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4 - Dissecting Matter

Odd Bodies in Medical Dictionaries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2024

Stephen Turton
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
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Summary

This chapter explores the contours of illness and embodiment in medical lexicography. From the early modern period, dictionaries subjected sexual deviance to medical as well as legal and moral regulation, as abominable acts were linked with aberrant anatomies. While hard-word and general dictionaries offered cautionary tales of hypospadians committing bestiality and sodomites afflicted with anal disfigurements, specialist medical lexicons were far more preoccupied with women who had sex with women. Lexicographers endowed these tribades or confricatrices with preternaturally large clitorises which they used to have penetrative sex—though whether clitoral enlargement was the cause of tribadism or its consequence was a question whose answer varied from one author to the next. That dictionaries aimed at physicians were able to dissect women’s sexuality with such candour prompts us to consider the exclusivity of medical lexicography in both social and material terms: with respect to the barring of women from the elite medical professions until the late nineteenth century, and to the escalating price of specialist works compared to the cost of dictionaries aimed at lay users.

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Before the Word Was Queer
Sexuality and the English Dictionary, 1600–1930
, pp. 117 - 144
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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  • Dissecting Matter
  • Stephen Turton, University of Oxford
  • Book: Before the Word Was Queer
  • Online publication: 14 March 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009006804.005
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  • Dissecting Matter
  • Stephen Turton, University of Oxford
  • Book: Before the Word Was Queer
  • Online publication: 14 March 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009006804.005
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Dissecting Matter
  • Stephen Turton, University of Oxford
  • Book: Before the Word Was Queer
  • Online publication: 14 March 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009006804.005
Available formats
×