Progress and pathology SOCIAL HISTORIES OF MEDICINE Series editors: David Cantor and Keir Waddington Social Histories of Medicine is concerned with all aspects of health, illness and medicine, from prehistory to the present, in every part of the world. The series covers the circumstances that promote health or illness, the ways in which people experience and explain such conditions, and what, practically, they do about them. Practitioners of all approaches to health and healing come within its scope, as do their ideas, beliefs, and practices, and the social, economic and cultural contexts in which they operate. Methodologically, the series welcomes relevant studies in social, economic, cultural, and intellectual history, as well as approaches derived from other disciplines in the arts, sciences, social sciences and humanities. The series is a collaboration between Manchester University Press and the Society for the Social History of Medicine. Previously published The metamorphosis of autismBonnie Evans Payment and philanthropy in British healthcare, 1918–48 George Campbell Gosling The politics of vaccinationEdited by Christine Holmberg, Stuart Blume and Paul Greenough Leprosy and colonialism Stephen Snelders Medical misadventure in an age of professionalization, 1780–1890 Alannah Tomkins Conserving health in early modern culture Edited by Sandra Cavallo and Tessa Storey Migrant architects of the NHS Julian M. Simpson Mediterranean quarantines, 1750–1914 Edited by John Chircop and Francisco Javier Martínez Sickness, medical welfare and the English poor, 1750–1834 Steven King Medical societies and scientific culture in nineteenth-century BelgiumJoris Vandendriessche Managing diabetes, managing medicine Martin D. Moore Vaccinating Britain Gareth Millward Madness on trial James E. Moran Early Modern Ireland and the world of medicine Edited by John Cunningham Feeling the strain Jill Kirby Rhinoplasty and the nose in early modern British medicine and culture Emily Cock Communicating the history of medicine Edited by Solveig Jülich and Sven Widmalm Progress and pathology Medicine and culture in the nineteenth century Edited by Melissa Dickson, Emilie Taylor-Brown, and Sally Shuttleworth Manchester University Press Copyright © Manchester University Press 2020 While copyright in the volume as a whole is vested in Manchester University Press, copyright in individual chapters belongs to their respective authors. This electronic version has been made freely available under a Creative Commons (CC-BY-NC-ND) licence which permits non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction provided the editors, chapter authors and Manchester University Press are fully cited and no modifications or adaptations are made. Details of the licence can be viewed at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 5261 3368 7 hardback ISBN 978 1 5261 4754 7 open access First published 2020 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Cover image: Punch, ‘A drop of London water’. Credit: Wellcome Collection. CC BY Cover design: riverdesignbooks.com Typeset by Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited Contents List of figures and tables page vii List of contributors ix Acknowledgements xiii Introduction 1 Melissa Dickson, Emilie Taylor-Brown, and Sally Shuttleworth Part I: Constructing the modern self 25 1. Revolutionary shocks: the French human sciences and the crafting of modern subjectivity, 1794–1816 27 Laurens Schlicht 2. Medical negligence in nineteenth-century Germany 56 Torsten Riotte 3. Imperfect bodies: the ‘pathology’ of childhood in late nineteenth-century London 78 Steven Taylor 4. Phrenology as neurodiversity: the Fowlers and modern brain disorder 99 Kristine Swenson Part II: Paradoxes of modern living 125 5. A disease-free world: the hygienic utopia in Jules Verne, Camille Flammarion, and William Morris 127 Manon Mathias vi Contents 6. ‘Drooping with the century’: fatigue and the fin de siècle 153 Steffan Blayney 7. ‘A rebellion of the cells’: cancer, modernity, and decline in fin-de-siècle Britain 173 Agnes Arnold-Forster 8. The curse and the gift of modernity in late nineteenth- century suicide discourse in Finland 194 Mikko Myllykangas Part III: Negotiating global modernities 215 9. From physiograms to cosmograms: Daktar Binodbihari Ray Kabiraj and the metaphorics of the nineteenth- century Ayurvedic body 217 Projit Bihari Mukharji 10. From Schenectady to Shanghai: Dr Williams’ Pink Pills for Pale People and the hybrid pathways of Chinese modernity 247 Alice Tsay 11. Poisonous arrows and unsound minds: hysterical tetanus in the Victorian South Pacific 269 Daniel Simpson Part IV: Reflections and provocation 293 12. What is your complaint? Health as moral economy in the long nineteenth century 295 Christopher Hamlin Bibliography 328 Index 364 Figures and tables Figures 4.1 ‘Numbering and Definition of the Organs’, O. S. Fowler and L. N. Fowler, The Illustrated Self-Instructor in Phrenology and Physiology with over One Hundred Engravings (New York: Fowler and Wells, 1859), p. vi. page 106 4.2 ‘Parental Love’, O. S. Fowler and L. N. Fowler, The Illustrated Self-Instructor in Phrenology and Physiology with over One Hundred Engravings (New York: Fowler and Wells, 1859), p. 81. 