Gender, Old Age, and the Infertile Body in Medieval Medicine

Abstract

Medieval medical texts regularly discussed a range of reproductive disorders in men and women. As part of this discussion, they often noted that men and women were infertile in extreme youth and old age. Although medieval medical views of infertility have received scholarly attention, these references to age and infertility have not been analysed. This chapter traces these references in a range of twelfth- to fifteenth-century Latin medical works. It argues that discussions of men and women’s fertility in old age were broadly similar, and that age was more important than gender when medical writers thought about age-related infertility. Nonetheless, behind the similarities many medical writers presented age as placing a greater burden on women’s fertility than men’s.