SOURCE: “Medicine, the Body and the Botanical Metaphor in Erotica,” in From Physico-Theology to Bio-Technology: Essays in the Social and Cultural History of Biosciences: A Festshrift for Mikuláš Teich, edited by Kurt Bayertz and Roy Porter, Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1998, pp. 197-223.

In the essay below, Peakman examines eighteenth-century erotica as a means by which the public grappled with emerging scientific ideas about the body and sex.

Arbor Vitae, or the Tree of Life, is a succulent Plant; consisting of one straight Stem, on the Top of which is a Pistillum, or Apex. … Its Fruits, contrary to most others, grow near the Root; they are usually no more than two in Number.

Arbor Vitae Or, The Natural History Of The Tree Of Life.¹

The Frutex Vulvaria is a flat low Shrub, which always grows in a moist warm Valley, at the Foot of a little Hill, which is constantly...