Anne R. Hanley, Medicine, Knowledge and Venereal Diseases in England, 1886–1916

Abstract

Knowledge has always been a central theme in the history of venereal diseases. Who should know about such diseases, to what extent, and in what circumstances, are questions that have long elicited strong opinion. In late Victorian Britain these debates were particularly marked, in part due to growing concerns about how to provide knowledge without destabilising morality. The need to tread delicately when sharing knowledge about disease, for example with modest women or innocent young children, was one factor that fuelled a gradual shift in relation to who ‘owned’ this knowledge: sex became increasingly a medical issue. By the turn of the century, deviant sexual behaviour was being pathologised and sex education began to emerge as a public health issue. While disease had always fallen within the medical sphere, for diagnosis and treatment, this period was undoubtedly one of significance. Not only did medical practitioners have the power to disseminate knowledge about sex to the public, they were also producing it at an unprecedented rate due to advances in bacteriology.