Poxt and Clapt Together: Sexual Misbehavior in Early Modern Cases of Venereal Disease

The connection between infertility and venereal disease was probably widely understood in the early 1700s, though evidence of this is elusive, and it has received little historical attention.¹ The association is clearest in instances of healers who specialized in both curing venereal disease and treating infertility, and a few remedies for the disease doubled as fertility treatments.² Venereal scabs, ulcers, and scars were thought to hamper the physical processes involved in procreation. As one book put it quite brusquely, “the Seed does not squirt out with that Jirk as is necessary to keep up its conveyance to the Ovarium of