The treatment system, sometimes strange and unpleasant, includes eating crushed pig testicles and medieval medical texts (collected by Weller Library). For medieval men, success means inheritance.
From kings to social classes, heredity has always been the center of law and order.
Therefore, when children reach marriageable age, everyone's attention is focused on their fertility.
Although it is believed that women in medieval England were the chief culprit in most cases, the latest analysis of popular medical and religious books by the University of Exeter shows that many of these medical documents have acknowledged the possibility of male infertility since13rd century, including the medieval Paris manuscripts "Report on Infertility" and "Inappropriate Seeds", and devoted themselves to health.
Surprisingly, Trotula, a gynecological book published by Biblio the National de France12nd century, describes a urine test, which can determine whether the culprit of "defect" is male or female.
It is recorded in detail in the book that everyone, whether male or female, must urinate in a can of bran, and these cans should be kept for 9 to 10 days.
If bugs appear in one of the pots, then this person is considered as a sterile partner. Catherine Rider, a senior lecturer in medieval history at the University of Exeter and an expert in medieval magic, medicine, religion and marriage, studied many popular texts in this period and shared her knowledge. For example, Phys Org reported, "Although medical literature tends to spend most of its space on female infertility, male infertility is still often discussed as a possible cause of childlessness in academic literature and educated medieval doctors, and this information may sometimes be used in treating childless couples.
These books show that people have long accepted that male reproductive disorder is not just a problem in sexual life. What kind of treatment should a man who can't get his wife pregnant receive? The first and most common solution is prayer.
When prayer doesn't work (and usually doesn't work), there will be more intense treatment.
For example, the medical cookbook Liber de Diversis Medicinis in the15th century mentioned, "If a man wants a woman to have children, he should eat some mint and cook it with wine until its volume is reduced to one third. Another medieval book, located in Wellcome Library in London, suggested that in order to prevent infertility, pig testicles should be removed.
An example of a person taking medicine in the Middle Ages (University of Aberdeen). As for Dr. Reid's conclusion? She said, as Org Phys reported, "We can't fully understand people's attitudes towards male infertility in the Middle Ages, because we have almost no records describing the experiences of patients with reproductive disorders.
In practice, it is difficult to know whether men or women are more likely to seek infertility treatment.
Most of our evidence comes from doctors who discuss what might happen and how to treat it.
Going on, it is difficult to know whether men or women are more likely to seek treatment for infertility in practice.
Most of our evidence comes from doctors, who discuss what might happen and how to treat these problems, which means that further research and more information are needed so that we can decisively understand more details of male infertility in medieval England. Above: Medieval medical textbook (public domain) by Theodore Rocca Gass, MD.