Faculty Research Fellows Talk with Kathryn Olivarius

Kathryn Olivarius: "Syphilis, Shame, and the Civil War"

At least 200,000 Union soldiers—mostly white, unmarried men in their twenties—contracted venereal disease during the American Civil War. Some soldiers died quickly and painfully from syphilis in Union hospitals; many more brought the slow killing, highly contagious disease home, turning the Civil War into a super-spreader event. Doctors urged syphilitic men to delay marriage for four to six years to avoid infecting wives and children. But by the twentieth century, health authorities estimated that one in six urban Americans had syphilis and linked it to many infant deaths and nearly all cases of deformity and deafness, suggesting veterans ignored medical advice. How did Gilded Age Americans discuss—or avoid discussing—syphilis as a destructive legacy of the war for freedom? How did the disease and its associated shame shape gender roles and reverberate across generations?

Kathryn Olivarius is Associate Professor of History.

Clayman Faculty Affiliates are welcome to attend the lunch seminars.  All Stanford academics are eligible to become Clayman Institute Faculty Affiliates.