Podcast Summary: Olivia Weisser, "The Dreaded Pox: Sex and Disease in Early Modern London"

Podcast: New Books Network
Host: Dr. Miranda Melcher
Guest: Dr. Olivia Weisser
Date: January 28, 2026

Overview

This episode features Dr. Olivia Weisser, historian of medicine at UMass Boston, discussing her book The Dreaded Pox: Sex and Disease in Early Modern London. The conversation explores how sexually transmitted diseases—then called "the pox"—were understood, experienced, and treated against the bustling, chaotic backdrop of 17th and 18th-century London. Dr. Weisser shares her methodological innovations, her findings about everyday experiences of disease and stigma, and the contemporary resonances of her work.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Why Write This Book? (04:03)

• Topic: Scarcity of direct accounts due to stigma; the widespread impact of venereal disease.
• Dr. Weisser was drawn to uncovering everyday experiences of a disease most people wanted to hide:
  • "I was interested in this topic because, like you just said, this disease was rampant...Yet, we don't know a ton about lived experiences because of its stigma." [04:11]
• Infection rates were high—up to 20% among adults in 18th-century London.
• Shift in methodology: Moving from medical spaces (hospitals, clinics) to non-medical, everyday spaces (homes, taverns, streets).

2. Methodological Challenges & Sources (06:22)

• Topic: Reconstructing experiences using unconventional archives.
• Frequent reliance not just on direct testimonies but on indirect traces—recipe books, court records, trade cards, advertisements.
• Innovative mapping:
  • "I looked at the addresses at the top and I made a map of where you could find a cure in the city...to imagine what it would have been like to navigate the city looking for one of these guys." [07:37]
• Emphasis on repurposing traditional medical sources for new social and spatial histories.

3. Disease Conceptions, Categorization, and Stigma (09:44)

• Topic: The shifting meaning of disease before modern diagnostic categories.
• No clear-cut modern distinctions between STIs:
  • "It was a broad umbrella of symptoms, and it could be what we now today think of as a broad array of STIs...They didn't have these disease categories back in the 1600s and 1700s." [09:56]
• Disease experiences were individualized and contingent, with little notion of uniform symptoms or treatment.
• Stigma drove the experience and understanding of disease:
  • "When words become unreliable, healers privilege bodies..." [12:26]
  • Stigma anticipated "modern" ways of thinking about disease before the Paris Clinic paradigm—by necessity, not science.

4. Why Was 'The Pox' So Central and So Stigmatized? (14:28)

• Topic: The intersection of disease with morality, body, and urban society.
• Visual signs of disease (sores, limps, baldness) mattered greatly in a society where appearance indicated virtue:
  • "This disease was incredibly visually stigmatizing...it left ulcers and sores...weeping ulcers comes up quite a bit..." [14:43]
• London’s explosion as a commercial metropolis meant more opportunities both for the spread of disease and new treatment markets.
• Consumer revolution: diseases and attempts to conceal them (wigs, perfumes, patches) became commodified.

5. Markets and Treatments for the Pox (17:59)

• Topic: What treatments existed; the rationale behind them.
• Medical logic of the era focused on fluids and their balanced flow—thus, purges or sweating, often via mercury, guaiacum wood, sarsaparilla.
• Intriguing treatments, e.g., “the virgin cure” and “drinking the urine of a virgin”:
  • "There is always an early modern logic, which is why I love studying this time period..." [22:29]
• Medicines reflected contemporary understandings of bodies, contagion, and morality.

6. Accessing Treatment: Navigating the Options (23:47)

• Topic: Social knowledge, navigating shame, and consumer choices.
• People sought cures through word of mouth, tips, and experimentation:
  • "My favorite little scrap of evidence is the waterman who you hire to cross the Thames...gave someone a tip for how to cure their venereal disease, which was to eat eggs for breakfast with the shells still on." [24:23]
• Market stratification: free hospitals for the poor (highly stigmatized), living-in regimens with private healers for the rich, and over-the-counter cures for the rest.
• The same substances were sometimes acquired at a range of price points, but the experience of seeking treatment varied greatly:
  • "I don't think the treatments really changed, but the experiences of accessing them were very starkly different." [27:22]

7. Who Was Selling the Cures? (28:29)

• Topic: Blurred medical authority, street-level chaos, fraud.
• “Doctors” included everyone from esteemed physicians to tradespeople-turned-healers and outright imposters.
• Over-the-counter cures were widely available, often carrying the name of a prominent physician but outsourced to non-medical vendors:
  • "These kind of what we would call doctors...some of them didn't have medical degrees...a lot of them were just like, you know, they used to be cobblers and then they were like, oh, I could make more money selling venereal cures." [28:30]
• Widespread temptation for fraud and fierce competition:
  • "My house has the yellow pails in front. The other guy's an imposter. He's pretending to be me to poach my customers." [31:30]

