Albert H. Hayes. Sexual Physiology of Woman, and Her Diseases. Boston: Peabody Medical Institute, 1869.
Like prurient anatomical museums, dirty books traded on the appearance that they were serious medical works grounded in science. Authors often added “Dr.” or “M.D.” to their names and affiliated themselves with bogus medical schools, or otherwise inflated their credentials. Albert Hayes was no exception. Evidence suggests that although he was a doctor in the army, he was not the Surgeon of the United States Army, as the title page suggests. He also attended lectures at Columbia College in Washington, D.C., but had not been, as he claimed in advertisements, the Vice President of Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York. He was successful at publishing books on male and female sexuality and running an office in Boston for treating venereal disease, promising “inviolable secrecy and certain relief” to his patients. Later editions of this Hayes work appeared without the plates, likely in order to avoid obscenity charges.
