Download or read book Cultures of Neurasthenia from Beard to the First World War written by Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra and published by Rodopi. This book was released on 2001 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Neurasthenia, or "nerve weakness," was originally identified in the U.S. in the late-19th century as an urban disease, similar to today's chronic fatigue syndrome. Neurasthenia maintained popularity through the first decade of the 20th century. This text contains 16 papers from a conference held in June 2000 in Amsterdam, to analyze and compare the history of neurasthenia in Britain, Germany, and the Netherlands. Developments in America and France are also given attention, as well as nervous disorders in Britain prior to the coming of neurasthenia. The authors consider the rise and fall of neurasthenia, variations in its popularity among countries, and the professional, patient, and public views of the disorder.
Download or read book Cultures of Neurasthenia written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2016-08-22 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Neurasthenia, meaning nerve weakness, was ‘invented’ in the United States as a disorder of modernity, caused by the fast pace of urban life. Soon after, from the early 1880s onwards, this modern disease crossed the Atlantic. Neurasthenia became much less ‘popular’ in Britain or the Netherlands than in Germany. Neurasthenia’s heyday continued into the first decade of the twentieth century. The label referred to conditions similar to those currently labelled as chronic fatigue syndrome. Why this rise and fall of neurasthenia, and why these differences in popularity This book, which emerged out of an Anglo-Dutch-German conference held in June 2000, explores neurasthenia’s many-sided history from a comparative perspective.
Download or read book The Emotional Economy of Holidaymaking written by Yaara Benger-Alaluf and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2021-03-04 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Emotional Economy of Holidaymaking explores the rise of popular holidaymaking in late-nineteenth-century Britain, generally considered to be the birthplace of mass tourism. It unravels the role emotions played in British spa and seaside holiday cultures.
Download or read book Sounds of Modern History written by Daniel Morat and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2014-09-01 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Long ignored by scholars in the humanities, sound has just begun to take its place as an important object of study in the last few years. Since the late 19th century, there has been a paradigmatic shift in auditory cultures and practices in European societies. This change was brought about by modern phenomena such as urbanization, industrialization and mechanization, the rise of modern sciences, and of course the emergence of new sound recording and transmission media. This book contributes to our understanding of modern European history through the lens of sound by examining diverse subjects such as performed and recorded music, auditory technologies like the telephone and stethoscope, and the ambient noise of the city.
Download or read book Literature as a Response to Cultural and Political Repression in Franco s Catalonia written by Jordi Cornellà-Detrell and published by Tamesis Books. This book was released on 2011 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A thoroughly researched and documented study of Catalan literature under the Franco regime, focussed on several key post-Civil War novels and their authors. During the 1950s and 1960s, several key Catalan authors set about rewriting some of their narrative work despite the obstacles to publication in Catalan under the Franco regime. This study describes the social, political and cultural conditions that impelled Salvador Espriu, Xavier Benguerel, Sebastià Juan Arbó and Joan Sales to revise Laia, El testament, Tino Costa and Incerta glòria, concentrating particularly on the linguistic debates and literary trends from the 1950s to the early 1970s. Drawing on a wide range of theoretical perspectives, this book examines the reasons for the rewriting, including censorship and self-censorship, generational and ideological changes within the Catalan literary field, controversies over linguistic purism, the appearance of new literary trends and gender and political issues. It focuses on the (re)construction of a distinctive national identity and the impact of repression, memory, exile and silence on the representation of the war and the post-war periods. This study explores not only how writers or society at large were affected by the dictatorship, but how the armed conflict left its mark on the writing process itself. Jordi Cornellà-Detrell is a Lecturer in Spanish in the School of Modern Languages at Bangor University.
Download or read book The Age of Stress written by Mark Jackson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-11-17 with total page 556 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We are living in a stressful world, yet despite our familiarity with the notion, stress remains an elusive concept. In The Age of Stress, Mark Jackson explores the history of scientific studies of stress in the modern world. In particular, he reveals how the science that legitimates and fuels current anxieties about stress has been shaped by a wide range of socio-political and cultural, as well as biological, factors: stress, he argues, is both a condition and a metaphor. In order to understand the ubiquity and impact of stress in our own times, or to explain how stress has commandeered such a central place in the modern imagination, Jackson suggests that we need to comprehend not only the evolution of the medical science and technology that has gradually uncovered the biological pathways between stress and disease in recent decades, but also the shifting social, economic, and cultural contexts that have invested that scientific knowledge with meaning and authority. In particular, he argues, we need to acknowledge the manner in which enduring concerns about the effects of stress on mental and physical health are the product of broader historical preoccupations with the preservation of personal and political, as well as physiological, stability.
