Abraham Cowley’s Plants talking abortion
The rich and often insightful medical prose of early modernity could be vibrant, and was often combative in its accounts of anatomical, institutional and pharmacological matters. But it was also circumspect in what could and could not be discussed. Scholarship on the history of abortion, for example, has had to read between the lines, to reconstruct the realities of women’s choices, and seems more often to have encountered its subject in legal rather than medical guises, or at the edges of writings on midwifery. But such an impression is to reckon without early modern poetry on the subject, where medical subject matters could be altogether more forthright than its equivalent prose.
Abraham Cowley’s expansive Latin poem, Plantarum Libri Duo (1662), translated into English in an expanded six book version, includes in its lengthy second book an animated debate on gynaecology, menstruation and abortion, all considered by and from the perspective of the plants involved: a collection of abortifacients and emmenagogues (herbs used to stimulate menstruation, sometimes overlapping with the herbs used to produce abortion). If we suppose that abortion was spoken about only in hushed voices, then what are to make of such a text, by no means an under-the-counter work.
Until recently, this was a wholly neglected book, but interest in it over the past few years, particularly in the writing by Victoria Moul, has renewed interest in a poem that seemed once to hold few readers’ attention for long (see bibliography below). This is changing however, and an essay as part of this Science-and-Poetry project (link here) looks at Cowley’s enmeshing of its scientific subject matter within such rhetorical, dramatic and generic complexity, how abortion could find such an elegant forum for its elaborate, staged discussion.
Cowley (1618-1667), one of the most popular poets of his day, ranged widely in his writing, from his quasi-Cavalier lyrics of 1630s and 1640s, to the semi-epic poetry of his Davideis and The Civil War, in the 1650s, together with an influential set of Pindarique Odes, a form taken up by a number of scientifically-inclined poets. While he sided with the royalist cause, and went into exile in the mid-1640s as part of the dislocated court, his political fortunes and commitment to royalism was doubted by some in the latter 1650s, and he was accused of having made his peace a little too easily with what seemed the Republican reality of things. In any case, Thomas Sprat, editing his posthumous Works (1668), deemed a defence of his constancy necessary, together with some judicious omissions and changes in the chronology of events.
After his return to England, and a brief period of confinement, he retrained as a physician, studying botany and medicine, although Sprat claims that this was mere cover for his covert pro-monarchical activities. Be that as it may, he involved himself seriously with his science, publishing A proposition for the advancement of learning, retitled the same year as A proposition for the advancement of experimental philosophy (1661), and acquired a knowledge that he put to use in his long scientific poem, Plantarum Libri Duo (1662). A longer version of these plant poems, Plantarum Libri Sex (1668), appeared posthumously, as part of his Poemata Latina (1668), prepared by Thomas Sprat for the press, and translated under Nahum Tate as Six Books of Plants (1689), with Aphra Behn as the translator of one section and J.O. (probably John Oldham) responsible for the first two books of natural history. The latter four books, even while they mention plants fetched from the New World, contain relatively little scientific material.
The earlier two-book version, however, is full of complex medical-scientific material, working in natural history, pharmacology and women’s health. Where the first book attends to the pharmaceutical qualities of numerous herbs and their medical uses, the second book, some of which is here, opens in an apparently light-hearted debate amongst ‘female plants’, who have carefully dismissed males from their presence. This debate, taking place in an Oxford Herb-Garden at midnight one spring evening, is a rhetorical set-piece consisting of some twelve expansive speeches by scientifically-knowledgeable female plant-speakers, variously Ovidian and classically-minded, and erudite on the subject of anatomy, from Galen and Hippocrates to William Harvey. It is at one and the same time, borderline absurd and wholly serious, even while, in tone, it is a long way from the burlesque so commonly encountered in much of the era’s poetry. On the contrary, its account of the always fraught medical, social and emotional tensions around abortion makes it the most frank and sympathetic discussions of the subject in early modernity.
As it goes on, the learned council of women, shifts its discussion from theories of menstruation, to a long series of exchanges on abortion: its ethics, its practicalities, as well as the hypocrisy that surrounds the way it is discussed. There are very few, if any, such open account of abortion in early modern texts, even if the subject is discussed obliquely in midwifery and medical texts. Cowley’s poem, however, is something quite different. Moreover, all the plant-speakers involved are themselves ‘ecbolics’, glossed as ‘such Medicines as bring away dead Children, or cause abortion.’
The essay will appear in print later in the year, but an ‘early-view’ version can be found in the journal, The Seventeenth Century here.
An online version of the poem can be found here and a brief bibliography is given after the poem.
The extract here is from the early part of Book 2, where one of the plants, Penny Royal (Pulegium) gives an account of what women suffer, and why. This is at a point when the debate is relatively cordial, though it will turn far more spiky as things go on. The account of women’s anatomy given here offers variously melodramatic, metaphysical and mechanistic explanations of menstruation.
PENNY ROYAL
First penny-royal, to advance her fame
(And from her mouth a grateful odour came),
Tells ’em, they say, how many ills that source
Threatens, whene’r it stops its purple course.
That foggy dulness in the Limbs attends 180
And under its own weight the body bends.
Things ne'r so pleasant once, now will not please,
And Life it self becomes a mere Disease.
Ulcers and Inflammations too it breeds,
And dreadful, bloudy, vomiting succeeds.
The Womb now labouring seems to strive for breath,
And the Soul struggles with a short liv'd Death.
The Lungs opprest hard respiration make,
And breathless Coughs soon all the fabrick shake.
Yea the proud foes the Capitol, in time;
And all the minds well-guarded Towers climb.
