The Physician and Sexuality in Victorian America

The Physician and Sexuality in Victorian America PDF Author: John S. Haller
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780809320097
Category : Physicians
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
In post–Civil War America, Victorian men and women turned to physicians for scientifically based impartial advice on personal and moral questions as well as for health matters. Doctors played willing advisors to trusting patients. Making their consultation rooms authoritarian settings, they presumptuously doled out personal advice on all topics—from intrafamily communication to proper clothing, exercise, contraception, infidelity, masturbation, and venereal disease. More than any other professional group, doctors expressed the moral judgment of the middle class and articulated the forces that lay in wait for those of both sexes who squandered their birthrights through unrestrained indulgences. Insecure both socially and economically, the rising middle class gave physicians far more authority than their medical and scientific knowledge warranted. Although the middle class operated on a double standard, Victorian men faced enormous expectations and restrictions similar to the proscriptive role assigned Victorian women. John S. Haller, Jr., and Robin M. Haller cover the resulting nervous ailments common to Victorians, in addition to marriage and sexual relationships, proper hygiene, prostitution, and drug addiction. In one of the few sexual studies to deal with both genders, the authors reject the stereotypical view of Victorian sexuality. Discounting the popular dictum of the Victorian period as an aberration in the ascent of women to greater sexual freedom, they posit prudery as a mask behind which women sometimes gained greater freedom of person.

The Physician and Sexuality in Victorian America

The Physician and Sexuality in Victorian America PDF Author: John S. Haller (Jr.)
Publisher: Urbana : University of Illinois Press
ISBN:
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
The authors detail the social history of the medical profession-- including doctors, homeopaths, and eclectics--and its moral influence on 19th-century sexuality. They examine the ways in which professionals dealt with physical and psychological complaints and such issues as marriage, hygiene, prostitution, drug addiction, corsets, and contraception. The bibliography lists primary sources including pamphlets and articles from the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Includes bandw illustrations. First published in 1974. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The Physician and Sexuality in Victorian America

The Physician and Sexuality in Victorian America PDF Author: John S. Haller (Jr.)
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Great Britain Moral Conditions
Languages : en
Pages : 331

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Book Description


The Physician and Sexuality in Victorian America [sound Recording]

The Physician and Sexuality in Victorian America [sound Recording] PDF Author: Haller, John S
Publisher: Peterborough : Ontario Audio Library Service
ISBN:
Category : United States Moral conditions
Languages : en
Pages : 331

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Book Description


The "Racial" Economy of Science

The Author: Sandra Harding
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253115539
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 548

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Book Description
"The classic and recent essays gathered here will challenge scholars in the natural sciences, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, and women's studies to examine the role of racism in the construction and application of the sciences. Harding... has also created a useful text for diverse classroom settings." -- Library Journal "A rich lode of readily accessible thought on the nature and practice of science in society. Highly recommended." -- Choice "This is an excellent collection of essays that should prove useful in a wide range of STS courses." -- Science, Technology, and Society "... important and provocative... "Â -- The Women's Review of Books "The timeliness and utility of this large interdisciplinary reader on the relation of Western science to other cultures and to world history can hardly be overemphasized. It provides a tremendous resource for teaching and for research... "Â -- Ethics "Excellent." -- The Reader's Review "Sandra Harding is an intellectually fearless scholar. She has assembled a bold, impressive collection of essays to make a volume of illuminating power. This brilliantly edited book is essential reading for all who seek understanding of the multicultural debates of our age. Never has a book been more timely." -- Darlene Clark Hine These authors dispute science's legitimation of culturally approved definitions of race difference -- including craniology and the measurement of IQ, the notorious Tuskegee syphilis experiments, and the dependence of Third World research on First World agendas.

Primers for Prudery

Primers for Prudery PDF Author: Ronald G. Walters
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801863486
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
He provides an updated bibliographical note.

Sexuality and Medicine

Sexuality and Medicine PDF Author: E.E. Shelp
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400937253
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
When confronted by the concerns of human sexual function or dys function, American medicine finds itself well impaled on the horns of a dilemma. Currently it is acceptable medical practice to treat sexual dysfunctions, disorders, or dissatisfactions that arise from psy chogenic etiologies, endocrine imbalances, neurologic defects or are side effects of necessary medication regimes. In addition, implanta tion of penile prostheses in cases of organic impotence is an increas ingly popular surgical procedure. These clinical approaches to sexual inadequacies, accepted by medicine since 1970, represent one horn of the dilemma. The opposite horn pictures the medical profession firmly backed into a corner by cultural influences. For example, when hospital admissions occur, a significant portion of the routine medical history is the section on system review. A few questions are asked about the cardio-respiratory, the genito-urinary, and the gastro-intestinal sys tems. But in a preponderance of hospitals no questions are permitted or, if raised, answers are not recorded about human sexual functioning. Physicians tend to forget that they are victims of cultural imposition first and of professional training a distant second.

