Turn-of-the-century nursing perspectives on venereal disease.

Abstract

In the early 1900s, nurses, feminists, and social reformers focused on venereal disease as a symbol of women's powerlessness. Authors in popular literature and nursing journals debated the ethics of the "medical secret," whereby physicians collaborated with their male patients to keep wives uninformed of the risk of infection. The nurses Lavinia Dock and Emma Goldman used the topic of venereal disease as a springboard to discuss their contrasting feminist ideologies. Their writings provide a context for current debates about sexual partner notification for HIV and nurses' role in political activism.