De Secretis Mulierum  

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The De secretis mulierum or Secreta mulierum[1] is a medieval treatise generally but erroneously attributed to the philosopher Albertus Magnus. It was written in Latin in the late thirteenth or early fourteenth. It is a work of medico-philosophical nature which concerns itself with human reproduction.

"De Secretis Mulierum" is what is known as a "Book of secrets", a compendium of medicinal knowledge, magic, and folklore very common in the late middle ages and the Renaissance.

On the authorship by Magnus:

• "Already in the thirteenth century, Albert Bollstoedt, Bishop of Ratisbonne, better known as Albertus Magnus, had, in spite of his clerical profession, furnished much scabrous matter concerning the opposite sex in his work De Secretis Mulierum." --Centuria Librorum Absconditorum. The compiler of this monumental work and the two companion volumes, Index Librorum Prohibitorum and Catena Librorum Tacendorum, would seem to be at variance with Havelock Ellis. A further reference to Albertus Magnus by Fraxi is worth giving: "Shall a bishop, raised to the See of Ratisbonne, (exclaims the erudite James Atkinson) and (still more monstrous) shall a canonised man, an 'in coelum sublevatus,' undertake a natural history of the most natural secret, inter secretalia foeminea? Is the natural and divine law at once to be expounded, inter Scyllam et Charybdim, of defailance and human orgasm?" Medical Bibliography, p. 72.[2]

References

• De Secretis Mulierum : or the Mysteries of Human Generation fully revealed, faithfully rendered into English, with explanatory Notes, and approved of by the late John Quincy, MD London, 1725. 8vo. 5s. A publication by Edmund Curll