Release date is 2025-11-16

René Galluvot, from page images generously made available by Münchener DigitalisierungsZentrum, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (www.digitale-sammlungen.de)

"Aphrodisiaque externe, ou Traité du fouet et de ses effets sur le physique de…." by D***** is a medico-philosophical treatise written in the late 18th century. It investigates how flagellation provokes sexual arousal and uses medical, historical, and moral arguments to condemn flogging in convents and schools. The work also explains the physiology behind this effect and closes with a practical discourse on aphrodisiacs intended to restore marital harmony rather than fuel libertinage.

The opening of the treatise presents an anonymous physician who defends publishing a candid inquiry, outlines his plan, and insists on plain language for the sake of public health. He first documents the use of whipping as a sexual stimulant—from antiquity to contemporary brothels—illustrated by anecdotes and authorities, then rejects astrological causes and offers a physiological explanation centered on heating the loins and lumbar nerves. He next denounces religious self-flagellation and clerical abuses as practices that inflame desire rather than suppress it, and urges their abolition, before arguing that flogging children’s buttocks sexualizes them, fosters masturbation, and should be replaced by better discipline. A brief conclusion reiterates the reformist aim and leads into an appended dissertation that outlines three sources of sexual “coldness” (constitutional weakness, exhaustion, and age), prescribes diet, regimen, and topical stimulants while warning against cantharides, and begins a catalogue of purported aphrodisiac substances. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Originally published: Geneva: (unknown), 1788