Medico-forensic pre-histories of sexual perversion: The case of necrophilia (c. 1500–c. 1850)

Abstract

From early modern legal debates about sodomitical, or unnatural, forms of lust, early nineteenth-century European forensic medicine inherited a shortlist of what eventually came to be called perversions of the sex drive. This brief article traces this forensic-medical prehistory of sexual perversion focusing on one such prototypical sexual aberration: sex with female corpses.

Keywords

• Corpse
• Forensic psychology
• Medical history
• Lust murder
• Necrophilia
• Paraphilia