8. Can You Treat the Pox Privately at Home? (32:36)

• Topic: Domestic medicine, shame, and self-treatment.
• Many recipe books included cures for venereal disease (nearly 30% of those surveyed).
• Complicating factors: recipe books don’t guarantee actual usage; treatments could be resource-intensive and complex.
• Even in private, stigma remained pervasive:
  • "Shame was still there. It was just different. It was embedded in the...ways they titled the recipes. Like 'Burning from a Harlot' was the title of one..." [36:41]
  • Treatments themselves often included elements of punishment, atonement, and self-mortification.

9. The Pox in the Courts: Vulnerability and Agency (38:28)

• Topic: How disease functioned as legal evidence and a tool for navigating gendered oppression.
• The disease most frequently arose in court either as part of rape charges or in cases for marital separation due to abuse.
• Paradox: What was shameful in public could become legal proof in court:
  • "In courts, this is the one place I found at least, where the shame is turned on its head...the disease is the material proof of unlawful sex." [39:20]
• Women used visible evidence of infection to overcome barriers in providing consent testimony, though ultimately procedures privileged male expert voices (medical testimony).
• Documentary evidence suggests a 30% higher conviction rate in rape cases where venereal disease was cited:
  • "Mentioning the disease did raise the conviction rate for rape up 30%. So you had a 30% higher chance of getting a conviction..." [43:31]

10. Contemporary Relevance: Stigma, Disease, and Silences (45:14)

• Topic: The enduring presence of stigma and the importance of recording lived experience.
• Parallels with modern pandemics (COVID-19, HIV/AIDS)—silence, stigma, and forgetting:
  • "Stigma shows up in these different ways when we look in different non medical sites, we see shame, this kind of invisible guest at every single interaction..." [47:59]
• The struggle to recover erased, hidden histories "because now we don't want to talk about...it's a bummer...it's a coping mechanism." [46:24]
• Stigma shapes not just experiences but the very conception of disease—a pattern that bridges early modern London and the present.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the challenge of historical recovery:
  "How do you write a history of a disease that no one wanted to admit they had?" — Dr. Olivia Weisser [04:20]

• On ‘shopping’ for cures:
  "How do you find John Spinks house in Honeymoon Honey market?...How do you find Mr. Fowles in the back of the tavern to get his secret nostrum?" — Dr. Olivia Weisser [07:53]

• On treatment logic:
  "I always tell my students, there were no MRI machines, there were no CT scans, there were no ultrasounds. All people had to look inside the body was what came out of the body." — Dr. Olivia Weisser [18:15]

• On the reality of home cures:
  "Making these recipes was very complicated work. It required a lot of technological know how, so it wasn't necessarily an easier option." — Dr. Olivia Weisser [35:46]

• On the persistence of shame:
  "Shame was still there. It was just different. It was embedded in the...ways they titled the recipes." — Dr. Olivia Weisser [36:41]

• On the interplay of gender, law, and disease:
  "All of a sudden, what would be too shameful to talk about in any other context becomes something that prosecutors are highlighting because the disease is the material proof of unlawful sex." — Dr. Olivia Weisser [39:20]

• On the echoes of the past in the present:
  "It’s kind of got its talons in all different dimensions of this disease. And I think that is a transhistorical story." — Dr. Olivia Weisser [48:33]

Timestamps for Key Segments

• [04:03] Dr. Weisser introduces her background, goals, and the challenge of writing about a secretive disease.
• [06:22] Discussion of source base and creative methodologies.
• [09:44] How venereal disease was conceptualized differently from modern STIs.
• [14:28] The reasons for intense stigma and the social centrality of the pox.
• [17:59] What treatments existed and their medical logic.
• [23:47] How people decided what cures to try and the social process of seeking treatment.
• [28:29] The blurred, chaotic world of healers, fraudsters, and medical authorities.
• [32:36] Domestic, at-home treatment: promises and realities.
• [38:28] The role of venereal disease as legal evidence, and the gendered dynamics in court.
• [45:14] Contemporary resonances: stigma, silence, and lessons for the present.

Conclusion & What’s Next

Dr. Weisser closes by reflecting on the broader significance of recovering lived experience from silence, especially around stigmatized diseases—then and now. She hints at returning to broader questions about patient history in her next academic work [49:01], maintaining a through-line of centering the patient’s (often hidden) perspective in medical history.

This episode provides a vivid, multifaceted portrait of disease, stigma, and everyday life in early modern London—with insights that resonate far beyond history.