Feminizing Venereal Disease

by Spongberg, Mary

• ISBN13: 9780814780824
• ISBN10: 0814780822
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1998-11-01
• Publisher: New York Univ Pr

Summary

In 1497 the local council of a small town in Scotland issued an order that all light women--women suspected of prostitution-- be branded with a hot iron on their face. In late eighteenth- century England, the body of the prostitute became almost synonymous with venereal disease as doctors drew up detailed descriptions of the abnormal and degenerate traits of fallen women. Throughout much of history, popular and medical knowledge has held women, especially promiscuous women, as the source of venereal disease. InFeminizing Venereal Disease, Mary Spongberg provides a critical examination of this practice by examining the construction of venereal disease in 19th century Britain.Spongberg argues that despite the efforts of doctors to treat medicine as a pure science, medical knowledge was greatly influenced by cultural assumptions and social and moral codes. By revealing the symbolic importance of the prostitute as the source of social disease in Victorian England, Spongberg presents a forceful argument about the gendering of nineteenth- century medicine. In a fascinating use of history to enlighten contemporary discourse, the book concludes with a compelling discussion of the impact of Victorian notions of the body on current discussions of HIV/AIDS, arguing that AIDS, like syphilis in the nineteenth century, has become a feminized disease.

Table of Contents

List of Plates
Preface
Introduction	p. 1
The Sick Rose	p. 17
The Source	p. 35
Implementing the System	p. 63
Resisting the Acts	p. 73
The New Campaign	p. 85
Pathologizing Children	p. 105
Child Prostitution	p. 127
The Sins of the Father	p. 143
The Syphilitic as Moral Degenerate	p. 160
Trapped in a Woman's Body? The Persistence of Feminine Pathology in Biomedical Discourse around HIV/AIDS	p. 185
Notes	p. 196
Index	p. 225
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