Whatever one's view of the medical status of conditions such as 'repetitive strain injury', 'multiple chemical sensitivity', and 'chronic fatigue syndrome', one thing is clear - psychosomatic illness and epidemics of such illness are not peculiar to modern times. For centuries physicians and philosophers have debated the existence and putative health impacts of the historical equivalent of our modern food allergies, environmental toxins, and mysterious viral infections. In the early modern period, such debates reached fever pitch. How did the (diseased) mind influence the body and vice versa? Could it influence other minds and bodies? Were melancholics especially hairy and why? Did werewolves and vampires really exist? And what impact did social class, gender, and nationality have on the incidence and conceptualisation of illnesses such as hypochondria and hysteria in early modern Europe? In this collection, researchers from the fields of medical and intellectual history, literature, art history, and psychiatry, explore the different ways in which the early modern record may be interrogated for the conceptual roots of the modern somatoform disorders.
Comments (3)
Nov 29, 2007
Yasmin Haskell says:
Welcome contributors! For a crash course in Confluence please refer to this ...Welcome contributors! For a crash course in Confluence please refer to this page: http://confluence.arts.uwa.edu.au/display/~emajocha/Working+in+shared+spaces
Best wishes,
Yasmin
Nov 29, 2007
Elzbieta Majocha says:
Dear All, Further to Yasmin's comment above, there is a more thorough Help sect...Dear All,
Further to Yasmin's comment above, there is a more thorough Help section here:
http://confluence.arts.uwa.edu.au/display/HELP/Home
Please change your password to a more secure one; you'll find a section about changing your password in the help space.
kind regards, ela
ps. this comment should have come to you via an auto email from confluence@fotogenix.arts.uwa.edu.au
please confirm this by adding a comment in my space (by clicking on my name, and then on Add Comment at the bottom of the page)
Nov 30, 2007
Yasmin Haskell says:
Contributors, these comments can be viewed by the public. Please add comments yo...Contributors, these comments can be viewed by the public. Please add comments you don't want all the world to see to the page: 'Diseases of the Imagination -- restricted'. Ela, am I right that individual contributors can also create their own pages in this space and restrict access to themselves (i.e. for storing drafts, backup of documents, &c)? Cheers, Yasmin