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Control, Compulsion and Controversy: Venereal Diseases In Adelaide and Edinburgh 1910-1947 PDF

317 Pages·2015·18.67 MB·English
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YO zo-L- Control, Compulsion and Controversy: Venereal Diseases a 1n Adelaide and Edinburgh 19L0-L947 By Susan Lemar Department of History University of Adelaide February 2001. Control, Compulsion and Controversy: Venereal Diseases in Adelaide and Edinburgh 1910-1947 Contents Page Declaration Abstract Acknowledgements l1 Abbreviations lll Introduction L Part A ADELAIDE 1. Controversy in Adelaide's Public Health 22 2.Pox, Prostitution and Public Policy in Darkest Adelaide 1873-L910 35 3 Locating Adelaide Eugenics : Venereal Disease and the 52 British Science Guild South Australian Branch 1910-191'4 4. "It serves the lustful beggars tiglrrt"z Social Hygiene and World War I L915-\920 5. Proclamation, Propaganda and Prophylaxis:'Controlling' the 112 'Grave Menace' in Inter-war Adelaid e ]-921'-1939 6 "sexually cursed, mentally weak and socially untouchable"- 144 World War Two, National Security Regulations and the New Campaign, 1939-1945 7. Conclusion 185 Part B EDINBURGH Page 8. Compulsion in Edinburgh's public heatlh policy 1,89 9. "For the protection of others": venereal diseases and 201. policy in Britain 19L6-1928 10. "The liberty to spread disaster": campaigning for compulsion 2L6 in interwar Edinburgh, 1928 11. "The lesser of two evils": war ressutes 1939-1947 243 12. Conclusion 267 Part C 13. Social Reponses to Venereal Disease 269 in Adelaide and Edinburgh Bibliography 280 ABSTRACT Control, compulsion and controversy: venereal diseases in Adelaide and Edinburgh1910-1947 This thesis argues that despite the liberal use of social control theory in the literature on the soical history of venereal diseases, rational discourses do not necessarily lead to government intervention. Modern analyses usually overestimate the capacity of social control strategies to hit their mark. Where intervention was proposed the degree and method was, in the case of venereal diseases, continually debated and revised. Through the unique experience of the failed attempt to introduce compulsory notification and treatment for venereal disease in Adelaide and Edinburgh in the period defined by the title it will be demonstrated that legislators were constrained in these two cities by a -zarietl of factors in determining the public health policy in regard to these particular diseases. The complexity of the relationship between governments and the societies for whom they legislate and the influences or otherwise of social organisations, institutions and pressure groups are seen as important factors in this relationship. Also, analyses that assume geographic as well as empirical specificity demonstrate the difficulty for historians who attempt to mould a national experience from a diverse set of circumstances. Comparative analysis reveals that culturally similar iocations can experience simiiar impulses and constraints to the development of social policy under differing constitutional arrangements. il Acknowledgements V/ithout the kind assistance of many this work would not have been completed. Thanks are due to my supervisors, Dr. Adrian Graves (University of Adelaide), Associate Professor Robert Dare and Dr. Roger Davidson (University of Edinburgh) for their kind and patient guidance during the progress of this work. Also thanks to Dr. Katharine Massam, and Professor Peter Mühlhaüsler for their much needed support. On this score I also owe a debt of gratitude to the Department of History at the University of Adelaide. Susan Lemar February 2001 111 Abbreviations BPP British Parliamentary Papers BPD British Parliamentary Debates DHS Department of Health for Scotland EPHD Edinburgh Public Heaith Department GRG Government Record Group HH Home and Health Series LHB Lothian Health Board MJA Medical Journal of Australia ML Mortlock Llbrary MiL Mitchell Llbrary MOH Medical Officer of Health NAS National Archives of Scotland SBH Scottish board of Health SLSA State Llbrary of South Australia SAAP South Australian Acts of Parliament SAPD South Australian Parliamentary Debates SAPP South Australian Parliamentary Papers SRSA State Records of South Australia WCTU Woman's Christian Temperance Union Introduction Control, Compulsion and Controversy: venereal diseases in Adelaide and Edinburgh19\0-1947 (i) Object The historiography of the growth of government in modern industrial societies has taken shape around the validity of two propositions. The first is that governments tend inexorably to regulate social life through the elaboration of an apparatus of inspection and compulsion. The second is that regulation in turn tends toward the control by elites of subordinate and relatively powerless social groups such as women and children, the poor the sick, immigrants and non-Anglo Saxons. Changes in social policy over time, in other words, advance a programme of "social control." This thesis examines the history of venereal diseases control in Britain and Australia