Author Series: The Dreaded Pox: Sex and Disease in Early Modern London In-Person
About the book:
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, venereal disease, or the 'pox,' was a dreaded diagnosis throughout Europe. Its ghastly marks, along with their inexorable link to sex, were so stigmatizing that it was commonly called 'the secret disease.' How do we capture everyday experiences of a disease that so few people admitted having? Olivia Weisser's remarkable history invites readers into the teeming, vibrant pox-riddled streets of early modern London. She uncovers the lives of the poxed elite as well as of the maidservants and prostitutes who left few words behind, showing how marks of the disease offered a language for expressing acts that were otherwise unutterable. This new history of sex, stigma, and daily urban life takes readers down alleys where healers peddled their tinctures, enters kitchens and gardens where ordinary sufferers made cures, and listens in on intimate exchanges between patients and healers in homes and in taverns.
About the author:
Olivia Weisser is Associate Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts Boston. She received a B.A. in History from Wesleyan University and a Ph.D. in History of Medicine from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Her first book, Ill Composed (Yale University Press, 2015) is about gendered perceptions of illness in the 1600s and 1700s. The book was a finalist for the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians Book Award and short-listed for a British Medical Association Book Award. Her new book, The Dreaded Pox (Cambridge University Press, 2026) is about life in London in the 17th and 18th centuries told from the perspective of venereal disease. Her work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, American Historical Association, and Huntington Library, among others.
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