- Title
- Even more hidden from history? Male homosexuality and medicine in turn-of-the-century Australia
- Creator
- Featherstone, Lisa
- Relation
- Out Here: Lesbian and Gay Perspectives VI p. 56-68
- Relation
- http://books.publishing.monash.edu/apps/bookworm/view/Out+Here%3A+Gay+and+Lesbian+Perspectives+VI/126/oh110004.xhtml
- Publisher
- Monash University Publishing
- Resource Type
- book chapter
- Date
- 2011
- Description
- In the final years of the nineteenth century, the surgeon Paul Ward Farmer was briefly institutionalised in the Kew Lunatic Asylum, Melbourne. Determined to expose the chronically miserable conditions of the asylum, Farmer wrote a gripping tale of institutional life, a warts-and-all expose of life amongst the poor and the mad. He chronicled the treatments meted out to inmates, as well as the peculiar and often repulsive behaviour of the mentally ill men, with understanding, humanity and grace. Where his general benevolence fell, however, was when Farmer witnessed male same-sex desire. Despite his medical training, Farmer was amazed to find homosexuality within the asylum. Farmer was a trained medical man, yet had no language to describe homosexuality, and no concrete idea of its existence, until a chance encounter with a patient. Homosexuality was almost entirely outside of his educational and moral framework, so much so that he was not quite sure of its very existence. It is clear that there were emerging, nascent beats and subcultures in urban Australia during this period. Yet it is less clear whether or not understandings of sodomy or homosexuality were widespread or integrated into broader colonial culture. Even amongst medical professionals, knowledge about homosexuality could be very limited. Certainly, in the late nineteenth century, the British sexologist Havelock Ellis claimed that even experienced medical men had no experience of inversion. When considering medical training at Sydney University, there appears to be no mention of homosexuality or sodomy, or indeed even any space where they might have been discussed. The lack of training might have led to unworldly doctors never conceiving of homosexuality. Dr Farmer felt not only a lack of knowledge, but a clear loathing towards what he discovered: for a man who took most of the aspects of living in Kew Asylum in his stride, and who had a resounding sympathy for his fellow inmates, he was notably repulsed by the very idea of same-sex desire.
- Subject
- homosexuality; taboo; Australian history
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1063940
- Identifier
- uon:17411
- Identifier
- ISBN:9781921867002
- Language
- eng
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