"The Wages of Sin shows how society's view of particular afflictions often heightened the suffering of the sick and substituted condemnation for care.

Peter Allen moves from the medieval diseases of lovesickness and leprosy through syphilis and bubonic plague, described by one writer as "a broom in the hands of the Almighty, with which He sweepeth the most nasty and uncomely corners of the universe." More recently, medical and social responses to masturbation in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and AIDS in the twentieth round out Allen's timely and erudite study of the intersection of private morality and public health.

The Wages of Sin tells the story of how ancient views on sex and sin have shaped, and continue to shape, religious life, medical practice, and private habits."--BOOK JACKET.