Treatments of Sub-Suharan African Prostitutes
While there are few mentions of Africa in Parent-Duchatelet's research, there is a moment when he is discussing traveling to hospitals in other countries and recounts what he sees in which he mentions Africa. Apparently, in one hospital he accounts for the status in syphyllis to be a result of the different climate.
"We found in Africa the beneficial influence of climate on syphilis Roman climate does not it fill a similar role that would offset the causes of worsening NONS that have reported?" [4]
This sentiment harkening back to the mention of climate during the discussion Berterand's visit to Algeria, effectively connecting Algerians and Sub-Saharan Africans as "others" in the minds of Frenchmen. At this historical moment, racial differences were linked to geographic and climate differences. What is interesting here is that climate is being rejected as the difference in syphyllis outbreak in Africa, referencing a similar climate in Rome but lack of similar circumstances. As such, it makes sense that someone would look again to race when searching for an explanation.
In addition to race being an explanation for differences in systems of prostitution, race also serves as something of curiosity for traveling Frenchmen. This can be seen in the image on this page of a seated Algerian woman and a standing black woman. Traveling across Algeria, encountering new races, and sights, taking photos serves as a method through which to commodify their experience. Reduced to a photograph in a book, with so-called scientific studies claiming the inferiority of POC, the people encountered during these trips become further separated from what the French would deem to be civilized. The women in these photographs and painting are never heard, only seen.
More explicit discussions of race and prostitution can be seen in É. A. Duchesne's "De la prostitution dans la ville d'Alger depuis la conquête".
"The earliness of puberty in Africa is a cause of prostitution among the natives. From 12 to 15 years a woman is nubile, and it is the same for the masculine sex. In Egypt, the Copts and fellahs marry girls eight to nine years in whom menstruation has not yet begun. We see the same reproduced in Mecca and probably in other parts of Africa. The Arabs of both sexes marry very young, and it is not unusual to see a young man of fourteen or fifteen years marry a young girl of eight to ten years, or at least already own a slave " [5]
This seems to ignore the youth of many prostitutes that could be found in Paris and is an attempt to find a difference because of the presumption that there must be one between Europeans and Africans.
[4] Parent du Châtelet
[5] Duchesne, E. A. (1853). De la prostitution dans la ville d'Alger depuis la conquête. Paris: J.B. Baillière, Garnier frères. pg. 76. http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k28714x/f88.item.r=duchesne,%20E.zoom