so I found this book on the history of corporal punishment as a kink and this is apparently the oldest reference to it the author could find and idk, the phrasing of this is very funny to me:
me, having taken blows from a flogger: "wow I hath been charmed by this invigorating beating"
Okay this is actually fascinating.
One of the oldest, and for literally centuries, most popular explanations for why some men were into getting beaten was a belief that there bodies were colder than others, and that by hitting them there body temperature would increase and this would allow them to actually get aroused.