View source for Wilson Collection: James Mills Peirce: “Professor X”

[[File:Profx.jpg]]

''(Title page of Mathematical Tables Chiefly to Four Figures
by James Mills Peirce, 1896)''

'''James Mills Peirce: “Professor X”'''

Homosexual case studies populated late-century medical literature. In Krafft-Ebing's book ''Psychopathia Sexualis'' (1893), “Case 99,” a male, “never lost for an instant the feeling of being a woman.”<ref>R. von Krafft-Ebing, ''Psychopathia Sexualis, with Especial Reference to Contrary Sexual Instinct: A Medico-Legal Study'', authorized translation…by Charles Gilbert Chaddock (Philadelphia: The F.A. Davis Company, 1893), 211.</ref> Case 106, identified as “Mrs. M,” “would run after pretty girls...for hours at a time.”<ref>Krafft-Ebing, 233.</ref> 

The book, ''Sexual Inversion'', by influential British sexologist Havelock Ellis also contained in-depth case histories. In 1897 it featured a letter by “Professor X.” Circumstantial, but very convincing evidence has identified the letter writer as Harvard math professor, James Mills Peirce.<ref>Hubert Kennedy, “The Case for James Mills Peirce” in his “Six Articles on James Mills Peirce” (Concord: Peremptory Publications ebook, 2003), 13, accessed October 19, 2012, http://hubertkennedy.angelfire.com/Peirce.pdf.</ref> He wrote, “[W]e ought to think and speak of homosexual love, not as 'inverted' or 'abnormal'...but as being in itself a natural, pure and sound passion.”<ref>Jonathan Katz, ''Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A.'' (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1976), 376.</ref> 

==''References''==
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==''To return to "Exhibit contents" links, click:''==
==[[Rich Wilson: Aspects of Queer Existence in 19th-Century America]]==

==''See also:''==

==[[Professor X: "a natural, pure and sound passion," 1897]]==

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