Some years ago I acquired a small, modest-looking French book published in that would become the source of my interest in women and prostitution in Paris, especially after the French Revolution. With this little guidebook in hand, a man in the s could save the wear-and-tear of prowling the streets in order to find an appealing nymphe to suit his erotic tastes β it was almost like choosing a chocolate from a box of assorted flavors, or even a breeding stallion from a stud book.
In a short preface, hoping to avoid complications lest he be discovered and considered a pimp, he disavows knowing any of the women described, claiming that he merely received the information from others. Somewhat unexpectedly, he then rails against a society that preaches morals but permits vice, and urges fathers to protect their children against prostitution. By reading his book. The list of nymphs begins immediately after this peculiar suggestion.
Intrigued, I began to piece together what I knew about post-Revolutionary France with the mystery of my little dictionary. It took me thirty years to solve the riddle of the nymphs, which I will get to shortly. But before I was able to zero in on that, I began to look for clues in other books, and started to assemble a collection of material on Parisian prostitution β from the fall of the Bastille to the rise of the Eiffel Tower β and discovered an entire genre of books and prints devoted to it.
In fact, I began to realize that prostitution was at the epicenter of the era. A frequent visitor to Paris, I was aware that the capital was and still is fueled by large quantities of caffeine, nicotine, alcohol and sugar, but I was unaware, until I began my quest, that prostitution had formerly been as fundamental to Parisians as those other stimulating staples. Studied as exotic specimens from the animal kingdom, they were probed, questioned and examined by doctors and experts in the newly emerging fields of hygiene, statistics, and sociology.
Parent next turned his clinical, pragmatic mind to the public health problem posed by prostitution after being contacted by an unidentified colleague who wanted to research and publish a study of prostitutes in order to rehabilitate them but who could not afford to do so. It was only logical. Sewers and prostitutes, each receptacles of human bodily excreta, could be cleaned and regulated scientifically, and because prostitution was legal in France, the task could be undertaken in an orderly fashion.
