Spread Of Venereal Diseases Research Articles

Colliding Bodies: Prostitutes, Soldiers, and Venereal Diseases in Colonial Egypt.

This article explores attempts to control outbreaks of venereal diseases among prostitutes and imperial soldiers in Cairo and Alexandria leading up to and through World War I. Seeking to move beyond the usual colonial framing of center-periphery, it considers two British imperial outposts-Egypt and Australia-in conversation. The war brought thousands of Australian soldiers to Egypt, leaving their mark on Egypt and becoming marked by their time there, sometimes in indelible and deadly ways, as bodies and bodily fluids collided, and microbes passed between colonial and imperial subjects. The article argues that the highly racialized and classed system for regulating foreign and local prostitution that British officials implemented in Egypt to protect soldiers exacerbated rather than contained the spread of venereal diseases.

Sexual Progressives: Reimagining Intimacy in Scotland, 1880-1914, by Tanya Cheadle

Reviewed by: Sexual Progressives: Reimagining Intimacy in Scotland, 1880–1914 by Tanya Cheadle Katie Barclay (bio) Sexual Progressives: Reimagining Intimacy in Scotland, 1880–1914, by Tanya Cheadle; pp. x + 223. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020, $120.00. Scotland once prided itself on its chastity, though many were surprised to learn after the introduction of the civil registration of births in 1858 of its distinctly high number of births outside marriage. This result might have been less surprising had people reflected more on the important role sex held in the popular imagination. It was a central anxiety of the Church of Scotland, which looked for sin under every bedcover, but also something often represented as seemingly natural and playful in popular writings and songs. Historians have sought now for some time to uncover the complex practices and attitudes of this nation toward sex, and in doing so have opened up a richer and messier social experience than Scotland's staid reputation once suggested. Sexual Progressives: Reimagining Intimacy in Scotland, 1880–1914 contributes to this conversation, filling an important late-nineteenth-century gap and placing particular attention on those Scots who formed part of a British, even global, movement to reform sexuality for the modern world along socialist-feminist—and often eugenic—principles. Tanya Cheadle's book offers a group biography of four Scottish progressives, exploring their attitudes toward sex, feminism, socialism, religion, and science, and placing them both within their local and familial contexts and larger progressive networks. In doing so, Cheadle seeks to give a rounded picture of how the radical beliefs of these individuals toward sex emerged, how their formative influences coalesced, and how these were shaped as much by their familial and domestic relationships as by the big ideas with which they engaged. After an introduction and scene-setting chapter that explains Scotland's sexual culture for those unfamiliar with the subject, the work focuses on these individuals and their lives. Two chapters are dedicated to Bella (née Duncan) and Charles Pearce, married Glaswegian socialists and disciples of the millenarian cult the Brotherhood of the New Life. Chapter 2 focuses on the couple's involvement in the Independent Labour Party, with particular attention to Bella's commitment to socialist-feminism. The chapter charts her emerging claims to gender equality and particularly her critique of the sexual double standard, which was so closely tied to exploitative prostitution and the spread of venereal disease. Bella's outspoken feminism sat increasingly uneasily within a masculinized and conservative labor movement, and so over time she came to have greater affinity with the Women's Social and Political Union and eventually transferred her energies to their aims. The couple's involvement in the Brotherhood is the focus of chapter 3. The cult, led by the charismatic American Thomas Harris, proffered sexual desire as an "elemental life-force" that could be harnessed by meditative breathing exercises, during which one sought to commune with a spiritual counterpart that would enter the body as a transcendental sexual experience (86). The Pearces played a significant role in supporting this faith in Scotland, selling the wine they grew in their US commune, arranging for the publications of Harris's work and providing their own writings on the faith. Here, as Cheadle explores, they adapted and constrained some of Harris's more radical ideas for a more conservative British public, emphasizing a higher spiritual love over earthly passions. [End Page 157] The last two chapters focus on Patrick Geddes and Jane Hume Clapperton, respectively. Geddes is perhaps most well known as a biological scientist and the author, with John Arthur Thomson, of Evolution of Sex (1889). In his scientific writings, Geddes argued for men and women as separate but equal, having distinct qualities and characteristics that were formed through evolutionary processes, but that nonetheless were equally perfect. The gendered characterization of men and women's qualities and roles was conservative, but it allowed him to make several claims: for women as equal partners, for the importance of feminine altruistic behaviors to evolution, and for birth control (largely along eugenic principles). These views also informed his marriage with his wife and his support of a large progressive network, which...

