Speed, Stress, and Strain: Disorders of Modern Life, 1850-1900

For both scientific and cultural commentators at the end of the nineteenth century, the defining characteristic of the era was that of speed - whether externally in the technologies of communication, or internally as registered in accelerated modes of mental and bodily life. In this panel we explore some of the diverse, but interlocking strands of these new understandings of the conditions of modernity. Jean-Michel Johnston looks at the arrival of the telegraph in Germany, not simply as a medium of communication, but also as a force for social disruption, as it entered into, and disturbed, patterns of daily lives. The history of technology is here linked to the telling details of microhistory. Melissa Dickson focuses on ideas of nervous overstrain, and the burgeoning field of medical advertising, with the marketing of endless cures for the diseases created by the conditions of modern life. The paper then moves into the realm of cultural fantasies of human enhancement, as expressed in the new genre of science fiction, and the exploration of human potential for adaptation to the changing conditions of social life. Finally, Sally Shuttleworth considers the emergence of concerns about ‘overwork’ and associated conditions of sleeplessness and insomnia, as expressed both in scientific and medical works, and popular culture. At a time when long-hours culture and the disruption of rest and sleep by digital technologies are generating major social concern in our own society, this panel offers the opportunity to place these anxieties in historical perspective.