Human demography and disease

This is a truly interesting and well written book. While many historical works on venereal disease focus on one particular kind of disease, in this volume public debates on the subject play a central role, and therefore we learn not only about syphilis, but also, for instance, about herpes genitalis and AIDS. This is not surprising, because the author's aim was to write a sociological study in which not only the diseases themselves but also the public responses to them and their symbolic dimension are understood in the specific Dutch historical context. In this she has succeeded very well. With the help of theatrical metaphors, the public debate is reconstructed as a changing stage on which new narrators as well as characters come and go, on which new definitions of the problem are introduced, and new solutions proposed. While in the early debates the professional prostitute was seen as the source of infection, in the period between 1920 and 1955 the modern, promiscuous working girl-the amateur-was a central target of the campaigns to fight syphilis. While the main characters were condemned to silence and anonymity, medical practitioners and moralists-feeling superior to them-controlled the public debate. However, this relation between narrators and characters changed. In the sixties it was the lifestyle of well-educated, left-wing and sexually liberated heterosexuals which became associated with a new venereal disease, herpes genitalis. Now the main characters of public debate stopped being just the 9bjects of controversy and became major participants in the debate. A new literary genre developed in which these patients testified to the meaning of this disease for their lives and relationships, and this genre played a major role in regulating sexual practices at a time when the pill as well as penicillin were available to prevent babies as well as syphilis. Although, on the one hand, medical science and statistics became more and more important in the debate on venereal disease, the erosion of the opposition between narrators and characters continued in the eighties when AIDS was put high on the agenda. In fact, the influence of medical experts on the debate grew in parallel with that of laymen, and the national government now also became an important actor. This changing relationship between narrators and characters marked the content of the discussion as well. The public debate on AIDS articulated a great awareness of the complexity of the spread of this disease …