Release date is 2025-12-02

Laurent Vogel (This file was produced from images generously made available by the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF/Gallica))

"De l'utilité de la flagellation dans la médecine et dans les plaisirs du…" by J. H. Meibomius is a medical treatise written in the late 17th century. It argues—drawing on classical authorities, case anecdotes, and anatomical reasoning—that flagellation can serve therapeutic ends and even facilitate sexual performance, with special attention to the roles of the loins and kidneys. In the French edition, the work is expanded by a substantial introduction and copious notes that place these claims within a wider historical and theological debate about penitential and erotic whipping.

The opening of De l'utilité de la flagellation presents a translator’s warning that this rare Latin tract is issued in French with corrected text, softened wording where possible, and extensive notes to make its medical and historical arguments accessible. An introduction then distills Abbé Boileau’s History of the Flagellants, recounting the criticisms it drew, and surveying voluntary and involuntary flagellation from pagan rites through medieval monastic practices to the sect of Italian flagellants, with ribald and cautionary anecdotes that show how penance can shade into pleasure. A brief note urges readers seeking a broader indictment of clerical abuses to other works. The treatise proper begins as a letter to “Cassius,” where the author marshals ancient and early modern physicians to claim that whipping has cured mania, melancholia, fevers, constipation, and sexual torpor, and that some individuals cannot perform sexually without it; he supports this with cases from learned literature and recent legal proceedings. He then offers an anatomical and scriptural rationale locating generative power in the loins and kidneys, compiles texts linking “reins” and desire, and explains how stimulation (or cooling, with lead plates and posture) alters arousal and emission. The excerpt closes as he turns to classical customs (Thesmophoria) and the reputed chastening effects of agnus-castus. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Originally published: Paris: C. Mercier, 1795