Nervous Disease in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain
Heather R. Beatty - Nervous Disease in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain
Published: 2011-11-30 | ISBN: 1848933088 | PDF | 241 pages | 3.25 MB
This study, based on extensive use of eighteenth-century newspapers, hospital registers and case notes, examines the experience of suffering from nervous disease - a supposedly upper-class malady. Beatty concludes that, far from the stereotyped portrayal of nervous patients in contemporary fiction, 'nervousness' was a legitimate medical diagnosis with a firm basis in eighteenth-century medical theory.