Quacks Pretend To Cure Other Men’s Disorders But Rarely Find A Cure For Their Own – Part Sixty Five
James Graham (1745 – 1794) and the Celestial Bed
We’ve seen before that sexual health and well-being is no respecter of wealth or position in society. Of course, those with plenty of dosh are right for exploitation in this most personal of issues and this is where Edinburgh born James Graham spotted his opportunity. He trained as a doctor but failing to qualify, moved across the pond to Philadelphia where he picked up enough knowledge about electricity and magnetism to serve him in good stead in later years.
Graham moved back to Blighty and set up a practice in Bath specialising in providing therapies to improve sexual health. His reputation was made when one of his celebrity patients married his brother, William who was half her age. Encouraged, Graham moved to London where in August 1779 he opened the so-called Temple of Health in Adelphi Terrace. There Graham, resplendent in a white linen suit and a posy of flowers in his hand, would wander around opining to his customers on the benefits of electricity when it came to sex. To help punters get into the swing of things, female assistants would stand semi-naked amongst the statuary as Hygeia, the goddess of health. One of Graham’s assistants was the young Emma Lyon, later to become Hamilton and Nelson’s famous paramour. If that didn’t work, the goddess would bathe in a mud bath. It was a roaring success.
In June 1781 Graham opened the Temple of Hymen in Schomberg House in Pall Mall, the centrepiece of which was the Celestial Bed, 12 feet by 9 in size, covered by a dome featuring musical automata, fresh flowers and a couple of live turtle doves. For the £50 a night fee the couple were stimulated by oriental fragrances and ethereal gases released from a reservoir in the dome. The bed tilted to the best position for conception and when the couple got to it, music would play, the tempo increasing in line with their efforts. The mattress was stuffed with perfumed flowers and “sweet new what or oat straw” as well as magnets to prevent an unfortunate drop in performance. To top matters off, at the head of the bed was the injunction “Be fruitful, multiply and replenish the Earth” illuminated by electrical fire.
For those who couldn’t afford the Celestial Bed, they could pay two guineas to attend one of Graham’s frank lectures – one was called Lecture on Generation which recommended genital hygiene and marital love but condemned masturbation and prostitution. For your admission money you also enjoyed some music, dance and poetry and a free electric shock from a conductor which was secreted in the padding of the chairs in the lecture theatre. For an additional charge, you could sit on an elaborate throne, designed to give a light electric shock to cure impotency or barrenness. Patrons were encouraged to bathe in water through which an electrical current had been passed.
Then there was electrical aether which could be sniffed – it was actually an extract of assorted plants which had been subjected to an electrical charge of some sort – or drink some ethereal balsam which was the aether mixed with wine. Whether any of this did anyone any good is debatable but what is clear is that it didn’t serve Graham well – he went bankrupt in 1784. But like a good quack, he bounced back, offering in 1786 a new hygienic treatment, called earth bathing. The patient was buried up to their neck in earth, which supposedly recharged and cleansed their body.
Graham returned to Scotland, became increasingly religious and died in 1794, after a prolonged period of fasting.