107 9.1 Nagendranath Sengupta, Sachitra Susruta Samhita. Author’s personal collection. 234 9.2 Gopalchandra Sengupta, Ayurveda Samgraha (Calcutta, 1871). Author’s personal collection. 235 9.3 Lecture on the Nervous System from 1860. Wellcome Images. 236 10.1 Dr Williams’ Pink Pills for Pale People. Wellcome Images. 250 10.2 1915 Shenbao advertisement for Dr Williams’ Pink Pills featuring testimonies from Mr Cui Xiwu (top) and Mr Zhao Shaoqin (bottom). The advertisement, viii List of figures and tables published on 3 April 1915, is now in the public domain. Original copy used for this scan belongs to the University of Michigan. 259 10.3 Dr Williams’ yuefenpai poster designed by Hang Zhiying, 1922. Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences. Photo Credit: Penelope Clay. 262 Tables 8.1 Suicide per 1 million inhabitants in Finland, 1841–90 page 206 10.1 Contents of Dr Williams’ Pink Pills for Pale People 252 Contributors Agnes Arnold-Forster is a Wellcome Trust funded Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Roehampton. She received her PhD on the history of cancer in nineteenth-century Britain from King’s College London in 2017 and now works on the emotional landscape of the NHS from 1948 to the present. She has been published by Social History of Medicine, Gender & History, and the British Medical Journal. Steffan Blayney is a Research Fellow in the Department of History at the University of Sheffield. His research focuses on the relations between health, the body, and society, and on histories of political activ- ism in modern and contemporary Britain. Melissa Dickson is a Lecturer in Victorian Literature at the University of Birmingham. She has a PhD from King’s College, London, and an MPhil, BA, and University Medal from the University of Queensland, Australia. She is the author of Cultural Encounters with the Arabian Nights in Nineteenth-Century Britain (2019) and co-author of Anxious Times: Medicine and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century (2019). Christopher Hamlin is a historian of science, technology, and medi- cine, Professor in the Department of History and the Program in the History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Notre Dame, and Honorary Professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical x List of contributors Medicine. His research focuses broadly on the application of know- ledge to public needs, mainly in areas relating to health. In nearly six dozen articles and several books, he has examined concepts of disease and disease causation, forensic science and expert disagreement, the assessment of water and air, the regulation of environmental nuisances, social epidemiology (focusing on issues of hunger and exposure), alter- native agricultures, and cultural and religious concepts of nature. He is author of A Science of Impurity (1990), Public Health and Social Justice in the Age of Chadwick: Britain, 1800–1854 (1998), Cholera: The Biog- raphy (2009), More than HOT: A Short History of Fever (2014), and most recently co-editor of Global Forensic Cultures (2019). Manon Mathias is a Lecturer in French at the University of Glasgow. She has published several book chapters and journal articles on the nineteenth-century novel, particularly the works of George Sand. Her monograph, Vision in the Novels of George Sand, was published in 2016. Her current research project focuses on the digestive system in nineteenth-century French medicine and culture. She is the co-editor of Gut Feeling and Digestive Health in Nineteenth-Century Literature, History and Culture (2018). Projit Bihari Mukharji is an Associate Professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He was educated in India and the UK and researches the histories of science and medicine in modern South Asia. Mukharji is particularly interested in how different traditions of knowledge making interact. He is the author of two monographs, Nationalizing the Body: