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John Parascandola, Sex, sin, and science: a history of syphilis in America, Healing Society: Disease, Medicine, and History series, Westport, CT, and London, Praeger, 2008, pp. xx, 195, illus., £27.95, $49.95 (hardback 978-0-275-99430-3).
For medical historians, the concept that a disease has a biography within a social, cultural and political frame that varies from culture to culture and over time is an analytic given. However, for students and the public new to this kind of thinking, even in the face of the HIV/ AIDS pandemic, there is still the sense of wonderment that comes from realizing that not just seemingly scientific information shapes the naming, aetiology, and treatment of diseases. In the hope of furthering this understanding, the former US Public Health Service (PHS) historian John Parascandola has written a short book about the scourge of the sexually transmitted, and once terrifying, disease of syphilis. His focus on blame, sexuality, the loss of civil liberties, and silences about sex shape...