Venereal Disease, Hospitals and the Urban Poor: London's "Foul Wards," 1600-1800 (Rochester Studies in Medical History)

by Kevin P. Siena

This book explores how London society responded to the dilemma of the rampant spread of the pox among the poor. Some have asserted that public authorities turned their backs on the "foul" and only began to offer care for venereal patients in the Enlightenment. An exploration of hospitals and workhouses shows a much more impressive public health response. London hospitals established "foul wards" at least as early as the mid-sixteenth century. Reconstruction of these wards shows that, far from banning paupers with the pox, hospitals made treating them one of their primary services. Not merely present in hospitals, venereal patients were omnipresent. Yet the "foul" comprised a unique category of patient. The sexual nature of their ailment guaranteed that they would be treated quite differently than all other patients. Class and gender informed patients' experiences in crucial ways. The shameful nature of the disease, and the gendered notion of shame itself, meant that men and women faced quite different circumstances. There emerged a gendered geography of London hospitals as men predominated in fee-charging hospitals, while sick women crowded into workhouses. Patients frequently desired to conceal their infection. This generated innovative services for elite patients who could buy medical privacy by hiring their own doctor. However, the public scrutiny that hospitalization demanded forced poor patients to be creative as they sought access to medical care that they could not afford. Thus, Venereal Disease, Hospitals and the Urban Poor offers new insights on patients' experiences of illness and on London's health care system itself. Kevin Siena is Assistant Professor of History at Trent University.

Table of Contents

The Foul Disease, Privacy, and the Medical MarketplaceThe Foul Disease in the Royal The Seventeenth CenturyThe Foul Disease in the Royal The Eighteenth CenturyThe Foul Disease and the Poor Workhouse Medicine in the Eighteenth CenturyThe Foul Disease and Moral The Lock HospitalRethinking the Lock Hospital

375 pages, Hardcover

First published February 28, 2004

Reviews

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting overview of venereal disease treatment in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, specifically with its focus on the urban poor and the ways in which class and gender affect access to care. This book is thorough, but often times I found its arguments muddled and a little disjointed, especially when it's refuting other historians' arguments. I also thought many of its main arguments were resolved in its introduction, which made me wonder what the rest of the book was doing (though it's examination of patient experiences and the systematic workers of hospitals was insightful). With its strong focus on class and gender, I was left wondering about the racial aspect of V.D. treatment in this period and if there was any evidence of this in the archives.