Managing the “Obscene M.D.”: Medical Publishing, the Medical Profession, and the Changing Definition of Obscenity in Mid-Victorian England

Abstract

<p>This article examines links between mid-Victorian opposition to com- merce in popular works on sexual health and the introduction of a legal test of obscenity, in the 1868 trial <em>R. v. Hicklin</em>, that opened the public distribution of any work that contained sexual information to prosecution. The article demonstrates how both campaigning medical journals’ crusades against “obscene quackery” and judicial and anti-vice groups who aimed to protect public morals responded to unruly trade in medical print by linking popular medical works with public cor- ruption. When this link was codified, it became a double-edged sword for medi- cal authorities. The <em>Hicklin </em>test provided these authorities with a blunt tool for disciplining professional medical behavior. However, it also radically narrowed the parameters through which even the most established practitioners could com- municate medical information without risking censure. </p>