Perspectives

The art of medicine

Sexual science beyond the medical
The US television series Masters of Sex tells the story of how his work on syphilis, was particularly forthright in calling
William H Masters and Virginia E Johnson began to work for a new approach to sex research that would use cross-
together in the 1960s to study, observe, and measure the disciplinary approaches. According to Bloch, sexual science
physiology of human sexual response. The series depicts needed to move beyond a narrow focus on the study of
the couple as pioneers in applying clinical observation to the sexual pathologies and this required drawing on a range
study of human sexuality and focuses on the challenges they of other disciplines. In Bloch’s influential book The Sexual
faced in persuading medical authorities to accept the validity Life of Our Time In Its Relation to Modern Civilization (1906),
of their work. Masters of Sex presents a later chapter within he proposed: “Let us leave the hospital and the medical
a longer history of the 150-year struggle to establish sex consulting-room; let us make a journey round the world;
research as a legitimate discipline. let us observe the sexual activity of the genus homo in its
From the mid-19th century medical professionals such as manifold phenomena, not as physicians, but as ordinary
the Austrian psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing, author observers.” What Bloch called for was an expanded
of the foundational Psychopathia Sexualis (1886), began to understanding of sexual science, which, he believed, “must
explore what they perceived to be the differences between be treated in its proper subordination as a part of the general
pathological and healthy forms of sexual desire and to ‘science of mankind,’ which is constituted by a union of
develop taxonomies and diagnostic categories to explain and all other sciences—of general biology, anthropology and
define sexual behaviour. French and Russian psychiatrists like ethnology, philosophy and psychology, the history of
Jacques-Joseph Moreau de Tours and Benjamin Tarnowsky literature, and the entire history of civilization”.
undertook similar work in this period. Sexual science began Bloch was not alone in calling for the cross-disciplinary
to emerge as a medical field that used clinical methodologies study of sexuality, as his approach reflected broader
to establish its authority and legitimacy. trends. One of his colleagues in Berlin, for instance, was
Yet not all sex researchers were content with an exclusively the German Jewish physician Magnus Hirschfeld, the most
medical approach to the study of sexuality. At the turn of the influential sexual scientist in Germany in this period. Like
20th century, several sexual scientists argued that a clinical Bloch, Hirschfeld was concerned with expanding the scope
approach was too narrow to understand the complexity of of sexual science and exploring the diversity and variability
human sexuality. The German dermatologist Iwan Bloch, of human sexual behaviour. To do so, he drew on a range
who first became interested in the study of sexuality through of evidence drawn from history, anthropology, and literary
fiction in his own publications, including his magnum opus
The Homosexuality of Men and Women (1914). Hirschfeld
also edited an important journal called the Jahrbuch für
Sexuelle Zwischenstufen (1899–1923), in which contributions
from physicians and psychiatrists sat alongside articles by
scholars from a range of disciplinary backgrounds, including
classicists, jurists, and ethnographers. In 1919, Hirschfeld
founded the Institute for Sexual Research in Berlin that
housed his extensive library and archive. It allowed him and
his colleagues to consult with patients, offer sexual health
advice, and present educational talks to the general public.
The institute was made up of five research departments—
sexual psychology, sexual physiology, sexual pathology,
sexual sociology, and sexual ethnology—and represented the
remarkably cross-disciplinary nature of sexual science during
the early 20th century.
In this historical moment, physicians sought to work
with writers and thinkers from other disciplines because it
Wellcome Library, London

was believed that they could make valuable contributions

to the understanding of sexuality. In 1914, for instance,
German psychiatrist Albert Moll extended an invitation to
English socialist reformer and poet Edward Carpenter to
Press cutting of a caricature of Richard von Krafft-Ebing from 1896–97 present a paper on the cultural history of homosexuality

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 Perspectives

at the First International Congress for Sexual Research in

Berlin. In his letter to Carpenter, Moll explained that the
Congress would “embrace the total sphere of scientific sexual
research, and will probably be divided into a biological-
medical section, a sociological section (including history
of civilisation and ethnology), a legal section (including
criminal-anthropology and psychology) and a philosophical,
psychological, educational section”. Moll maintained
that exchange between different fields of knowledge was
integral to sex research and the historical–anthropological

