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Tight corsets cause nymphomania, orgasms can kill and
						wasps are a turn
				
		
		
				‐
				on. Yeah Right!
		
		
				Reproduction is crucial to humanity’s survival, so it would 
				be logical to expect it to have been sussed early in human
				evolution. But since the start of civilisation, humanity has
				been absurdly confused by a parade of moralists, pundits
				and visionaries all claiming to know the magic secrets and 
				only too happy to pass them on at a very reasonable price.
		
		
				The tradition of bestselling love guides goes back to the
				ancient Chinese. The earliest known manuals were first
				written in 300BC and buried in a family tomb in Hunan
				province. Recent translation reveals the timeless nature of
				the subjects they tackled. 
				
						As ever, it was all nonsense: home
						 
				
				
						‐
						made Viagra recipes involved ingredients such as beetle
				
				larvae, wasps and dried snails. The books also promised that
				any man who had sex with a different virgin every night for
				100 nights without ejaculating would live for ever 
				(albeit
				rather uncomfortably).
		
		
				These odd beginnings set a trend of weird tips from
				various, (sometimes surprising) authors, many of whom
				became manual martyrs. Ovid, the Roman poet, advised
				women on the best positions to suit their bodies in his
				
						poem 
						
								Ars Amatoria. 
						
						and the prudish Emperor Augustus
				
				banished poor Ovid to a chilly outpost of empire.
		
		
				
						Mediaeval European sex advice followed the strait
						‐
						laced
				
				trend: most of it said “don’t”. Pleasure paved Hell’s roads
				
						and misogynistic manuals such as 
						
								De Secretis Mulierum
						
				
				claimed that females used sex to drain men of their power
				and that 
				
						some hid sharp shards of iron inside themselves to
				
				injure innocent lovers
				.
		
		
				The technological breakthrough in the Renaissance the
				printing press enabled publishers to churn out dodgy books
				faster than the Church authorities could ban them. 
		
		
				Readers
				were treated to gems such as 
				
						Mrs Isabella Cortes’s handy
				
				hint from 1561 
				that a 
				
						
								mixture of quail testicles, large‐
								winged
						
				
				ants, musk and amber was perfect for straightening bent
				penises
				. The era also brought the earliest recorded
				recommendation of slippers as a sex aid 
				
						(“Cold feet are a
				
				powerful hindrance to coition,” warned Giovanni Sinibaldi in
				his 1658 book Rare Verities.)
		
		
				The oddest advisers may have been the Victorians and
				Edwardians. William Chidley, for example, believed that he
				could best promote his ideas by walking around in a toga;
				
						an Australian
						
								, 
						
						he advised readers in his 1911 pamphlet 
				
				
						‘The
				
				Answer’ 
				that 
				
						heavy clothing caused erections, which would
				
				lead to sexual overexcitement, illness and death, as well as
				being “ugly things” of which “we are all ashamed”. 
				He urged
				people to live on fruit and nuts and to practise a method of
				flaccid intercourse apparently based on horses’ sex lives. It
				wasn’t his ideas that got him repeatedly arrested, though, it
				was his silk toga, which the authorities thought indecent!
				After his death, supporters continued propounding his
				theories into the 1920s.
		
		
				Marie Stopes proves relevant qualifications aren’t
				necessary to become a world expert on any topic. She was
				married and in her late thirties when she wrote a sex guide,
				
						Married Love. 
				
				But her marriage was unconsummated! She
				was inspired by her betrothal to Reginald “Ruggles” Gates,
				whom, she told a divorce court, had failed ever to become
				
						“effectively rigid”. 
				
				When Married Love hit the shelves early
				in 1918 it outsold the bestselling contemporary novels by a
				
						huge margin. By 1925, sales had passed the half
						‐
						million
				
				mark. (Stopes was a fan of Hitler’s eugenics and offered
				Rudyard Kipling and George Bernard Shaw advice on
				
						writing). Her main sex
						‐
						manual innovation was a theory that
				
				women have a 
				
						“sex tide” of passion that ebbs and flows on a
				
				"
				
						fortnightly basis — 
				
				and woe betide the man who didn’t
				understand this. (In case her second husband, the
				manufacturing magnate Humphrey Verdon Roe, got it
				wrong, she made him sign a contract releasing her to have
				sex with other men).
		
		
				
						Ancient Wisdom
						 
				
		
		
				• 
				How to pull..“Pick the worst feature and then make it
		
		appear desirable. Tell an older woman that she looks
		young. Tell an ugly woman that she looks
		
				‘fascinating’.” 
				
						Philaenis, papyrus sex manual (2BC)
				
		
		
				
						• 
						Go blondes!....“All women are lascivious but auburn
				
				blondes the most. A little straight forehead denotes 
				an unbridled appetite in lust.” 
				
