Some people* have been asking for this, so here it is: a Hippokratic reading of #WAP , inspired by recent... medical claims about the song. Thread (1/x).

*no one.

For the Hippokratics, intercourse and conception were unthinkable w/o vaginal wetness. As writes the author of Generation (tr. Ionie), during sex, “a woman also releases something from her body, sometimes into the womb, which then becomes moist, and sometimes externally" (2/x).

Much like Cardi’s “macaroni in the pot,” the Hippokratic author of Generation compares female arousal to “boiling water,” and male sperm to a smaller quantity of cold water: “if into boiling water you pour another quantity of water which is cold, the water stops boiling." (3/x)

Further, the uterus is “moistened by intercourse, whereas when the womb is drier than it should be it becomes extremely contracted, and this extreme contraction causes pain to the body," and even "sickness." (4/x)

The Corpus distinguishes femaleness from maleness, then, primarily in terms of moisture. This distinction is clearly articulated in the treatise Regimen: "Males of all species are warmer and drier, and the females moister and colder." (5/x)

The Hippokratics did not weigh in on the recurring question of whether the female sex is the hotter or colder sex (Aristotle says the latter). They were more concerned with moisture, even calling it is the “nature” (φύσις) of woman. (6/x)

The cultural construction of ‘femaleness = wetness” Hippokratic gynaecology makes woman a threat to man. The source of this threat is her affinity with the natural world, or what Anne Carson calls “a vital liquidity with the elemental world." (7/x)

By contrast, man is dry. One of Aristophanes’ characters says a man must “dry his mind” to “speak sharply”; Diogenes of Apollonia says “moisture hinders intelligence." In other words, “wet ass pussy, make that pullout game weak, woo." (8/x)

Wetness, as we see, is aligned with wantonness, the hungry demands of sexual appetite, and “liquefying” feelings such as limb-melting Eros (Sappho 130). Excessive emotions and sexual appetite stem, in the Hippokratic view, from the simple facts of female physiology. (9/x)

The “femaleness = moisture” tenet of Hippokratic medicine features in the Corpus' most racist treatises, namely Airs Waters Places, which features an extended ethnographic comparison between European and Scythian constitutions (AWP 12-24). (10/x)

In AWP, the Hippokratic author claims that, owing to the uniformity of seasons in Scythian climates, all Scythian men develop the same “moist” physique (ὑγρὰ). Thus, “most Scythians become impotent, do women’s work, live like women and converse accordingly” (AWP 22). (11/x)

As Kuriyama points out, the Scythian bodies in this passage and female bodies throughout the Corpus have important similarities. Both kinds of bodies are called ἄναρθροι (“inarticulate,” literally “w/o joints”). (12/x)

This Greek fascination with “jointedness” works to create a hierarchy of bodies, as Kuriyama says, “separat[ing] one part of the body from another, distinguish[ing] individuals from each other, divid[ing] Europeans from Asians”. The root of this all? Wetness. (13/x)

The flesh is the site where wetness registers difference for Hippokratics. Flesh is not just flesh, but either male or female. The author of Diseases of Women I summarizes this attitude through an analogy comparing the porousness of female flesh to that of wool. (14/x)

In this analogy, women are raw material, whereas men “are the finished product of a manufacturing process,” as @fluff35 puts it. At the most basic physiological level, woman is wet, wild, unprocessed, uncivilized while man is dry, tame, cultivated, refined. (15/x)

The porousness of the female flesh necessitates menstruation: women absorb excess blood from food and consequently must purge it (Mul.I.14). If their health is defined by successful menstruation, the failure to purge moisture is the #1 agent of disease in the Corpus. (16/x)

Likewise there is danger in a lack of moisture and sex, causing the famous “wandering womb”-like symptoms that Freud misread as continuous w/ his theorization of hysteria. These complications (τὰ ὑστερικὰ) were not due to mental disturbances, however, but physical ones. (17/x)

Re: the wandering womb: Hippokratics never used the verb “wander” (πλάνω), unlike Plato. Instead, the uterus is said to “rush” (θέω, σεύομαι), “leap upon” (ἐμ-/ἐπιβάλλω), “turn” (τρέφω) or “fall toward” (προσπίπτω) other organs like the liver in pursuit of moisture. (18/x)

So in the Hippokratic Corpus, we find in women a dangerous wetness which seeks to attract any moisture it can, leaving surroundings barren. Thus the respective constitutions of the dry man and the wet female are said to predetermine their lifestyles & mortalities. (19/x)

In short, there's arguably nothing more central to Hippokratic gynaecology than a WAP. While vaginal wetness was essentially for all things gynaecological, too much wetness /when not purged/ spelt disease. Bring a bucket and a mop. (20/x)

Ok, I am going to stop now. Errors are my own, as are translations (unless otherwise specified!) (21/21)