By Last week I looked at the controversy over the effects of coffee – was it an aphrodisiac or did it cause men to become impotent and infertile. This is really a brief follow-up to that post to show that it was not only coffee that men and women worried about in
The Coffee Controversy
In 1685 a printed treatise declared that: ‘amongst all the Drugs whereof Heaven has shewed it self liberal to Men, there be three chiefly which in our time have required so great a vogue or credit, and so particular an esteem through all Europe by the signal effects which they
A Mother’s Milk
Breastfeeding Mothers and Milk in Shakespeare Dr Victoria Sparey Many of Shakespeare’s characters are described in terms that relate to milk and infant feeding. In Titus Andronicus, Lavinia considers whether pleas for mercy will save her from being raped by the Queen’s sons, who ‘even at thy teat…hadst thy tyranny’
Guest Blog: Mothers and Sons
Mothers’ Worries over the Spiritual and Bodily Health of their Sons. Dr Sara Read In the seventeenth century it was common for high-ranking boys to be sent to study at the universities of Oxford or Cambridge from the age of around fourteen. As gentlemen, they often didn’t graduate – obtaining a degree wasn’t the
The Stuff of Dreams
Today a whole range of sleep disorders are recognised by medical science; a brief glance at the NHS direct website shows a list including: insomnia, sleep apnoea, and sleep paralysis. It is likely that we have all felt the effects, to whatever degree, of disrupted sleep and recognise that if experienced