Unmentionable Madness: Gender, Disability, and Shame in the Malaria Treatment of NeurosyphilisIn 1930, neurosyphilis struck an unsuspecting Mabel Smith. Doctors at the Central State Hospital for the Insane in Indianapolis turned to malaria therapy--a radical treatment that relied on the belief that infection with malaria might save Smith’s life by attacking the bacterium that causes syphilis.
In Unmentionable Madness: Gender, Disability, and Shame in the Malaria Treatment of Neurosyphilis, Dr. Christin L. Hancock looks through the lens of feminist disability to examine the popular but ethically suspect treatment and its consequences. As Hancock shows, the treatment’s purported success rate relied on the disabled minds and bodies of people incarcerated in mental hospitals. The backgrounds and identities of these patients reflected and perpetuated attitudes around poverty, gender, race, and disability while betraying authorities’ desire to protect the public from women and men perceived as abnormal, sexually tainted, and unworthy of community life.
Paying special attention to the patients’ voices and experiences, Unmentionable Madness offers a disability history that confronts the ethics of experimentation.
To purchase Unmentionable Madness visit UI PRESS.
Free and open to All. For more information, please contact the Garaventa Center at: 503-943-7702 or garaventa@up.edu. ADA compliant event.
University of Portland
5000 N. Willamette Blvd.,
Portland, Oregon 97203-5798
503.943.8000
This website uses cookies to track information for analytics purposes. You can view the full University of Portland privacy policy for more information.
