Medicine and Health Drift 13, Rm. 004 Organized Session
26 Jul 2019 04:00 PM - 06:00 PM(Europe/Amsterdam)
20190726T1600 20190726T1800 Europe/Amsterdam 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.

Organized by Sally Shuttleworth

 Drift 13, Rm. 004 History of Science Society 2019 meeting@hssonline.org
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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.

Organized by Sally Shuttleworth

Between Order and Chaos: Telegraphy and the Stresses of Everyday LifeView Abstract
Organized SessionTechnology 04:00 PM - 04:30 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2019/07/26 14:00:00 UTC - 2019/07/26 14:30:00 UTC
The unprecedented speed of telegraphic communication was the source of considerable excitement across Europe during the nineteenth century. The technology, it was often held, heralded a new age of instantaneous interpersonal communication, which would simplify the conduct of business, politics, and even everyday life. Looking back upon the period, we might be tempted to describe the revolutionary impact of the electric telegraph in a similar way, recognising its contribution to the global standardisation of time, to the streamlining of international diplomacy, to the organisation of the global securities market, and even to the elaboration of reliable weather forecasts—the historian James Beniger went so far as to call it a modern ‘control revolution’. The telegraph was a double-edged sword, however, and many contemporaries were in fact concerned that the speed of communication would upset the well-established structures of everyday life, with its ceaseless interventions into social relations, its interference with the channels of geopolitical communication, and its capacity to throw financial markets into turmoil with a dose of unexpected news. This paper examines the hopes and disappointments experienced by users of the telegraph across Germany, from politicians to businessmen, agriculturalists, and even ordinary villagers, as they turned to the technology to help them manage the vagaries of everyday life.
Presenters
JJ
 Jean-Michel Johnston
University Of Oxford
Stress, Strain, and the Nineteenth-Century Medical MarketplaceView Abstract
Organized SessionMedicine and Health 04:30 PM - 05:00 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2019/07/26 14:30:00 UTC - 2019/07/26 15:00:00 UTC
This paper considers the overstrained nervous system as a critical component of the framework within which late nineteenth-century medical, literary, and popular culture defined itself as modern. Amidst the overwhelmingly fast pace of modern life, the nervous body emerged in this period as an elastic site of stress and overload, which teetered constantly on the verge of collapse. This created a lucrative market for a range of tonics that would supposedly relieve the sufferings of the modern populace. Bolstered by prevailing medical orthodoxies, a host of individuals and companies eagerly capitalised on this cult of nervous valetudinarianism, and popular tonics, often containing powerful narcotics and stimulants, were patented, marketed, and experimented with as a means of countering nervous exhaustion. The proliferation of such medications prompted, this paper argues, an array of scientific and cultural fantasies of nervous evolution and adaptation in which the body might be continually fashioned and re-fashioned in order to produce a high-functioning social subject in a fast-paced modern society.
Presenters Melissa Dickson
Lecturer, University Of Birmingham
Overwork and Sleeplessness in Victorian CultureView Abstract
Organized SessionMedicine and Health 05:00 PM - 05:30 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2019/07/26 15:00:00 UTC - 2019/07/26 15:30:00 UTC
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.
Presenters
SS
 Sally Shuttleworth
Ms
Commentary: Speed, Stress, and Strain: Disorders of Modern Life, 1850-1900View Abstract
Organized Session 05:30 PM - 06:00 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2019/07/26 15:30:00 UTC - 2019/07/26 16:00:00 UTC
Presenters
GD
 Gowan Dawson
Professor Of Victorian Literature And Culture, University Of Leicester
Dr. Jean-Michel Johnston
University of Oxford
Melissa Dickson
Lecturer, University of Birmingham
Prof. Sally Shuttleworth
Ms
Gowan Dawson
Professor of Victorian Literature and Culture, University of Leicester
John Christie
John Christie
John Christie, University of Oxford
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