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Unmentionable madness : gender, disability, and shame in the malaria treatment of neurosyphilis / Christin L. Hancock.
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Hancock, Christin Lee, 1974- author.
- Series:
- Disability histories (Series)
- Disability histories
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- People with disabilities--Social conditions.
- People with disabilities.
- Human experimentation in medicine.
- People with disabilities--Abuse of.
- Discrimination against people with disabilities.
- Neurosyphilis--Treatment.
- Neurosyphilis.
- Physical Description:
- xii, 172 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.
- Place of Publication:
- Urbana : University of Illinois Press, [2025]
- Summary:
- "In 1930, neurosyphilis struck an unsuspecting Mabel Smith. Doctors at the Central State Hospital for the Insane in Indianapolis turned to malaria therapy--a radical treatment that relied on the belief that infection with malaria might save Smith's life by attacking the bacterium that causes syphilis. Christin L. Hancock looks through the lens of feminist disability to examine the popular but ethically suspect treatment and its consequences. As Hancock shows, the treatment's purported success rate relied on the disabled minds and bodies of people incarcerated in mental hospitals. The backgrounds and identities of these patients reflected and perpetuated attitudes around poverty, gender, race, and disability while betraying authorities' desire to protect the public from women and men perceived as abnormal, sexually tainted, and unworthy of community life. Paying special attention to the patients' voices and experiences, Unmentionable Madness offers a disability history that confronts the ethics of experimentation"-- Provided by publisher.
- Contents:
- Introduction. Mabel Smith, ancestral disability, and shame
- Mabel Smith
- Dr. Walter L. Bruetsch
- Supplying the research : patient experiences at CSH
- Race, gender, and neurosyphilis
- Dying from neurosyphilis and the silencing of disability
- Conclusion. Revisiting Mabel, dismantling shame.
- Notes:
- Includes bibliographical references and index.
- Other Format:
- Online version: Hancock, Christin Lee, 1974- Unmentionable madness
- ISBN:
- 9780252046148
- 0252046145
- 9780252088223
- 0252088220
- OCLC:
- 1434025807
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