Today I offer 4 books which deal with female psychology, before it existed.

Willis by way of dissection anticipates modern ideas of the physiology of emotion baby connecting the mood, hysteria and melancholy with Brain functions.

Châstelain, who treated diseases of the nervous system Argues that that vapors and convulsions and hysteria are functions of body chemistry and

pseudo Albertus Magnus who was strongly influenced by Avicenna’s [Ibn-Sina (980-1037)] connects all stages of female sexual generation with the early medieval concept of the ventricular system (concavitate cerebri) [ventricles] (with fowing animal spirit inside) where the virtues (virtute) [fac-ulties] were allocated –and can effect the outcome of child birth.

Drake in her ‘Essays in defence of the female sex’ relies greatly on “the New Science ” to prove “there were no rational grounds for contending that women were intellectually inferior to men. Such a belief was only sustained through ‘the Usurpation of Men, and the Tyranny of Custom”

I hope that you find this four books as interesting as I have.

  1. 816J WILLIS, Thomas (1621–1675)

Thomæ  Willis Med. Doct. Opera Omnia, Nitidius quam unquam hactenus edita, plurimum emendata, Indice rerum copiosisimo, ac distinctione characterum exornata. Studio & Opera Gerardi Blasii, M. D. Et in Illust. Amstelaed. Gymnasio Prof. Publ. Bibliothecarii, &c. Hac tandem nouissima Editione accuratissime recognita, ac expolita. Excellentissimo Domino Antonio Mastini Medicorum Coryphaeo Preaestantissimo Dicata.

Coloniae,  Sumptibus Gasparis Storti. Cum Superiorum Facultate. 1694.

                                                                                                                          Price $5,000

Two Folio volumes bound together; 3.3 X 22 cm: Signatures: π⁸ A-Z⁶ Aa⁸ Bb-Zz⁶, [table;3 leaves of plates after page 430 {bound upside down}] Aaa-Ddd6. Half-title, title printed in red and black and with printer’s engraved device, engraved portrait of the author by Isabella Piccini and 7 engraved plates, numerous engraved text illustrations, woodcut headpieces and initials, general index. Text in two columns. Bound in contemporary Vellum.

Rare Third GENEVA EDITION of Thomas Willis’ collected works, edited by Gerard Blasius, and the first (and finest) printed in folio format. Pages 181-88 of this edition reprint the text of William Croone’s 1664 De ratione motus musculorum (see Garrison-Morton 575). The place of printing has frequently been misinterpreted as being Cologne in Germany but  is in fact the community of Cologny (Coloniae Allobrogum) in canton Geneva, Switzerland. “In addition to his invaluable work in the anatomy and physiology of the nervous system, Willis was the first to distinguish true diabetes mellitus, and showed that the polyuria was not due to any disease of the kidneys. He anticipated the recognition of hormones in the circulation of his suggestion that the phenomena of puberty were due to a ferment distributed through the body from the genitals. He discovered the superficial lymphatics of the lungs, distinguished acute tuberculosis from the chronic fibroid type and gave the first clinical and pathological account of emphysema. The modern treatment of asthma really begins with Willis, who considered it to be of nervous origin . . . Willis was probably the first to report an epidemic of cerebrospinal fever” (Garrison-Morton 10280)

NLM/Krivatsy 13003; Garrison-Morton 10280;

Willis concluded that hysteria had a cerebral origin; prior to this discovery, physicians thought that the uterus was responsible for excessive emotionality (Pearce, 2003). as seen in the following book by Châstelain. But Willis in his Affectionum quae dicuntur hystericae et hypochondriacae pathologia spasmodica vindicata. Accesserunt exercitationes medico-physicae duae de sanguinis accensione et de motu musculari (1670) proposed that the brain influenced the cerebellum through the quadrigeminal plate and the superior cerebellar peduncles, and so the latter coordinated the vagus and ‘intercostal’ (sympathetic) nerves, which were involuntary. This influence was often evidenced in hysteria by difficulty in breathing, chest pain, abdominal distension and outbursts of weeping and laughter. Hence, Willis anticipated modern ideas of the physiology of emotion (Vinchon & Vie, 1928).

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 “ As women experience more serenity than men  the most frequent cause of their convulsions and convulsive moments is serenity which accumulates more often in the ovaries or the glands of the mesentery than the folds of the brain or the ventricles. “

“Traité des convulsions et des mouvemens convulsifs qu’on appelle à présent vapeurs, par M. Chastelain.”

