GLR September-October 2024

age of the normal sexual response, causing a man’s natural de sire to be channeled into unnatural acts. He theorized that elec troshock treatments could remove that blockage. “One electrode in the rectum and the other in the urethra, both insulated nearly to their tips. In this method very mild currents must be used, since the tips of the electrodes come very near together, the tis sues are very moist, and there is but slight resistance to the cur rent.” Perhaps not surprisingly, the patient who sought treatment because he was drawn to masturbate other men ultimately de clined Dr. Beard’s intervention: “I saw the patient but once, and do not know the result of the plan of treatment proposed.” § D R . A LLAN M C L ANE H AMILTON , grandson of Alexander Hamilton, was physician to the best society families of New York, specializing in “nervous disorders.” In 1896 he pub lished a case history that unfolded with all the restrained drama of a Henry James novel. Had James himself written it, the case history might have sounded something like this: A young heiress, referred to as “Miss A.” in the case study, had inher ited a fortune of over a million dollars, but was now causing her family concern, so much so that they contacted Dr. Hamil ton, who had earned a reputation, and the respect of New York’s legal community, as an expert witness in court pro ceedings, to intervene on their behalf, because to their distress the heiress—up until then meek and pious and content to allow her brothers, who were highly competent financial advisors, to invest her money for her—had, because she suffered from “trivial uterine disorders,” been induced by a friend to come to the city in order to consult a woman doctor, and now, to the consternation of her family, she seemed reluctant to return home. Concerned for her safety, and appreciative of Dr. Hamilton’s reputation for discretion when dealing, as he so often did, with the affairs of the elite of New York society, they had enlisted his aid as a last resort in their quest to convince the heiress to return to her family, or, failing that, to have a court declare her legally insane. In his published case study, Hamilton reported on what he had uncovered about the gynecologist that the heiress had con sulted. “The doctor was a large-framed, masculine-looking woman of about forty, with short, black hair, a raucous, deep voice, and a manner of talking which was in marked contrast to her patient, who was gentle and refined. When it pleased her she did not hesitate to emphasize her conversation with oaths, and affected the carriage and manner of an energetic and coarse man. Her attire even was affected, and was in harmony with her other peculiarities.” The young woman was treated for her gy necological problems for several months, with the relationship interrupted only briefly when the doctor decided to spend the summer in Europe. The patient returned temporarily to her fam ily, but it was not a happy homecoming. “She was dejected, pre occupied, and constantly talked of the woman doctor in a way to tire the patience of those about her; but in a few months she become elated by the receipt of several letters and, despite the persuasions of her mother, returned to New York and went to live with her medical adviser.” The family was alarmed when Miss. A. began to withdraw large amounts of her inheritance from her bank account, at the same time that the gynecologist began to build an expensive

man’s genital organ was “well developed.” In fact, everything about the man appeared outwardly normal. “Patient is an intel ligent man, and perfectly natural in his appearance and manner, except that he is distressed by his abnormal state, and wishes medicine to overcome it.” But Dr. Shaw could offer no cure for the affliction, no pill to relieve the man’s distress, so the anony mous patient put his clothes back on, slipped out of the doctor’s office, darted stealthily out the front door, and disappeared into the streets of the metropolis, to remain forever nameless. § G.M. B EARD , THE DOCTOR who acknowledged that there were homosexuals who “do not wish to get well,” reported on one of his patients. “I was at one time consulted,” wrote Beard, “by a man whose constant desire was to attain sexual gratification, not in the normal way or by masturbation, but by performing the masturbating act on some other person, and, in his case, it had become a mania practically, so that he was a great sufferer, and very earnestly sought relief.” Beard believed that many of his patients were unable to respond in an appropriate way sex ually because of “nervous impairment,” a physiological block “P ERVERTED SEXUAL INSTINCT ” led the April 1883 issue of a noted medical journal.

September–October 2024

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