Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language

Disease, death and killing 209
today. It lives on in the idiom to be treated like a leper and in other powerful
images retained in the metaphorical use of leper and leprosy. Examples taken
from the OED demonstrate the persistent dysphemism: the leprous humour of
Popery (Sanderson, 1632); When nations are to perish of their sins, ’tis in the
church the leprosy begins (Cowper, 1781); that leprous stain Nobility (Coleridge,
1796); Idleness is a moral leprosy which soon eats its way into the heart
(H. Smith, 1836). Compare also the modern French lépreuse, referring to an
eroded stone edifice. Given such a stigma, it is not surprising that the preferred
term today among the medical profession is Hansen’s disease, 12 though this
term has not spread to the ordinary layman’s language. The disease is now
rare in western communities, and there is little need to refer to it.
Disease and women’s bodies
Because women are much weaker . . . therefore they have many kinds of sickness. And
especially in those parts which nature has added for pregnancy and the sickness affects
them in secret parts, so that from shame they dare not reveal (them) to any master.
Therefore I pity their shame and have prepared a book to help all women. (Daems
1967 [c.1300]: 179)
This quote (our translation) comes from a medieval Dutch text that is remarkable
for having a section devoted exclusively to women’s problems. In eleven
other medieval medical treatises between 1300 and 1600, 13 the only ones that
freely mentioned the female sex were collected works of recipes and potions;
and then always it was in connection with recommendations for testing
virginity, pregnancy, the sex of a foetus and sterility – those things also of
concern to men. Sterility was viewed as the wife’s failing, even though men
were believed to make the more significant contribution to reproduction; from
the time of Aristotle, women were viewed as mere incubators for the male
seed. 14
Authors of the ancient and medieval medical treatises were all male, and
the problem of communication between female patients and male physicians
(although often assisted by female attendants) is well documented in their
treatises; a number of medical writers discussed the fact that women were
inhibited when describing their complaints to men. 15 There was a reciprocal
reserve on the part of the male physicians and writers when discussing
gynaecological problems. Indeed, ancient and medieval medical works
mostly discuss male patients. If women are mentioned at all in the text, it is
more often than not as carriers of disease, even though suggested remedies
always envisaged male rather than female patients. Physicians used ingenious
and imaginative biological arguments to support their contention that women
were dangerous purveyors of disease.