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For the nineteenth-century physician, the moral issues that suicide raised could not be isolated from its constitutional components. Thus, those who exhibited suicidal tendencies were subjected to an amalgamation of pharmacological, social, and psychological interventions, which practioners labeled the "moral treatment." By the 1890s, however, the consensus about the causes of suicide became unglued as a bacteriological medicine and the rise of the social sciences jointly served to call into question eclectic diagnoses. The goal of American Suicide is to demonstrate how the apparent contradictions among sociological, psychoanalytic, and neurobiological explanations of the etiology of suicide may be resolved. Only througha reintegration of culture, psychology, and biology can we begin to construct a satisfactory answer to the questions first raised by Durkheim, Freud, and Kraepelin.
Jean-Martin Charcot, the iconic 19th century French scientist, is still regarded today as the most famous and celebrated neurologist in the world. Despite the development of strong independent schools of thought in the USA, UK and Germany, his 'Salpêtrière' school has become symbolic of the early development and rise of neurological practice and research. This book presents a fresh look at the origins of nervous system medicine, and at the fate of Charcot's school and pupils. Special emphasis is placed upon the parallels and interactions between developments in neurology and mental medicine, clearly demonstrating that Charcot is not only the father of clinical neurology, but also wielded enormous influence upon the field we would come to know as psychiatry. Providing new insights into the life and work of Charcot and his pupils, this book will make fascinating reading for neurologists, psychiatrists, physicians and historians.
In the nineteenth century a new type of mystic emerged in Catholic Europe. While cases of stigmatisation had been reported since the thirteenth century, this era witnessed the development of the ‘stigmatic’: young women who attracted widespread interest thanks to the appearance of physical stigmata. To understand the popularity of these stigmatics we need to regard them as the ‘saints’ and religious ‘celebrities’ of their time. With their ‘miraculous’ bodies, they fit contemporary popular ideas (if not necessarily those of the Church) of what sanctity was. As knowledge about them spread via modern media and their fame became marketable, they developed into religious ‘celebrities’.
"Collection of incunabula and early medical prints in the library of the Surgeon-general's office, U.S. Army": Ser. 3, v. 10, p. 1415-1436.
Unorthodox Minds in Contemporary Fiction seeks to provide an overview of the ways in which broadly understood contemporary fiction envisions, explores and engenders minds going beyond the classical models. The opening essay discusses the complex relationships between such innovative concepts of the mind and experimental techniques for presenting mentality. The chapters which follow focus on (dis)embodied and/or extended mind, virtuality of avatar minds, intermental thought of reader communities, the capability of artificial intelligence (and humans) for genuine selfless love, the interplay between technology and affect in posthuman consciousness. The books under discussion include Murmur by Will Eaves, The Unfortunates by B.S. Johnson, The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie, H(A)PPY by Nicola Barker and Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan. A piece of conceptual fiction by Steve Tomasula, one of the most innovative American novelists of our times, exploring the human mind’s alleged power to transcend its biological limits, complements these scholarly inquiries.