Download or read book Brainmedia written by Flora Lysen and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2022-07-28 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Will we ever be able to see the brain at work? Could it be possible to observe thinking and feeling as if watching a live broadcast from within the human head? Brainmedia uncovers past and present examples of scientists and science educators who conceptualize and demonstrate the active human brain guided by new media technologies: from exhibitions of giant illuminated brain models and staged projections of brainwave recordings to live televised brain broadcasts, brains hooked up to computers and experiments with “brain-to-brain” synchronization. Drawing on archival material, Brainmedia outlines a new history of “live brains,” arguing that practices of-and ideas about-mediation impacted the imagination of seeing the brain at work. By combining accounts of scientists examining brains in laboratories with examples of public demonstrations and exhibitions of brain research, Brainmedia casts new light on popularization practices, placing them at the heart of scientific work.
Download or read book Neurology and Modernity written by Laura Salisbury and published by Springer. This book was released on 2010-02-10 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As people of the modern era were singularly prone to nervous disorders, the nervous system became a model for describing political and social organization. This volume untangles the mutual dependencies of scientific neurology and the cultural attitudes of the period 1800-1950, exploring how and why modernity was a fundamentally nervous state.
Download or read book Burnout Fatigue Exhaustion written by Sighard Neckel and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-06-19 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This interdisciplinary book explores both the connections and the tensions between sociological, psychological, and biological theories of exhaustion. It examines how the prevalence of exhaustion – both as an individual experience and as a broader socio-cultural phenomenon – is manifest in the epidemic rise of burnout, depression, and chronic fatigue. It provides innovative analyses of the complex interplay between the processes involved in the production of mental health diagnoses, socio-cultural transformations, and subjective illness experiences. Using many of the existing ideologically charged exhaustion theories as case studies, the authors investigate how individual discomfort and wider social dynamics are interrelated. Covering a broad range of topics, this book will appeal to those working in the fields of psychology, sociology, medicine, psychiatry, literature, and history.
Download or read book Impotence written by Angus McLaren and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-09-15 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As anyone who has watched television in recent years can attest, we live in the age of Viagra. From Bob Dole to Mike Ditka to late-night comedians, our culture has been engaged in one long, frank, and very public talk about impotence—and our newfound pharmaceutical solutions. But as Angus McLaren shows us in Impotence, the first cultural history of the subject, the failure of men to rise to the occasion has been a recurrent topic since the dawn of human culture. Drawing on a dazzling range of sources from across centuries, McLaren demonstrates how male sexuality was constructed around the idea of potency, from times past when it was essential for the purpose of siring children, to today, when successful sex is viewed as a component of a healthy emotional life. Along the way, Impotence enlightens and fascinates with tales of sexual failure and its remedies—for example, had Ditka lived in ancient Mesopotamia, he might have recited spells while eating roots and plants rather than pills—and explanations, which over the years have included witchcraft, shell-shock, masturbation, feminism, and the Oedipal complex. McLaren also explores the surprising political and social effects of impotence, from the revolutionary unrest fueled by Louis XVI’s failure to consummate his marriage to the boost given the fledgling American republic by George Washington’s failure to found a dynasty. Each age, McLaren shows, turns impotence to its own purposes, using it to help define what is normal and healthy for men, their relationships, and society. From marraige manuals to metrosexuals, from Renaissance Italy to Hollywood movies, Impotence is a serious but highly entertaining examination of a problem that humanity has simultaneously regarded as life’s greatest tragedy and its greatest joke.
Download or read book Becoming Insomniac written by L. Scrivner and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-09-24 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A study of the history of modern insomnia, this book explores how poets, journalists, and doctors of the Victorian period found themselves in near-universal agreement that modernity and sleep were somehow incompatible. It investigates how psychologists, philosophers and literary artists worked to articulate its causes, and its potential cures.
