James Graham (sexologist)
Dr James Graham (1745–1794) was a pioneer in sex therapy with a genius for spectacle, best known for his electro-magnetic musical Grand State Celestial Bed. It was designed to make the barren fertile, the impotent virile, and to produce perfect babies. For centuries Graham was dismissed as a quack, but he is better understood as a medical entrepreneur. Quackery, in the context of largely ineffective eighteenth-century medicine, is best defined by a practitioner’s advertising techniques and geographical mobility rather than by his medical skills or success. Graham was certainly an expert in “puffing” himself, but he also genuinely believed in the efficacy of his unusual treatments.
Read more about James Graham (sexologist): Early Life, Temple of Health, Celestial Bed, Earthbathing and Religion, Publications, In Fiction
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