						Giovanni Sinibaldi,
				
				Rare Verities: the Cabinet of Venus Unlock’d (1658)
		
		
				
						• 
						Buns and corsets cause nymphomania..“Constricting
				
				the waist by corsets prevents the return of blood to
				the heart, overloads sexual organs and causes
				unnatural excitement of the sexual system. The
				majority of women follow the goddess Fashion and
				so also wear their hair in a heavy knot. This great
				pressure on their small brains produces great heat
				and chronic inflammation of their sexual organs. It is
				almost impossible that such women should lead
				other than a life of sexual excess.” 
				
						Dr John Cowan,
				
		
		
				The Science of a New Life (1888)  • On the other hand.......“The majority of women(happily for them) are not very much troubled withsexual feelings of any kind.” Dr William Acton,Functions and Disorders of the Reproductive Organs(1858)
		
				
						• 
						Enlargement......“Rub your penis with the bristles of
				
				certain insects that live in trees, and then, after
				rubbing it for ten nights with oils, rub it with the
				bristles as before. Swelling will be gradually
				produced. Then lie on a hammock with a hole in it 
				and hang the penis through the hole. Take away the
				pain from the swelling by using cool concoctions.
				The swelling lasts for life.” 
				
						Kamasutra, translated by
				
				Sir Richard Burton and F. F. “Bunny” Arbuthnot (1883)
		
		
				
						• 
						Climaxes can kill......“Fainting, vomiting, involuntary
				
				urination, epilepsy and defecation have occurred in
				young men after first coitus. Lesions of various
				organs have taken place. In men of mature age the
				arteries have been unable to resist the high blood
				pressure and cerebral haemorrhage with paralysis
				has occurred. In elderly men the excitement of
				intercourse with young wives or prostitutes has
				caused death.” 
				
						Havelock Ellis, Psychology of Sex: a
				
				Manual for Students (1933)
		
		
				
						• 
						How often?.....“The ordinary man can safely indulge
				
				about four times a month. More than that would be
				excess for a large majority of civilised men and
				women.” 
				
						Lyman B. Sperry, Confidential Talks with
				
				Husband and Wife: a Book of Information and Advice
				for the Married and Marriageable (1900)
		
		
				
						• 
						Single‐
						handed signs.....“Look at the habitual
				
				masturbator! See how thin, pale and haggard he
				appears; how his eyes are sunken; how long and
				cadaverous is his cast of countenance; how irritable
				he is and how sluggish, mentally and physically; how
				afraid he is to meet the eye of his fellow, feel his
				damp and chilling hand, so characteristic of great
				vital exhaustion.” 
				
						Dr Henry Guernsey, Plain Talks on
				
				Avoided Subjects (1882)
		
		
				
						• 
						Never marry these women....“Redheads. Any girl
				
				named after a mountain, a tree, a river or a bird.
				Ones with rough hands or feet. Ones who sigh,
				laugh or cry at meals. Any girl with inverted nipples, a beard, uneven breasts, flap ears, spindle legs orwho is scrawny. Girls whose big toes aredisproportionately small. Girls who make the groundshake when they walk past.” Koka Shastra, TheIndian Scripture of Koka (12th century)
		
				
						• 
						And, if you can’t find it, don’t worry.....“The clitoris,
				
				while important, is not nearly as important as many
				of us have been taught or led to believe.” 
				
						Edward
				
				Podolsky, Sex Technique for Husband and Wife (1947)
		
		
				
						• 
						But whatever you do ... “Never fool around sexually
				
				with a vacuum cleaner.” 
				
						Dr Alex Comfort, The Joy of
				
				Sex (1972)
		
		
				So that’s our sexual forebears, a weird lot with funny ideas?
		
		
				The twentieth century was remarkable for the sheer
				volume of sex advice being consumed: one woman in four
				now owns a sex manual, says a survey by the publishers
				Dorling Kindersley. Everyone from porn stars to the carmanual
				firm Haynes has one.
				
						I can’t help wondering........ 
						(who Haynes are)
				
				In 50 years’ time, perhaps there will be students at a
				university faculty of sexual semiotics studying the early
				
						Twenty
						‐
						Ohs with the same mirth, incredulity and horror
				
				that shake us when we consider our ancestors’ obsessions.
				Perhaps they will wonder why we bought so many manuals,
				videos and DVDs but seemed to have so little time or
				energy left for sex.
		
		
				Maybe they will link our obsession with orgasms to our
				endless need to go shopping. They might also connect our
				avid consumption of sex advice to our growing terror of
				personal embarrassment and “getting it wrong”.
				
						It might be called the 
						
								Age of the Erotic Neurotics.
						
				
		
		
				
						Sources
						 
						Historical varied