Gomastahs, Peons, Police and Chowdranies: The Role of Indian Subordinate in the Functioning of the Lock Hospitals and the Indian Contagious Diseases Act, 1805 to 1889

Recent scholarship on the social history of health and medicine in colonial India has moved beyond enclavist or hegemonic aspects of imperial medicine and has rather focused on the role of Indian intermediaries and the fractured nature of colonial hegemony. Drawing inspiration from this scholarship, the article highlights the significance of the Indian subordinates in the lock hospital system in the nineteenth century Madras Presidency. This study focuses on a class of Indian subordinates called the “gomastah”, who were employed to detect clandestine prostitution in Madras to control the spread of venereal disease. It also underlines the role of other native and non-native subordinates such as Dhais, Chowdranies and Matrons, the ways in which they became indispensable for the smoother operation of the Contagious Diseases Act and the lock hospitals on a day-to-day basis. By emphasising how Indian subordinates were able to bring in caste biases within colonial governmentality, adding another layer to the colonial prejudices and xenophobia against the native population, it underlines the fact that there was not a one-way appropriation or facilitation of the coloniser’s knowledge or biases by the colonised intermediaries. Rather, it argues for an interaction between them, and highlights the complexities of caste hierarchies and prejudice within the everyday colonial governmentality. Moreover, the article focuses on the consequent chaos and inherent power struggle between different factions of colonial staff.

“Soldier Struck”: Public Discourses, Women and American Servicemen in World War II South Australia

ABSTRACT The social impact of Allied Forces on the Australian home front is central to research on World War II gender relations but is often overlooked in South Australia. The arrival of 20,000 American servicemen in Adelaide in March 1942 heightened anxiety about immoral female behaviour. This article illuminates the public discourses and state controls implemented in South Australia in response to women’s contact with American servicemen, female alcohol consumption, and spread of venereal disease. It argues that the pejorative labels applied to women during this time had a self-disciplinary effect, prompting some who pursued American servicemen to adopt a discourse of feminine patriotism to describe their relationships.

Policy Approaches Toward Combatting Venereal Diseases in the Soviet Occupation Zone in Germany (1945-1949), the German Democratic Republic (1949-1989), and the Polish People's Republic (1945-1989).

The spread of venereal diseases after the Second World War constituted a grave public health danger in Europe. Especially in all four occupation zones in Germany and the Polish People's Republic high morbidity rates were observed. In order to limit the spread of diseases, respective administrations adopted specific regulations. The aim of this research is the analysis and comparison of legal regulations for controlling and combating venereal diseases in these countries. We have analyzed legislative and administrative acts concerning combatting venereal diseases issued by the official organs of the Soviet Occupation Zone, the German Democratic Republic, and the Polish People's Republic from 1945 to 1989. Subsequently, the analyzed sources were evaluated in light of the existing literature on the topic. Our analysis shows that policy approaches in both countries were based the Soviet Union's model for fighting venereal diseases. Visible are similarities of the approaches. They include organization of anti-venereal services, compulsory hospitalization, and actions against social groups perceived as sources of venereal diseases. Beside the purpose of breaking the spread of the epidemics, the approaches had also a political aim of sanctioning behavior that diverged from prescribed socialist moral norms.

Sex, Military Brothels and Gender Violence during the Italian Campaign in the USSR, 1941–3

During the Italian occupation in the USSR, the soldiers of Italian Armed Forces often had relationships with Soviet women, opposed by the authorities for motives of politics and security. Some of the officers openly practised concubinage, in contrast to the racism expressed on that campaign. The authorities in situ also decided to open brothels for the troops, filled with local women, in order to avoid both enemy espionage and the spread of venereal disease. As for the Germans in the USSR, the organization of brothels was difficult from the start due to the absence among the civilians of a ‘prostitution outlook’ and to the inexperience of the women, who at best offered to work out of hunger. Sexual crimes were also committed then, facilitated by the conflict’s climate and often disregarded by military justice, which had other priorities. Such aspects of the Italian occupation in the USSR have been superficially studied, in part because they are at odds with the collective imagination and a national awareness based on war memoirs and military publications, often reticent on the more inconvenient aspects of the Italian presence abroad during the Second World War.

