In search of sexual health : diagnosing and treating syphilis in Hot Springs, Arkansas, 1890-1940 / Elliot Bowen.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bowen, Elliott G., 1983- author.

Contributor:

ProQuest ebook central.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Army and Navy General Hospital (Hot Springs, Ark.).

United States. Public Health Service. Division of Venereal Diseases.

United States.

Syphilis--Treatment--Arkansas--Hot Springs--History.

Syphilis.

Hospitals--Arkansas--Hot Springs--History.

Hospitals.

Soldiers--Health and hygiene--United States--History.

Soldiers.

Syphilis--history.

Soldiers--Health and hygiene.

History.

Syphilis--Treatment.

Arkansas.

Arkansas--Hot Springs.

Medical Subjects:

Syphilis--history.

Arkansas.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xii, 217 pages) : illustrations (black and white

Place of Publication:

Baltimore, Maryland : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020.

System Details:

text file

Summary:

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.

Contents:

The emergence of Hot Springs as a haven for the American syphilitic, 1880-1910

"Administering to minds diseased": treating syphilis in turn-of-the-century Hot Springs

Diagnosing syphilis at Army and Navy General Hospital, 1890-1912

The Hot Springs VD clinic, 1920-1937

From hygiene to hydrotherapy : private practitioners in Hot Springs, 1910-1940.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI Available via World Wide Web.

Description based on print version record.

Other Format:

ebook version :

ISBN:

9781421438573

1421438577

Publisher Number:

40030231290

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.