5 - Combating Venereal Disease

Summary

This chapter examines how doctors became increasingly critical of the approach to contain venereal disease supported by the authorities and instead favored the promotion of sex education and compulsory treatment. These views, the chapter shows, started to take shape particularly among military doctors. The strategies developed to combat venereal disease in the Army and the Navy proved influential in how the Asistencia Pública approached venereal disease in the 1930s, leading to a significant expansion in treatment facilities in the capital and the establishment a national anti-venereal strategy. This expansion coincided with growing concerns among Peru’s medical community over venereal disease among the indigenous population. It also coincided with growing attention to prostitution from criminologists and sociologists who reframed debates over prostitution in the context of a broader discussion over sexuality and changing sexual mores.