Nervous Disease in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain: The Reality of a Fashionable Disorder

Heather R. Beatty

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.

"'Beatty presents a wealth of new information and perspectives'"

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Nervous Disease in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain

The Reality of a Fashionable Disorder

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Contents

Frontmatter
pp i-iv

CONTENTS
pp v-vi

Acknowledgements
pp vii-viii

Introduction: Explaining a Fashionable Disorder
pp 1-6

1 - Defining Nervous Disease in Eighteenth-Century Britain
pp 7-36

2 - Quacks, Social Climbers, Social Critics and Gentlemen Physicians: The Nerve Doctors of Late Eighteenth-Century Britain
pp 37-62

3 - ‘Fester'd with Nonsense’: Nervous Patients in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain
pp 63-98

4 - The Pursuit of Health: The Treatment of Nervous Disease
pp 99-140

5 - A Disease of the Body and of the Times
pp 141-174

Epilogue
pp 175-182

Appendix
pp 183-188

Notes
pp 189-220

Works Cited
pp 221-236

Index
pp 237-241

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Nervous Disease in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain

The Reality of a Fashionable Disorder

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