Q. What is carnal copulation?  A. It is a mutual action of male and female, with instruments ordained for that purpose to propagate their kind.

Q. Why is this action good in those that use it lawfully and moderately?  A. Because it eases and lightens the body, clears the mind, comforts the head and senses, and expels melancholy.

Q. Why is immoderate carnal copulation hurtful?  A. Because it destroys the sight, dries the body, and impairs the brain, often causes fevers and shortens life also.

Q. Why doth carnal copulation injure melancholic or choleric men, especially thin men?  A. Because it dries the bones much which are naturally so.  On the contrary, it is good for the phlegmatic and sanguine, because they abound with that substance which by nature, is necessarily expelled.

Q. Why should not the act be used when the body is full?  A. Because it hinders digestion; and it is not good for a hungry belly, because it weakens.

Q. Why is it not good soon after a bath?  A. Because then the pores are open, and the heat dispersed through the body:  for after bathing, it cools the body too much.

Q. Why is it not proper after vomiting or looseness?  A. Because it is dangerous to purge twice a day; for in this act the veins are purged, and the guts by the vomit.

Q. Why is there such delight in the act of venery?  A. Because this act is such a contemptible thing in itself, that all creatures would naturally abhor it were there no pleasure in it; and therefore nature readily uses it, that all kinds of living things should be maintained and kept up.

Q. Why do such as use it often take less delight in it than those who come to it seldom?  A. 1.  The passages of the seed are over large and wide; and therefore it makes no stay there, which would cause the delight. 2.  Through often evacuation there is little seed left, and therefore no delight. 3.  Because such, instead of seed there is cast out blood, undigested and raw, or some other watery substance, which is not hot, and therefore affords no delight.

Of the Seed of Man and Beasts.

Q. How, and of what cometh the seed of man?  A. Some philosophers and physicians say, it is superfluous humours; others say, that the seed is pure blood, flowing from the brain, concocted and whitened in the testicles; but sweat, urine, spittle, phlegm, choler, and the like, and blood dispersed throughout the whole body, come chiefly from the heart, liver and brain, because those parts are greatly weakened by casting seed; and therefore it appears that frequent carnal copulation is not good.

Q. Why is a man’s seed white, and a woman’s red?  A. It is white in men by reason of great heat and quick digestion, because it is rarefied in the testicles; but a woman’s is red, because her terms corrupt the undigested blood, and it hath its colour.

Q. How come females to have monthly courses?  A. Because they are cold in respect of men, and because all their nourishment cannot be converted into blood, a great part of which turns to menses, which are monthly expelled.