Dr. Iwan Bloch
 Marquis de Sade: His Life and Work
                  (1899)
        Translated by James Bruce
Digitized and typeset by Supervert 32C Inc.
                  © 2002
 
https://www2.hu-berlin.de/sexology/GESUND/ARCHIV/COLLBLO.HTM

Iwan Bloch, the "father of sexology", was a Berlin dermatologist of enormous erudition. He spoke several languages, including Greek and Latin and was an avid reader of historical literature. He possessed a personal library of over 40 000 books as well as an extensive collection of autographs. His many socio-cultural studies in sexology earned him an international reputation as a medical historian. (He also discovered de Sade’s manuscript of the "120 days of Sodom", which had been believed to be lost.) In 1907, Bloch proposed the new concept of a science of sexuality: Sexualwissenschaft or sexology. With his colleague Magnus Hirschfeld  and others, he contributed to organizing this science, co-editing a Journal for Sexology and editing a "Comprehensive Handbook of Sexology in a Series of Monographs" (because of WWI and Bloch’s early death, only a few volumes appeared). He himself wrote the first volume on "Prostitution". He died rather unexpectedly at the age of 50.