Abstract Summary
At the close of the nineteenth century, a writer in the Lancet commented that ‘Sleeplessness is one of the torments of our age and generation’. He thus articulated the perception, which had been the source of mounting cultural and medical anxiety over the previous decades, that the conditions of ‘modern life’ of the late nineteenth century were responsible for a serious threat to public and individual health. This paper traces those concerns across scientific, medical and cultural texts, exploring their intersections, and the ways in which physiological researches on brain functioning during sleep were linked to popular, alarmist accounts of the consequences of sleep deprivation. It looks at a few high profile cases of sleeplessness (including Gladstone and Tyndall), as well as lesser-known case studies, and the emergence of the medical category of what Benjamin Ward Richardson identified as ‘disease from late hours and broken sleep’. The paper will explore the interlinked notions of overwork, and sleeplessness, and the identification of both primarily with the professional classes, and the young in educational establishments.
