(The Wrong Kind of ) Gonorrhea in Antiquity
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Authors
Editors
Szreter, S
Publication Date
2019-10Journal Title
The Hidden Affliction: Sexually Transmitted Infections and Infertility in History
ISBN
1580469612
9781580469616
Publisher
University of Rochester Press
Number
1
Pages
43-67
Type
Book chapter
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Flemming, R. (2019). (The Wrong Kind of ) Gonorrhea in Antiquity. In Szreter, S. University of Rochester Press, The Hidden Affliction: Sexually Transmitted Infections and Infertility in History. [Book chapter]. https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.46946
Abstract
Studying the relationship between disease and fertility in antiquity is challenging. The first difficulty is establishing the presence, and then prevalence, of any particular condition before an assessment can be made of its demographic impact. In the case of what are now called sexually transmitted infections (STIs), the empirical obstacles to identifying such infections in the classical world are exacerbated by the moralizing that attends discussions of sexual practice and that has so strongly characterized the ways sexual behavior and pathology have been, and continue to be, conceptually conjoined. Julius Rosenbaum’s influential and exhaustive nineteenth-century exploration of the ancient history of syphilis (broadly construed), for example, is based on the assumption that venereal diseases are caused by the “abuse” of the genital organs for nonprocreative purposes. Their history is, therefore, the history of human “lasciviousness and debauchery,” and there was so much of that in classical Greece and Rome that syphilis and all kinds of genital afflictions necessarily followed.
Identifiers
External link: https://boydellandbrewer.com/the-hidden-affliction-hb.html
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.46946
This record's DOI: https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.46946
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