This chapter investigates cures for lovesickness in early modern literature, focusing on four remedies that are revealing for the ways in which gender affects lovesickness: two physical treatments—phlebotomy (or bloodletting) and sexual intercourse—and two that are mental/psychological—trickery (or performative healing) and humiliation. For men in particular, lovesickness is frequently portrayed as a degrading and emasculating passion; because of this, remedies for erotic melancholy often function as social as well as psychosomatic cures, so that the sufferer's restoration to bodily health is also represented as a reconciliation with male codes of honour. Cures for lovesickness thus illuminate wider cultural ideas about masculinity and sexuality, suggesting the fears and fantasies regarding erotic abandon, the sexual double standard concerning illicit sex, and what is at stake in curing the impassioned lover other than the lover's health.
Keywords: cures, masculinity, gender, sexuality, bloodletting, phlebotomy, sexual intercourse,