Doctor of Love - the first comprehensive biography of James Graham - tells
the remarkable story of Britain's first sexologist. Dr Graham set out to bring the sublime into the sex life of every married couple. He guaranteed both ecstasy and fertility to the users of his infamous Celestial Bed, a contraption which harnessed all the most exciting developments of the Enlightenment. Electricity, magnetism, mind-altering gases and music all played a part in this astonishing invention, luxuriously designed to impart exquisite pleasure and produce perfect babies.
Graham’s medical career took him from his native Edinburgh to America and back again, and he crossed paths with many of the most famous individuals of his day. The doctor’s well-publicized efforts to overturn medical orthodoxy provoked both admiration and ridicule. He was crowned “the King of Quacks”.
Doctor of Love is a fully rounded portrait of a remarkable eighteenth-century celebrity, revealing a complex character, at once startlingly progressive, extraordinarily arrogant and touchingly humane. He was the epitome of his era, yet utterly one of a kind.
'Eye-opening' -
Time Out
'I was entranced by Lydia Syson’s superb volume... Syson combines a sure
grasp of intellectual history with enough awareness of just how much fun
her story is. More than that, it shows how the failures and eccentrics
of history are often the most intriguing subjects.’ –
Stuart Kelly, The
Scotland on Sunday
'Syson's enthralling book offers a new portrait of Graham as an authentic
innovator... [an] admirable and engaging book.' –
The Guardian
'Wordsworth gave us the egotistic sublime, and Graham the
sexual sublime; Lydia Syson has given us a highly enjoyable peep from
behind the partition at one of the eighteenth century's weirdest and most
wonderful figures.'
Literary Review
'Syson pins the iconoclastic Graham like a butterfly on the
wider canvas of a lively social history.'
The Times
'Lydia Syson investigates the life of this most progressive of quacks in an engaging dash around the credulous and curious world of Enlightenment medicine...This meticulous reconstruction of his journey from obscure apothecary to London society darling is a vibrant portrait of a surprisingly modern world...Her discussion of Graham's methods and influences is exhaustive and often illuminating...
Doctor of Love is revealing and funny about early attempts to make a science of sex.'
Times Literary Supplement
'Graham's career has cried out for a biography, and this is a useful and conscientious one. . . Give Syson the least cue and she chases it remorselessly.'
The Sunday Telegraph
Interview with Lydia Syson
Read an excerpt from
Doctor of Love
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