Animal, Vegetable, Mineral? by Gibson Susannah;

Author:Gibson, Susannah;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press, Incorporated
Published: 2015-05-28T16:00:00+00:00

The man plant

These were serious issues indeed; they affected everyone, not just men of science. Discussion of generation, preformation theory, and epigenesis were not confined to learned circles. The dispute about whether there were such things as male and female plants caught the imagination of the public, and of many a satirist. Beyond the religious or scientific implications of generation theories, here was a way to talk about the often-taboo topic of sex in polite company. The public’s interest in these potentially scandalous topics is seen in popular racy satires such as The man plant published under the pseudonym Prof. Vincent Miller and Lucina sine concubitu by Sir John Hill, both published around 1750. 81

Fifteen years after the first publication of Linnæus’ sexual system, it was as popular as ever across much of Europe. Botany was a fashionable pursuit amongst men and women of all classes; thanks to the Enlightenment culture that was spreading across the Continent, there thrived increasingly liberal salons and clubs where ideas could be exchanged and debated freely; and, in these liberal times as traditional authorities were being chipped away, frivolity abounded. Botany and Linnæus were just waiting to be lampooned. The man plant, or, scheme for increasing and improving the British breed did just that.

Writing as Prof. Miller, The man plant’s anonymous author claimed he had discovered something momentous—something that would allow the human race to procreate without women having to worry about the dangers and inconveniences of pregnancy and childbirth. How had he discovered this? Well, he began with some Linnean-style thinking: he considered the analogies between plants and animals—he compared roots to veins, skin to bark, lungs to leaves. To show just how well the system worked for humans, the author supplied a handy description of a woman in Linnean terms. As Linnæus considered the reproductive parts to be the most essential parts of a plant, Miller’s description mirrored this. To conceal his more lascivious analogies from lady readers, Miller did what many botanists did and wrote the description in Latin. The parts of the flower—calix, corol, nectarium, pistillus, pericarpium—were transformed into the parts of a woman, accompanied by sensuous and somewhat lewd descriptions (Figure 9).

With this part of the analogy between people and plants nicely set up, the author moved on; since it was possible to germinate a seed in good soil in a warm greenhouse, could not the same be done with a human embryo? Next came the question of who could provide the embryo. Miller’s wife, he lamented, was too old so he turned his attention to Sally, the gardener’s daughter, a pretty, healthy 18-year-old. Miller encouraged young Sally into the arms of her sweetheart at a local wedding and, when it became apparent to her that she was pregnant, kindly offered to help her out. After 39 days’ gestation, Miller procured the embryo (the details here become a little vague) and planted it in a seed basket with some ‘chimico-lacteal fluid’ to sustain it. Eight months later, while visiting

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