A woman from my city who appeared to be mad was taken by her husband and relatives to a soothsayer, who, they hoped, would cure her. In order to cross the Arno River they put her on the shoulders of the strongest man. Suddenly she began wriggling her buttocks simulating the movements of coitus, screaming at the top of her lungs: “I want to be fucked!” Thus she revealed the source of her affliction.

The man carrying her fell into such a fit of laughter that he tumbled into the water. The others burst out laughing also when they learned the cure for this insanity; asserting that incantations would not do the job, but that coition would restore her to health. Then turning to the husband they said, “You will be your wife’s best doctor.”

So they all went home, and when the husband had fulfilled his marital obligations, the woman’s mind returned to its former state. This is the best remedy for the insanity of women.

From David O. Frantz’s Festum Voluptatis, Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 1989, p. 18, quoting from Giovanni Francesco Poggio Bracciolini’s Facetiae, translated by B.J. Hurwood, New York: Award Books, 1968 (first published in 1450), No. XXIV, pp. 43-44.