2). 759J   M. Jean  Châstelain ±1715. (professeur de l’Université de Montpellier1697-1715).

Traité des convulsions et des mouvemens convulsifs qu’on appelle à présent vapeurs, par M. Chastelain.

Lyon : Anisson et Posuel,1691                               Price   $1,900

Octavo, 13 X 8 cm, Signatures a6, A-K12. Bound in full contemporary sheep over gilt spine with title. a nice original copy, slight bookworm damage on the title page and second leaf, otherwise an excellent internal copy.

In the entry for Chastelain in Eloy’s ‘Dictionnaire historique’ it is stated that, according to Astruc, Chastelain was the first professor to promulgate Harvey’s doctrines at Montpellier (‘Il m’a pourtant dit qu’il étoit le premier qui eût soutenu la circulation dans les écoles’). Monsieur Chastelain, was  Conseiller du Roi & Professeur roial in medecine, de l’Université de Montpellier.

During this role he was called for consultation in Bordeaux by his colleague Demery, with a young lady of condition “attacked by convulsion and periodic convulsive movements” … he wrote this treatise which was only to be a chapter in a general history of diseases which never saw the light of day. But in this book we get a glimpse of his ideas about Convulsions which tend to be rather traditional compared with Willis.  Jean Chastelain is one of four authors to have treated diseases of the nervous system in Montpellier with Lazare Riviere, J. Lazerme and Boissier des Sauvages.  

Still, despite the traditional way he deals with the unexplainable Chastelain expands typical work of the late seventeenth century that blends traditional humoralism with iatromechanism. This book considers true cases and actual mechanisms in the brain and body. 

Wellcome cat. of printed book; 17456;A, Krivatsy, NLM 2417.

Not in Garrison-Morton nor in Castiglioni. 

 There is a variant printed the same year in Paris with the sole indication of Anisson. (Inventaire de la Collection Anisson sur l’histoire de l’imprimerie et la librairie principalement a Paris) Variant bears the imprint: A Lyon & se vend a Paris, : Chez J. Anisson, directeur de l’imprimerie Roiale, ruë S. Jaques, vis-à-vis la ruë des Mathurins.

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3) 704J pseudo Albertus Magnus

Albertus Magnus de secretis mulierum cum commento.

[Venetiis]; [Per Jo. Alvisium de Varisio], 1501. Price $8,800

Quarto 24 x 14.5 cm. Collation: a-g⁸. 56 leaves. (The text is that of the undated edition of Perugia.) This copy is bound in later vellum over paste paper boards. Some restorations to the last leaves covering small parts of the text, uniform and light browning of the first issue, but a very good, margined and fresh copy. Contemporary maniculae, notes and passim attention signs Similar to other copies I have seen.

(Impressum Venetiis : per Io. Aluisium de Varisio, 1501 die XVI mensis Octubris)

All early editions are quite rare. Only three U.S.copies of holding institutions listed in USTC: National Library of Medicine: UNIV OF ILLINOIS,

This book has been called “one of the most influential documents in the history of medieval scientific attitudes toward women” it is a culmination of Hippocratic, Galenic, and Aristotelian theories and discussions on sexuality and reproduction from both a medical and philosophical perspectives. The earliest manuscripts date from the beginning of the fourteenth century (possibly as early as c. 1300). This work exists in many manuscripts from the thirteenth century on, I’ve located about 75 copies worldwide. It was Printed first in 1481 and there exists 20 printed edition to the turn of the 15th century,(to 1501) all of these are rare, with the greatest part of holdings of any edition s being held by the Philadelphia college of Physicians (9) and Nation library of Medicine (10) leaving 22 copies of any edition spread across the country suggesting that this was a popular book and used to the point of scarcity and furthermore that the concepts expressed in this work were of great interest and perhaps influence.

Lynn Thorndike explored the attribution of this work to Albertus Magnus, and concludes that De Secretis and was probably composed by one of his followers during the late 13th or early 14th century. The text is interspersed with commentary also by unknown authorship, there extists two states of commentary and this is known as commentator ‘A’ . It is curious and determinative that the authors all refer to Albertus Magnus in the third person. (studies by Wickersheimer, 1923, Ferckel, 1954 and Thorndike, 1955).
This text might establish itself as scientific and philosophical treatis by the pseudo attribution to Albertus, in order to segregate itself from orther genera of ‘secret’ texts, including myth, folk lore, magic et c.

