Last week, I reviewed Holly’s Blood Work: A Tale Of Medicine and Murder in the Scientific Revolution. Today, I’m excited to welcome Holly for a guest post about baby-making superstitions!
You Are What You Eat
When I was pregnant, I craved tons of fruit. Truly, I could not get enough of it. At my local Smoothie King, they started the blenders the minute I walked in. And I walked in at least once or twice a day.
I should have guessed it. I should have known. I was going to have a daughter. The fruit was the tell-tale sign.
As part of my day job, I research early medicine. By early, I mean pre-1800. A single theory of the body permeated both the learned and lay communities for nearly a millennium. Humoralism held that the body was a murky mess of fluids (humors). There were four humors: blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile. Good health happened when the humors were in balance. Ill-health when they were not.
This helps explain why there was so much bloodletting done in early medicine. Bloodletting was simply the most efficient way to rebalance the humors.
But the humors also had a lot to do with babymaking. Men and boys tended toward a warmer humoral “complexion” [balance]. Women and girls tended toward a cooler complexion.
Before the discovery of the egg and the sperm (1672 and 1677), folks thought that babies were the result of a battle between maternal and paternal seed. (Women had seed—you just couldn’t see it). If the father’s complexion was warm but not hot, it could easily be conquered by a wife with a very cold complexion. A girl would result. If the mother’s complexion tended to run a little warmer than that of most women, a boy would result when her seed was mixed with that of the father’s.
Now you could always try to alter your complexion if you were trying to make a baby of one or the other kind. I’ve worked with some fabulous sex manuals of the 17th century. (Wait—that doesn’t sound right. But you know what I mean.) One title is especially memorable, “The Art of Making Boys.” In France, where girls had few inheritance rights, who would want to make a girl anyway?
Apparently I did. Fruit is the ultimate cooling food. It joins salad in this respect. (Although arugula, with its kick, gets counted as a “hot” food in humoralist herbals.) I drank smoothie after smoothie. And voilà, a beautiful baby girl. Thank you Smoothie King!
For more strange and true stories about early medicine, be sure to have a look at Holly’s new book, Blood Work: A Tale of Medicine and Murder in the Scientific Revolution.
On to the giveaway! I have one copy of Blood Work to give away to one lucky reader! To enter, please fill out the form below. Open to US & Canadian residents only, please. Winner will be contacted via email on Thursday, April 7.
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