Download or read book Treating the Trauma of the Great War written by Gregory M. Thomas and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2009-06 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the outset of World War I, French doctors faced an apparent epidemic of puzzling neurological and psychiatric illnesses among soldiers. As they attempted to understand the causes of these illnesses, doctors organized specialized centers near the front, where they submitted soldiers to swift, humiliating treatments and then returned them to duty. At home, they interned the scores of civilians who succumbed to the war's strains in decrepit asylums or left them to fend for themselves. In Treating the Trauma of the Great War, Gregory M. Thomas explores the psychological effects of the war on French citizens, showing how doctors' understanding of mental illness produced deep, tangible effects in the lives of the men and women who suffered. Doctors vigorously debated the war's role in the genesis of the neuropsychiatric disturbances observed in soldiers and civilians, but most psychiatrists ultimately concluded that mental illnesses appeared primarily in individuals predisposed to disease. Consequently, doctors granted their patients few favors when making decisions about diagnostic labels, treatment regimes, and pension allocations, leaving many to endure illnesses without adequate care or sufficient financial support. In their quest to understand the psychological impact of war, Thomas argues, doctors focused more on demonstrating the capabilities of their medical specialties and serving a state at war than on treating patients. Those aims significantly affected doctors' scientific conclusions, their medical and legal decisions, and their treatment practices. When the war ended, psychiatric reformers used the trauma of war to their advantage, promoting the perception of France as a traumatized nation in need of new psychiatric institutions that could accommodate a large and growing pool of psychologically wounded citizens. Thomas draws on the vast medical literature produced during and after the war, including veterans' journals, parliamentary debates, newspaper articles, and medical administrative reports, infusing his narrative with a vivid human element. Though psychiatrists ultimately failed to raise the status of their specialty, Thomas reveals how the war helped precipitate lasting changes in psychiatric practice.
Download or read book Perversion and Modern Japan written by Nina Cornyetz and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010-01-21 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Perversion and modern Japan focuses on the psychoanalytic approach to the study of modern Japan. Using a wide range of psychoanalytic approaches the contributors to this book have brought together chapters on everything from the Ajase complex to underpants, from fascist modernism in literature to internet-based suicide pacts.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Environmental History written by Andrew C. Isenberg and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 801 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of Environmental History draws on a wealth of new scholarship to offer diverse perspectives on the state of the field.
Download or read book Preventing Mental Illness written by Despo Kritsotaki and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-10-16 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides an overview of a diverse array of preventive strategies relating to mental illness, and identifies their achievements and shortcomings. The chapters in this collection illustrate how researchers, clinicians and policy makers drew inspiration from divergent fields of knowledge and practice: from eugenics, genetics and medication to mental hygiene, child guidance, social welfare, public health and education; from risk management to radical and social psychiatry, architectural design and environmental psychology. It highlights the shifting patterns of biological, social and psychodynamic models, while adopting a gender perspective and considering professional developments as well as changing social and legal contexts, including deinstitutionalisation and social movements. Through vigorous research, the contributors demonstrate that preventive approaches to mental health have a long history, and point to the conclusion that it might well be possible to learn from such historical attempts. The book also explores which of these approaches are worth considering in future and which are best confined to the past. Within this context, the book aims at stoking and informing debate and conversation about how to prevent mental illness and improve mental health in the years to come. Chapters 3, 10, and 12 of this book are available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license at link.springer.com
Download or read book The Age of Noise in Britain written by James G Mansell and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2016-12-08 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sound transformed British life in the "age of noise" between 1914 and 1945. The sonic maelstrom of mechanized society bred anger and anxiety and even led observers to forecast the end of civilization. The noise was, as James G. Mansell shows, modernity itself, expressed in aural form, with immense implications for the construction of the self. Tracing the ideas, feelings, and representations prompted by life in early twentieth century Britain, Mansell examines how and why sound shaped the self. He works at the crux of cultural and intellectual history, analyzing the meanings that were attached to different types of sound, who created these typologies and why, and how these meanings connected to debates about modernity. From traffic noise to air raids, everyday sounds elicited new ways of thinking about being modern. Each individual negotiated his or her own subjective meanings through hopes or fears for sound. As Mansell considers the different ways Britons heard their world, he reveals why we must take sound into account in our studies of cultural and social history.
Download or read book A Weary Road written by Mark Osborne Humphries and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2018-01-01 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than 16,000 Canadian soldiers suffered from shell shock during the Great War of 1914 to 1918. Despite significant interest from historians, we still know relatively little about how it was experienced, diagnosed, treated, and managed in the frontline trenches in the Canadian and British forces. How did soldiers relate to suffering comrades? Did large numbers of shell shock cases affect the outcome of important battles? Was frontline psychiatric treatment as effective as many experts claimed after the war? Were Canadians treated any differently than other Commonwealth soldiers? A Weary Road is the first comprehensive study to address these important questions. Author Mark Osborne Humphries uses research from Canadian, British, and Australian archives, including hundreds of newly available hospital records and patient medical files, to provide a history of war trauma as it was experienced, treated, and managed by ordinary soldiers.
