The Foul Disease, Privacy, and the Medical Marketplace
The Foul Disease in the Royal Hospitals: The Seventeenth
Century
The Foul Disease in the Royal Hospitals: The Eighteenth Century
The Foul Disease and the Poor Law: Workhouse Medicine in the
Eighteenth Century
The Foul Disease and Moral Reform: The Lock Hospital
Rethinking the Lock Hospital
This is a masterly study, based on meticulous archival research,
which...provides an illuminating spotlight on many aspects of early
modern urban life. The rich and detailed story Siena tells will be
of interest to a wide range of historians... It significantly
expands and nuances our hitherto over-simplistic picture of the
extent of, and provisions for the treatment of, venereal disease in
the metropolis.
*Lesley A. Hall, Wellcome Library for the History and Understanding
of Medicine, London*
Venereal Disease, Hospitals and the Urban Poor is a solid piece of
research. Siena has clearly combed a range of archives, and he
draws on institutional accounts, court records, medical journals,
advertisements, and patient records to make a convincing case that
the early modern period was a pivotal one in the treatment of
venereal disease.
*JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF SEXUALITY*
This is a well-researched, compelling book on a grim topic with
some contemporary overtones.
*CHOICE*
Siena has delved into old sources in new ways, producing not only a
superbly refined view of the care offered to the venereally
diseased poor throughout early modern England, but also a model for
future historical efforts directed towards a better understanding
of the care sought for and received by this often overlooked,
foundational segment of London society.
*AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW*
It is a pleasure to read a book so deeply grounded in archival
work; Siena's extensive research offers new perspectives on health
care in early modern England. First, he dispels any lingering ideas
about the happy, unrepressed, pre-Victorian days of jolly sexuality
in which venereal disease was just a minor inconvenience. . . .
Second, like other scholars, he shows poor patients to be
resourceful players in a jerry-built system that met their needs
imperfectly at best. As always, ideas about morality and gender
shaped health care for the poor, and especially for the poor with
venereal diseases.
*JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF MEDICINE, 2006*
Siena's ambitions here extend to the attempt to recover patients'
own experience of illness and healthcare; and he has succeeded to a
remarkable extent in conveying the desperate human costs of the
'foul disease'. This is a book then that is marked not only by
erudition and sound scholarship but also by humanity and empathy.
It is a major achievement.
*JOURNAL OF SOCIAL HISTORY*
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