Pseudo-Science and Society in 19th-Century America

Pseudo-Science and Society in 19th-Century America PDF Author: Arthur Wrobel
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813186757
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 275

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Book Description
Progressive nineteenth-century Americans believed firmly that human perfection could be achieved with the aid of modern science. To many, the science of that turbulent age appeared to offer bright new answers to life's age-old questions. Such a climate, not surprisingly, fostered the growth of what we now view as "pseudo-sciences"—disciplines delicately balancing a dubious inductive methodology with moral and spiritual concerns, disseminated with a combination of aggressive entrepreneurship and sheer entertainment. Such "sciences" as mesmerism, spiritualism, homoeopathy, hydropathy, and phrenology were warmly received not only by the uninformed and credulous but also by the respectable and educated. Rationalistic, egalitarian, and utilitarian, they struck familiar and reassuring chords in American ears and gave credence to the message of reformers that health and happiness are accessible to all. As the contributors to this volume show, the diffusion and practice of these pseudo-sciences intertwined with all the major medical, cultural, religious, and philosophical revolutions in nineteenth-century America. Hydropathy and particularly homoeopathy, for example, enjoyed sufficient respectability for a time to challenge orthodox medicine. The claims of mesmerists and spiritualists appeared to offer hope for a new moral social order. Daring flights of pseudo-scientific thought even ventured into such areas as art and human sexuality. And all the pseudo-sciences resonated with the communitarian and women's rights movements. This important exploration of the major nineteenth-century pseudo-sciences provides fresh perspectives on the American society of that era and on the history of the orthodox sciences, a number of which grew out of the fertile soil plowed by the pseudo-scientists.

Innocent Ecstasy, Updated Edition

Innocent Ecstasy, Updated Edition PDF Author: Peter Gardella
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190609427
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
Though they disagree on virtually everything else, evangelicals and gays, Catholics and agnostics all agree that sex should be innocent and ecstatic. For most of Western history people have not had such expectations. Innocent Ecstasy shows how Christianity led Americans to hope for so much from sex. The book explains how the sexual revolution could have occurred in a nation so deeply imbued with Christian ethical values. Tracing our strange journey from the hands of Jonathan Edward's angry Puritan God to the loving embrace of Marabel Morgan's Total Woman, Gardella draws his surprising evidence from widely disparate sources, ranging from Catholic confessionals to methodist revival meetings, from evangelical romances to The Song of Bernadette. He reveals the sexual messages of mainstream Protestant theology and the religious aspirations of medical texts found at the Kinsey Institute for Sex Research. He sheds new light on such well-known figures as Henry Adams, Margaret Sanger, Aimee Semple McPherson, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, and introduces us to such fascinating, lesser-known characters as Dr. John Harvey Kellogg and Sylvester Graham, inventors of corn flakes and Graham crackers, who devised their products as anti-aphrodisiacs. While detailing the development of moral obligations to pursue sexual pleasure and to follow certain patterns of sexual practice, Gardella incidentally provides one of the few books to bring together the liberal Protestant, Roman Catholic, and evangelical perspectives on any aspect of American culture. Gardella attributes the American ethic of sexual pleasure to the eagerness of Americans to overcome original sin. This led to a quest for perfection, or complete freedom from guilt, combined with a quest for ecstatic experience. The result, he maintains, is an attitude that looks to sex for what was once expected from religion. In this new edition, a new conclusion explores how popular music, gay liberation, and recovery from sexual abuse have substantially expanded innocent ecstasy during the past thirty years while continuing the Christian themes of redemption and mission. A new afterword deals with contemporary developments in popular culture and offers thoughts about the future

The Invention of Heterosexuality

The Invention of Heterosexuality PDF Author: Jonathan Ned Katz
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022630762X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description
“Heterosexuality,” assumed to denote a universal sexual and cultural norm, has been largely exempt from critical scrutiny. In this boldly original work, Jonathan Ned Katz challenges the common notion that the distinction between heterosexuality and homosexuality has been a timeless one. Building on the history of medical terminology, he reveals that as late as 1923, the term “heterosexuality” referred to a "morbid sexual passion," and that its current usage emerged to legitimate men and women having sex for pleasure. Drawing on the works of Sigmund Freud, James Baldwin, Betty Friedan, and Michel Foucault, The Invention of Heterosexuality considers the effects of heterosexuality’s recently forged primacy on both scientific literature and popular culture. “Lively and provocative.”—Carol Tavris, New York Times Book Review “A valuable primer . . . misses no significant twists in sexual politics.”—Gary Indiana, Village Voice Literary Supplement “One of the most important—if not outright subversive—works to emerge from gay and lesbian studies in years.”—Mark Thompson, The Advocate

American Medicine in Transition, 1840-1910

American Medicine in Transition, 1840-1910 PDF Author: John S. Haller
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252008061
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 488

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Book Description
After a lifetime of moving and assuming new identities, sixteen-year-old Chass begins to piece together the disturbing past that haunts her and her mother and which involves a mysterious tape, a deceased popular singer, and the secrets of several people in a small Alabama town.