Potency, Virility, Sexual Pleasure: Chapters 9 and 10 of the Rasamañjarī

This chapter examines the ninth and tenth chapters of the sixteenth-century Rasamañjarī, an alchemical work with a strong focus on medicine. The ninth chapter is dedicated to medicines related to human sexuality and reproduction. It offers recipes to delay ejaculation, increase potency, and ensure impregnation, as well as destroy sexual desire and prevent pregnancy. Unusually, much of the chapter is focused on the female body and its sexual health, though there is still a large emphasis on the sexualization of women for male pleasure. The approach of the alchemists here shows a synthesis of medicine with tantric thought, juxtaposing the use of amulets and charms with the application of herbal and mineral medicines. This is followed by the work’s tenth chapter, a brief overview of children’s diseases. Here we find treatments that include the appeasement of the various goddesses who possess children and make them ill.