It is illegal to seduce the wet nurse of the heir to the British throne: you can contaminate the royal blood with your plebeian qualities, which will be passed on to the infant through milk.
From ancient times and at least until the last century, there was a theory that sperm from the right testicle gives rise to boys, and from the left testicle - girls (in some authoritative sources the opposite is stated). Aristotle proposed a simple experiment: remove one testicle and see if then all the children born of this father will be boys or girls.
On hearing in 1975 about a grant from the National Science Foundation to research the nature of love, Senator William Proxmere (1915-2005), known for his antiscientific attacks on NASA, made one of the most flawed generalizations in decades: “Two million Americans want so that some things remain a secret, and the first thing we don’t want to know is why a man falls in love with a woman and vice versa.”
Sex is a great playground for unorthodox scientists. The sheer scale of this question is overwhelming. Sir Richard Burton (1821-1890) discovered that homosexuality is concentrated in the Sotadic Zone, a vast area that encircles the world.
The title of William Smith's book, Did Man and Woman Descend From Different Animals? (Are men and women descended from different animals?) (1927) speaks for itself, and his theory was discussed back in the 1980s in the British Medical Journal.
Hippocrates (c. 450-370 BC) believed that the Scythians died out because they became impotent, spending many hours in the saddle, and Pope John Paul II (1920-2005) in 1980 said that adultery is a lustful gaze not only at his neighbor's wife, but also at his own wife.
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In the Islamic world in early 2006, a fatwa issued by the Egyptian cleric Rashad Hassan Khalil that married couples should be dressed during sex: if they make love naked, their marriage is invalid. Other Islamic theologians, not to mention the Islamic community, expressed strong opposition.
Barbara Cartland (1901-2000) suggested that brides should not take off their white gloves on their wedding night if they wanted to in case they had to touch the “terrible organ”. Arabella Kinili (1859-1932) wrote The Human Gyroscope: A Consideration of the Gyroscopic Rotation of Earth as Mechanism of the Evolution of Terrestrial Living Forms: Explaining the Phenomenon of Sex: Its Origin and Development and Its Significance in the Evolutionary Process (Human gyroscope: consideration of the gyroscopic rotation of the Earth as a mechanism for the evolution of terrestrial life forms. Explanation of the phenomenon of sex: its origin and development, and its role in the evolutionary process) (1934). This is yet another work whose title says everything there is to know about it.
Edward Clarke (1820-1877) warned in 1873 that education can lead to a drying out of the womb in women.
The list of dubious sex hypotheses is endless.
It is often argued that sex is permissible only as long as it is not enjoyable; so, the Victorian ladies were advised to lie on their backs and think about England. But in Victorian times, even kissing was feared. In What Everyone Knew About Sex (1972), William Dwyer quotes American sexologist Orson Fowler (1809-1887): “When you enjoy kissing and allowing yourself to be kissed, caressed and allowed to be fondled, hug tight and allow yourself to be hugged, you enter into mental sexual contact."
Similar Fowler's schemes related to the sexual act itself, even in marriage: a child conceived on a night of stormy love (especially if the spouses were tipsy) may be born with deviations, mentally abnormal, or, worst of all, "like Satan."
Curiously, it was Fowler who at the same time argued that not enjoying the act of love is no less dangerous, since children born from dispassionate intercourse can also be painful and feeble-minded. And it is best to try to stick to the golden mean between the act as a forced action and ecstasy.
So from the point of view of 19th century doctors, even in marriage, sex was full of dangers. Some modern sexologists do not recommend sex on their wedding night, because both partners are tired and / or drunk, and some of their predecessors suggested waiting a whole year from the wedding day. For the first twenty years of their lives, young ladies were taught to be chastity, and the shock of her being suddenly "available" could lead to sleepwalking.
Of course, sex is at the center of most, if not all, old religions. Our ancestors were primarily preoccupied with annual agricultural fertility cycles, and therefore sex - a triumphant proclamation of fertility - quite naturally became the focus of religious thought. In some rural areas, such customs as sowing grain for the next harvest, as if shooting them into the ground, are still alive. Therefore, it is strange that Christianity, for example, for so long did not approve of not only sex as adultery, but often, as already mentioned, even the joy of conjugal sex. This dislike, coupled with an understanding of the fertile aspects of sex (remember, Onan's sin was not masturbation, but wasting semen?) Had dire consequences for centuries.
Sexual acts performed with the aim of obtaining pleasure without the possibility of conception were usually considered a crime (homosexuality, masturbation, oral sex, sodomy, and even sex with an infertile wife). But Herbert W. Armstrong (1892-1986), editor-in-chief of The Plain Truth for decades, reassured Christians around the world in the April 1981 issue that the terrible sin of enjoying sex would soon become just a problem: “And those mortals who reach their incredible HUMAN POTENTIAL … they will no longer have genitals - there will be no more men or women … no sex differences, like the angels in heaven."
