Galen Examines His Lesbian Daughter
Tuesday, July 16th, 2013 -- by Bacchus
An ancient medical investigation of lesbianism:
Galen, the second-century Greek physician whose own daughter was a lesbian, according to medieval Arabic writers, is supposed to have examined his daughter’s labia and surrounding veins and to have concluded that her lesbianism was due to “an itch between the major and minor labia” that could be soothed only by rubbing them against another woman’s labia.
From Medieval Arab Lesbians and Lesbian-Like Women by Sahar Amer, in the Journal of the History of Sexuality (2009).
Galen was renowned for centuries as the greatest doctor who had ever lived. But that doesn’t mean he was actually all that good.
Also: readers may remember that Galen’s previous appearance on ErosBlog where his name was invoked as part of a husband’s appeal for buttsex during pregnancy:
Thy size repels me, whilst thy charms invite;
Then, say, how celebrate the marriage rite?
Learn’d Galen, Celsus, and Hippocrates,
Have held it good, in knotty points like these,
Lest mischief from too rude assaults should come,
To copulate ex more pecudum.
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