Prostitution in a Small North China Town in the 1930s

Abstract Almost all of the studies of prostitution in Republican era China have focused on big cities. Using recently rediscovered field notes from a social survey of the small town of Gaoyang in Hebei province, this article describes the practice of prostitution in the mid-1930s and considers how small-town prostitution differed from that in big cities. The women working in the sex trade in Gaoyang were all “clandestine” or unregistered prostitutes, who had been attracted to the town, which was the center of a major rural weaving district where there was a large number of unattached males who had migrated to the locale to work. Cautionary tales, popular in the local community, described the dangers of prostitution, including the spread of venereal diseases and the loss of job or reputation that resulted from spending too much time and money on the pleasures of the sex trade. County government approaches, including a “don’t ask, don’t look” policy, allowed the practice of prostitution to persist despite its illegal nature.

The state in sexual life

During the 1970s, condoms were introduced into Singapore as a medical device. Health officials described men’s condom use as sharing women’s risks and responsibilities in birth control and family planning. For the officials, condom distribution helped contain the spread of venereal diseases, deal with unwanted pregnancies and maintain an optimal birth rate for national economic development. With the emergence of AIDS and a more self-assertive middle class of well-educated, globally aware citizens, the official discourse on male contraceptives came under fire from social conservatives, who associated condom use with the moral decline of society. This article examines the dialectical relationship between government policies and public perceptions of condom use in Singapore. The 1980s debates over condoms revealed greater male involvement in state-directed contraceptive projects and a burgeoning dichotomy between state and society.

Regulationist Measures: Prostitution and Politics in the State of Mysore

The paper explores official policies towards Prostitution and the spread of Venereal Diseases in the Cantonment and Mysore Provinces. A medico-military discourse emerged in the Cantonment with the spread of Sexually Transmitted Diseases among white troopers. Transgressive sex was tolerated despite prostitutes being considered a receptacle of diseases. In not recognizing the dynamics of disease transmission, regulatory measures and race, sex, and class-bias blatantly vilified prostitutes. Though civilian spaces in the State of Karnataka were not as complex, regulations were enforced in tandem with the Cantonment during the colonial rule. Consequently, after the independence, the State’s measures were coincidental with the social purity movement’s censure of Devadasis.

Venereal diseases in a "general practice" in the 17th and early 18th centuries

The diary of the town physician Johannes Franc (1649-1725), handwritten in Latin, gives-among other diseases-an overview of sexually transmitted infections affecting citizens in Ulm such as syphilis and gonorrhea. Franc reported on his own experiences in the diary and also included many theoretical details on the causes of the diseases and the corresponding therapies, including ethical considerations. Even in ancient times, there are indications of venereal diseases. However, at the latest with the outbreak of syphilis around the year 1495, the treatment and control of the spread of venereal diseases became an important task of medicine. Before gonococci were detected by Neisser in 1879, sexually transmitted diseases were generally seen as asingle disease. However, at the beginning of the 18th century, there were several doctors who treated syphilis and gonorrhea as separate entities. Franc was one of them. Examining the milestones in the history of syphilis and gonorrhea, the present article reviews the existing theories that tried to explain the origins of these diseases. Franc's treatment patterns are illustrated. Franc's case reports indicate afundamental change in the perception of STIs at the end of the 17th/beginning of the 18th century.

Transience, Class and Gender in Interwar Sexual Health Policy: The Case of the Liverpool VD Scheme

Abstract Focusing on the implementation of the Liverpool VD Scheme, this article reasserts the importance of morality to interwar medical understandings about the spread of venereal disease. Despite claiming to offer impartial, practical solutions to the spread of venereal disease, the Liverpool VD Scheme, created in 1916, reflected and promoted the notion that the transient lifestyles of many of the working class presented physical and moral threats to the city. This article therefore counters suggestions that the interwar control of venereal disease was shaped by practicalities rather than moralities. Evidence is provided for the persistence of a medico-moralising that continued to place working-class sexual practices at the heart of discussions about the spread of venereal disease. However, presumptions about men’s biological need for sex combined with the local importance of the port, meaning that working-class seamen with VD were judged less harshly than working-class women with the same infections.

