Medicine and Modernity, Conference 2016

This two-day interdisciplinary conference, hosted by the ERC project Diseases of Modern Life: Nineteenth Century Perspectives, explored the phenomena of stress and overload, and other disorders associated with the problems of modernity in the long nineteenth century, as expressed in the literature, science, and medicine of the period. The keynote speakers were Professor Laura Otis (Emory College of Arts and Sciences) and Professor Christopher Hamlin (University of Notre Dame), and videos of their talks are available here.

The final conference programme is now available here, and speaker abstracts with biographical information are available here.

The conference led to a series of guest blogposts collected below and the following special issue:

Wallis, Jennifer and Sally Frampton, 'Medical and Health Periodicals in the Late 19th and Early 20th Century', in Media History 25.1, 2018.

Guest Blogposts

Cover from William Morris's News from Nowhere

A Disease-Free World: The Hygienic Utopia

31 October 2016

This is a guest post by Dr Manon Mathias, a Lecturer in French at the University of Aberdeen.

Nerve-Exhausted but not Insane: Therapeutic Travel for the Over-Taxed Brain Worker

03 October 2016

This is a guest post by Dr. Jennifer S. Kain, a Junior Research Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London, and author of 'The Ne-er-do-well: Representing the Dysfunctional Migrant Mind, New Zealand 1850-1920'.

Pathology of Progress: Cancer in Nineteenth-Century Britain

17 October 2016

This is a guest post by Agnes Arnold-Forster, a third-year PhD candidate in the History Department at King's College London. Agnes's research, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, looks at cancer in Britain, from 1792 to 1914

Pills for Our Ills: Dr. Williams' Pink Pills for Pale People

29 November 2016

This is a guest post by Alice Tsay, a PhD candidate in English Language and Literature at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

Victims of Civilization: The Stammerer's Identity in Victorian Britain

10 October 2016

This is a guest post by Dr Josephine Hoegaerts, a Research Fellow at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies and the author of Masculinity and Nationhood, 1830-1910. Constructions of Identity and Citizenship in Belgium.

Blake engraving of children and childhood

Victorian Precocity as a Modern Complaint

24 October 2016

This is a guest post by Mallory R. Cohn, a doctoral candidate in English Literature and Victorian Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington.

Worked to the Point of Madness

07 November 2016

This is a guest post by Dr Amy Milne-Smith, Associate Professor of History at Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada currently researching representations and understandings of men and madness, 1850-1914.

Illustration from The Picture of Dorian Gray

'Drooping with the Century': Fatigue and the Fin de Siècle

14 November 2016

This is a guest post by Steffan Blayney, a PhD student in history at Birkbeck, University of London researching fatigue, the science of work, and the working body in Britain c.1870-1939.

Cocaine and Chloroform: Technologies of Pain and Progress in Victorian Medicine

26 September 2016

This is a guest post by Dr Douglas Small, a Wellcome Trust Research Fellow in Literature and Medicine at the University of Glasgow and the author of 'Sherlock Holmes and Cocaine: A 7% Solution for Modern Professionalism'.

Full Archive

Cartoon, 'L'apres Midi', showing various people in hospital beds

Medicine and Modernity Conference Report and Keynotes videos

10 September 2016

On 10th and 11th September, the Diseases of Modern Life team held its main conference, 'Medicine and Modernity in the Long Nineteenth Century' at St Anne's College, Oxford.

Call for Papers: Medicine and Modernity in the Long Nineteenth Century, 10-11 September 2016 at St Anne's College

12 October 2015

CfP for Medicine and Modernity in the Long Nineteenth Century at St Anne's College, Oxford 10th - 11th September 2016

Medicine and Modernity in the Long Nineteenth Century

12 April 2016

In this two day interdisciplinary conference, hosted by the ERC project Diseases of Modern Life: Nineteenth Century Perspectives, we will explore the phenomena of stress and overload, and other disorders associated with the problems of modernity.

Medicine and Modernity: Conference Registration Open

12 April 2016

Conference registration is now open for Medicine and Modernity in the Long Nineteenth Century, to be held at St Anne's College on 10-11 September 2016.