G. F. von Franckenau’s Satyra sexta (1674) on Male Menstruation and Female Testicles

The essay focuses on the German physician Georg Franck von Franckenau (1643– 1704) and his Satyrae medicae from the 1670s and 1680s. It illuminates Franckenau’s ideas on sexual difference based on his discussion of sex-specific bodily functions such as menstruation and male and female genital structure. In Franckenau’s satires, a woman is not simply opposed to or likened to a man, but she is also compared to and contrasted with a child, an animal and even a salt statue. Franckenau offers an interesting view of those conventional biases that were attached to women’s bodies and their physical functions. By following the logic of curiosity and by bringing together seemingly different categories, Franckenau objected to generalisations about male and female bodies and challenged conventional sexual groupings by offering counterexamples.