to challenge this meta-narrative of social policy in four ways. It shows the persistence of voluntary and non-compuisory forms of disease control; i.t shows the contested and negotiated states of regulatory measures; it shows that as far as venereal diseases control was concerned, transnationally, compulsion was far from acceptable and popular approach to the problem; and it shows that communities sharing remarkably similar social structures, systems of government, moral codes and medical cultures could take similar paths for the control of venereal diseases but produce quite different outcomes. From its original preoccupation with sanitation, the issue of compulsion in public health in Britain and Australia quickly incorporated a debate over the liberty of the individual and his or her responsibility to the common weal. In the matter of health care, "individual and corporate responsibility", "individuai initiative", "exertion and diligence", and "personal discipline" were considered by early public health theorists more valuable to the nation, more constructive 2 and permanent, than a too rapid or superficial provision of external facilities for securing social well-being.l When the same principles were applied to the control of infectious diseases a distinct discourse surrounding public health was initiated. When venereal diseases were introduced into the equation medical responses to public health issues merged with moral responses that were often injected with pseudo-scientific prescriptions for national fitness. Usually such prescriptions were also infused with related issues such as the age of consent, prostitution, abortion, alcoholism and mental deficiency. The conseqltences of such "social evils", rather than offering categorical justification for decisive measures for their control, confronted social policy reformers with considerations as to what was possible, what was practicable and what was ethical. This study intends to reveal the difficulties for historians in attempting to reconcile motives and outcomes. Also it aims to demonstrate that localised studies are useful in revealing the controversies of the compulsion debate surrounding venereal diseases. The localised case-study approach is important in revealing that the compulsion debate was intricate; that popular explanations for the motivation and consequence of coercive health policy may be qualified when experiences in particular circumstances are scrutinised; and that, although it is always possible to uncover specific examples that do not conform to grand theories, the relationship between governments and the societies for whom they legisiate is always compiex. This complexity is well demonstrated during the debate surrounding compulsion in the control of venereal diseases in Adelaide and Edinburgh from 1910 to 7947. 1 E. E. Reynolds, Ourselues nnd tltc Contnutnity, Cambrid¡;e (University Press, Cambridge, 1932), p. 51 (ii) Historiography In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the debate over venereal disease control was an international one. In the early twentieth century international congresses drew together the medical profession from a variety of countries. When determining legislative responses governments drew on the experience of others. The strengths and weakness of proposals were vigorously debated. The successes and faiiures of various strategies were scrutinised, and compulsory and voluntary schemes were compared for their efficacy and capability of enforcement. The dilemma over whether or not to enforce a compulsory system of disease control incited considerable debate among liberal social reformers, the medical profession, public health authorities and legislators. The nature and content of this debate have been the subject of a large body of work on the social history of venereal diseases. The basic assumption underpinning the majority of this work is that the control of the venereal diseases, syphilis, gonorrhoea and soft chancre, was a problem beyond merely public health policy. Contemporary concerns about social morals and racial fitness and the double sexual standard have underpinned many studies into social responses to venereal diseases control. Most studies, like those by Lucy Bland, acknowledge the growth of eugenics, the 'science' of racial health and purity, as a dominant and motivating ideology behind venereal disease control policy.2 Flowever, others, by focusing on the creation of discourses surrounding sexuality, examine disease control in respect of racial health and racial purity in more specific historical contexts. The work of Sander L. Gilman on images of illness, health, sexuality and race has been influential for its identification of the translation of theological concepts of ': The and, ( lation isease History of Medicitrc and AIlicd Scie nccs, vol.43, no. 2 (1988), pp.747.

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Proclamation, Propaganda and Prophylaxis:'Controlling' the .. of the venereal diseases control debate, especially in relation to the issue of.
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