Infertile Bodies -- Sex and Gender in Medical Approaches to Infertility, Germany 1870-1930

Towards the end of the 19th century, medical approaches to infertility
changed. New diagnostic instruments invaded the body, surgery became less dangerous, and bacteriology altered disease concepts. Increasingly, those experiencing reproductive difficulties would turn to experts, listen
to their advice, possibly change their sexual practices, subject their
bodies to physical examinations, take drugs (including hormones and
aphrodisiaca), and even consent to dangerous and painful surgical
treatments. Authority shifted from patients to doctors who, based on new
diagnostic procedures, could produce and reveal more reliable information on patients’ fertility.

How did gender and sex impact on this process? How did medical approaches reflect cultural beliefs, social norms, and practices but also bodily differences? How did bodies matter? By focusing on male sterility, the fight against venereal disease, and late 19th-century sperm testing, my talk will question the assumption that male reproductive bodies were treated with more care and respect. While concepts of gender informed medical approaches, sexual differences meant that male and female bodies were open to different forms of diagnosis and treatment. Hence, sperm testing could be introduced decades before comparable diagnostic methods became available for female infertility. Instead of focussing on long-term continuities in the relation between gender and medicine, I suggest studying specific historical moments in which new instruments and medical concepts were brought to bear on sexed bodies; the materiality of these bodies influenced the ways in which they could be handled, studied, and manipulated.