Help me with my nineteenth century syphilis stats!

June 30, 2011 4:15 AM

Where can I find statistics about the incidence of syphilis in the United Kingdom in the nineteenth century? Bonus points for evidence of changing virulence...

Hivemind, I'm writing about the supposed "masturbation panic" of the nineteenth century, and I'm wondering how often authors and historians haven't mistaken veiled discourse about syphilis for worrymongering about self abuse. (As you know, much writing on this subject between 1960 and 1990 basically set out to accuse nineteenth century Britons of the crime of not being 1960s left-wing radicals, and the "masturbation panic" idea helped by rendering Victorians not only imperialist phallocentric capitalist scum, but ridiculous with it).

What would really help me is some sources of Victorian disease stats that include syphilis. They don't have to be accurate in the modern sense: I'm interested in what Victorians themselves felt was happening. Were incidences on the increase? I know some medical thinkers of the time thought so - but were there figures to back them up? I've found government stats from 1900 on. But were they maintained from an earlier date, and if so, where?

Online sources would be marvellous, but I've access to a deposit library and a major university library, so obscure crumbling undigitised sources from long-abandoned underground stacks welcome!

I am very much after "Blue Book" style statistics here, if they exist. Thank you in advance for anything anyone can suggest.

posted by pyotrstolypin to Science & Nature (5 answers total)

Best answer: I doubt you're going to find what you want on a grand scale; syphillis was not notifiable in any meaningful sense, and so it will only be 'visible' statistically when it's listed as a cause of death (therefore in the general birth/marriage/death stats gathered by the General Register Office & published in their annual reports). You could case study it for records which would have been available - perhaps a specific hospital, or the rates of diagnosis in a Lock hospital etc, but I don't think this will help you answer the question you're posing. What you want are publically available stats, right? The sort of thing that would be published in a newspaper to horrify people - and the private records of hospitals, or of the Military, or of the Contagious Diseases Act's various outputs were not, as a general rule, in the public sphere.

Speaking from archive experience, there is by-and-large no distinction made (outside the medico-scientific press) in the coverage of venereal diseases between syphillis and any other form of VD - it's all 'vice' and 'vice diseases', so while you might find an increase in reporting of these stories (some of this is driven by the campaigns for/against the CDC) across the second half of the 19thc, there's no way of knowing if this is syphilis or even if it is expected to be 'understood' as syphilis.

My vaguely informed sense would be that the average late Victorian would see and hear more about these diseases than they had in the past, and it would be almost impossible to ignore the hullabaloo surrounding the CDC. It would be pretty obvious, though, except to the most sheltered, whether a shock article was about masturbation or about vice diseases. I don't think it's a tenable argument that we or they are mistaking veiled references to syphilis for veiled references to masturbation.
posted by AFII at 4:29 AM on June 30, 2011

Response by poster: GRO and Lock Hospitals! Perfect, thankyou! I should have the GRO material to hand, and can access the Lock Hospitals records via the Womens Library in London next time I'm there.

I'd draw a distinction between Victorians themselves being able to tell what's being talked about - vice diseases or masturbation - and 20th century writers being able to make that distinction: what set me off on this was a letter by headmaster Thring of Uppingham school which had been interpreted by a historian as an anti-masturbatory tract when it very obviously refers to (1) the mercury treatment given to syphilis sufferers and (2) Victorian fears about the heritability of syphilis.

Well, that's perfect, and within minutes too. Just what I was looking for - I'm very grateful to you.
posted by pyotrstolypin at 5:08 AM on June 30, 2011

Best answer: The Victorians were fascinated by statistics, and made repeated attempts to collect statistical information on the incidence of syphilis, particularly in the army. The figures have to be used with caution, but they are there.

William Acton's 1846 paper in The Lancet, Observations on Venereal Diseases in the United Kingdom, From Statistical Reports in the Army, Navy and Merchant Service, with Remarks on the Mortality from Syphilis in the Metropolis can be accessed on Google Books. Judith Walkowitz, in Prostitution and Victorian Society (1980), has some helpful comments on the reliability of these and other statistics, noting that 'classification and nomenclature changed over the course of the nineteenth century' but concluding that 'military medical statistics and civilian death rates for syphilis are rough indicators of the long-range change in incidence and virulence in syphilis and gonorrhea'.

If you're interested in 'veiled discourse about syphilis', have a look at Charlotte M. Yonge's novel Magnum Bonum (1879). This is about a mysterious medical discovery resulting, we're told, from 'a succession of experiments .. quite impossible for any woman'. We're never told exactly what it is, but it sounds as though it might be some sort of treatment for syphilis, which Yonge, as a respectable female novelist, couldn't possibly have mentioned by name but might have expected her readers to recognise.
posted by verstegan at 6:04 AM on June 30, 2011

Best answer: This may not be directly relevant, but there's a great account of changing nineteenth-century medical views about the nature of syphilis (as an endemic vs. an epidemic disease) in the Russian Empire in Laura Engelstein's The Keys to Happiness. Maybe you can find some potential sources there.
posted by nasreddin at 7:55 AM on June 30, 2011

Response by poster: There goes my weekend, Verstegan and Nasreddin: that's all completely new to me and again, just the kind of thing I was hoping would be out there. Thanks!
posted by pyotrstolypin at 12:44 AM on July 1, 2011