ABSTRACT
This section includes works on medicine and philosophy. Both fields were concerned with understanding the human condition, and both acknowledged that sexuality and sexual acts played an important role in defining that condition. The medical works that discuss reproduction and gynecology made an impact on people’s sexual perceptions and actions, For example, the controversy over whether women contributed “seed” during conception or not influenced how people approached intercourse. Those holding the former opinion stressed the importance of female orgasm, those holding the latter did not. The scientific writings were also important because they discussed sexuality with a candor that was often absent in the religious sources. (See Joan Cadden, item 580, for a discussion of scientific sexual openness in an age of purported sexual repression.) I have included works of Aristotle here because his works were so important to the Middle Ages that intellectually they almost belong more to that era than to the ancient world.
