The Dreaded Pox: Sex and Disease in Early Modern London

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, venereal disease, or the 'pox,' was a dreaded diagnosis throughout Europe. Its ghastly marks, along with their inexorable link to sex, were so stigmatizing that it was commonly called 'the secret disease.' How do we capture everyday experiences of a disease that so few people admitted having? Olivia Weisser's remarkable history invites readers into the teeming, vibrant pox-riddled streets of early modern London. She uncovers the lives of the poxed elite as well as of the maidservants and prostitutes who left few words behind, showing how marks of the disease offered a language for expressing acts that were otherwise unutterable. This new history of sex, stigma, and daily urban life takes readers down alleys where healers peddled their tinctures, enters kitchens and gardens where ordinary sufferers made cures, and listens in on intimate exchanges between patients and healers in homes and in taverns.

Table of Contents:
Note on the text; Introduction. Republic of Venus; 1. Piss prophets and clap curers: London's venereal trade; 2. Streets: shopping for cures; 3. Consultation rooms: encounters with healers; 4. Households: treating the foul disease at home; 5. Courtrooms: the pox on trial; Conclusions.

About the Author :
Olivia Weisser is Associate Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.

Review :
'Olivia Weisser's succinct, brilliant history of the pox centers venereal disease as a key component of life in early modern London and a new pathway through which to understand many aspects of big city life. What often seems secret to us was a mundane reality to Londoners. Weisser provocatively argues that the pox was a leading edge of modern disease patterns. In lively prose, she explores the world of the pox from the perspective of ordinary people managing and shaping the experience of infection and its stigma in ways that were both close to home and embedded in the expanding global imperial marketplace.' Julie Hardwick, author of Sex in an Old Regime City: young workers and intimacy in France, 1660–1789 'Uncurable, but infinitely treatable, in 18th-century London venereal disease changed lives. The Dreaded Pox interrogates a hidden world of home remedies, quack nostrums and sexual violence, unearthing the experience of individual sufferers. It will be necessary reading for social historians of all stamps.' Tim Hitchcock, co-author of London Lives: Poverty Crime and the Making of a Modern City, 1690–1800 'Weisser takes us on a compelling tour of the world of venereal disease in 18th century London. From streets to coffeehouses to courtrooms, we discover ordinary women and men's encounters with a dreaded disease, and their ingenious remedies for it, marketed through handbills, or scribbled in recipe books. Between the lines of the archive, she uncovers the informal, pragmatic routes that servants, wives, and respectable men took to manage an intractable set of symptoms. Women are powerful agents in this story, selling remedies, fighting disease, and even using the evidence of infection to convict their own husbands of sexual misconduct. Full of rich evidence and revealing stories, Weisser's book reconstructs the havoc the pox wreaked, and the strategies women and men deployed to survive.' Laura Gowing, author of Ingenious Trade: Women and Work in Seventeenth-Century London 'Weisser's research of primary sources is thorough and impressive. This makes a colourful and highly readable contribution to the history of the pox' Julie Peakman, author of Libertine London: Sex in the Eighteenth-Century Metropolis 'This is a book sure to generate great interest from scholars and students pursuing the histories of sexuality, medicine, gender, commerce and early modern urban studies. Weisser uses the harrowing and gruesome 'pox' as the centerpiece for a compelling exploration of the realities and travails of eighteenth-century urban life. With innovative approaches to sources and clear, heartfelt prose Weisser weaves the stories of common women and men battling a debilitating, painful and odious disease into a humane history marked by both struggle and innovation. A dynamic history from below, The Dreaded Pox brings alive the experiences of everyday Londoners while simultaneously advancing a provocative and compelling argument that the pox was a modernizing force in medicine.' Kevin Siena, author of Rotten Bodies: Class and Contagion in Eighteenth Century Britain 'Olivia Weisser has provided us with as intimate an exposure as one might want to the experiences of those afflicted with the shameful venereal diseases so prevalent in early modern London. We pry revealingly into the closets, private sickness chambers, recipe books and rare diaries of the literate class. The book culminates with an outstanding analysis of consistory court cases mostly brought against men for rape or for infecting their wives. Though women's words had close to no value in court against a man's, bodily and material evidence of the disease could convict the perpetrators.' Simon Szreter, editor of The Hidden Affliction: Sexually Transmitted Infections and Infertility in History