Contagious Disease In The 19th Century

The efforts of those lobbying for the extension of the Contagious Diseases Acts in the late 1860s and 1870s are notable in drawing attention to venereal diseases beyond the realm of the military. Military efficiency was not the only thing to seriously affected by venereal disease, but also the health of the nation as a whole. The Association formed to promote the Acts’ extension held that ‘sufferers under any kind of contagious disease are dangerous members of society, and should, so long as they are in this state, be prevented from communicating it to others.’ They framed venereal disease as a contagious disease ‘of the gravest character’, and stressed heavily the risk of syphilis being transmitted from parent to offspring, and from husband
Whilst sexual moralism of the Victorian period is regarded as ‘intrinsic to the concept of the ‘Victorian’, it appears it was not necessarily practised. Whilst soldiers and sailors tended to remain single because of their conditions of service, outside of the forces delayed marriage was ‘an extremely widespread phenomenon’. Working-class men were compelled to save the means to marry, whilst middle-class men postponed marriage until they received an income which would allow their wife a comfortable life of a particular style. Hence, it was not uncommon for men to indulge in premarital sex, especially with the prevailing notion that male lust was a natural impulse. Such men, it is believed, accounted for ‘by far the largest share of the demand for the services of prostitutes’. Consequently, these men were equally as susceptible to venereal disease as the soldiers and sailors of the armed forces. Upon marrying, the bridegroom would have passed on any such disease to his new wife. Thus, venereal disease was able to infiltrate the domestic sphere on what was believed to have been an unprecedented
These women had become as much a statistic as any other group vulnerable to the ravages of venereal disease. In February 1885, Dr. John Syer Bristowe, who was appointed as president of the Pathological Society of London in the same year, spoke at the West Kent Medico-Chirurgical Society on the topic of visceral syphilis. Speaking first about a case of tertiary syphilis, he detailed the case of a 42 year-old patient, ‘Rachel W’, who had been referred to him the previous November. Rachel had been married for 20 years, and soon after marriage was treated for an ulcerated sore-throat at St. Bartholomew’s. Her first four children died at birth, only the fifth survived. For seven years prior to being received under the care of Dr. Bristowe, Rachel had suffered from ulcerated legs, and in the past two to three years her abdomen had become enlarged and also developed rheumatic fever. The factual details of the case alone insinuate that the patient had contracted syphilis from her husband, yet what is particularly interesting is the delayed diagnosis. At first, Bristowe assumed the patient was suffering from sarcoma and, although admitting this did not account for the rheumatic fever, treated her accordingly. It was only after six weeks, during which time her condition did not improve, that Bristowe enlisted the help of a colleague, Mr. Pitts, and considered the