By the first decade of the twentieth century, Russia was experiencing a decadent period of cultural degeneration. Simultaneous with this artistic response, science was developing ways to identify medical conditions that supposedly reflected the health of the entire nation. Leonid Andreev (1871–1919), the leading literary figure of his time, stepped into the breech of this scientific discourse with literary works about degenerates. The spirited social debates on mental illness, morality and sexual deviance which resulted from these works became part of the ongoing battle over the definition and depiction of the irrational, complicated by Andreev’s own publicized bouts with neurasthenia. Specific to the study is the way in which Andreev readily accepted and incorporated scientific conjecture into his cultural production and how these works were in turn cited by medical authorities as confirmation of their theories, creating a circular argument. This book demonstrates the implications of scientific discourse on Russian concepts of mental illness and national health. It examines the concept of pathology in Russia, the influence of European medical discourse, the development of Russian psychiatry, and the role that it had on popular culture by investigating the life and works of Andreev. Although widely discussed in its European context, degeneration theory has not been afforded the same scholarly attention in Russian cultural studies. As a result, this study extends and challenges scholarship on the Russian fin de siècle, the emergence of psychiatry as a new medical science, and the role that art played in the development of this objective science.
1 Disease and Welsh society ‘The gentry in general are pretty hearty in the Countrey [sic]. It’s the common sort that drop off ’.1 So wrote the Anglesey curate Owen Davies in March 1729 as an epidemic fever swept through his area. In many respects, however, his wry comment does represent something of the true situation in early modern Wales, since social status could have a strong influence on both susceptibility to disease and the chances of survival. By the early eighteenth century, the population of Wales is estimated to have been around 400,000 following a
7 Health and disease Traditionally viewed as a developmental or a humanitarian challenge, addressing Africa’s pressing public health problems has increasingly come to be seen as a critical human security challenge for the twenty-first century. While many have criticized the securitization of health issues, the cross-cutting linkages to other political, social, and economic issues are real, and so too are the implications for security. For ultimately, if enhancing the safety and well-being of individuals and communities lies at the heart of the human security
continues. This chapter intervenes in the debate by focusing on literary engagements with the topic and thereby challenges the narrative of a straightforward move from dirt to cleanliness by demonstrating a much more complex relationship between filth, hygiene, and modern selfhood. Strachan's hygiene hypothesis seemed to undermine, indeed reverse, accepted wisdom regarding dirt and its nefarious qualities, which had been the broad consensus since germ theory was widely accepted. A connection between disease and filth, especially human waste, had, of
10 ‘Man against disease’: the medical Left and the lessons of science, 1918–48 John Stewart This chapter examines the ideas and aspirations of left-wing doctors and medical scientists from the end of the First World War to the inauguration of the National Health Service (NHS) in 1948. There were four underlying premises to these medical politicians’ social and political analyses. First, scientific and medical practice provided a model for social organisation. Doctors and medical scientists, it was argued, worked collaboratively and irrespective of national
The following considers Richard Marsh’s 1897 gothic novel The Beetle in relation to fin-de-siècle anxieties, specifically sexual deviancy, empire, and venereal disease. While the domestic Contagious Diseases Acts had been revealed in the 1880s, continued high rates of VD amongst British soldiers in particular continued the debate as to who was responsible for spreading diseases such as syphilis both at home and abroad. At a time of ‘colonial syphiliphobia’, to extend Showalter’s term, The Beetle suggests the necessity of regulating venereal disease in the Empire to protect Britain’s ‘racial superiority’ and conservatively warns against the potential consequences of dabbling with the sexually ‘deviant’ and dangerous Orient.
hegemonic. Moreover, doctors were not always blind to the limits of their understanding of indigenous societies. As colonial states matured, and medical officers’ attention moved beyond the needs of European officials and the local servants, soldiers and police who sustained them, so their lack of knowledge of the underlying causes of disease among the wider indigenous population provoked increasing concern
4 ‘The disease which is most feared’:1 the problem of tuberculosis and its threat to nurses’ health, 1880–1950 ‘The disease which is most feared’ In 1882, Dr Theodore Williams of the Brompton Hospital for Consumption concluded that tuberculosis posed little danger to nurses as long as they took proper precautions handling sputum.2 At the time TB, or consumption as it was widely known, was the largest single recorded cause of death in Britain with an annual death toll of over fifty thousand.3 As its incidence in the general population declined during the first
21 1 The making of a colonial disease in the eighteenth century On 19 August 1755, the Swedish botanist Daniel Rolander was exploring plants and wildlife near a coffee plantation on the banks of the Perica river in Suriname when he came across a horrendous sight. He wrote the following in his journal: [We] passed a few sylvan huts of blacks, where some sick unfortunates addressed us from afar, warning us not to approach any closer or enter their huts, because they said they were suffering from a contagious disease called ‘boise’ [boasie or boassie]. This
4 Barbed wire disease and the grim realities of internment Wer es nicht durchgemacht hat, kan es nict fassen: vier Jahre eingesperrt in einem maessigen Geviert, auf dem weder Grass noch Baueme wachsen, auf dem kein Vogel sein Nest baut, auf dem schwarze Huetten den einzigen Schatten und das einzige Regendach bieten. Vier Jahre Leben erwachsene Männer mit Geisen und Knaben, bunt durcheinander gewürfelt, ohne Unterschied der Bildung, des Standes, der Erziehung, der religiosen and politischen Überzeugung. Vier Jahre ist die Frau aus unserer Kreise verbannt.1
