Sex Workers and Women in Antiquity

What is the difference between sex workers (prostitutes) and “non-commercial” women in Classical Athens (Greece) and Ancient China?

Answer:

Women, especially those from the aristocracy, were not educated and lived only to serve their husbands.

Prostitutes could read, sing and dance.  They’re erudite.  The stigma actors face through the millennia is related to this: Singing or dancing or reading lines is the domain of the prostitute.

REFERENCES

Huang, Ginger.  “Prostitutes and Poets: How the Prostitution of the Past Wrote Some of China’s Greatest Poetry.”  The World of Chinese,  30 Nov. 2013.  Web.  <https://www.theworldofchinese.com/2013/11/prostitutes-and-poets/>.

Pomeroy, Sarah B.  Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity.  1975.  New York: Schocken Books, 1995.  pp. 74, 88-92.

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Originally posted on my Facebook wall in a slightly different form on 27 April 2020.

Pandemics

The number of deaths in the 1918 influenza pandemic far exceeds that of the current coronavirus pandemic.  But of course, history can repeat itself, i.e., the coronavirus has the potential to surpass the influenza pandemic.

The 1918 influenza virus attacked in waves.  Areas where the novel coronavirus of 2019 has been initially controlled are now seeing another wave of infections.  Governments – our government included – may institute intermittent quarantine periods to control the recurrences.

When World War I ended, people celebrated in throngs, forgetting about social distancing, multiplying the influenza virus exponentially.  Social distancing was largely responsible for containing the pandemic.

Here in American-occupied Philippines, the officials (white Americans) claimed Filipinos had their own indigenous influenza which mixed with the pandemic-causing virus.  One official even said that the Philippine General Hospital was no longer fit for white patients.  Give it to the imperialistic white monkeys to blame the brown chimpanzees for the virulence of the virus.  Oops.  Racist comment.

REFERENCES

Gealogo, Francis A.  “The Philippines in the World of the Influenza Pandemic of 1918-1919.”  Philippine Studies 57.2 (2009): 261-92.

Roos, Dave.  “Why the Second Wave of the 1918 Spanish Flu Was So Deadly.”  History Stories.  History, 3 Mar. 2020.  Web. <https://www.history.com/news/spanish-flu-second-wave-resurgence>.

Strochlic, Nina and Riley D. Champine.  “How Some Cities ‘Flattened the Curve’ during the 1918 Flu Pandemic.”  History.  National Geographic, 27 Mar. 2020.  Web.  <https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2020/03/how-cities-flattened-curve-1918-spanish-flu-pandemic-coronavirus/>.

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Originally posted on my Facebook wall on 27 April 2020.

Victorian Mindset

Adult content.  Please enjoy, and please be guided accordingly.

A French physician, Joseph Henri Reveille-Parise, was quoted in the 1854 issue of The New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal for what he said in 1828: “In my opinion, neither plague, nor war, nor small-pox, nor a crowd of similar evils, have resulted more disastrously for humanity, than the habit of masturbation: it is the destroying element of civilized society.”

Masturbation worse than the plague or smallpox?  WTF.  This doctor was nuts, although he really wasn’t by the standards of his day.

Even if we organize Earth Wanking Day where everyone in the world wanks simultaneously at a given time, say 5 p.m., the world will be inundated with secretions at most (maybe a quake here and there), but global synchronized wanking certainly can not be worse than the plague or smallpox.

Forty years later (1894), in another issue of The New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal, Dr. A.J. Bloch performed clitoridectomy (removal of clitoris, female circumcision) on a girl who liked to masturbate.  Bloch referred to women who masturbated as moral lepers and to masturbation as psychopathia sexualis.

Why unearth Victorian-era mindset backed by documented medical thought of the day?

Because even today, people – including medical doctors – with such mentality can still be found among us.  Sad eh.  (Is it possible that these modern-day Victorians are closet wankers?  H’m.)

Lubricate.  Pace.  Breathe.  Masturbating causes no harm if enjoyed and done in moderation.

REFERENCES

“Review of European Legislation for Control of Prostitution.”  The New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal 11.1 (1854): 667-705.

Bloch, A.J.  “Sexual Perversion in the Female.”  The New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal 22 (1894-95): 1-7.

Evans, Hilary and Robert E. Bartholomew.  Outbreak! The Encyclopedia of Extraordinary Social Behavior.  San Antonio, TX: Anomalist Books, 2009.  393.

Together

When the clinic where I work continued to operate despite the lockdown, I felt so happy (and scared at the same time).  I told myself, “Wow, I’m going to die… for a good cause... exiting this world debilitated and intubated.”  Oh well.

That private clinic where I moonlight sees a lot of patients in a day.  Farting usually is the only rest time.

I had a child patient suffering from asthma with pneumonia (my diagnosis after examination).  I told the mother to bring the child to the hospital.  She replied, “Wala kaming sasakyan.  Walang tricycle sa lockdown.  San namin dadalhin anak namin? (We don’t have our own car.  No tricycle is available during lockdown.  Where will we bring our child?)”  Something detonated in my heart.

I smiled at the mother, wrote her a prescription and reminded her to seek help from the barangay in case her child worsens.

Such a moment reminds me of why we are doctors, why we took medicine in the first place.  When I was young, I’d always wanted to die for a cause.  Now that I’m in my 50s, I’d rather live for one.

Staying home or practising medicine (or not) during the pandemic is alright.

COVID is not anyone’s personal cause.  We’re all in this together.

House Calls

To All My Friends:

If and when I die, whether because of COVID or something else, you are not obliged to visit my remains at the funeral house.  I will personally visit and inform you of my passing, wherever you are.  You do not even need to call my name, but I will surely be there – when you least expect it.

(Walang katapusan trabaho ng doktor.  Patay na nagha-house call pa. A doctor’s work never ends.  Dead but still doing house calls.)