Stories of the Origin of Syphilis in Eighteenth-Century England: Science, Myth, and Prejudice

McAllister, Marie E.

doi:10.1215/00982601-24-1-22

Cited by 30 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…For the pox, origin stories reflect a culture of blame that was shaped by views of women as inherently lustful and deceitful. Such stereotypes supported the common notion that women—most especially prostitutes and non‐European women from warm climates—were “naturally” susceptible to contracting and spreading venereal disease (McAllister, 2000; Schleiner, 1994a; Schleiner, 1994b; Siena, 1998; Wittman, 2014). More recent work by Katherine Paugh has shown that we have even more to learn from origin stories than stereotypes about women's supposed disease‐prone bodies (Paugh, 2014).…”

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confidence: 65%

Histories of the pox

Weisser

2021

History Compass

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This essay charts key approaches to the history of disease by focusing in particular on how historians of early modern Europe have examined venereal disease, commonly called the pox. In offering a state of the field overview, the essay covers studies of past understandings of the disease, the place of the pox in early modern medical practice, the history of hospitals, literary methods, and newer cultural and realist approaches to the topic. Rather than uphold any one method as more valuable than the next, the essay looks at various historical debates and approaches, as well as the assumptions and questions that underlie them, to chart a path for how the field might develop.

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confidence: 65%

Histories of the pox

Weisser

2021

History Compass

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“…37 Other work addresses mythologies and blame cultures around diseases’ origins or makes a virtue of demographic and narrative sources to clarify disease–life-cycle impact and doctors’ limited roles in sufferers’ lives. 38 Kevin P. Sienna’s superb study of London hospitals’ ‘Foul Wards’ focuses on poxed bodies and the experiential burdens of poor sufferers, somewhat offsetting previous scholarly stress on the judgemental tenor of institutional regimes. 39…”

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History of Medicine: Health, Medicine and Disease in the Eighteenth Century

Andrews

2011

J Eighteenth Century Stud

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This article surveys anglophone scholarship in the history of medicine over the past decade or so. It selectively identifies and critically evaluates key themes and trends in the field. It discusses the emergence of the discipline from a period of directional crisis to more recent emphasis on a pluralistic and 'bigger-picture' agenda, on comparative, cross-disciplinary and multicultural approaches, and on the reorientation and (putative) broadening out of medical history towards wider public engagement and closer interface with medical humanities. Keywordsinterdisciplinary; cultural; social history of medicine; medical humanities; healers; sickness; practitioners; diseases; institutions; bodies; emotions In the past decade the intellectual breadth, status and coherence of the history of medicine have undergone significant re-evaluation. This essay will give an account of this reassessment, providing a necessarily partial survey of the most significant contributions to the field, though focusing only on recent scholarship published in English. The millennium began with scholars more appreciative of the flaws in influential previous approaches, including retrodiagnostic-inspired medical history, and reassessing the virtues of others, including social constructionist accounts. 1 Recognising the achievements of the social history of medicine, and generally gratified that over-progressive, clinically construed historiographies have been superseded, some scholars have nonetheless criticised the 'social' turn of medical history for sidelining medico-scientific theory/ideas. Researchers have remained rather at odds, moreover, over what the history of medicine ought to be. For some, the field is 'divided almost irreconcilably between intellectual, economic, social, and cultural historians of medicine'. 2 While some preach eschewal of the reductive sociological excesses of constructivism, others' suggestions for overcoming the field's apparent rifts, including espousing linguistic engagement with the rhetoric of illness/healing, have received uneven endorsement. Likewise, reassertions of the centrality of social constructivist methodologies have mostly met with unreceptive (or divergent) responses. 3 Controversial evaluations of over-specialised tendencies in the history of medicine and its allegedly antipathetic engagement with other disciplinary areas have also emerged with particular vigour. Doubts redounding as to the discipline's engagement with big 'impact' questions and its 'relevance' to contemporary health/scientific concerns implied some sort of directional 'crisis'. 4 In Britain the melodramatically inclined pronounced the once 'new' social history of medicine to be defunct, mired in a sterile, insular set of discourses. 5

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“…Modern historian Marie McAllister describes the intellectual reaction to the new disease as a series of three questions: where did this disease come from, why is it here, and how can one escape its effects? 3 The earliest proposed explanations aligned with traditional disease theory, particularly in the Avicennic and Galenic school of medicine. Pox sufferer Ulrich von Hutten reported in the sixteenth century that the pox was first thought to be a miasma, transmitted through "venomous steams" from corrupted lakes and rivers; later developments indicated through astrology that the location of Saturn and Mars caused the natural imbalance.…”

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Creating the Pocky Women

Reynolds¹

2011

Constellations

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The sexually transmitted disease known as “The French Pox,” a forerunner of modern syphilis, represented a significant departure from early modern European knowledge of disease. Particularly distinctive was the gendered nature of the disease; females were labeled responsible for the formation of disease and thus associated with the moral corruption of the pox. This article examines the roots of this societal sexism in the Christian Pauline theory, using the binary between male and female to appreciate the development of the pox and the social differentiation that occurred as a result of its contagion.

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Stories of the Origin of Syphilis in Eighteenth-Century England: Science, Myth, and Prejudice

Cited by 30 publications

References 13 publications

Histories of the pox

Histories of the pox

History of Medicine: Health, Medicine and Disease in the Eighteenth Century

Creating the Pocky Women

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