This text consists of 13 chapters;

On the Generation of the Embryo
On the Formation of the Fetus
Concerning the Influence of the Planets
On the Generation of Imperfect Animals
On the Exit of the Fetus from the Uterus
Concerning Monsters in Nature
On the Signs of Conception
On the Signs of Whether a Male or Female is in the Uterus
On the Signs of Corruption of Virginit
On the Signs of Chastity
Concerning a Defect of the Womb
Concerning Impediments to Conception
On the Generation of the Sperm

As our pseudo author of Albertus Magnus, the treatises’s “believed that the study of nature as perceived through sense experience and then analyzed in a rational manner forms a single discipline through which we come to comprehend the universe in its corporeal aspects. Human reproduction, a main subject of this treatise, is one of these aspects, that nevertheless has repercussions for our understanding of the entire cosmos” (Lemay, p. 3).

To speculate upon the community of reader addressed or the actual rader of this text has come to a point of controversy recently, Thondike suggests this was a text sort of book, while De Secretis was most likely “designed to be used within a religious community as a vehicle for instructing priests in natural philosophy, particularly as it pertains to human generation.”

“A strong subtext of the Secrets, however, is the evil nature of women and the harm they can cause to their innocent victims: young children and their male consorts. Clearly then, another purpose of this treatise is to malign the female sex, a tradition that extends back in Christianity to second-century misogynist writings” (Lemay, p. 16). Among the concepts that the text popularised were the idea that women’s menstrual blood was poisonous, that post-menopausal women (especially those who were poor) were more “venomous” because they could no longer expel the toxins, and that women were inherently lascivious beings with a physiological need to absorb the heat and life force of men. “It is these misogynistic ideas about women’s sexuality that seeded their demonization in the years that followed, as the Secrets served as a direct source for the Malleus Maleficarum. Indeed, the most famous statement from the Malleus explicitly connects witchery with ideas about women’s sexuality rooted in the medieval period: ‘All witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which is in women insatiable’”

(McLemore, “Medieval Sexuality, Medical Misogyny, and the Makings of the Modern Witch”, blog of the University of Notre Dame’s Medieval Studies Institute, October 30, 2020). Pseudo- Albertus Magnus (Hillard 55)

USTC No. 800052. https://www.ustc.ac.uk/editions/800052. Index Aureliensis CNCB 259. EDIT 16 CNCE 16221

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One of the Pillars of Early Modern English “Feminism”

4) 775J Judith Drake, (fl. 1696-1723). 


An essay in defence of the female sex. In which are inserted the characters of a pedant, a squire, a beau, a vertuoso, a poetaster, a city-critick, &c. In a letter to a lady. Written by a lady. The third edition with additions.


London: printed for A. Roper and E. Wilkinson at the Black Boy, and R. Clavel at the Peacock, in Fleetstreet, 1697. Price $6,500

Quarto. 19 x 11 cm. Signatures: A8, B4, Bb-K8, L4 With an engraved frontispiece, “The Compleat Beau” Third EDITION (a year after the first edition.) . Bound in contemporary, speckled calf, ruled in blind. with spine is rebacked with “Female Sex” gilt spine. Internally, this copy is in excellent condition with clean, fresh leaves and large margins.

“‘An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex” (1696) was one of the most significant English contributions to the early modern debate concerning women. Attributed to Judith Drake (c. 1670- post 1723), who wrote it in the form of a letter to a female friend following ‘a private conversation, between some gentlemen and ladies’, the tract vigorously and wittily vindicated female intellectual abilities and character. Drake drew upon John Locke’s ‘An Essay Concerning Human Understanding’ (1690) to construct a rationalist framework upon which to argue that it was custom and language which engendered the belief that women were intellectually inferior to men. Drake then proceeded to reject the cult of the ancients and, in their place, championed the work of ‘modern’ learning and the value of informal education for women. Additionally, Drake contended that men shared the character faults of which women were usually accused. She accentuated masculine follies by sketching satiric portraits of various male types, such as the : 

“There remains nothing more, but to shew that there are some necessary Qualifications to be acquir’d, some good Improvements to be made by Ingenious Gentlemen in the Company of our Sex. Of this number are Complacence, Gallantry, Good Humour, Invention, and an Art…”


“Drake’s welding of rationalist epistemology to ‘feminist’ argument was of particular originality within the context of early modern pro-women writings. Only two ‘feminist’ texts had previously employed such a methodology as a foundation for their discussion, and only one of those had been English. The earliest was “The Woman as Good as the Man” (1677), a translation of François Poulain de Barre’s Cartesian analysis of how gender is culturally constructed. Two decades later, another Cartesian-inspired tract joined the debate, Mary Astell’s ‘A Serious Proposal to the Ladies’(1694/7) Since Drake’s treatise was published two years after Astell’s, she has been relegated to the position of being a disciple of Astell’s. Indeed, owing to confusion over the authorship of the anonymously published ‘Essay’, the work has been credited to Astell.

