Midwife Jane Sharp explains that if the cervix is ‘too often and unreasonably opened by too frequent, or in over moist bodies, or by the whites, it makes women barren, and therefore whores have seldom any children.
As Cornelia intimates, too much sex means too much fluid in the womb, and so it was assumed to be too wet and slippery for a pregnancy to survive. As Sharp’s modifier makes clear this assumption is only partially reliable and the reason whores only ‘seldom’ conceive. Sharp repeats this assertion in her later section on infertility, ‘too frequent use makes the womb slippery, and therefore whores have but few children.
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