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Showing posts from February, 2023

Celebrating LGBT+ History Month: From the College Archive

The historic RCSI Biological Society (BioSoc) is the official student society of RCSI and one of the oldest student medical societies in the world. Trawling through the minutes of BioSoc meetings recently, we were struck by the number of papers delivered on the subject of human sexuality as far back as the early 1940s:  2 May 1940         ' Sex Development Normal & Abnormal', presented by Mr D Early 5 March 1942      'Sex and Life', presented by Mr J Carri 5 May 1943           ' Homosexuality', presented by Mr R Poole Though the papers themselves have not survived, the topics under consideration and the nature of the discussions that ensued among those in attendance were captured to varying degrees in the minutes of these BioSoc meetings.  RCSI Biological Society members, late 1940s-early 1950s The Science of Sexuality BioSoc offered an unusually open forum for discussion of sex and sexuality at a time when it was still regarded as taboo within mainstream a