The Physician and Sexuality in Victorian America (review)

Although this book has an introduction entitled “Preface to New Edition” it is not a new edition, but a reprinting of the 1974 book originally published by the University of Illinois Press. That edition was generally well received, although some critics suggested that the authors, in their discussion of the various physicians, should have distinguished between allopathic and sectarian physicians. The Hallers in their brief introduction to the “new” edition reject such criticism. They agree that there were disproportionately large numbers of sectarian physicians—principally homeopathic, eclectic, and physio-medical—writing advice literature to disseminate their ideas. They also agree that such books included large segments on sex, but they argue that the sexual advice given was wide-ranging and differed more from individual to individual than between the sectarians and the regulars. In fact, they assert that until 1910, it would have been difficult to determine the pedigree of the author on the basis of the advice given since ideas migrated easily among the advice givers. I think this response is somewhat misleading, however, because comparatively few allopathic physicians gave the wide-ranging sexual advice of their rivals—and most, in fact, were reluctant to encourage discussion on the topic, regarding it as unprofessional.

When the book originally came out, I wrote that the authors demonstrated a wide reading in the nineteenth-century advice literature and that theirs was the best overall survey of the topic I had read. Their search of the primary literature had been extensive and the quotations or summaries from it were invaluable. Since the Hallers originally wrote, however, research into the advice literature has continued, and new assessments have been made of individuals such as George Beard, Sylvester Graham, Clelia Mosher, and Robert Latou Dickinson, and on topics such as contraception, homosexuality and lesbianism, and menstruation—yet none of this appears in the Hallers’ work. The bibliography manages to finesse any discussion of this by listing only primary sources. The new printing of the book would have been more helpful had it made readers aware of these changes, if only by including a bibliographical essay at the end. Interpretations do change. Still, all told, the book holds up well, and in its “feminist” approach to the topics, it reads as if it could have been written today—no small compliment for a twenty-year-old book.