Prostitution- Medical Journal Articles c.1880's

[lynn cates]

good job

Hello Bunny. Good work, as always.

Cheers.
LC

[Archaic]

Study of Prostitutes From Criminal Anthropology Perspective, Part II.

This is the 'Study of Russian Prostitutes, Part II', 1890.

It's from the same journal as Part I, 'Public Health', 1890.

It struck me that the female doctor who conducted this study (and who was certainly a pioneer in her field) adopted the same discompassionate, supposedly "scientifically objective" perspective that the male doctors employed.

Best regards,
Archaic

(Again, the article segments read left to right.)

[Archaic]

Study of Prostitutes From 'Criminal Anthropology' Perspective

1890: 'Study of Russian Prostitutes Part I’

This article is from ‘Public Health, The Journal of the Society of Medical Officers of Health’, 1890.

It presents a detailed “scientific” study of Russian prostitutes from the Criminal Anthropology perspective popularized by Cesar Lombroso. Criminal Anthropology is also known as “Biological Determinism” and typically applies heavily biased pseudo-scientific social judgments that are then “scientifically proven” using flawed ‘scientific method’. It’s also called ‘Social Darwinism’ because prejudices are ‘scientifically’ and morally justified by invoking misunderstood aspects of Darwinian Theory.

Note that the study employs many seemingly objective scientific terms, yet still exhibits obvious bias by referring to the women as “whores”, automatically excluding them from a ‘control’ group labeled “honest women”, and by seeking to identify prostitutes as constituting a hopelessly degenerate and entirely separate “race” of human beings.

The final paragraph really blew me away.

Best regards,
Archaic

PS: Sorry the article segments are a bit "choppy"; the closely-set paragraph structure and narrow type made it awkward to divide. they also loaded a bit awkwardly. Please read article segments horizontally, Left to Right. Thanks.

[Archaic]

Hello everyone. While going through c.1880’s Medical Journals I've come across a number of interesting articles on Prostitution. I think others might find them interesting too, so I decided to start posting them here on this thread.

Doctors, Public Health officials and Alienists (early Psychologists/Psychiatrists) all wrote about Prostitution in their scientific journals, but the bleak socio-economic realities of the Victorian Era which forced many women to resort to prostitution simply to survive are seldom mentioned. Instead the medical professionals preferred to analyze prostitution from the ‘Disease’ perspective. Prostitutes are described over and over again as having diseased bodies, diseased minds, and diseased morals, all of which were believed to pose a very real threat to the social order. Prostitutes are repeatedly identified as being not merely the carrier, but the source of many of the most dreadful and deadly diseases suffered by individuals in all classes of society. Medical professionals regarded Prostitution itself as a uniquely dangerous and infectious ‘Social Disease’, and discussed how Science could best contain and eradicate so virulent a form of ‘Social Contagion’.

These medical journal articles are remarkably matter-of-fact. There is seldom any sympathy expressed for the misery and danger of prostitutes' lives, because they were firmly believed to have "chosen" a life of prostitution as a direct result of their own moral, physiological, hereditary and spiritual faults. Prostitutes were viewed as being inherently different from ‘normal’ women, and it was genuinely believed that ‘Modern Science’ had proven this to be an undeniable fact. This incredibly judgmental point of view was so deeply ingrained that I have yet to find an article in a c.1880’s medical journal that even questions its veracity.

Medical professionals studied prostitutes just as they studied criminals, from a pseudo-scientific 'Criminal Anthropology' perspective, minutely analyzing their physical characteristics in order to prove a foregone conclusion- that prostitutes belonged to a sub-class of human beings born "Morally and Physically Degenerate".

I found these contemporary articles quite illuminating, in particular because of the extremely rigid contemporary paradigm they reveal. Physicians were among the most highly educated people in society. They had presumably become physicians because they wished to help their fellow human beings by alleviating suffering and restoring health. Therefore one might expect physicians to take a somewhat more enlightened and compassionate view of the human beings who ended up becoming prostitutes. But in these journal articles the health professionals often speak of prostitutes as if they are plague-infected vermin in need of extermination.

If this was the ingrained attitude of intelligent, well-educated professionals towards prostitutes, it gives one a very sobering idea of the attitudes that might have been held by the rest of society... including those of the individual known to history as Jack the Ripper.

Best regards,
Archaic