ABSTRACT
Thérèse, usually a beautiful young woman, suffers from a mysterious ailment. She
complains, “I was listless, my complexion jaundiced, my lips inflamed … I resem-
bled a living skeleton.” She consults a doctor, who surprisingly diagnoses a lack of
sex, that “divine liquid which affords us the one physical pleasure.” Thérèse
regains her health with a remarkable discovery: while bathing her private parts,
inflamed from abstinence, she finds “a little protuberance which caused me to
shiver.” Rubbing it, she “soon gained the heights of pleasure!” This happy woman
is the heroine of a radical pornographic novel called Thérèse Philosophe, and her
creator challenged the Church’s antagonism toward sexual desire.
