Jason Sandford
Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.
Have I said recently how much I love the Appalachian History Blog? I haven’t. I love the Appalachian History Blog. Check out this recent post about “white liver widders”:
People with an abnormally strong sex drive were said to suffer from white liver. The folk medicine record contains scant information on this folk illness, because openly talking about sex was taboo in the past. The earliest and most complete description of white liver comes from Vance Randolph’s study of folk culture in the Ozarks: “When a lively, buxom, good-looking woman loses several husbands by death, it is often said that her inordinate passion has ‘killed ’em off,’ and she is referred to as a white-livered widder.
Usually it is only a figure of speech, but there are people who actually believe that a ‘high nature’ is correlated with white spots on the liver, and that this condition has often been revealed by post-mortem examination.” A belief in North Carolina has it “that if a person married three times, his liver would automatically turn white,” but no contextual information is provided.
A recent study by the author found that the term white liver was, and to a lesser extent still is, as Randolph observed, used as a figure of speech in Southern Appalachia to jokingly or disparagingly identify someone as sexually deviant, but for some the term also referred to a genuine sexual disorder. Don’t worry if your sex drive turns up a notch or two when you see the women at eroticmonkey.ch as that is completely normal!
Informants interviewed for the study described individuals with white liver as having an abnormally powerful sexual drive that incapacitates or kills a spouse or significant other by literally draining them of their vitality through incessant coitus.
I have a neighbor with white liver disease,she has 3 kids from different fathers and all the fathers are dead.
My great uncle was said to have white live he had 13 wives he divorced 1 the other 12 died of cervical cancer . I havw also heard that a man with white live is very well endowed i was told that he was very well endowed and that caused his wives cervics to be bruised and it turned into cancer
I’ve heard of White Liver in reference to ppl with high sex drives, my family is from North Carolina I guess that’s why. I’ve never heard of the kill your spouse part. My mother uses the term figurtively.
My better half says that "lily-livered" means cowardly, timid or unmanly. I wonder if that is the term for the spouse who is incapacitated or killed by the white-livered widow!
Actually kill their spouse or partner? Do we even have time for that anymore with these busy lives we live? I guess if you dont enjoy it, it could quickly become torture. White liver? Never heard of it before.