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Social History of Medicine 1996 9(2):195-214; doi:10.1093/shm/9.2.195
© 1996 by Society for the Social History of Medicine
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‘Searching for Mary, Glasgow’: Contact Tracing for Sexually Transmitted Diseases in Twentieth-Century Scotland1

ROGER DAVIDSON*

* Department of Economic and Social History University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH8 9JY.

SUMMARY Social historians of medicine and sexuality have focused in recent years upon various strands of public health policy towards sexually transmitted diseases. However, despite the fact that, from the 1930s, contact tracing became one of the primary weapons with which British government sought to contain the incidence of STDs, its history in twentieth-century Britain has been largely ignored. Based on a range of governmental and private archives, supplemented by interviews with former practitioners, this paper examines the development of contact tracing in Scotland from its origins in the interwar period, through its expansion under Defence Regulation 33B during the period 1942–7, to its postwar development within the National Health Service. Particular attention is paid to the discriminatory aspects of wartime controls and to the professional, resource, and legal constraints shaping contact tracing in postwar Scotland.

Keywords: Scotland; venereal disease; sexually transmitted diseases; contact tracing; public health; venereology; twentieth century; policy making

1I am indebted to the Wellcome Trust, whose financial assistance made possible the research upon which this article is based. I am also greatly indebted to Dr J.M. Harvey, Mrs M. MacLellan, Dr A. McMillan, Dr G. Masterton, Dr S.I.A. Mathieson, Dr R.S. Morton, Dr C.B.S. Schofield, and Dr T.S. Wilson for information on the history of contact tracing in Scotland and/or their comments on an earlier draft of this paper, and to Ann McCrum for undertaking the bibliographical search for the project.


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A. Kampf
A `little world of your own': stigma, gender and narratives of venereal disease contact tracing
Health (London) , April 1, 2008; 12(2): 233 - 250.
[Abstract] [PDF]


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