Agnes Arnold-Forster In 1904 a rank and file clinician, A. T. Brand, narrated an incident in which, “a man presented himself…suffering from cancer of the…penis.” On further analysis, the tumour was “found to consist, not of penile tissue, but of uterine cervical elements.” It was then discovered, “the the man’s […]
Medicine and Sexuality
Moral Panic and Syphilis in Jamaica
Jill Briggs In 1934 Jamaica was gripped by a moral panic. According to a well-publicized British naval report, the island was “rife” with venereal diseases, particularly syphilis. Some venereal disease experts speculated that infection rates topped eighty percent of the population and included children as young as eight. The root […]
Catholicism, Contraception, and The History of Sexuality
The Commission had the potential to challenge the very nature of Catholic epistemology.
“She was both Poxt and Clapt together”: Confessions of Sexual Secrets in Eighteenth-Century Venereal Cases
Olivia Weisser Furtive trysts. Regretful dalliances. Fleeting affairs. Sexual secrets were nothing new in the 1700s, but confessing them to a doctor became surprisingly common in published medical cases of venereal disease. In one instance, a woman consulted a surgeon for a common reproductive ailment known as “the whites.” She […]
Sex, Disease, and Fertility in History
Boyd Brogan If you’re looking for evidence about bodies in history, it doesn’t get harder than skeletons. Opening this three-day conference at the University of Cambridge on the historical relationship between sexually-transmitted infections (STIs) and fertility, bioarchaeologist Charlotte Roberts argued that it is human remains, not documents, that constitute the primary record […]
Through the Eyes of the Establishment: Student Sexuality and the Dean of Women’s Office at Purdue University
Donna Drucker Purdue University in northern Indiana, like most American colleges and universities, experienced dramatic social and cultural changes in the 1960s and 1970s. The Dean of Women’s Office—which oversaw the affairs of female students until it merged with the Dean of Men’s Office to form the Dean of Students […]
Found in Translation: How Sexual Debates Developed Across the Modern World
Heike Bauer A new collection of essays I edited, Sexology and Translation: Cultural and Scientific Encounters Across the Modern World (Temple UP, 2015) shows that the emergence of modern sexuality was a global phenomenon. The book examines the contemporaneous emergence of sexual science in Europe, Asia, Peru, and the Middle […]
Recent Posts
Understanding Zika & the Abortion Debate in Brazil: A View from 1940
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Syphilis Onstage: Eugène Brieux’s Damaged Goods
The Catholic Church and Child Sexual Abuse in Twentieth-Century Ireland
Reverend Anna Garlin Spencer and the Rise of “Family Life” in Early Sex Education