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Book ID: CBB592274912

In Search of Sexual Health: Diagnosing and Treating Syphilis in Hot Springs, Arkansas, 1890–1940 (2020)

Bowen, Elliott (Author)

Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date: 2020
Language: English

ISBN: 9781421438566

Publication Date: 2020
Physical Details: 233

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Health resorts, watering-places, etc. Medicine and society Syphilis Sexually transmitted diseases 20th century, early 19th century Arkansas (U.S.)

During the late 1800s and early 1900s, the central Arkansas city of Hot Springs enjoyed a reputation as one of the United States' premier health resorts. Throughout this period, the vast majority of Americans who traveled there did so because they had (or thought they had) syphilis—a disease whose incidence was said to be dramatically on the rise all across the country. Boasting an impressive medical infrastructure that included private clinics, a military hospital, and a venereal disease clinic operated by the United States Public Health Service, Hot Springs extended a variety of treatment options. Until the antibiotic revolution of the 1940s, Hot Springs occupied a central position in the country's struggle with sexually transmitted disease.Drawing upon health-seekers' firsthand accounts, clinical case files, and the writings of the city's privately practicing specialists, In Search of Sexual Health examines the era's "venereal peril" from the standpoint of medical practice. How, Elliott Bowen asks, did people with VD understand their illnesses, and what therapeutic strategies did they employ? Highlighting the unique role that resident doctors, visiting patients, and local residents played in shaping Hot Springs' response to syphilis, Bowen argues that syphilis's status as a stigmatized disease of "others" (namely prostitutes, immigrants, and African Americans) had a direct impact on the kinds of treatment patients received, and translated into very different outcomes for the city's diverse clientele—which included men as well as women, blacks as well as whites, and the poor as well as the rich.Whereas much of the existing scholarship on the history of sexually transmitted diseases privileges the actions of medical elites and federal authorities, this study reveals Hot Springs, a remote and fairly obscure town, as a local node with a significant national impact on American medicine and public health. Providing a richer, more complex understanding of a critical chapter in the history of sexually transmitted diseases, In Search of Sexual Health will prove valuable to historians of medicine, public health, and the environment, in addition to scholars of race, gender, sexuality.

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Reviewed By

Review John Parascandola (2022) Review of "In Search of Sexual Health: Diagnosing and Treating Syphilis in Hot Springs, Arkansas, 1890–1940". Journal of American History (pp. 853-854). unapi

Review Kimberly A. Hamlin (2021) Review of "In Search of Sexual Health: Diagnosing and Treating Syphilis in Hot Springs, Arkansas, 1890–1940". Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences (pp. 477-479). unapi

Review Deborah Doroshow (2022) Review of "In Search of Sexual Health: Diagnosing and Treating Syphilis in Hot Springs, Arkansas, 1890–1940". Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 197-199). unapi

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