KEHIDUPAN NYAI DAN PERGUNDIKAN DI JAWA BARAT TAHUN 1900-1942

This research discusses on the lives of the people of West Java, especially women who make the practice of concubinage as a livelihood to meet the economic needsof the family. The method used in this research is the historical method with the literature study technique by searching the source of literature. By the highnumber of native women who became Nyai in West Java, the problem of this research is about the lives of native women when became Nyai to Europeanpeople. The urgent needs of economy make the women to earn living by working on the farm or became Nyai to European people. There are two kinds ofconcubinage performed, they are official relationship and unofficial relationship. Concubinage official relationship is a relationship legalized in marriage andlegally registered in the Dutch government. However, if the relationship is unofficial, then the marriage is conducted without lawful ties and the absence oflaw protecting the native women. This has a devastating impact that is the spread of venereal disease among Europeans and Natives.

Frederick W. Lowndes, MRCSE and Surgeon to the Liverpool Lock Hospital: Prostitution and Venereal Disease in the 1880s

The aim of this paper is to analyse the perpetuation of the myth of the fallen woman in the rescue work and the cure of prostitutes in Liverpool in the 1880s. To this end, Frederick Lowndes’ 1886 publication, Prostitution and Venereal Diseases in Liverpool, will be discussed as an example of a text written by a medical authority concerned with sexual promiscuity and the spread of venereal disease. Prostitution had cultural and moral implications for Victorians, and prostitutes represented a threat to middle-class society as the very image of vice and public disorder itself. Lowndes offers an overview of the issue for the years leading up to the publication of his pamphlet, dealing with issues like the role of brothels, the causes of prostitution in Liverpool and the classification of these women into different categories, thus echoing some of the ideas of moral reformers and medical men concerning the Great Social Evil. The role played by local laws in the containment of this public vice and of the Liverpool Lock Hospital in the treatment of the diseases considered to be the result of prostitution will be analysed in the light of Lowndes’ text and ideas. My intention is to prove that seclusion of deviant elements of society together with their classification and indoctrination were still present in the medical and moral discourses of the latter part of the Victorian period. Similarly, Foucauldian notions concerning deviancy and discipline will be discussed together with Butlerian ideas about gender and sexuality in the context of Victorian respectability and womanhood.

From Control to Terror: German Prostitution Policies in Eastern and Western European Territories during both World Wars

In both World Wars, the German armies enacted a prostitution policy in all the occupied territories of Western and Eastern Europe. Through a comparative study, this article uses archival research in Poland, France, Belgium and Germany as well as existing studies in five languages to examine the continuities and discontinuities in German prostitution policies between the Western and the Eastern territories during both wars. In exploring the question of continuity, we consider the interaction of local authorities with occupation forces and how prostitution policies in Western and Eastern countries differed from the German ‘home front’. Strong continuities existed between the First and Second World War, including a severe backlash against the abolitionist trend in Europe and the extension of regulatory controls beyond the prostitutes to include other ‘suspect’ women, often justified by concerns over the spread of venereal diseases and public morality and health. Despite these continuities, prostitution policies were even more regressive during the Second World War, with the racial ideology of Nazism as the main trigger for the brutalisation of prostitution policies. German authorities pushed the system to greater extremes, overseeing its evolution from control to terror.

Mapping the war: gender, health, and the medical profession in France and Germany, 1914–1918

This article compares the gender and health politics of the German and the French medical professions, which incorporated military command structures into their civilian self-conception. Mobilized doctors committed themselves to the new circumstances and opportunities offered by the war. They applied the established military spatial ‘map’ which distinguished between the male-dominated front and the female-dominated home front and turned it into an epidemiological map, identifying danger zones which arose from points of contact between men and women. The analysis singles out two case studies: the rapid spread of venereal disease and psychiatric disorders. These case studies allow for a comparative analysis of the following questions: How did doctors assess the impacts of the war on the individual and the society as a whole? How did they view the war’s impact on conventional gender orders, individual and national health? And how did they see their own role as a part of an independent civilian profession?

