.n., 1712).

21. The Works of Aristotle (printed for Archibald Whistleton, Chiswell Street, n. d. but c. 1810) quoted in Roy Porter and Lesley Hall, The Facts of Life: The Creation of Sexual Knowledge in Britain, 1650-1950 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995), 44.

22. Dr. James quoted in Paul-Gabriel Boucé, ‘The Secret Sex Nexus: Sex and Literature in Eighteenth Century Britain’, in Alan Bold (ed.), The Sexual Dimension in Literature (London: Vision Press Ltd., 1983), 79.

23. According to Vern and Bonnie Bullough, Tissot's views were widely accepted Vern L. and Bonnie Bullough, Sexual Attitudes (London: Prometheus Books, 1995), 71.

24. John Marten, Gonosologium; or A New System of all the Secret Infirmities and Diseases, Natural, Accidental, and Venereal in Men and Women (London: Crouch, 1709, 6th ed.), 10.

25. Robert Erickson, “‘The Books of Generation’: Some Observations on the Style of the British Midwife Books, 1671-1764” in Boucé (ed.), Sexuality in Eighteenth-century Britain, 74-94.

26. Jane Sharp, The Midwives Book (London: Simon Miller, 1671), 10-19.

27. Indeed whole landscapes were depicted as women's bodies in such erotica as John Cotton's Eρωτóπoλιs, The Present State of Bettyland (1684), reprinted in Potent Ally (London: E. Curll, 1741).

28. Peter Wagner, Eros Revived. Erotica of the Enlightenment in England and America (London: Secker and Warburg, 1987), 191-2.

29. See M. C. Howatson (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 462; and Felix Guirand (ed.), New Larousse Encyclopaedia of Mythology (London: Hamlyn Publishing, 1959): The tree as phallic symbol of fertility can be seen in the worship of Priapus and is also the source of life, the tree of knowledge from the Garden of Eden and the focal point in the Fall from Paradise.

30. Simon Schaffer, ‘The Earth's Fertility as Social Fact in Early Modern Britain’, in Mikuláš Teich, Roy Porter and Bo Gustafsson (eds.), Nature and Society in Historical Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 124-47.

31. As quoted in Robert Olby, History of Biology (London: Fontana, pending), see chapter eight.

32. John Cleland, Memoirs of A Women of Pleasure (Ware: Wordsworth Classics, 1993), 192. First published in 1748/9.

33. Earlier botanists had suggested the idea of the sexuality of plants, including Nehemiah Grew in Anatomy of Plants (1672) but Linnaeus was the one to develop and popularise it. At least one edition of Arbor Vitae was dedicated to the London botanist Phillip Miller and would have been recognised as a skit of his serious study of plants, Catalogus Plantarum Officinalium (1730). Miller was to adopt the system of Linneaus.

34. Londa Schiebinger, Nature's Body: Sexual Politics and the Making of the Modern Science (London: Pandora, 1993), 4, 37.

35. Londa Schiebinger, ‘The Private Life of Plants: Sexual Politics in Carl Linnaeus and Erasmus Darwin’, in Marina Benjamin (ed.), Science and Sensibility: Gender and Scientific Enquiry 1780-1945 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991), 126. Also see Londa Schiebinger, The Mind has No Sex. Women in the Origins of Modern Science (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University, 1989).

36. According to Schiebinger, ‘Linnaeus saw plants as having sex, in the fullest sense of the term, sometimes illicit, and sometimes the sanctified expression of love between husband and wife’, Schiebinger, Nature's Body, 23.

37. See M. S. J. Engel-Ledeboer and H. Engel (trans.), Carl Linnaeus, Systema Naturae (1735) (Nieuwkoop: B. de Griaf, 1964).

38. This was possibly a reference to William Kent (1686-1748), a landscape gardener who freed the English Garden from formality using winding paths and wooded glades, contrasting the wilderness of nature with small classical temples.

39. Arbor Vitae (London: E. Hill, 1741), 3. The picture of Merryland comes from this edition which is used herein.

40. Arbor Vitae, 2-4.

41. Julie Peakman, Flagellation in Eighteenth Century Erotica, MA Dissertation, RHBNC: London University, 1992.

42. Curll defended himself against accusations of pornography on the grounds that ‘the Fault is not in the Subject Matter, but in the Inclination of the Reader, that makes these Pieces offensive; see Thompson, Unfit for Modest Ears, 164-6.

43. Curll had already been promoting interest in the topic of eunuchs in his book, Eunichism Display'd (London: Curll, 1718) and was catching the public interest in operatic castrati as well as doing his usual business of promoting sex.

44. Peter Anthony Motteux (1660-1718) was a French translator and dramatist who wrote satirical plays with evocative titles such as Love's a Jest, The Loves of Mars and Venus and The Temple of Love, the latter performed at the Haymarket in 1706, as well as editing the Gentleman's Journal or the Monthly Miscellany. He died in a house of ill fame in 1718 in Star Court, Butcher's Row near St. Clement's church where he had gone with a woman named Mary Roberts after calling in at White's chocolate-house. Roberts alleged that he had been taken ill while still in the coach but the brothel-keeper and her daughter were committed to Newgate to await the inquest and much speculation surrounded the incident. See Trial at the Old Bailey, 23 April 1718; DNB.