The idea of a homunculus separated from a theory called "preformism" (or ovism, or animalulism), which was that all the basic structures of an adult are already present in the germ cells of the parent - either in the mother's egg or in the father's sperm. This theory can be traced back to the discovery by René de Graaf (1641-1673) of what he believed to be a mammalian egg (this was a misnomer: it would take a couple of centuries for instruments to observe the mammalian egg).
Soon thereafter, Anthony van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723) discovered the male reproductive cell, or sperm, which wriggled like an independent living being, or a microscopic animal organism - the animalculus.
The Dutch microscopist Nicholas Hartsecker (1656-1725) suggested that an adult is hiding in every sperm. The process of intrauterine growth from a homunculus was considered similar to the development of an adult from a child: the shape and size changed, but morphological changes did not occur - unlike, for example, caterpillars and moths. Thus, in every sperm cell or in an egg, a tiny human embryo, a homunculus, is coagulated; according to other, more artistic, versions, the homunculus could fly out of the sperm, like a witch on a broomstick.
The early microscopists, looking hopefully into their imperfect lenses, observed subtle homunculi - much in the same way as Schiaparelli saw "channels" on Mars through his telescope, and for almost the same reasons. One naturalist, Jean Fabian Gaultier d'Agoti (1747-1781), was able to demonstrate by placing in a glass of water a homunculus large enough to be seen with the naked eye.
But not all scientists were prone to self-deception. They noticed, for example, that the content of a chicken egg cannot be said to be particularly similar to that of a chicken. They did not deny preformism, but rather pointed out (and quite correctly) that the fact that the yolk does not look like a chicken does not prove that it does not contain a miniature chicken embryo, too small and transparent to be seen.
The main drawback of the theory was that if the homunculus really carries the rudimentary forms of an adult, then it must also contain adult reproductive cells with a tiny homunculus contained in it. And in this homunculus there is an even smaller homunculus … and such a progression of smaller and smaller homunculi would have to continue indefinitely, or at least up to the number of generations that the Lord gave to humanity for life on Earth. In fact, the naturalists of the 17th and 18th centuries did not find this at all funny, as it seems to us today, since they did not know about cells and therefore did not have an idea of the minimum size that a complex structure like a homunculus could have.
Onan's crime was the waste of semen, and it was a violation of morality not because of self-gratification, but for the betrayal of the Jewish people, whose God-given duty was to have as many children as possible. For centuries, the Christian Church has been negative about sexual activity that does not lead to pregnancy: even today, the Roman Catholic hierarchy stubbornly opposes contraception on the grounds that the act of love should be just an act of creation.
Not long ago, the church, government and scientific medicine were united in their accusation of any waste of semen as harmful to the body and / or soul. The recent general enlightenment has affected most levels of Western society, although some populists still verbally and even physically attack homosexuals, who are particularly vilified by right-wing American televangelical evangelicals at every opportunity.
Exceptions to the general church rule are such ineffective methods of contraception as interrupted intercourse and retention of ejaculation (in the latter case, the man avoids orgasm). This method of contraception was used by the Oneida Society (where polygamy and polyandry were also practiced). By the end of the last century, Alice Bunker Stockham (1833-1912) in her book "Karezza" (Karezza) recommended this method, at the same time advising that sexual intercourse should take place at most once every few weeks, and preferably once every few months.
But masturbation was really sinful. In Victorian times, the theory was widespread that a man could ejaculate as many times as there was semen for his life. This theory has been used by doctors and the general public alike to keep boys from self-gratification by fear. There were consequences even more terrible than the finished seed, and they came faster. Fowler says:
“Victims of self-gratification have pale, bloodless faces, sunken, deep-set and half-meaning eyes with a red border around the eyelids, black and blue circles around the eyes, red acne all over the face with black dots in the middle, and clear signs of involuntary ejaculation in men and irregular menstruation in women …"
The hypothesis was undoubtedly based on the fact that most adolescents have acne and most of them masturbate. Can acne increase lust? “Masturbation poisons the body,” adds Fowler, “destroys the nervous system, paralyzes the entire body. If masturbated before puberty, it shrinks and weakens the genitals. It is also a crime against morality and a threat to the salvation of the soul! You can even die by exhausting yourself."
Anti-masturbation device for boys and girls
There is no choice, because even "Dr. Naface, despite his belief that occasional masturbation does not lead to irreversible consequences … admits that frequent repetition leads to dementia or serious illness and even early death."
Because George Naface (1842-1876) was the leading gynecologist of the day, his opinion carried some weight. Naface's reputation suffered severely in those days, and it's not hard to see why. Take at least one example from his writings: “… in rare cases, women experience only a tenth of the sexual feelings familiar to most men. Many of them are completely frigid and even in marriage they never feel real desire."
