Here’s a tidbit for any Wonders and Marvels readers out there who may be thinking about starting a family.
Until the late seventeenth century, Galenic notions of the body as a complex system of fluids (humors) dominated. In the sport of baby-making, the end goal was to mix male and female “seed” in just the right quantity and quality to make a boy. So this meant that the hotter the better.
Men were considered hot and dry in humoralist models. So, if the seed mix was hot, a boy would be born.
So, here are a few seventeenth-century tips for all of you out there. If you want a girl, stick with those cold foods like fruit and lettuce. If you want a boy, head straight for foods that early-modern physicians classified as hot: wine, meat, arugula.
I’m not so sure about the recipe for dried stag testicles, though. If it works for you, let us know. Early doctors recommend that you sprinkle them liberally onto your food.
Imagine this: “Excuse me, Sire. But could pass the salt and testicles?”
For more eclectic musings on embryology, childbirth, chastity belts, brothel madams, you name it…
take a peek here.
By Holly Tucker
What would happen if a painter-monk fell in love with a young novitiate? And what happens when an art historian pairs up with a novelist? Answer–The Miracles of Prato: A Novel.
The page-turning novel opens with a birth, a scandal–and then leads the reader into the dark corners of convent life during the Renaissance. It’s a beautiful book built on the equally spell-binding paintings by one of Italy’s masters, Fra Filippo Lippi.
The authors will come by on Thursday to talk a bit about the Sacred Belt of the Virgin. A topic right up our alley, given how fascinated we are by love, sex and childbirth here at Wonders and Marvels.
In the meantime, you may wish to study up on your art history with a couple of great articles from the New York Times–one of which describes the research that the authors did in Italy so they could be sure to have their details right.
Eternal Objects of Desire (Fra Filippo Lippi exhibit, Art Review, Roberta Smith)
In Tuscany, the Revealing of a Forbidden Love (Laurie Lico Albanese)
And for those of you who love book trailers, take a look here.
Image: Fra Filippo Lippi, “The Virgin with the Sacra Cintola” (1450s). Museo Civico, Prato.
