January 30th, 2012 at 2:00PM
(via Doctoring the Novel: Medicine and Quackery from Shelley to Doyle - Ohio University Press & Swallow Press) Description: If nineteenth-century Britain witnessed the rise of medical professionalism, it also witnessed rampant quackery. It is tempting to categorize historical practices as either orthodox or quack, but what did these terms really signify in medical and public circles at the time? How did they develop and evolve? What do they tell us about actual medical practices? Doctoring the Novel explores the ways in which language constructs and stabilizes these slippery terms by examining medical quackery and orthodoxy in works such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Charles Dickens’s Bleak House and Little Dorrit, Charlotte Brontë’s Villette, Wilkie Collins’s Armadale, and Arthur Conan Doyle’s Stark Munro Letters. Contextualized in both medical and popular publishing, literary analysis reveals that even supposedly medico-scientific concepts such as orthodoxy and quackery evolve not in elite laboratories and bourgeois medical societies but in the rough-and-tumble of the public sphere, a view that acknowledges the considerable, and often underrated, influence of language on medical practices. About the author: Trained in Victorian studies and pharmacy, Sylvia A. Pamboukian is an associate professor in the department of English at Robert Morris University. She has published on topics as diverse as Victorian x-rays, Rudyard Kipling’s supernatural stories, and taboo in the Harry Potter series.

(via Doctoring the Novel: Medicine and Quackery from Shelley to Doyle - Ohio University Press & Swallow Press)

Description:

If nineteenth-century Britain witnessed the rise of medical professionalism, it also witnessed rampant quackery. It is tempting to categorize historical practices as either orthodox or quack, but what did these terms really signify in medical and public circles at the time? How did they develop and evolve? What do they tell us about actual medical practices?

Doctoring the Novel explores the ways in which language constructs and stabilizes these slippery terms by examining medical quackery and orthodoxy in works such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Charles Dickens’s Bleak House and Little Dorrit, Charlotte Brontë’s Villette, Wilkie Collins’s Armadale, and Arthur Conan Doyle’s Stark Munro Letters. Contextualized in both medical and popular publishing, literary analysis reveals that even supposedly medico-scientific concepts such as orthodoxy and quackery evolve not in elite laboratories and bourgeois medical societies but in the rough-and-tumble of the public sphere, a view that acknowledges the considerable, and often underrated, influence of language on medical practices.

About the author:

Trained in Victorian studies and pharmacy, Sylvia A. Pamboukian is an associate professor in the department of English at Robert Morris University. She has published on topics as diverse as Victorian x-rays, Rudyard Kipling’s supernatural stories, and taboo in the Harry Potter series.

4 notes Source: ohioswallow.com #Ohio University Press#academic press#books#history#Victorian Studies#Mary Shelley#Charles Dickens#Charlotte Bronte#Wilkie Collins#Arthur Conan Doyle#history of science#history of medicine#medicine#quackery
September 20th, 2011 at 4:12PM
(via BiblioVault - Death, Dissection and the Destitute) In the early nineteenth century, body snatching was rife because the only corpses available for medical study were those of hanged murderers. With the Anatomy Act of 1832, however, the bodies of those who died destitute in workhouses were appropriated for dissection. At a time when such a procedure was regarded with fear and revulsion, the Anatomy Act effectively rendered dissection a punishment for poverty. Providing both historical and contemporary insights, Death, Dissection, and the Destitute opens rich new prospects in history and history of science. The new afterword draws important parallels between social and medical history and contemporary concerns regarding organs for transplant and human tissue for research. For those interested in the history of science and medicine, and the social constructions of the punishments for “being poor”.

(via BiblioVault - Death, Dissection and the Destitute)

In the early nineteenth century, body snatching was rife because the only corpses available for medical study were those of hanged murderers. With the Anatomy Act of 1832, however, the bodies of those who died destitute in workhouses were appropriated for dissection. At a time when such a procedure was regarded with fear and revulsion, the Anatomy Act effectively rendered dissection a punishment for poverty. Providing both historical and contemporary insights, Death, Dissection, and the Destitute opens rich new prospects in history and history of science. The new afterword draws important parallels between social and medical history and contemporary concerns regarding organs for transplant and human tissue for research.

For those interested in the history of science and medicine, and the social constructions of the punishments for “being poor”.

8 notes Source: bibliovault.org #books#academic press#university of chicago press#history of science#history of medicine