scholarly journals Fagged out: overwork and sleeplessness in Victorian professional life

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 20190088 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sally Shuttleworth
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Sleep Problems ◽  
William Gladstone ◽  
Sleeping Pills ◽  
Lack Of Sleep ◽  
History Of ◽  
Nineteenth Century Medicine ◽  
Current Concerns ◽  
Social Causes

The paper sets current concerns with insomnia in our 24/7 society in the context of nineteenth-century anxieties about the pressures of overwork and sleeplessness in professional culture. Following a case study of a sleepless prime minister, William Gladstone, it explores the early history of sleep research, including the first recordings of a brain pulse during sleep by Angelo Mosso. In parallel with current problems with addiction to sleeping pills, it explores accounts of addiction to choral, a sleeping remedy, and considers the forms of diet and regimes recommended for combatting insomnia. These are surprisingly similar to current advice, including a form of mindfulness breathing. Medical findings also anticipated recent research in arguing that sleeplessness could cause heart problems and what was termed ‘premature mental decay’. Concerns about overwork and lack of sleep were also extended to school children, with campaigns to reduce homework and examinations, in order to improve mental and bodily health. Nineteenth-century medicine offered a broad-based model for understanding the physiological, psychological and social causes of sleep problems from which we can still learn.

scholarly journals VIRTUE LANGUAGE IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY ORIENTALISM: A CASE STUDY IN HISTORICAL EPISTEMOLOGY

2015 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 689-715 ◽  
Author(s):  
HERMAN PAUL
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Relative Importance ◽  
Historical Epistemology ◽  
Detailed Case ◽  
Thought Pattern ◽  
History Of ◽  
Dependency Relations

Historical epistemology is a form of intellectual history focused on “the history of categories that structure our thought, pattern our arguments and proofs, and certify our standards for explanation” (Lorraine Daston). Under this umbrella, historians have been studying the changing meanings of “objectivity,” “impartiality,” “curiosity,” and other virtues believed to be conducive to good scholarship. While endorsing this historicization of virtues and their corresponding vices, the present article argues that the meaning and relative importance of these virtues and vices can only be determined if their mutual dependencies are taken into account. Drawing on a detailed case study—a controversy that erupted among nineteenth-century orientalists over the publication of R. P. A. Dozy'sDe Israëlieten te Mekka(The Israelites in Mecca) (1864)—the paper shows that nineteenth-century orientalists were careful to examine (1) the degree to which Dozy practiced the virtues they considered most important, (2) the extent to which these virtues were kept in balance by other ones, (3) the extent to which these virtues were balanced by other scholars’ virtues, and (4) the extent to which they were expected to be balanced by future scholars’ work. Consequently, this article argues that historical epistemology might want to abandon its single-virtue focus in order to allow balances, hierarchies, and other dependency relations between virtues and vices to move to the center of attention.

scholarly journals Insomnia and the late nineteenth-century insomniac: the case of Albert Kimball

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 20190074 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Beaumont
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Sleep Problems ◽  
Urban Society ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Victorian Period ◽  
The Usa ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The Individual

This article explores the emergence, in late nineteenth-century Britain and the USA, of the ‘insomniac’ as a distinct pathological and social archetype. Sleeplessness has of course been a human problem for millennia, but only since the late-Victorian period has there been a specific diagnostic name for the individual who suffers chronically from insufficient sleep. The introductory section of the article, which notes the current panic about sleep problems, offers a brief sketch of the history of sleeplessness, acknowledging the transhistorical nature of this condition but also pointing to the appearance, during the period of the Enlightenment, of the term ‘insomnia’ itself. The second section makes more specific historical claims about the rise of insomnia in the accelerating conditions of everyday life in urban society at the end of the nineteenth century. It traces the rise of the insomniac as such, especially in the context of medical debates about ‘neurasthenia’, as someone whose identity is constitutively defined by their inability to sleep. The third section, tightening the focus of the article, goes on to reconstruct the biography of one exemplary late nineteenth-century insomniac, the American dentist Albert Kimball, in order to illustrate the claim that insomnia was one of the pre-eminent symptoms of a certain crisis in industrial and metropolitan modernity as this social condition was lived by individuals at the fin de siècle .

