Children’s health: causes, diagnosis and recovery from illness and disease
Chair: Catherine Rider (all participants from the Centre for Medical History, University of Exeter)
Hannah Newton: 'The Sick Child Recovered: Children's Experiences of Recovery from Illness in Early
Modern England'
The historiography of early modern medicine often makes depressing reading. It implies that people fell sick,
took ineffective remedies, and died. This concentration on death and disease over recovery and health may
stem from the assumption that recovery was a rare occurrence in the early modern period. However, James
Riley has shown that the crude death rates at this time stood at about 30 people per 1000 a year, which
means that most ailments ended in recovery (1989). In the case of children, whose rates of death were
higher than those of adults, three-quarters survived beyond the age of ten. Taking the perspective of child
patients and their parents, this paper explores the experience of recovery. It asks how children and their
mothers and fathers responded emotionally to the lessening of pain and restoration of health. In doing so, I
seek to generate a more balanced picture of health in early modern England.
Sarah Toulalan: ‘‘I was in some doubt as to her Disorder’: understanding venereal disorders in sexually
assaulted children in early modern England’
This paper explores early modern understandings of the nature and causes of venereal disorders in children.
Historians have argued that the incidence of venereal disease in children, revealed through court trials for
their rape and sexual assault, suggests that there was a widely held contemporary belief that sex with a
virgin/child cured the pox, and that this belief explained the significant numbers of children victims of sexual
assault diagnosed with a venereal infection when their bodies were examined. The nature and possible
cause of the child’s venereal disorder was therefore frequently discussed in court, with medical ‘experts’
(usually surgeons) testifying to their understanding and interpretation of the various marks and discharges
from the child’s body, and particularly as to whether or not these were ‘natural’, either because ‘naturally’
produced by the child’s body or because they had a ‘natural’ cause such as a strain, a fall or other injury to
the child’s groin. The paper therefore has three main aims: it questions the supposition that children’s
venereal disorders are clear evidence of child sexual abuse as a cure for venereal infections in adult men; it
suggests that these cases indicate an evolving body of medical knowledge, understandings and classifications
of natural and unnatural venereal discharges; and it argues that these seventeenth- and eighteenth-century
understandings about ‘natural’ and ‘unnatural’ vaginal secretions and discharges in children contributed to
later nineteenth century ideas about ‘innocent’ transmission that were therefore not necessarily indicative
of a later denial of inter-generational sexual activity.
Victoria Bates: ‘Contracted in the Usual Way’: Medical Diagnoses of Venereal Disease in English Children,
1850-1914
There is a widespread assumption among historians that Victorian medical practitioners avoided interpreting
vaginal discharges as evidence of sexual offences against children. This argument takes two forms: firstly,
that medical practitioners regularly diagnosed venereal diseases as ‘natural’ discharge; secondly, that
medical practitioners were happy to diagnose venereal diseases but commonly attributed them to ‘innocent
transmission’. Through both of these arguments, scholars claim that medical practitioners deliberately
evaded the issue of sexual offences against children. This paper will reassess and revise these arguments. It
will show that apparent reluctance to diagnose venereal diseases was often due to practical limitations on
medical practitioners, such as diagnostic tools, rather than their denial that sexual crimes were committed
against children. Using medical depositions from trials for sexual crimes conducted in Middlesex (London)
and South-West England, the paper will also demonstrate that there was some disparity between medical
theory and practice. Although some nineteenth-century medical textbooks continued to cite long-held
Panel contact: Dr Sarah Toulalan, Centre for Medical History, University of Exeter
beliefs in ‘innocent transmission’ of venereal diseases, medical witnesses in court rarely attributed venereal
diseases to non-sexual causes. Overall, this paper will argue for a revision of the view that nineteenthcentury doctors associated the transmission of venereal diseases with unclean towels or innocent bodily
contact. It refutes Karen Taylor’s influential claim that these medical practitioners were not ‘scientifically and
culturally prepared’ to acknowledge sexual contact with children. In light of the difficulties of distinguishing
between types of vaginal discharge, medical practitioners showed surprising willingness to diagnose
venereal diseases and associate them with sexual contact.
Panel contact: Dr Sarah Toulalan, Centre for Medical History, University of Exeter