La reglamentación de la prostitución en la Barcelona de la Restauración (1870-1890)

Abstract

«Hygienism» was a medical doctrine which incorporated the social features that were directly related to disease into its treatment. One of the fields where hygienic doctrine had most influence was on the exercise of prostitution. This was because the study of the causes that originated prostitution and the series of moral prophylactic measures that were introduced to halt prostitution were both added to medical practice. It was through these methods that the medical profession tried to control and shape social behaviour and to prevent the effects of contagious venereal and syphilitic diseases. These elements were reflected in the regulation of prostitution that was adopted in the most important cities in Spain from the middle of the nineteenth century onwards. In this legislation the creation of Sections of special hygiene was included. These were designed to record, prevent and control the exercise of prostitution, as well as all the illnesses derived from it. In the city of Barcelona, during the Restauration, the Section of special hygiene under Carlos Ronquillo´s government focused particularly on the treatment of prostitution as a social disease and on the female prostitute as a victim of the precarious social and labour circumstances of the working class in the late nineteenth-century industrial city.