CRISES AS A DISEASE OF THE BODY POLITICK. A METAPHOR IN THE HISTORY OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY ECONOMICS

2011 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
DANIELE BESOMI
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Body ◽  
Medical Terminology ◽  
Epidemic Spreading ◽  
Trivial Character ◽  
History Of

This paper examines the use of the medical metaphor in the early theories of crises. It first considers the borrowing of medical terminology and generic references to disease, which, notwithstanding their relatively trivial character, illustrate how crises were originally conceived as disturbances (often of a political nature) to a naturally healthy system. Then it shows how a more specific metaphor, the fever of speculation, shifted the emphasis by treating prosperity as the diseased phase, to which crises are a remedy. The metaphor of the epidemic spreading of the disease introduced the theme of the cumulative character of both upswing and downswing, while the similitude with intermittent fevers accounted for the recurring nature of crises. Finally, the paper examines how the medical reflections on the causality of diseases contributed to the epistemology of crises theory, and reflects on the metaphysical shift accompanying the transition from the theories of crises to the theories of cycles.

scholarly journals Exit the frog, enter the human: physiology and experimental psychology in nineteenth-century astronomy

2001 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-197 ◽  
Author(s):  
JIMENA CANALES
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Human Physiology ◽  
Experimental Psychology ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
History Of Astronomy ◽  
Sensory Transmission ◽  
History Of ◽  
Intense Debate

This paper deals with one of the first attempts to measure simple reactions in humans. The Swiss astronomer Adolph Hirsch investigated personal differences in the speed of sensory transmission in order to achieve accuracy in astronomy. His controversial results, however, started an intense debate among both physiologists and astronomers who disagreed on the nature of these differences. Were they due to different eyes or brains, or to differences in skill and education? Furthermore, they debated how to eliminate them. Some, for example, wanted to eliminate the observer, and prescribed the use of new technologies like the electro-chronograph or photography, while others believed in discipline and education. By debating the nature of these differences, astronomers and physiologists sketched both different conceptions of ‘man’ and different paths to objectivity. These diverse conceptions, moreover, were tied to current nineteenth-century debates, such as the benefits or disadvantages of railroads, telegraphy and the standardization of time and longitudes. By focusing on the debates surrounding the speed of sensory transmission, this paper reevaluates the history of astronomy, physiology and experimental psychology. Furthermore, in investigating astronomy's relation to the human sciences, it uncovers profound connections in the traditionally separate histories of objectivity and the body.L'heure sera distribuée dans les maisons,comme l'eau ou le gaz.Adolph Hirsch

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alys Moody
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Pierre Bourdieu ◽  
The Body ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Human Potential ◽  
Aesthetic Autonomy ◽  
History Of ◽  
Human Failure ◽  
A Site

The introduction maps out the broad intellectual history of hunger, modernism, and aesthetic autonomy, sketching the prehistories that led to their convergence in the art of hunger. It sets out two competing definitions of aesthetic autonomy: a sociological definition, deriving from the writing of Pierre Bourdieu; and a philosophical one, deriving from the German philosophical tradition. It argues that the art of hunger represents a crisis in both definitions of aesthetic autonomy. At the same time, the art of hunger reflects a changing understanding of the body more broadly, as it becomes increasingly understood as a limit to human potential in the nineteenth century. The confluence of these failed modes of aesthetic autonomy and the new understanding of the body as a site of human failure and limitation, creates the conditions within which the art of hunger emerges as a modernist trope.

scholarly journals Bodily signs and case history in Indian morgues: what makes a medico-legal autopsy complete?

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 22-37
Author(s):  
Fabien Provost
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Forensic Medicine ◽  
Case History ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
The Body ◽  
North India ◽  
Post Mortem ◽  
History Of ◽  
Practical Sense

In contemporary forensic medicine, in India, the label of complete autopsy applies to a whole range of post-mortem examinations which can present consid- erable differences in view of the intellectual resources, time, personnel and material means they involve. From various sources available in India and elsewhere, stems the idea that, whatever the type of case and its apparent obviousness, a complete autopsy implies opening the abdomen, the thorax and the skull and dissecting the organs they contain. Since the nineteenth century, procedural approaches of complete autopsies have competed with a practical sense of completeness which requires doctors to think their cases according to their history. Relying on two case studies observed in the frame of an ethnographic study of eleven months in medical colleges of North India, the article suggests that the practical completeness of autopsies is attained when all aspects of the history of the case are made sense of with regard to the observation of the body. Whereas certain autopsies are considered obvious and imply a reduced amount of time in the autopsy room, certain others imply successive redefinitions of what complete implies and the realisation of certain actions which would not have been performed otherwise.

scholarly journals Constriction – Construction, a short history of specialised wearing apparel for athletic activities from the fourteenth century to nineteenth century

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 73-95
Author(s):  
Soline Anthore Baptiste ◽  
Nicolas P. Baptiste
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
The Body ◽  
Short History ◽  
Athletic Activity ◽  
The Past ◽  
Bodily Movement ◽  
History Of ◽  
Sporting Activities ◽  
Physical Construction

AbstractDuring the twentieth century, clothing permits a real freedom of bodily movement. However, when examining past athletic activity, we must take into account the period approach to the body: liberty of movement is at the same time controlled by morality, gestures and clothing. The French term “tenue” initially referred to behaviour, but since the end of the eighteenth century concerns the manner of dressing, and later by extension, the “dignity of conduct”. In the past times concerned with “sporting” activities such as the HEMA (Historical European Martial Arts), physical appearance is affected by rules of etiquette imposed by morality and civility. From the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century, each period offers a different overview of the dress standards in relation to the different approaches to corporal identity, and the constriction first necessary for military activities becomes indivisible from the moral and physical construction. As a practitioner of the 21st century, the question raises about our relationship, not only with our bodies but also with past cultures. As demonstrated by some concrete examples, if it is desired to fully approach the ancient practices, it is therefore necessary to also adopt the garment, in the same way as the accessories.

