Part 18 (2/2)
Lippert records as a medical fact that examinations have frequently shown the domestics in the highest families to be literally saturated with venereal disease, and he states his opinion that six out of every ten servant-girls who are found in the streets at night are accessible to pecuniary temptation. This ratio is very large, but as it is a local matter with which he is presumed to be well acquainted, it would be out of place to attempt either to sustain or controvert it.
All these private prost.i.tutes resort to the houses of accommodation (_Absteigequartiere_), which exist in spite of the constant watchfulness of the police. When they are hunted up and rooted out of one place, they reappear under another guise elsewhere; a removal being facilitated by the slender nature of their equipment, which seldom consists of more than furniture for one room. For ”genteel” delinquents, they are placed where the accommodation is veiled under the French disguise of _pet.i.ts soupers_, or some such flimsy artifice.
To the question, ”What becomes of the prost.i.tutes?” Hamburg offers no special reply. Under favorable circ.u.mstances, they abandon their calling, and become the wives of mechanics or small tradesmen; or they carry on some business for themselves, and strive to become reputable members of society; or they become companion to some man, and follow his fortunes, usually reverting to common prost.i.tution. When their charms are entirely lost, and no hope remains of earning a living from their sale, they sometimes, but very rarely, become brothel-keepers; sometimes procuresses; and, more frequently, servants in the registered houses.
Some of the dancing saloons already mentioned have attained European celebrity. They stand in the same relation to common women as the exchange does to the mercantile community. Their female visitors are mostly prost.i.tutes, a fact which deprives the scene of many fascinations existing in other cities. In the end of the last century there was no public place expressly designed for dancing, until, with the many equivocal blessings disseminated by the French Revolution, they also became an inst.i.tution.
The Hamburg saloons are conducted with order and quiet, and are generally closed about one o'clock in the morning. One of the most important, the Bacchus Hall, was burned down some few years since, and the authorities have, as yet, refused to grant a license for its re-erection.
As public places which in some degree facilitate prost.i.tution, mention must be made of the common sleeping apartments locally called ”deep cellars” (_tiefen kellar_). These are roomy vaults, many feet under ground, in which the poor find nightly shelter at very low prices. They are provided with beds and bedding. In the depth of poverty to which some of their customers have fallen, they can not afford to pay two sch.e.l.lings (about four cents) for the luxury of a bed, and these repose their weary limbs on some foul straw, or on the ground, at the charge of half a sch.e.l.ling. Some of these cellars are fifteen or twenty feet below the surface of the street, and it will not require a very vivid imagination to portray their horrors.
The beer and wine houses of Hamburg are tolerably free from prost.i.tution; but a new cla.s.s has lately sprung up, called ”cellar-keeping”
(_kellerwirthschaff_), and in these the guests are served by females in fancy costume, Swiss, Polish, or Circa.s.sian, as the case may be. Many of these contain private rooms for prost.i.tution, and, although they are closely watched by the police, who sometimes ungallantly expel the fair foreigners and close the establishments, they still flourish, others being speedily opened elsewhere to fill up the gap.
From this general description of prost.i.tutes, their habitations, and customs, we will proceed to a consideration of their condition as to health, and the extent and virulence of syphilis among them, still taking the pamphlet of Dr. Lippert for our guide.
It is generally imagined that the excessive action of the generative organs interferes with the power of procreation in common women. Dr.
Lippert undertakes to controvert this opinion, with what success medical men whose professional experience has been among this cla.s.s will be able to judge. He supports his views by general a.s.sertions rather than by specific facts, but refers, in corroboration, to well-known instances in which children have been born while the mothers were living in a state of open prost.i.tution, as also to those cases where women who have abandoned the habit of promiscuous intercourse confine themselves to one man by marriage or cohabitation, and then become mothers. He attributes their sterility during prost.i.tution to their wild and irregular life, their constant exposure to weather, etc., and argues that the powers of conception are suspended, but not destroyed thereby. He also introduces the fact that abortions are frequently produced in Hamburg by the common women themselves, or by some old crones who preside over their orgies, and are stated to have a long list of drugs applicable to this purpose, which they use in a reckless manner. The medical police are not unaware of these proceedings, but find them difficult to detect, as a woman will endeavor to avoid the stated examination by pleading excessive menstruation, or inventing some story she thinks likely to deceive, until all traces of the abortion are removed. The remarks of Dr. Lippert would lead to the belief that the _excessive use_ of the female organs was more favorable to health than the disuse would be, a conclusion which most physicians will not be willing to admit. He adds, ”Cancer of the womb occurred but once in my experience of eleven years at the General Infirmary, and cases of prolapsus uteri are very rare.”