How German Theologians Read and Edited Luther for the Public: Karl Gottlieb Bretschneider’s Luther for Our Time

2021 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 186-206
Author(s):  
Zachary Purvis
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Public ◽  
Critical History ◽  
Actual Use ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Creation ◽  
History Of Scholarship ◽  
Conservative Protestants

Abstract Dieser Beitrag untersucht die Entstehung und die Wirkung von Luther an unsere Zeit (1817), Karl Gottlieb Bretschneiders vielgelesenes Buch der Auszüge, als Fallstudie darüber, wie moderne wissenschaftliche Theologen und Herausgeber Luther gelesen, kommentiert und anderen Lesern vorgestellt haben: in diesem Beispiel als Rationalist. Das Buch war umstritten. Der Beitrag befasst sich auch mit zwei konkurrierenden Auswahlen von Luthers Schriften, die von den konservativeren Protestanten Friedrich Perthes und Hans Lorenz Andreas Vent sowie den ultramontanen Katholiken Nikolaus Weis und Andreas Räß als Antwort verfasst wurden. Es deutet darauf hin, dass eine stärkere Berücksichtigung solcher Zusammenstellungen und der Arbeitsmethoden der Compiler selbst – als Teil der kritischen Geschichte der Wissenschaft – sowohl unser Verständnis des tatsächlichen Einsatzes der Reformer und ihrer breiten Rezeption durch verschiedene Leser bereichern als auch neues Licht werfen wird über die Polemik des frühen neunzehnten Jahrhunderts. This article examines the creation and impact of Luther for Our Time (1817), Karl Gottlieb Bretschneider’s much-read book of excerpts, as a case study of how modern scientific theologians and editors read, annotated, and introduced Luther to other readers: in this instance as a rationalist. The book was controversial. The article also looks at two competing selections of Luther’s texts prepared in response by the more conservative Protestants Friedrich Perthes and Hans Lorenz Andreas Vent and the ultramontane Catholics Nikolaus Weis and Andreas Räß. It suggests that greater consideration of such compilations and the working methods of the compilers themselves – part of the critical history of scholarship – will both enrich our understanding of the actual use of reformers and their broad reception by various readers, as well as shed new light on the polemics of the early nineteenth century.

Propaganda and Reception in Nineteenth-Century Music Criticism: Maurice Schlesinger, Henri Herz, and the Gazette musicale

2019 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-60
Author(s):  
Shaena B. Weitz
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Media Studies ◽  
Central Component ◽  
German Romanticism ◽  
Music Criticism ◽  
Problematic Relationship ◽  
History Of

In the mid-1830s, Henri Herz (1803–88) was an internationally renowned pianist, but his reputation today, for the most part, is that of a second-rate musician who wrote trivial variations on opera themes. This enduring picture of Herz was painted first in France in 1834 by the Gazette musicale. The Gazette’s campaign has been understood by modern scholars as a conspicuous moment in a broad aesthetic shift away from French salon music and toward high German Romanticism, and the Gazette has garnered praise for its prescience. But a closer examination of the Gazette’s articles, the events surrounding the coverage such as a pistol duel and a libel case, contemporary correspondence, and Herz’s publishing record indicate that the Gazette’s negative treatment of Herz was not an organic assessment of his output, but rather a revenge scheme orchestrated by the Gazette’s owner and Herz’s former publisher, Maurice Schlesinger (1798–1871). As a case study, the Gazette’s Herz campaign exposes the endemic corruption of the nineteenth-century press that has been portrayed as an unseemly rarity rather than a central component of historical criticism’s production. But taken more broadly, the Gazette’s articles on Herz highlight limitations in the history of reception. This article turns to media studies to explore the problematic relationship between propaganda and reception and shows how the Gazette, and other nineteenth-century journals, are still manipulating our cognition.

scholarly journals The correspondence of Ferdinand von Mueller: from nineteenth century paper to twenty first century data

2018 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 63
Author(s):  
Gavan McCarthy
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
First Century ◽  
Research Activity ◽  
Digital Scholarship ◽  
History Of ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Correspondence Project

This paper presents a case study that demonstrates how a long term research activity, with the intention to create a scholarly edition of scientific correspondence, can be liberated from its print paradigm strictures to join the twenty first century world of interconnected knowledge. The Von Mueller Correspondence Project has produced a corpus of over 15,600 digitally transcribed letters and related materials focused on the period 1840 to 1896. These are complemented by materials in a range of forms that refer to Mueller dating from 1814 to 1931. Mueller was a prolific correspondent and established links with hundreds of fellow botanists and biologists across the globe; most of these, and certainly the most notable, will be registered in the History of Science Society Isis Cumulative Bibliography as Authority Records with links to publications about them and is some cases publications by them. The long-term plan is to systemically interlink the Von Mueller Correspondence Project digital corpus and the Isis Cumulative Bibliography and develop the synergies that will drive digital humanities analysis and future scholarly endeavour. That is the vision but what is the reality? At what stage is the project now? How did it get this far? What steps remain? How does the story of this project help us better understand the imperatives of digital scholarship – its strengths and its challenges?

