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Download (13MB) Med ical attitudes to the sexual disorders of the "normal" male ±n Britain, 1900—1950 Lesley Ann HALL Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy U niversity College London U niversity of London 1969 ProQuest Number: 10610045 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 10610045 Published by ProQuest LLC(2017). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 2 Abstract This thesis considers the British medical profession's general scorn and neglect of the sexual dysfunctions experienced by the "normal" male: defined as a man who perceived himself as such, and expected to marry and lead an ordinary married life, with children. The works of medical, and some non-medical, writers, who did take an interest in the subject are discussed. The prevalence of such disorders, and anxiety among men generally about sexual functioning, is illustrated, and set in the context of general perceptions about the nature of male desire which marginalised and pathologised, where they did not wholly ignore, common difficulties experienced by large numbers of men in the course of their sexual activities. Prevailing attitudes of taboo around sexual matters generally are also discussed as bearing upon this neglect, and contributing to doctors' reluctance to delve into the subject. Debates about the control of venereal disease are cited as well as discussions of the functional disorders. It is contended that while doctors were believed, in virtue of their profession, to have particular authority to pronounce on sexual questions, this was a subject dealt with cursorily, if at all, in medical education, and that doctors were as likely as non-doctors to have been influenced by common misconceptions and prejudices. Central to this thesis is a detailed study of the overwhelming response by male readers to the works of marital advice published by Marie Stopes. The difficulties presented to her in the enormous numbers of letters she received from the public, and comments upon doctors expressed to a non-medical expert in this field, are analysed. Consideration is given to the tensions between accepted notions of manhood and individuals' sense of their own experiences. Changing perceptions and attitudes to do with sexuality and marriage during the period under discussion are reviewed. Table of contents Page A bstract 2 Acknowledgements 4 Introduction 6 Chapter One: The Victorian Background and the Rise of Sexology 26 Chapter Two: Diseases, Dangers, and Double Standards 66 Chapter Three: "What a Young Man Ought to Know" 106 Chapter Four: Married Love and Enduring Passion 146 Chapter Five: "Young husbands and all those who are betrothed in love" 191 Chapter Six: "The most miserable of all patients" 233 Chapter Seven: "How little we medical men know" 275 Chapter Eight: "I fear a doctor would laugh if consulted" 325 Chapter Nine: World War II: Continuity and Change 366 Bibliography 408 4 Acknowledgements While engaged In this research I was employed full-time as an archivist at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine. I should therefore like to express my gratitude to the Wellcome Trustees for their provisions for their employees to undertake study for higher degrees. I have been indeed fortunate in having such a stimulating intellectual environment as the Wellcome Institute. Its programmes of seminars, symposia and lectures have made valuable contributions to my own development, as have more informal discussions. Dr W F Bynum of the Academic Unit at the Wellcome In s titu te has supervised this thesis and I am indebted to him for his initial encouragement and help in defining my thoughts on this topic, as well for his supervision. I am also extremely grateful to my colleagues of the Wellcome Institute Library whose support and cooperation made it possible to pursue my research. Particular thanks are due to Eric Freeman, Director and Librarian, and especially to Julia Sheppard of the Contemporary Medical Archives Centre for her patience with a preoccupied colleague. Jeanette Lake was most helpful in making available to me relevant printed material from a cataloguing limbo. I should also like to express my thanks to the Library Desk, stack and photocopying staff, and to all my colleagues for their interest and support. While 1 have been able to pursue much of my research within the Wellcome Institute Library I should also like to thank the following Individuals and Institutions: Dorothy Sheridan and the Tom Harrisson-Mass Observation Archive at the University of Sussex; David Doughan and the Fawcett Library at the City of London Polytechnic; the British Library, in particular the Department of Manuscripts, and especial gratitude to Dr Anne Summers; the Eugenics Society; the Church House Record Centre, Westminster; the Scout Association Archives; the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library, University of Sydney. Miss A G Polden of the Library Association Library provided a most helpful response to a query of mine on public library policies of the 1930s. Thanks are due to Harry Stopes-Roe who originally approached the Wellcome Institute in 1979 to give a home to those of his mother's papers rejected by the British Library. Cataloguing this collection sowed the seed which turned into this thesis. Mrs J Griffith, the wife of E F Griffith, when approached about her husband's surviving papers, was kind enough to transfer them to the care of the Contemporary Medical Archives Centre, and I received courteous replies, and valuable if negative Information, from His Excellency J F Walker and the Countess of Cork and Orrery respecting the papers of the la te Kenneth Walker. Valuable opportunities to present for discussion earlier versions of parts of th is th esis were provided by seminars at the Wellcome In s titu te its e lf, under the auspices of the Society for the Social History of Medicine in London and York, by the Cambridge Child Care and Development Group and by the Department of History at the South West Polytechnic Exeter, also in Sydney, Australia through the kind efforts of Dr Milton Lewis and Dr Wayne Hall. Some of the material in this thesis has been published in the form 5 of articles in the Journal of Contemporary History and the Bulletin of thp Society for the Social History of Medicine. Particular individuals whom I should like to mention with gratitude for useful informal discussions and stimulating reactions to my research and conclusions as well as general support and friendship are Dorothy Porter (both for her enthusiasm and for her contributions to the "pox-box"), Charlotte Mackenzie (and for references I might have overlooked, even if I didn't actually use "a common post-connubial insanity"), Malcolm Nicholson, Naomi Pfeffer, and of course the other "Wellcome In s titu te sexologists" Renate Hauser, Andreas Hill, and Mark Micale. I received welcome encouragement from Roy Porter, Barbara Brookes, Jane Lewis, Professor Jeanne Peterson of the University of Indiana, and Professor R A Soloway of the University of North Carolina. To all those whose interest and support kept me going through the production of this thesis I extend my thanks. An especial debt is owed to Heather Creaton of the Institute of Historical Research to whose encouraging response I first mooted the possibility of undertaking this research, and who has over the years kept me supplied with references I might otherwise have missed. I have been sustained throughout the production of this thesis by the companionship of Ray McNamee, whose support has extended to waiting in second-hand book-shops while I scoured the shelves for copies of obsolete sex-manuals, carrying these home, and building book-shelves to hold them. This thesis is dedicated to my parents, Frederick and Marjorie Hall. 6 Introduction In the past two decades there has been an upsurge In historical writing about sex in history. Much of this has sprung from the interests of feminist and gay historians and propagandists, although work by historians of demography and the family has also shed light on sexual conduct. Most of this work has looked at women or at "deviant minorities" or at the rise of the b irth control movement. Foucault's famous work on the subject argues that the rise of sexology in the later nineteenth century explicitly categorised the objects of the policing by definition and labelling by this new medicalised (as opposed to religious) discourse around sexual behaviour as the hysterical woman, the onanistic child, the deviant and the Malthusian couple.1 It is to these groups that most historiographical attention has been paid. Less attention seems to have been given to the pedagogic inculcation of society's sexual standards in the young: a few articles have looked at attitudes to masturbation and the construction of the belief in "masturbatory insanity"2 but the topic has not been studied with the attention that has been given to attitudes to female sexuality and the construction of deviant identities, or to examining changing reproductive behaviour within families. Unexamined by th is historiographical trend, and often assumed to be monolithic, unchanging, unproblematic, stands the "normal" male. The implication tends to be that sexual discourses operated exclusively for his benefit and that there was no ambiguity or ambivalence in his position, no possible constraint upon him.
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