Diseases of men: Sexual health and medical expertise in advertising medical institutes, 1900--1930

This dissertation uses a once-ubiquitous medical institution, the men's specialist or advertising medical institute, to show how many different groups staked out ground around medical expertise in the early twentieth century Midwest. Regular doctors, the advertising doctors themselves, newspaper editors, reformers, legislators, patients and others saw the arguments over the legitimacy of medical institutes as places to take a stand on how medical expertise was constructed. In particular, this dissertation investigates how the practice of advertising defined practitioners as quacks, and how advertising for the new discoveries in scientific medicine implicated men's doctors in questions of authority, authenticity, and medical views on sexuality. The process by which irregular practitioners were othered also highlights the disparities in access to health care for "men's diseases," such as sexually transmitted infections, in the early twentieth century. The Reinhardt brothers of St. Paul, proprietors of a chain of Midwest medical institutes in the early twentieth-century, provide a lens onto men's specialist practice.