Wellcome Library, London

perspective Carpenter brought to sexual science was clearly
valued by his colleagues.
The collaboration between Havelock Ellis and
John Addington Symonds offers another example of the
cross-disciplinary exchange that was at the heart of sexual
Magnus Hirschfeld (right) at the World League for Sexual Reform Conference in 1929
science at this time. Ellis, a physician, became one of the
most eminent British sexual scientists of the 20th century.
He is remembered today as the author of the seven-volume Indeed, the status and legitimacy of sexual science as a
Studies in the Psychology of Sex (1896–1928). Symonds, by recognised field of medical investigation were particularly
contrast, was not medically trained but was a well-known volatile at this historical moment. Ellis and Symonds’ Sexual
Renaissance scholar, classicist, and poet. In the 1890s, Inversion, for instance, was banned as obscene upon first
Ellis and Symonds collaborated and wrote Sexual Inversion publication in England, forcing Ellis to publish the subsequent
(1896), the first sustained medical study of homosexuality volumes of his Studies in the Psychology of Sex with an
in England. The surviving correspondence between Ellis and American publisher. Hirschfeld’s work was also subjected to
Symonds shows that a central aim of this publication was censorship on occasion and increasingly came under attack
to revise the works of earlier sexual scientists, which had by the Nazis in the 1920s. He was repeatedly harassed, both
focused on patient observations and medical case studies, verbally and physically, and his institute, which had been the
and were dominated by discussions of the pathological. site of much cross-disciplinary research and collaboration,
Symonds and Ellis set out to present a more comprehensive was raided and destroyed by the Nazis in 1933. In this sense,
study of human sexual variety by drawing on a wider range the history of sexual science shows both the difficulties
of evidence, particularly historical sources. involved in facilitating and sustaining cross-disciplinary
These early 20th-century sexual scientists used historical exchange at the same time as it raises fundamental questions
sources to complement clinical observations and to move about what the scientific study of sexuality entails and how
beyond the exclusive study of pathological forms of sexuality. medical authority is defined and secured.
Symonds and Ellis drew on historical examples to challenge This neglected moment in the history of sexual science
the idea that homosexuality was a pathological affliction. offers the potential for productive new thinking about Further reading
As Symonds argued, observation of the homosexual the dynamics of cross-disciplinary exchange between Bauer H, ed. Sexology in
behaviours of individuals in asylums, psychiatric hospitals, medical and non-medical forms of knowledge. In viewing translation: cultural and scientific
encounters across the modern
and prisons alone was distorting. He suggested that such sexual science as a cross-disciplinary field that went far world. Philadelphia: Temple
an approach ignored the existence of others (now and in beyond the study of sexual pathologies and was open University Press, 2015
the past), who experienced homosexual desires and did not to sexual diversity and variation, and in looking for Bland L, Doan L, eds. Sexology
display what were then regarded as signs of pathology. Ellis input from historians, anthropologists, theologians, in culture: labelling bodies
and desires. Cambridge: Polity
and Symonds looked to the history of ancient Greece for classicists, sociologists, philosophers, and literary writers, Press, 1998
an example of a culture that did not treat homosexuality as among others, physicians began to work towards richly Oosterhuis H. Stepchildren of
pathological. According to Ellis: “In Greece the homosexual contextualised understandings of sexuality. The cross- nature: Krafft-Ebing, psychiatry
impulse was recognized and idealized; a man could be an disciplinary dialogue that was fundamental to early sexual and the making of sexual
identity. Chicago: Chicago
open homosexual lover, and yet […] be a great and honoured science speaks to debates in the medical humanities today
University Press, 2000
citizen of his country.” For Ellis and Symonds, then, historical in that it shows how medical investigation can be enriched
Rosario V, ed. Science and
evidence was a powerful indicator of the complexities through engagement with other forms of knowledge. homosexualities. London:
of human sexual behaviour and the existence of healthy Routledge, 1996
expressions of homosexuality. Kate Fisher, *Jana Funke Terry J. An American obsession:
The attempts of sexual scientists to expand their Centre for Medical History (KF) and Department of English (JF), science, medicine, and
homosexuality in modern
investigations beyond the medical sphere were, however, University of Exeter, Exeter EX4 4QH, UK society. Chicago: Chicago
also embroiled in an ongoing struggle for medical authority. j.funke@exeter.ac.uk University Press, 1999

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