Abstract: The first bicycle trips elicit strong reactions amongst male writers and physicians : can women be allowed to ride a vehicle that liberated bodies and allowed them to escape from home? Social discourses try to prescribe a hygiene for cycling women, aiming to conform female bodies to a physiological and moral standard, either by claiming to cure women and their sexual vices through the bicycle, or, on the contrary, by recommending that they be protected against this pathogenic invention.