Prostitution: BJN 100 years ago

An interesting book review in the BJN 100 years ago on the subject of hygiene and morality by Miss Lavina Dock highlighted not only the attempts to control prostitution and the spread of venereal disease, but also the terrible problems caused by the Contagious Diseases Acts of 1886–1869. These acts were basically set up to protect men in the army from prostitutes who were infected with VD, but the wording of the Acts and their interpretation by the police at the time resulted in women being thrown into prison on the suspicion of being infected and left there till they were cured. The Acts were particularly hated by the working classes and enlightened doctors, nurses, and other politicians at the time took up the cause to have them abolished. A special Association for the ‘Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts’ was set up and produced a periodical called ‘The Shield’, which was published weekly to highlight aspects relating to the problems the acts caused

Investigation of bovine venereal campylobacteriosis in beef cow herds in New Zealand

AIMS: To determine regional prevalences of beef cow herds in New Zealand positive for Campylobacter fetus subsp venerealis antibodies in samples of vaginal mucus tested using an immunoglobulin (Ig) A enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), and to examine the suitability of the IgA ELISA for detecting infection with C. fetus subsp venerealis under field conditions in New Zealand. METHODS: Vaginal mucus samples (n=1,230) collected from beef cow herds (n=125) throughout New Zealand (approximately 10 samples/herd) were tested for antibodies to C. fetus subsp venerealis using an IgA ELISA. Test results were compared between herds classified as having low, medium and high fertility based on pregnancy test results interpreted in relation to the duration of the mating period used. In addition, a small number of samples were collected from dairy cows that were mated using artificial insemination (AI) and had no contact with breeding bulls. The influence of putative risk factors for the spread of venereal disease and the effect of sample quality on the status of herds according to test results was assessed using multivariate logistical regression. Preputial washings from 54 bulls from nine herds classified as low fertility in which mucus samples from ≥3 cows were IgA antibody-positive were cultured for the presence of Campylobacter spp, and isolates of C. fetus subspecies were characterised using a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test. RESULTS: One or more mucus samples was positive to the IgA ELISA in 70% of all herds tested. The prevalence of IgA antibody-positive individuals was >20% in most regions of New Zealand and did not differ significantly for cows from herds classified as high, medium or low fertility (28%, 26% and 23%, respectively; p=0.39). No relationship was found between mucus antibody status and age of breeding group, herd size, herd fertility, number of herds that female replacements or breeding bulls were sourced from, whether a serving ability test (SAT) was used to assess bulls, or the quality of samples submitted to the laboratory. Campylobacter fetus subsp venerealis was not cultured from any of the 54 bulls sampled. Four other species of Campylobacter and related organisms were cultured, viz Arcobacter cryaerophilus, Campylobacter jejuni, Campylobacter fetus subsp fetus and Helicobacter cinaedi. CONCLUSIONS: The specificity of the IgA ELISA as a diagnostic test for C. fetus subsp venerealis was found to be unsatisfactory under New Zealand conditions. It is possible that an immunological response by cows to Campylobacter species other than C. fetus subsp venerealis caused cross-reactivity in the IgA ELISA. The results do not support the hypothesis that C. fetus subsp venerealis is widespread in New Zealand.

Colonizing Sex: Sexology and Social Control in Modern Japan (review)

