Sexual science constitutes the empirical study of sexual function and behavior in living beings. It originated from natural philosophy and is now characterized by the methods and aims of modern science. This chapter treats the main story of sexual science, starting with conceptual concerns over the body and using examples from Chinese and Islamic medicine. Next, the analysis shifts to the foundations of sexual science in the Western world, examining philosophical and medical traditions that culminated in medieval scholasticism and institutions like universities and hospitals. The chapter then treats the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment, in which contemporaries invented the “two-sex” model and pioneered new ideas of “biopolitics.” The analysis turns the nineteenth century’s complex “discovery” of sex and the powerful connections between global imperialism and sexual understanding. The chapter concludes with the dynamics surrounding the body and sexuality in the global twentieth century, as found in evolutionary biology, sexology, and psychoanalysis, and the relation between mass culture and ideals of the sexual revolution. Sexual science appears paradoxical: sometimes, it seemed an agent of discipline and power, supporting entrenched values, or it seemed to help emancipate individuals, debunking prejudices and superstitions and liberating attitudes and behaviors.

Eugenics suffused the medical field through its convergence with hygiene and ideologically underpinned governmental policies of national health, maternal health, and venereal disease control in many countries globally, including in Romania and China. This resulted in the creation of Institutes of Social Hygiene in different countries, including in Romania. The writings of Dr Iuliu Moldovan, founder of The Institute of Hygiene and Social Hygiene in Cluj, Romania, offer insights into eugenics and its connection to veneral disease control in Romania. One case study of applying eugenics to public health is the work against venereal disease at the Model Sanitary Station in Gilau between 1924-33 in Transylvania, Romania. This chapter also uncovers transnational medical cooperation to create public health in China by following the international training of Dr Yang Chongrui, a renowned specialist in maternal health. The details of Yang”s Euro-American study tour attest to how she encountered important elements for eugenic public health: hygiene, venereal disease control, lectures on “the mentally defective”, puericulture, facilities for syphilitic children, prisons, and hospitals for indigent women. Yang”s interaction with Andrija Štampar, who arranged her global tours sponsored by League of Nations Health Organization, was also formative in shaping her eugenic beliefs.

We know a lot about Jack the Ripper’s crimes, but have no idea as to who he was. His crimes had a sexual character, and his dislike of women could be because he caught venereal disease from one. He targeted, amongst other regions, the women’s sex organs. We don’t know the identity of the Zodiac Killer, who targeted courting couples. It is likely that he felt envy towards them. Although Albert DeSalvo was widely believed to be the ‘Boston Strangler’, not everyone is in agreement about this and he was not found guilty of these crimes. However, his toxic upbringing and his characteristics of offending fit the pattern of other known serial killers. He showed evidence of dissociation. DNA evidence points to his involvement in at least one of the murders. A perspective of motivation might cast some light on these cases.

This chapter investigates the medical arrangements made for servicewomen as well as their general health. This includes a discussion of such matters as foot deformities, head infestation, menstrual disorders, venereal disease and pregnancy. Unmarried pregnant personnel were a particular concern for the military authorities and much thought was given to their welfare.

This chapter explores social morality on the home front focusing on the commentary about the public behaviour of soldiers’ wives, anxiety about a supposed increase in incidences of female drunkenness, and concern about prostitution and the spread of venereal disease. It tracks the number of wartime arrests of women for drunkenness and child neglect. The chapter argues that the hostility to separation women transcended the nationalist movement, and that while there were many incidences of soldiers’ wives arrested for drunken behaviour, the rhetoric exaggerated the reality with total convictions for drunkenness declining in wartime Ireland after the first year of the war.The chapter further explores concern with sexual immorality in wartime, focusing on venereal disease and illegitimate births. It also examines the women’s patrols established to limit the public interaction between working-class women and the soldiers. The chapter concludes that the public behaviour of working-class women in Ireland altered little as a consequence of the war, but there was nevertheless greater censure of problems evident before 1914. While the separation allowances brought women greater control over their domestic spaces, the surveillance of state and society confined women to narrowly defined codes of behaviour.