Finding that a child had discovered the forbidden fruit of masturbation, according to Fowler, was easier on other grounds: offenders often sat, clutching the guilty hand in their knees, pushed their pelvis forward while laughing and had a strange gait; girls masturbating, who were at risk of dementia, tuberculosis, flat-chested and other signs of general destruction, could be deduced from the fact that they crossed their legs endlessly.
According to the doctrine of focal sepsis, surgery helped to get rid of this habit: removal of the ovaries was considered effective, as was an increase in the anus; boys were offered castration, but it was rarely used.
Sodomy of male or female couples is still a crime in many parts of the world. Of course, it is illegal in some American states, where, paradoxically, judging by the outpouring of sex abusers, it is more popular than anywhere else in the Western world. Whether sodomy is physically harmful is a moot point. Other activities prohibited by law in some parts of the United States are not subject to such doubts. Some American states still have laws against extramarital affairs, although the penalties for adultery vary widely.
The strictest in this regard is the state of Michigan, in which the punishment can go up to $ 5,000 in a fine and five years in prison. In Arizona, he faces three years in prison. In Branchville, South Carolina, the fine is $ 500, while in Rhode Island, the fine is only $ 10 at a time (not a big price!).
Also, some states have draconian measures against oral sex, even between spouses. Florida tops this list with a maximum period of twenty years. South Dakota with its ten years is not far behind her. In Rhode Island, they get seven to ten years in prison, in New Mexico, two to ten years plus a $ 5,000 fine, and in Utah, six months plus a $ 299 fine.
Of course, most of these laws are simply ignored (except in cases of rape) until someone repeals them, but in 1988 in Clayton County, Georgia, Supreme Court Justice William Ison told the jury that the case of a carpenter from Atlanta James David Mosely, regarding oral sex between Mosely and his wife, committed by mutual consent in their own home, is a felony, and Mosely was sentenced to five years in prison.
The Bureau of Pardons and Parole, reviewing the case, ruled that Mozili should only serve two years of his sentence - and this at a time when Georgia's prisons were so overcrowded that the state had to release 3,000 sentenced prisoners. for serious crimes. Clive Stafford Smith, an international attorney who usually handled cases involving the death penalty, took up the Mosely case. When Mozili arrived at the prison, “the other prisoners - murderers and the like - burst out laughing,” said Stafford Smith.
The attitude towards homosexuality has changed over the centuries: the Greeks revered it, the Arabs believed that "a woman is given for duty, a boy is for pleasure, a melon for pleasure," and yet today in many countries of the world it is severely condemned and in some cases severely punished, up to the death penalty. It is a shame that scientists, in their prejudices, are not far from this. In the first two editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, in 1952 and 1968, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) formally identified among mental illnesses "sexual orientation disorder" - in other words, homosexuality …
It was only after a violent political campaign that the APA agreed to reconsider the status of homosexuality; even so, although the APA jury anonymously voted to change the status of homosexuality when the issue was put to the general vote of the APA members in 1974, the majority of the vote was less than 60% of the total number of psychiatrists eligible to vote; the rest still believed that homosexuals were mentally ill.
Male homosexuality is a common target for moral, legislative, and pseudo-scientific prejudices. Lesbianism is a different matter. Queen Victoria (1819-1901) expressed the conventional wisdom that sex between women is impossible.
From the world of sex politics, let's turn to a more mundane problem - the problem of nocturnal emissions. In Victorian times, people knew they were robbing and unhealthy; Moreover, what else is wet dreams if not a form of terrible masturbation? Some who suffered from this, for example Frank Harris (1856-1931), solved this problem with a tightly tied piece of string, others sealed the offending organ with adhesive tape.
Some doctors believed that this disgusting phenomenon was the result of sleeping on your back, and recommended going to bed with a towel tied around your chest and tied in a knot on your back to prevent you from accidentally lying on your back. The most effective remedy was the "spermatorrheal ring" with sharp pimples on the inside: just before going to sleep, it was put on the base of the penis. Any erection that began forced the person to wake up from terrible pain. It is not clear what the poor fellow was supposed to do next.
One of the more curious circumstances surrounding sex concerns the koro, which exists in various parts of Asia. The koro sufferer is convinced that his or her (mainly his) genitals are constricting - the concept of koro is believed to have come from various Malay and Indonesian words meaning "turtle", since the slang term for the tip of the penis in this part of the world is "turtle head" … If isolated cases of cortex do occur, they are hardly documented: most often cortex occurs in outbreaks, when hundreds, if not thousands, of people rush to doctors and run to hospitals to cure their penises (or breasts, or vulva) from shrinking. which was noticed not only by the patient, but also by his family.
