How did beliefs about syphilis shape the kinds of treatment people
with this disease received? The story of how a town in the Ozark
hinterlands played a key role in determining standards of medical
care around syphilis. 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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