A history of English sexual morals / by Ivan Bloch ; translated by William H. Forstern.

  • Iwan Bloch
Date:
1936
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: A history of English sexual morals / by Ivan Bloch ; translated by William H. Forstern. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    6 Medical Etiquette in England'x states that the review by a continental doctor of a strictly scientific book on sexual pathology, written by an accredited expert, was rejected by one of the foremost English medical journals with the comment: ' Not for English readers.' From the same source comes the following example of exaggerated prudery towards a doctor. ' A continental physician told me that an elderly lady, wife of a colleague, consulted him. The description of her symptoms pointed to some disease of an organ in the abdomen. The patient complained of pain and the doctor asked if the pain was in the abdomen, using the word belly. The lady, though elderly, became embarrassed at this word; and later on, having become on friendly terms with the doctor and his wife, confided to the latter, that the blunt use of the word belly had affected her most unpleasantly; she went on, moreover, to add that the doctor, when treating English ladies, would be well advised never to use this dreadful word: it was absolutely taboo. But in Heaven's name! the doctor's wife exclaimed, Whatever does an English lady do when she consults her doctor? She refers to her 6 stomach ' , answered the Englishwoman.' In his excellent Eclaircissement sur les Obscenites, Pierre Bayle writes with much humour on a similar case of exaggerated prudery, and its intimate psychological connec- tion with immorality has not escaped him. For it is obvious that a human being who is perpetually worrying about what is decent and what is indecent, must for ever be letting his thoughts dwell on indecency; whereas the naive and innocent person keeps easily without any bother within the bounds of decency; it never occurs to such a person to denounce anything as obscene when it is only the twisted thought of the prude that makes it so. 1 The Medical Weekly. 1900. No. 7. [11]