ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that the venereological literature implies that, by the early nineteenth century, it is much easier to identify aberrant behaviour among ‘ordinary’ practitioners and outlines how the formation of a more unified medical orthodoxy might be important for understanding the emergence of a more highly structured ‘fringe’. Much of the traditional historical literature on quackery tacitly or implicitly assumes that venereal disease has been a quack’s paradise. One feature of the venereal world was touted at the time, and has been repeated since, as a tellingly suspicious feature of shady behaviour: specialisation. The history of venereal disease, particularly since the eighteenth century, suggests that this may be so. The acquisition of a disorder generally contracted outside the socially sanctioned bounds of matrimony—the consequence of coitus impurus—has often left its victim the prey of remorse, guilt and desperation.
