JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
In this pamphlet1 Dr. Gerrish writes with kindness and compassion, and conviction, on the perils of the moral/ethical/medical life of a prostitute. He believed that prostitutes should be given as great a care as any and even more so to prevent the spread of communicable disease; and that understanding and empathy be extended to them from the medical profession as a way of building their self-esteem and perhaps on this strength be able to leave the profession. He was pissed that brothel owners, Johns, and prostitutes were arraigned differently and (usually) separately, and that they should all be arraigned together, as it wasn't just the fault of the prostitute that the law was broken. He made the case that prostitution was a fixable societal problem, and it must be addressed, in spite of what he saw was its massiveness. He claimed that slavery wasn't abolished --it simply went by the name of "prostitution" ("... that slavery has disappeared from European civilization. This is an error. It exists always ; but it weighs only on woman, and is called prostitution").
Read it in full at Hathi Trust: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015011655837;view=thumb;seq=6
Notes:
1. Frederic Henry Gerrish, The duties of the medical profession concerning prostitution and its allied vices : being the oration before the Maine Medical Association of its annual meeting, 12th of June 1878. Portland (Maine), Loring, Short & Harmon, 1878. First edition (a second edition appeared in 1879 with the same pagination, and a third of 39pp appeared in 1886). 23x15 cm WorldCat/OCLC--surprisingly, only three print copies of the first edition are found.
Comments