Reviewed by: Colonizing Sex: Sexology and Social Control in Modern Japan William Johnston (bio) Colonizing Sex: Sexology and Social Control in Modern Japan. By Sabine Frühstück. University of California Press, Berkeley, 2003. x, 267 pages. $50.00, cloth; $19.95, paper. The history of topics related to sex and sexuality remains a sensitive issue even today. In a faculty seminar, the Japanese historians present responded with quiet snickers when I announced that I was researching an aspect of the history of sexuality in modern Japan. When I started that research in 1992, an eminent Japanese sociologist tried to discourage me from continuing, saying it was not a serious historical topic and there were no appropriate sources to examine. That was the same year that a Kyoto University Medical School professor told me that AIDS would never be an issue in Japan because there were no gay men there. However, in the ensuing decade scholars have done much to overcome these lingering prejudices and to illuminate the social, cultural, scientific, and political histories of sex and sexuality in Japan. Recent works in English by Sheldon Garon, Gary Leupp, Gregory Pflugfelder, Jennifer Robertson, G. G. Rowley, Paul Schalow, Timon Screech, and Cecilia Segawa Seigle, among others, have made important contributions to this field. Sabine Frühstück's Colonizing Sex: Sexology and Social Control in Modern Japan will be remembered as one of the most important of the pathbreaking works in this field. The skeptics who give it a serious reading should be convinced that understanding the history of sex and sexuality is vital to understanding present cultures and societies. As Frühstück shows, the Japanese approach to sex-related policy issues today is rooted in its history. Frühstück had already started working on this subject when, in 1992, she joined a research group in Kyoto, the Sōtai Kenkyū Kai, to study the history of topics related to sex and sexuality. This group also included Inoue Shōichi, Akagawa Manabu, Furukawa Makoto, Nagai Yoshikazu, and myself; its main activity was to provide a forum for the discussion of sources [End Page 490] and ideas for future development. Most members of that group have gone on to publish significant works in the field, although Frühstück's is the first major work from this group to appear in English. As the title implies, Frühstück places the concept of colonization at the core of this book: "The underlying structure of this book is informed by various sites and the connections among them—sites where normative ideas about sex were created, examined, weighed, transformed, and translated into cultural practices in an effort to 'colonize' the sex and sexuality of the Japanese populace" (p. 1). It was a gradual colonization project and required the creation of "a complete colonial ruling apparatus" (p. 2). Frühstück further elucidates this book's main focus: "My analysis centers on the strategies employed in the colonization of sex in Japan. I am interested in the techniques at work in the conflicts and negotiations that aimed at the creation of a normative Japanese sexuality" (p. 2). The goal of this normative (and unwaveringly hetero) sexuality was the maintenance and growth of the Japanese polity as expressed in its empire. In the process of empire building, the body became a site for the expression of the imperial will: a place that consolidated "the nation, modernity, and progress" (p. 3) not only in the bodies of all-male conscripts, but also in those of prostitutes, children, and married couples. The book's five chapters follow a roughly chronological sequence, although each has a clear thematic focus. The first chapter, aptly entitled "Erecting a Modern Health Regime," examines the Meiji-period establishment of the central government's health bureaucracy and its concerns for the sexual health of the Japanese empire. A primary focus was the health of conscripts and the spread of venereal diseases as a threat to their fighting capacity. Soldiers underwent examinations for venereal diseases when conscripted, were issued condoms, and after 1937, were expected to engage in sex only with military "comfort women." The names of military condoms, such as "Attack...

Models of masculinity: sex education, the United States Public Health Service, and the YMCA, 1919-1924.

In 1918, the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) told American parents that "it is no longer possible for you to choose whether your child will learn about sex or not." According to the PHS, most American boys learned about sex from "improper sources" by the age of nine. The "unfortunate effect of these early impressions" had, PHS warned, not only resulted in a gross misunderstanding of sex, but also been a major factor in the spread of venereal disease (The Parents' Part [the U.S. Public Health Service, 1918], p. 5). To counter and correct this miseducation, PHS joined with the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) to create a sex education program aimed at adolescent boys. Officially launched in the spring of 1919, the "Keeping Fit" campaign provides a unique insight into the federal government's attempt to medicalize and regulate American sexuality through the forum of public health.

Frontiers in reproductive immunology – Forum introduction

It has been 50 years since Sir Peter Medawar kindled scientific interest in the unique problem posed by the existence of the fetal allograft within the uterus. The resultant efforts of immunologists and reproductive physiologists to understand the mechanisms by which the conceptus successfully evades rejection by the maternal immune system has led to a richer understanding of the nature of immune responses in the uterus and of their regulation by maternal and conceptus signals (see Billington, 1993 for a reflection on the progress since Medawar's seminal paper). Increasingly, the fact that the immune system is functional in the reproductive tract of the female is being recognized not only as a potential threat to the conceptus but as an important part of host defense in the female. The female reproductive tract is invaded by microorganisms at mating, parturition, and other times and it is critical to the health of the female that the immune system functions effectively in the uterus. Indeed, one can view the principles of reproductive immunology as at the center of combating one of the major health crises in the world - the spread of venereal diseases, including acquired immune deficiency syndrome.