A disease incident to common women, _Colica scortorum_ (W----'s Colic), happens in Hamburg as elsewhere, but is attributed to exposure to the weather more than any other cause. It consists of pain in the womb, extending across the abdomen round to the loins, and sometimes including the whole region of the stomach. It is frequently accompanied with gastric derangement, sickness, or diarrhoea.
The enlargement of the c.l.i.toris, so much insisted on by some writers, Lippert altogether doubts, except as a very exceptional case; nor does he admit any effect of prost.i.tution on the r.e.c.t.u.m unless induced by unnatural intercourse. As a general result of his observations, he concludes that, ”apart from syphilitic affections, the generative organs of a prost.i.tute do not usually differ from those of a virtuous woman.”
We find some returns of diseases not directly connected with prost.i.tution; thus, cases of itch, which is now becoming rare, were in
1836 62 1837 76 1838 87 1839 98 1844 38 1845 22 1846 36
Of other general maladies, including fevers, inflammation of the lungs, liver, womb, etc., rheumatism, small-pox, piles, jaundice, gout, dropsy, and diarrhoea, the following are reported:
1837 62 1838 90 1839 100 1844 85 1845 76 1846 77
Convulsions are more rare than in the female s.e.x in general; of hysteria there is scarcely a trace, and a few cases of epilepsy are ascribed to the use of ardent spirits.
Delirium tremens seldom occurs. The vigilance of the police, and the prompt committal to prison of every prost.i.tute found drunk and disorderly, may account for this. The proportion of cases of delirium tremens was only about one in one thousand.
Mania sometimes shows itself. Remorse may produce this, as may a violent affection for some particular man.
Of the actual extent of venereal disease in Hamburg, or any other city, it is impossible to speak with certainty, but the fact that in the general hospital there it is of a very mild type is an argument in favor of medical inspection. Dr. Lippert says:
”The usual form is gonorrhoea, with its complications, bubo, inflammation of the s.c.r.o.t.u.m, phymosis, paraphymosis, etc. Inflammation of the prostate gland, and stricture, are comparatively rare. Disease of the r.e.c.t.u.m is very rare, but there are examples.”
”We have excoriations and irritations of the s.e.xual organs. The simple chancre is common; the indurated chancre not unfrequent; the phagedaenic chancre is seldom met with. In general, the sores have a mild character, and heal easily with simple treatment and regular topical applications. _Herpes preputialis_ is extremely general. This is a group of small pustules, quickly healing up, but as quickly breaking out again, often in regular periodical recurrence. It is found especially on men who have suffered from gonorrhoea or chancre.”
”Secondary syphilis, ulcers of the neck, eruptions, syphilitic inflammation of the eyes, tumors, etc. These prevail more at some times than at others; how far the _genus epidemic.u.m_, the weather and season, the idiosyncrasy of the person, or the intensity of the infection operate, we have yet to learn.”
”_Tertiary syphilis is rare._”
”In sea-ports it is often observable that the disease takes peculiar aspects, and what may be called exotic forms are occasionally encountered. With sailors, syphilis is frequently latent or only partially cured, and is intensified by their habits and diet. s.e.xual intercourse with them will produce it in an exaggerated character.
This is not so much the case in Hamburg, owing to the constant and prompt medical attention; still, some distinction is observable between the venereal maladies of the city women and those of the St.
Paul Suburb. Among the latter the cases of a malignant type generally occur.”
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