Hence watchful Nights, but frightful Dreams proceed,
And minds that suffer true, false evils breed.
Dropsie at last the wearied Life o'rflows,
Which floating from its shipwreck'd Vessel goes.
How oft, alas! poor, tender, blooming Maids
(Before Loves pow'r their kinder hearts invades)
Does this sad Malady with Clouds o'rcast,
Which all the longing Lovers passion blast? 200
The Face looks green, the ruddy Lips grow pale,
Like Roses tinctur'd by a sulphurous gale.
To ashes, coals, and Lime their appetite
(A loathsom treat) their stomach does invite.
But 'tis a sin to say, the Ladies eat
Such things; those are the vile distempers meat.
Thus Penny-royal spake (more passionate
In words, than humane voice can e'r relate)
At which, they say, the whole Assembly mov'd
Wept o'r the loss of Beauty, once belov'd.
So that good Company, when Day returns,
The setting of the Moon, their Mistress mourns.
She told the means too; by what secret aid
That conquering Ill did all the limbs invade.
Through the Wombs Arteries, said she, it goes,
And unto all the noted passes flows.
(Whether the Wombs magnetick pow'rs the cause,
As the whole bodies floods the Kidney draws;
Or that the Moon, the Queen of fluid things
Directs and rules that, like the Oceans springs.) 220
But if the Gates it finds so fortified,
That the due current that way be deny'd;
It rages and it swells; the gross part stays,
And in the neighbouring parts dire revels plays:
Whilst the more liquid part does upward rise,
And into veins of purer nature flies.
It taints the rosie Channels, as it goes,
And all the soil's corrupted, where it flows.
The bane its journey through the Cava* takes,
And fierce attacks upon the Liver makes,
And Heart, whose right-side Avenue it commands,
Whilst that for fear amaz'd and trembling stands.
But the left Region so well-guarded seems,
That in her walls safe she her self esteems.
Nor stops it there, but on the Lungs does seize,
Where drawing breath it self grows a Disease.
Thence through a small Propontis carried down,
It makes the Port and takes the left-side Town.
What will suffice that covetous Disease,
Which all the Hearts vast treasures cannot please? 240
But Avarice still craves for more and more,
And if it all things don't enjoy, is poor.
Th'Aorta its wild Legions next engage,
They all agreed; for none of them e'r doubt,
How Life in Purple Circles wheels about.
That Plant they'd hiss out of their company,
Which Harvey's Circulation shou'd deny.
Bibliography (Primary)
Cowley, Abraham. Abrahami Couleij Angli, Poemata Latina. In Quibus Continentur, Sex Libri Plantarum, Viz. Duo Herbarum, Florum, Sylvarum, Et Unus Miscellaneorum (London, 1668)
Cowley, Abraham. A. Covleii Plantarum Libri Duo (Londini: Nath. Brooks, 1662)
Cowley, Abraham. The Third Part of the Works of Mr Abraham Cowley, Being His Six Books of Plants, Viz. The First and Second of Herbs, the Third and Fourth of Flowers, the Fifth and Sixth of Trees, Now Made English by Several Hands (London, 1689).
Sutton, Dana (ed.): De Plantis Libri VI (1668): https://philological.cal.bham.ac.uk/plants/2lat.html
Translation at: https://cowley.lib.virginia.edu/works/Bk2.htm
Bibliography (Seconary)
Killeen, Kevin, “The Outrageous Inner Lives of Plants: Abortion Poetics in Abraham Cowley’s Plantarum Libri Duo (Two Books of Plants).” The Seventeenth Century, 2025, 1–21. doi:10.1080/0268117X.2025.2457058.
Lecky, Katarzyna. ‘Abraham Cowley’s Six Books of Plants and the Diversification of Textual Authority’ in Abraham Cowley (1618-1667): A Seventeenth-Century English Poet Recovered, ed. Michael Edson and Cedric D. Reverand (Clemson, SC: Clemson University Press, 2023), 171–194
Monreal, Ruth. Flora Neolatina: Die Hortorum libri IV von René Rapin SJ und die Plantarum libri VI von Abraham Cowley. Zwei lateinische Dichtungen des 17. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2010).
Moul, Victoria. ‘Horatian Odes in Abraham Cowley’s Plantarum Libri Sex (1668),’ in Neo-Latin Poetry in the British Isles, ed. L. B. T. Houghton and Gesine Manuwald (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2012), 87–104
Moul, Victoria. ‘The Transformation of Ovid in Cfowley’s Herb Garden’ in The Afterlife of Ovid, ed. Peter Mack and John North (London: University of London Press, 2015), 221–234.
Spearing, Caroline. ‘“Expelling the Purple Tyrant from the Citadel”: The Menstruation Debate in Book 2 of Abraham Cowley’s Plantarum Libri Sex (1662)’, in Bodily Fluids in Antiquity, ed. Mark Bradley, Victoria Leonard, and Laurence Totelin (London: Routledge, 2021) 369–380.
Spearing, Caroline, ‘The Fruits of Retirement: Political Engagement in the Plantarum Libri Sex’ in Royalists and Royalism in 17th-Century Literature: Exploring Abraham Cowley, ed. Philip Major (New York: Routledge, 2020), 180–201.
Taylor, Kathleen and Wright, Gillian. ‘The Rich Help of books’: Patterns of Annotation in Latin and English Versions of Abraham Cowley’s Sex Libri Plantarum’, The Seventeenth Century, 38:4 (2023): 625–648.
Wright, Gillian. The Restoration Transposed: Poetry, Place and History, 1660-1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019).