New Year’s Reflection

Happy New Year everyone! Before we kick off with the posts for 2015, here is a look back at last years most popular posts of the last year

5. Just sneaking into the top five is a post all about the wondrous healing virtues of chocolate. As well as enhancing libido and sexual vigour ‘Comforting Cocoa’ was believed to help halitosis, consumption and coughs.

4. Our Halloween post about whether you could cure witchcraft comes in at number 4. Urine was the key component in removing witchcraft and someone’s susceptibility to diabolical possession.

3. Making it to the third spot is ‘Dampening Desire’. A post dedicated to early modern equivalents to a cold shower – lettuce, angelica and camphor. It told the tale of a rather sad carpenter who lost his libido working in a monastery where the monks drank camphor to help them maintain their vows of chastity.

2. At number two is ‘Pregnancy and Prostitution’, which outlined how early modern medical texts and erotic literature explained that prostitutes, despite their many sexual encounters, were usually barren; their wombs being made slippery through an excess of male seed.

1. Finally in the top spot is ‘Wounded at War’ a post all about battlefield surgery and the unusual remedies deployed in the field – including pear rind, crayfish and frogspawn.