A medieval French town ran an officially regulated brothel quarter with medical inspection

Evidence

The decreed price is four pennies of their money, which is the equivalent of our gros … There are taverns and cabarets. It is not easy to recognize these houses by daylight, while at night or in the evening the girls are seated at their doorways, with pretty lamps hanging near them in order to make it easier to see them at leisure. There are two doctors appointed and paid by the town to visit the girls every week in order to discover if they have any disease or intimate illness. If the town is stricken with any sickness, the lords of the place are required to maintain the girls at their expense and the foreigners are sent away to any place they wish to go. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 216

Categorization

• CANDY: A walled, doctor-inspected, municipally managed brothel quarter with uniform pricing and plague-support provisions is a striking conversation-worthy historical detail.