In the most serious cases, the patient is obsessed with the idea that his penis is being pulled into the body, and when he enters there completely, death will occur. Needless to say, the doctors examining the patients did not find any physiological changes in the dubious penis, and all that needs to be cured is the consequences of the most bizarre methods of self-medication that patients turn to in an attempt to prevent the genitals from completely disappearing into the body - even pinning them pins.
No one knows exactly what leads to outbreaks of coro, but the fact that they occur every few years in one or another part of Asia is an established fact. Moreover, although the bulk of patients are precisely uneducated people, other segments of the population are also affected. The disease, apparently, is caused by anxiety: the shrinking of the genitals, of course, is one of the main fears, and anxiety itself often leads to (temporary) shrinking of the penis, thus clearly "proving" that the process that the patient is so afraid of really happens.
As soon as a few people in one area decide that they are suffering from koro, panic spreads, and a lot of other people begin to believe that they, too, suffer from these symptoms - almost as if one person said that he saw a UFO, suddenly everything begin to believe that they have been seen too. Indeed, koro outbreaks have the same signs of the UFO hype.
In the United States, in 1943 there was a particularly high percentage of absenteeism among women who worked in a filler for fire extinguishers. When sociologists tried to figure out the cause, they learned that there were persistent rumors that carbon tetrachloride could lead to pregnancy. This was just one of many women's excuses in case of pregnancy during her husband's departure to the war. Much more risky was the woman's statement that when she crossed the field, a snake slipped out from below and entered it, and therefore, alas, the child who was born is a reduced copy of evil. This was the role of the serpent in Eden, according to the Old Testament in the version before 500 BC; in later versions, he only tempted Eve.
There is an ancient theory that the mental exercises of a pregnant mother can affect the unborn child, as well as parental emotions during gestation. So, in the Book of Genesis we find the story of Jacob, who promised to look after Laban's flocks with the proviso that upon Laban's return, Jacob would be able to keep for himself motley animals with specks, spots, etc.
“And Jacob took fresh twigs of poplar, almond and sycamore, and cut out white stripes on them, peeling off the bark to the whiteness that was on the rods, and put the twigs with slices in front of the cattle in the watering troughs where the cattle came to drink, and where, when they came to drink, conceived before the rods. And cattle conceived before the rods, and motley cattle were born, and with specks and spots. And Jacob separated the lambs and set the cattle facing the variegated and all the black cattle of Laban; And he kept his flocks apart, and did not set them up with Laban's cattle. Every time when he conceived strong cattle, Jacob put the rods in troughs before the eyes of the cattle, so that he conceived before the rods. And when the weak cattle conceived, then he did not lay. And the weak cattle went to Laban, and the strong to Jacob. And this man became very, very rich, and he had many sheep [and cattle], and female servants, and slaves, and camels,and donkeys."
The striped sheet makers have no idea what they've probably done!
In the 19th century, this theory was authoritatively promulgated. Orson Fowler talked about a mother-to-be who looked at grapes during pregnancy and was also attacked by a turkey; the baby was born with "a large, globular tumor hanging from the tongue and exactly like ordinary grapes, and there was a red bump on the baby's chest, just like a turkey's beard." But it could have been worse.
Fowler also reports a baby who was born with an extra thumb, so that the two thumbs resembled a lobster claw. And this happened because the future mother bought a lobster, which was then stolen. One pregnant woman foolishly went fishing and her baby was half human, half fish.
The English expression "Lick into shape" itself comes from the long-held theory that baby animals are born shapeless, and their mothers literally have to shape them by licking them. At the same time, according to Lord James Monboddo (1714-1799), who was also of the opinion that the orangutans belonged to the human race (and thus paved the way for "Sir Oran Gu-Tang" in Peacock's Melinkourt (1817), all human babies are born with tails that are skillfully removed by midwives.
There are many popular misconceptions surrounding menstruation. In some parts of Australia, Aboriginal people are convinced that if a man walks next to a menstruating woman, he will lose his strength and age prematurely. Similar myths live on in Western society. Eating ice cream during your period is risky, but not nearly as bad as washing your hair. Taking a bath during your period can lead to tuberculosis.
Flowers wither and crops die if a menstruating woman walks by. However, despite this, menstrual blood was used for medicinal purposes. It has long been believed that fresh human blood is effective against leprosy and that menstrual blood is best suited for this purpose; until very recently, the patient was advised to mix a little blood into the water in the bathroom. Menstrual blood could also remove warts.
The most incredible theories about sex and sexuality, as you already understood, are innumerable, and more and more are appearing at an alarming rate. My review was very brief.
An excerpt from the book by John Grant "Science. The most incredible theories, hypotheses, assumptions "(2006)
