Med Ges Gesch. 2001 ; 20(): 179-96.

J'ai vu une femme publique'. Sexuality, venereal disease and homoeopathy in nineteenth-century Ghent: the tale of the patient.

van Baal AH.

Using the casebooks of the Ghent homoeopathic physician Gustave van den Berghe (born Zwevegem, 1836; died Ghent, 1902), this essay reconstructs patients' experience with sexuality and venereal disease during the late 19th century. Van den Berghe's records are uncharacteristic in that they do not translate the patient's descriptions into medical terms. The casebooks therefore represent an opportunity to hear about the disease and its social context in the patient's own words. Reading these case reports carefully, we can begin to understand not only what it meant to suffer from venereal disease, but also what motivated people to seek homoeopathy in general and this healer in particular.