Semiosis of intercultural cooking: The nineteenth century travel literature as a case study

Semiotica ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 2016 (211) ◽  
pp. 45-57
Author(s):  
Mohamed Bernoussi
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Travel Literature ◽  
Culture Shock ◽  
The Other ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Private Lives ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cultural Topography

AbstractMy interest in culinary dates back to approximately fifteen years ago when I collaborated with [Béatrice Fink 1999. The cultural topography of food. Special issue, Eighteenth century life 23(2)] on a special issue of Eighteenth Century Life on food topography. I proposed then a study on the reactions of an English physician to Moroccan food, mainly couscous and tea. I continued working on other studies, and I realized how much a semiotics of food could serve the history of mentalities and private lives. While doing my research, I discovered the works of Jean Louis Flandrin 1986. La distinction par le goût. In Roger Chartier (ed.), Histoire de la vie privée de la Renaissance aux Lumières, vol. 3, 267–309. Paris: Seuil and Flandrin 1992. Chronique de Platine: Pour une gastronomie historique. Paris: Odile Jacob), who had contributed to the same volume directed by Fink and also represented a great inspiration for me. I felt that I was concerned with the study of the relation with the Other, with culture shock or encounter through travelers’ reactions to the food or the culinary, the prepared dish, and the consumed product in ceremonies or in private occasions. While thinking about these points, I asked myself the following questions: in which way does the reaction to food reveal the attitude of the traveler, his prejudices on the culture, the society, the food or the dish in question? In which way would reaction to food reveal his culture? This article explores these and other related issues.

scholarly journals Conclusion

2021 ◽  
pp. 273-279
Author(s):  
Ryan Sweet
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Cultural Representations ◽  
Advertising Campaign ◽  
Television Broadcasting ◽  
History Of ◽  
Network Channel ◽  
Paralympic Games ◽  
The Way

AbstractThis concluding chapter uses British free-to-air television broadcasting network Channel 4’s “Superhumans Return” advertising campaign for its coverage of the 2016 Paralympic Games as a case study with which to explore the overlaps between nineteenth-century and contemporary cultural representations of prosthesis users. It highlights the way that contemporary sources, including Channel 4’s campaign, interrogate a privileging of normalcy while remaining encoded by ableist inclinations. The chapter draws together the various strands of the book’s argument to make the case that the literary history of prosthesis is rich, complicated, and conflicted.

Embryos

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth A. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political History ◽  
First Case ◽  
Reproductive Life ◽  
History Of ◽  
Central Argument

This first case-study chapter is a political history of embryos and embryonic material. It relies primarily (although not exclusively) on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French writing about organic reproduction as an environmental rather than necessarily embodied activity. It also examines a few Ottoman examples of embryonic research contemporary with the French material. The central argument underlying the chapter is that this unbounded embryonic matter is one example, of many, of a biopolitical figure whose reproductive life is also nostalgic life. Embryonic slime, the chapter posits, is thus a biopolitical norm; the reproduction of embryonic slime (rather than embryos as products of reproduction) is a variation on thought; and this reproductive thought, in turn, might be defined, narrowly, as nostalgia.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-30
Author(s):  
David M. Doyle ◽  
Liam O’Callaghan
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social History ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
Legal Proceedings ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Crime ◽  
Revolutionary Period

This chapter opens with a micro-history of the murder of Ellen O’Sullivan by David O’Shea in rural Cork in 1931; this case study is used to introduce some of the key themes of the book, particularly around the social history of capital punishment in Ireland. The chapter then outlines the history of capital punishment in Ireland in the nineteenth century before analysing, in detail, the executions carried out during the revolutionary period and the civil war, and the attendant legal proceedings. Political crime and emergency legislation would remain key themes in the history of capital punishment after independence. The chapter then outlines the legal and technical procedures associated with the death penalty in independent Ireland. This key contextual material sets the scene for the remainder of the book.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document