This chapter explores the implementation of regulation in Lima in the early twentieth century. It considers the increasingly public debate over prostitution, in which several groups intervened including freemasons, anarchists, anticlerical journalists, and feminists, and the arguments put forward by the medico-legal community in support of regulation in this period. The chapter also examines how the authorities used the powers to police prostitution created by regulation in order to shape its geography and character.

This chapter considers the context in which Lima’s barrio rojo or red-light district was established in 1928. The decision by Lima’s prefect to establish a red-light district in La Victoria, a peripheral part of Lima (geographically and socially), was a response to growing pressure from Lima’s citizens who, particularly in the 1920s, complained of the danger that the proximity and visibility of prostitutes, both clandestine and registered, represented to decency and morality. Such complaints reveal a growing anxiety over the moral contagion that could result from the proximity of prostitutes, an anxiety that reflected broader fears about transgressive female behavior.

The conclusion serves three purposes. First, it provides a discussion of the book’s contributions to the different fields of scholarship with which it is in dialogue: the history of gender and sexuality, the history of medicine and public health, and the history of the state in Peru. Second, it considers in what ways this history can help us to reflect on current debates over prostitution in Peru. Finally, it considers that ways in which the history of prostitution in Peru can inform current debates over patriarchy and male sexual privilege.

This chapter examines the process that led to the closure of the barrio rojo in 1956. In a first section, it considers how the establishment of the barrio rojo coincided with an increasingly widely held negative view of regulation, which reflected the growing influence of abolitionism in the medical community and the public sphere, but it was also fed by the perception that the barrio rojo was a place of criminality and epidemiological threat. The chapter then examines the history of abolitionism in Peru, focusing on the establishment of the Comité Abolicionista Peruano and the activities that its members, a mix of medical doctors, lawyers, and feminists, promoted. In a third section, the chapter examines the campaigns led by publications such as ¡Ya! and Ultima Hora, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, to close down the red-light district. These campaigns, as a final section, drew on abolitionist arguments and contributed to the closure of the barrio rojo in 1956.

This chapter examines the role played by doctors in the regulation of prostitution and in containing the spread of venereal disease. At a time when, around the world, concern about, as well as research into, venereal disease were on the rise, doctors in Peru were drawn to its study. As they began to diagnose venereal disease more accurately, and came to recognize how it affected the Peruvian population, doctors grew increasingly anxious about the institutional capacities to properly treat venereal disease and what a high incidence of venereal disease signified for the nation. The creation in the 1910s of the Asistencia Pública, the institution charged with the medical inspection of prostitutes, and, in the 1920s, of the sifilicomio (syphilis clinic) did little to reduce the spread of venereal disease.

This chapter serves as an introduction to the book. It presents the main arguments of the book and well as the historical context and discusses the scholarship with which it is in dialogue. It also briefly introduces each chapter.

This chapter examines the debates over the regulation of prostitution that took place in the nineteenth century. These debates inserted Peru into a transnational debate over how best to “govern” prostitution. Drawing on medical and legal journals, and other sources, the chapter studies the arguments that Peruvian doctors and lawyers put forward in favor of regulation as a paradigm for governing prostitution and the opposition that their proposals encountered from those who drew on abolitionist critiques of regulation and argued that regulation was both immoral and ineffective.

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.

In 1915, four months after the first convoy of Australian soldiers disembarked in Egypt, venereal disease (VD) infected roughly 10 per cent of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF).1 In the Official History, Butler described it as ‘a startling outburst’ that resulted in 3 per cent of the force being ‘constantly sick’.2 Given that a significant number of soldiers were not only incapacitated but also occupying hospital beds that would be needed once combat casualties started to arrive, VD had serious implications for the efficiency of the AIF and its medical services.