The Sound of Politics in Early Nineteenth-Century Ireland

2021 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 389-402
Author(s):  
Katie Barclay
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Access Point ◽  
The Body ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Emotional Impact ◽  
Embodied Experience ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Music ◽  
History Of

AbstractIn the early 1800s, Jonah Barrington, an Irish judge, bemoaned that the air chosen as the march for the Irish Volunteer Movement had “no merit whatever, being neither grand, nor martial, nor animating,” contrasting it with the zeal of French revolutionary music. The emotional impact of music might be a matter of taste, but such a statement is suggestive of an aesthetics, where political music, or music used for political purposes, should have specific qualities that could be identified and judged by listeners. This article explores how people in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Ireland identified music as political, using theories of the effects and affects of sound during the period and a corpus of Irish political music as an access point into historical experiences of musical enjoyment. While the impacts of music on the body are challenging for historians to retrieve, scholarship from the history of emotions highlights the important role of normative frameworks of emotion in accessing embodied experience. Working from this perspective, this article argues that we can begin to access the sound of politics for audiences of this period, contributing to our understanding of the role of music in political life.

Edmund Burke's Idea of the Body Corporate: A Study in Imagery

1965 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 184-197 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter D. Love
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Body ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Personal Life ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ways Of Thinking

Burke is recognized as master of a language highly figurative, full of grace and telling images. But the imagery of nonfiction prose is not so much studied as the imagery of poetry, drama, and fiction. It should be. It reveals a great deal about a thinker. I have not studied Burke's imagery to spy on his personal life, conscious or subconscious, as some students of other writers do, nor have I tried to evaluate his style. I have used it as an oblique way of getting at the meaning of some of his concepts and I think it reveals something about his place in the history of ideas, making him a stalwart of eighteenth-century ways of thinking, instead of a harbinger of the nineteenth century.

A Hindu to His Body: The Reinscription of Traditional Representations

Paragrana ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-44
Author(s):  
Francis Zimmermann
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
The Body ◽  
Clear Distinction ◽  
Critical History ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject

AbstractThis paper is an attempt to put into a historical perspective the knowledge gathered over two centuries, a construction of the knowledge about the representations of the body in the Hindu world. In view of the critical history of Orientalist disciplines that has developed over the last few years we make a clear distinction between two periods in the construction of this knowledge. The representations of the body that emerged from reading, translating and interpreting classical writings of Hindu India, became the subject of two successive reinscriptions beginning in the second half of the nineteenth century. The analysis of these reinscriptions is presented in this paper.

Aspergillus Spondylodiscitis After Spinal Stenosis Surgery: A Case Report

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (3 And 4) ◽  
pp. 155-160
Author(s):  
Mohsen Aghapoor ◽  
◽  
Babak Alijani Alijani ◽  
Mahsa Pakseresht-Mogharab ◽  
◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Antifungal Drugs ◽  
The Body ◽  
Lower Limbs ◽  
Lumbar Pain ◽  
Case Presentation ◽  
Delay In Diagnosis ◽  
Death Case ◽  
Therapeutic Results ◽  
History Of ◽  
Probable Diagnosis

Background and Importance: Spondylodiscitis is an inflammatory disease of the body of one or more vertebrae and intervertebral disc. The fungal etiology of this disease is rare, particularly in patients without immunodeficiency. Delay in diagnosis and treatment of this disease can lead to complications and even death. Case Presentation: A 63-year-old diabetic female patient, who had a history of spinal surgery and complaining radicular lumbar pain in both lower limbs with a probable diagnosis of spondylodiscitis, underwent partial L2 and complete L3 and L4 corpectomy and fusion. As a result of pathology from tissue biopsy specimen, Aspergillus fungi were observed. There was no evidence of immunodeficiency in the patient. The patient was treated with Itraconazole 100 mg twice a day for two months. Pain, neurological symptom, and laboratory tests improved. Conclusion: The debridement surgery coupled with antifungal drugs can lead to the best therapeutic results.

A history of some fruit models in wax and other materials: scientific teaching aids and courtly table decorations

2003 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 299-316 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans-JüRgen Lechtreck
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Fruit Trees ◽  
Visual Aids ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Teaching Aids ◽  
Scientific Teaching ◽  
Glass Marble ◽  
History Of ◽  
By Products ◽  
Wax Models

Two early nineteenth century texts treating the production and use of wax models of fruit reveal the history of these objects in the context of courtly decoration. Both sources emphasise the models' decorative qualities and their suitability for display, properties which were not simply by-products of the realism that the use of wax allowed. Thus, such models were not regarded merely as visual aids for educational purposes. The artists who created them sought to entice collectors of art and natural history objects, as well as teachers and scientists. Wax models of fruits are known to have been collected and displayed as early as the seventeenth century, although only one such collection is extant. Before the early nineteenth century models of fruits made from wax or other materials (glass, marble, faience) were considered worthy of display because contemporaries attached great importance to mastery of the cultivation and grafting of fruit trees. This skill could only be demonstrated by actually showing the fruits themselves. Therefore, wax models made before the early nineteenth century may also be regarded as attempts to preserve natural products beyond the point of decay.

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