From Quack Doctors to French Academic Medicine: Anne Lister’s Explorations of Illness and Anatomy, 1819-1839
Anne Lister is best known as the diarist who wrote about her romantic and sexual relationships with women; when the diaries were decoded and published by Helena Whitbread, they changed the course of lesbian history. Now fully decoded and transcribed by a team of volunteers, the diaries also reveal how an erudite woman understood the human body through her intense study of medicine, her observations of her own body and illnesses, and her advice to friends and family. This paper will address two questions: First, how did Lister understand her diagnosis of venereal disease and how did she treat it? Second, why did she recommend that her friend and lover Sibella Maclean consult a quack doctor for treatment of tuberculosis, when the results were disastrous? I will address these questions in the context of contemporary debates in academic and popular medicine about the causes and treatments of disease and the nature of human anatomy.
Anna Clark is the author most recently of Alternative Histories of the Self (2017) including a chapter on Lister, and Desire: a History of Sexuality in Europe (revised and expanded 2nd ed, 2019, third edition in preparation). She is a professor of history at the University of Minnesota.
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This page was last updated on 22 May 2025
