Wages of Sin: Sex and Disease, Past and Present

Wages of Sin: Sex and Disease, Past and Present

University of Chicago Press, 5801 South Ellis Ave., Chicago, IL 60637-1496. 202p., illus., bibliog., index. ISBN 0-226-01460-6. $25.00.
Peter Lewis Allen. 2000.

"If the American AIDS crisis had a birthday, it would be 5 June 1981." That makes it 20 years since two UCLA doctors announced that they had found a number of cases of this highly unusual disease among some of their gay male patients in Los Angeles. Peter Allen has taken it upon himself to write a book that tells the story of sin and disease in Western culture over the past two thousand years. If he had succeeded in doing this, his book would have been many volumes. As a result, his book is not a continuous history, "but rather a series of portraits of disease arranged in rough chronological order." He hopes he has opened the window creating "a perspective on the European and American scene from the Middle Ages to the present." To this end his six portraits are: "Sex by Prescription: Lovesickness in the Middle Ages," "To Live Outside the Camp: Medieval Leprosy," "The Just Rewards of Unbridled Lust: Syphilis in Early Modern Europe," "A Broom in the Hands of the Almighty: Bubonic Plague," "The Heinous Sin of Self-Pollution: Medicine, Morals, and Masturbation," and "AIDS in the U.S.A."

This is a very interesting book to read that shows that there is an intersection of disease, punishment, and morality. "Certain diseases have been labeled for centuries as the wages of sin, and their sufferers were deemed unworthy of decent care or cure." The first five portraits certainly attest to this and, in the beginning, AIDS was considered a wage of sin falling upon the heads of the gay men. Peter Allen hopes that he can help to increase courtesy, charity, and compassion in the world by writing about people from the past and writing about intolerance. "Like the past, loss is irreversible, but it is not vain as long as we can give it meaning." This is a highly recommended book for all libraries.

Keywords: Sexually Transmitted Diseases; Social Aspects; Moral and Ethical Aspects; History; Sexual Ethics)
010310
BK011057

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