Sex in the City....Hospital
Sexual Encounters Among Nurses and Patients Amid Pandemic Not Without Historical Precedent
At an Auckland hospital in New Zealand earlier this September a patient noticed a young woman disappear behind a curtain to have sex with another patient from his ward.
When the incident was broached at a press conference attended by the Prime Minister of New Zealand the international press had a field day.
“Patient Concerned About Covid Reports Sex Romp at New Zealand Hospital” reported The Washington Post.
In another incident in December of 2020 a nurse in Indonesia was suspended after having sex with a Covid patient in a hospital bathroom. Both were subsequently quarantined.
Sexual encounters amongst nurses and patients during time of plague - while newsworthy - are hardly new - in fact they’re nearly as old as pandemics themselves.
Two centuries earlier Dr. Benjamin Rush noted a similar increase in the sexual libido of patients who recovered from yellow fever during the epidemic that struck Philadelphia and killed more than 5,000 Philadelphians in 1793.
“Delicacy forbids a detail of the scenes of debauchery which were produced near the hospital [at Bush Hill] in some of the tents which had been appropriated for the reception of convalescents,” Rush wrote in his “Account of the Bilious Remitting Yellow Fever” published a year after the epidemic.
In late August the City of Philadelphia had taken possession of William Hamilton’s vacant mansion adjacent to Bush Hill for use as a hospital.
A wealthy, lifelong bachelor and patron of the arts, Hamilton had initially supported the American Revolution before being suspected of being a Tory.
Hamilton was forced to flee Philadelphia for New York in 1783 – where he squandered a considerable portion of his fortune and was compelled to sell much of his land in the Philadelphia area.
When Hamilton’s mansion was confiscated to make use for a hospital he was far away in Europe.
On August 31 the first four patients were admitted to Bush Hill. Conditions at the hospital quickly deteriorated as the grounds became flooded with patients. Between September 16 and November 30 some 1,000 patients with yellow fever were admitted to the hospital. Nearly half died. “A profligate abandoned set of nurses and attendants (hardly any of good character could at that time be procured) rioted on the provisions and comforts, prepared for the sick who (unless at the hours when the doctors attended) were left almost entirely destitute of every assistance,” Irish born Philadelphia publisher Mathew Carey later recounted.
According to Carey, “the sick, the dying and the dead were indiscriminately mingled together. The odor and other evacuations of the sick, were allowed to remain in the most offensive state imaginable. Not the smallest appearance of order or regularity existed. It was in fact a great human slaughterhouse where numerous victims were immolated on the altar of riot and intemperance.”
The state of the hospital “was truly deplorable. It exhibited as wretched a picture of human misery as ever existed,” he wrote. A “general dread of the place prevailed through the city…Removal to it was considered a seal of death.”
All that changed when wealthy French merchant Stephen Girard volunteered to manage the hospital.
Under Girard’s new regime patients were each given their own bed, clean sheet, pillow, two or three blankets, clean linen and a bowl, plate and spoon to eat their meals of rice, bread, boiled beef, veal mutton, chicken, prunes, claret, porter, water, tea or boiled lemonade. Before long conditions began to improve.
“The hospital was a pleasant and airy situation; it was provided with all the necessaries and comforts for sick people that humanity could invent or liberally supply. The attendants were devoted to their duty; and cleanliness pervaded every room in the house,” Rush recalled following Girard’s arrival.
Despite the fact nurses were required to be the same sex as the patients they attended to, patients and nurses at the hospital became sexually promiscuous.
“The convalescence from this disorder was marked in some instances by a sudden revival of the venereal appetite. Several weddings took place in the city between persons who had recovered from the fever,” Rush wrote.
According to Rush a dozen weddings took place among the patients recovering at Bush Hill. Among those married were John Johnson and Priscilla Hicks.
According to Carey both were patients at Bush Hill before recovering and becoming nurses. The couple took two to three hours leave from the hospital and got married in the city
The following month another couple from the hospital were married – Nassy a “Portugese mulatto” and Hannah Smith “a bouncing German girl” both nurses at the hospital according to Carey.
In the end not everyone decided to get married much to Rush’s chagrin.
“I wish I could add that the passion of the sexes to each other among those subjects of public charity, was always gratified only in a lawful way,” he later would bemoan.
Sources:
India Today “Nurse Slips Off PPE Suit to Have Sex With COVID Patient In Toilet Suspended” Raya Ghosh December 30, 2020]
Washington Post “Patient Concerned About Covid Reports Sex Romp at New Zealand Hospital: ‘It Was Just All a Bit Staggering” Jaclyn Peiser, September 10, 2021
The Account of the Bilious Remitting Yellow Fever Benjamin Rush, Phild. Printed by Thomas Dobson, 1794 pg. 68, 319
A Short Account of the Malignant Fever Lately Prevalent in Philadelphia Matthew Carey PHild. 1794 pg. 89 34, 20, 31, 33
Annals of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania In the Olden Time John F. Watson Vol III, Phild. J.M. Stoddart & Co. 1879 pg. 493
The Historic Mansions and Buildings of Philadelphia Thompson Westcott Phild. Walter Barr 1895 pg. 423