 “Judith Drake drew upon one of the most influential Enlightenment thinkers, John Locke. Locke’s book An Essay Concerning Human Understanding would help Drake construct a rationalist framework to defend the female sex. With it, she argued that “there are no innate Ideas, but the Notions we have are derived from our external Senses, either immediately, or by Reflexion.” If human knowledge was based upon experience, men and women therefore had the capacity to become intellectual equals. Instead, custom and language had engendered the belief that women were intellectually inferior to men. Drake proceeded to reject what she deemed  “the cult of the ancients” and, in their place, championed the work of ‘’modern” learning and the value of informal education for women.: https://blog.lib.utah.edu/book-of-the-week-an-essay-in-defence-of-the-female-sex/embed/#?secret=kDAkos829W#?secret=WpHbAAcD5L

“Drake’s wholehearted espousal of rationalist argument is one of the defining notes of her work. She relied upon rationalism to formulate and justify her ideas concerning the intellectual and moral worth of women. Drake’s foremost intellectual debt was undoubtedly to Locke’s ‘Essay’. ‘The greatest Difficulty we struggled with’, she wrote, ‘was the Want of a good Art of Reasoning, which we had not’til that defect was supply’d by the greatest Master of that Art, Mr. Locke.’ Drawing upon Locke she stated that ‘there are no innate Ideas, but the Notions we have are derived from our external Senses, either immediately or by Reflection.’ If human knowledge was based upon experience, men and women therefore had the capacity to become intellectual equals. Additionally, the intellectualequality of the sexes could be demonstrated by knowledge which drew upon experience.


“Although Drake satirized the seemingly more bizarre activities of enthusiasts for the ‘new sciences’ in the ‘Essay’, in general she was a warm supporter of the cause and approved of the work of the Royal Society. Drake called upon ‘the new science’ to prove her case. She related how physicians had informed her that ‘there is no Difference in the Organization of those parts which have any Relation to, or Influence over, the Minds.’ Likewise, careful observation from nature could demonstrate this equality too. Drake noted that the behavior of animals showed that ‘there is no difference betwixt Male and Female in point of Sagacity.’ Drake drew a similar conclusion from studying the behavior of those most bereft of literate influences, the rural poor. ‘The condition of the two Sexes is more level, than amongst Gentlemen, City-Traders or rich Yeomen’, she remarked. Drake’s belief in the ability of the female intellect led her to speculate further that the inferior bodily strength of women suggested that they were created for thinking, whereas men were built for action. Consequently, she proposed that women could perform intellectual tasks in business, such as accounting, whilst men should carry out jobs requiring physical labor.

 “The underlying importance of party politics is exemplified in one of the greatest works of early modern ‘feminism’, Judith Drake’s An essay in defence of the female sex (1696). Although Drake shared political similarities with other tory ‘feminists’, including the more celebrated Mary Astell, Drake’s work differed radically from theirs over how an Anglican tory society could be maintained. Instead of stressing the necessity of teaching the tenets of Anglicanism to young women, as had her predecessors, Drake combined tory ideas with Lockean philosophy and concepts of ‘politeness’ to formulate an early Enlightenment vision of sociable, secularized, learning and the role female conversation could play in settling a society fractured by party politics.” (Dr Hanna Smith)


Drake also believed that ‘all Souls are equal, and alike’. Thus, for Drake, there were no rational grounds for contending that women were intellectually inferior to men. Such a belief was only sustained through ‘the Usurpation of Men, and the Tyranny of Custom’.”

(Dr Hannah Smith, “English ‘Feminist’ Writings and Judith Drake’s ‘An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex (1696)”, The Historical Journal, 44 (2001), pp. 27-47.)
Wing D 2125B (formerly Wing A 4058, under Astell); Halkett & Laing, “Dictionary of Anonymous and Pseudonymous English Literature”, Vol. 2.; Devereaux, Johanna. “‘Affecting the Shade’: Attribution, Authorship, and Anonymity in ‘An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex.’” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, vol. 27, no. 1, 2008, pp. 17–37. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20455350. Accessed 27 Mar. 2024.