45. Green sickness (other wise known as chlorosis) tended to particularly affect young or pubescent girls and was seen as a ‘wasting disease’. Physical symptoms included pallid skin, loss of appetite, amenorrhoea and often accompanied by behavioural changes such as lethargy or desire for solitude. See Roy and Dorothy Porter, In Sickness and in Health (London: Fourth Estate, 1988), 51, 83.

46. Arbor Vitae, 9.

47. Arbor Vitae, 6,7.

48. We find Dr. Misaubin, along with Dr. Rock, in Hogarth's, The Harlot's Progress, shown as money-grabbing quacks haggling while Moll dies of VD in front of them. On the floor lies an advert for an ‘anodyne’ (pain-killing) necklace bought to cure syphilis, and on the coal shuttle lies the remnants of Moll's teeth, fallen out as a result of taking Mercury on his advice; see Fiona Haslam, From Hogarth to Rowlandson in Eighteenth Century Britain (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1997); Hogarth was well-known for the fastidious authenticity of his interiors. The doctor's office in Marriage á La Mode, Plate III, is said to be that of Misaubin at 96, St. Martin's Lane, Westminster: see Sean Shesgreen (ed.), Engravings by Hogarth (New York: Dover Publications Inc., 1975), xx.

49. Lynn Hunt (ed.), Eroticism and the Body Politic (Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press, 1991).

50. Potent Ally: or The Succours from Merryland. With three essays (in verse) in praise of the cloathing of that country: and the Story of Pandora's Box.. … To which is added Erotopolis, the Present State of Merryland, second edition (London: Curll, 1741).

51. Paul-Gabriel Boucé, ‘Chronic and Pelagic Metaphorization in Eighteenth Century English Erotica’, Eighteenth Century Life, ix (1984-5), 205.

52. Frutex Vulvaria, 7.

53. Ibid., 11.

54. Richard Davenport-Hines, Sex, Death and Punishment. Attitudes to Sex and Sexuality in Britain since the Renaissance (London: Collins, 1990), 47.

55. Roy Porter, Health for Sale: Quackery in England 1650-1850 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989); see chapter 6, ‘Quacks and Sex: Pioneering or Anxiety Making?’.

56. Frutex Vulvaria, 12.

57. Gweneth Whitteridge (trans.), William Harvey, Disputations Touching the Generation of Animals (1653), (Oxford: Blackwell Scientific Publications, 1981), 65.

58. Frutex Vulvaria, 7/8.

59. Ibid., 14.

60. Elizabeth Needham (1680-1731) kept an opulent brothel in Park Place, St. James. In 1721, she went before the courts for entrapment of young girls and she can be seen corrupting a fresh-faced country girl into prostitution in Hogarth's The Harlot's Progress, Plate 1: See J. Burford, Wits, Wenches and Wantons. London's Low Life: Covent Garden in the Eighteenth Century (London: Robert Hale, 1986), 32, 69-71.

61. Margaret Pelling, ‘Medical Practitioners in Early Modern England: Trade or Profession?’ in Wilfred Prest (ed.), The Professions in Early Modern England (London: Croom Helm, 1987), 104.

62. Frutex Vulvaris, 13.

63. Anon, Wisdom Revealed; OR THE TREE OF LIFE (London: W. Shaw, 1725). The frontispiece states that it was sold at all the Pamphlet-shops in London and Westminster, price Six-Pence.

64. Vincent Miller, The Manplants: Or, a Scheme for Increasing and Improving the British Breed (M. Cooper, at the Globe in Pater-noster-Row: London, 1752). Price One Shilling.

65. The Sensitive Plant had been given the generic name Mimosa (L. mimus, mime) as far back as 1619 because the plants ‘mimick’ the sensitivity of animals: See Olby, History of Biology, chapter 8. Mimosa, or the Sensitive Plant (London: 1779) has been attributed to James Perry: See Wagner, Eros Revisited, 194. The poem was prefaced with a dedication to Joseph Banks and links him with an aristocratic intrigue. The veracity of the story is questionable but he does appear to have had an illegitimate child in 1773. It also slanders the Duke of Queensbury and Kitty Fisher his mistress, a celebrated courtesan of the day mentioned in the dedication.

66. Caves and grottoes have a history of association with female genitalia; see Mary Russo, The Female Grotesque. Risk, Excess and Modernity (London: Routledge, 1994).

67. The poems were referred to in the letters of Horace Walpole, William Cowper, Walter Scott, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, Hester Thrale, Percy Shelley and William Godwin, so the device was well recognised and appreciated. Coleridge accused him of plagiarism, declaring ‘Dr. Darwin was a great plagiarist. He was like a pigeon picking up peas, and afterwards voiding them with excremental additions.’ Eric Robinson states that without the likes of Darwin ‘the range of technical scientific vocabulary available for use in poetry would have been considerably smaller’, but we can see from the erotica that this device was well worked by earlier writers: Eric Robinson, ‘Erasmus Darwin's Botanical Garden and Contemporary Opinion’, Annals of Science (1954), 314-20.