Morel's popular medical handbook was unusual for its pretensions to an aesthetic sense in the dissemination of knowledge about procreation. He adopted the same approach to books of political theory and prostitution, and practised as a specialist in the treatment of syphilis and genito-urinary diseases. He was a graduate of the Paris Faculty of Medicine, and much despised by colleagues who believed him largely unqualified to adopt such a prominent position in Society as his popularisations of science won him. In sexual matters he advanced into posturings with little evidence of being qualified or offering solutions.

Perhaps something of this can be sensed in the florid typography on the titlepage and with a sensationalist pictorial proposition as frontispiece.