The VERY raunchy history of sex in the Middle Ages is revealed in a new book

From The Daily Mail:

From monks thought to have died from a lack of sex, to priests conjuring demons to lure women into bed, a new book offers fascinating glimpses into the history of sex in the Middle Ages.

Katherine Harvey's illuminating novel The Fires of Lust: Sex in the Middle Ages offers a peak into the bedrooms of ordinary mediaeval men and women living in western Europe.

Harvey is a London-based historian and author specialising in the medieval period and Honorary Research Fellow specialising in history, classics and archaeology at Birkbeck, University of London.

The book explains how the majority of ideas and attitudes towards sex and relationships were rooted in two dominant belief systems: Roman Catholic Christianity and Galenic medicine.

From women trying to reduce their breasts to look more virginal to drinking wine mixed with powdered hare testicles in a bid to conceive a son, the book reveals many astonishing practices.

As well as some surprises, like an emphasis on female pleasure when it came to reproduction, there are shocking anecdotes of brutal punishments for behaviour deemed immoral during the period.

read more here @ Daily Mail.