Of the air at sea -- Of sailing, as an exercise, compared with other exercises -- Histories of cures by living at sea -- Living at sea, a proper remedy, in various cases; and how it operates -- Sailing accommodated to the distempers of Great-Britain -- The right use of sea voyages -- Objections.

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During the nineteenth century, over 1.5 million migrants set sail from the British Isles to begin new lives in the Australian colonies. Health, medicine and the sea follows these people on a fascinating journey around half the globe to give a rich account of the creation of lay and professional medical knowledge in an ever-changing maritime environment. From consumptive convicts who pleaded that going to sea was their only chance of recovery, to sailors who performed macabre ‘medical’ rituals during equatorial ceremonies off the African coast, to surgeons’ formal experiments with scurvy in the southern hemisphere oceans, to furious letters from quarantined emigrants just a few miles from Sydney, this wide-ranging and evocative study brings the experience and meaning of voyaging to life. Katherine Foxhall makes an important contribution to the history of medicine, imperialism and migration which will appeal to students and researchers alike.

The essays collected here not only contribute to our understanding of the conception and application of a variety of medical ideas, showing how they depended on beliefs about climate and corporeal constitution as well as often inconsistent data or récits culled from travellers and geographically dispersed case histories, but also open up illuminatingly complex perspectives on the uncertainties and dangers of the phenomenon of modern travel.

Medicine and Mobility in Nineteenth-Century British Literature, History, and Culture analyses the cultural and literary histories of medicine and mobility as entangled processes whose discourses and practices constituted, influenced, and transformed each other. Presenting case studies of novels, poetry, travel narratives, diaries, ship magazines, skin care manuals, asylum records, press reports, and various other sources, its chapters identify and discuss diverse literary, historical, and cultural texts, contexts, and modes in which medicine and mobility intersected in nineteenth-century Britain, its empire, and beyond, whereby they illustrate how the paradigms of mobility studies and the medical humanities can complement each other.

From beloved elements of children’s playgrounds to leather tools of bondage, a sweeping study of the cultural significance of swings. In Arc of Feeling Javier Moscoso investigates the pleasure of oscillation and explores the surprising history of the swing through its meanings and metaphors, noting echoes and coincidences in remote times and places: from the witch’s broom to aerial yoga and from the gallows to sexual mores. Taking in cultural history, science, art, anthropology, and philosophy, Moscoso explores the presence and role of this artifact in the West, such as in the works of Watteau, Fragonard, and Goya, as well as in other Eastern traditions, including those of India, Korea, Thailand, and China. Linked since ancient times with sex and death, used by gods and madmen, as well as an erotic and therapeutic instrument, the swing is revealed to be an essential but forgotten object in the history of human experience.

"Few diseases have been more inextricably linked with our past than tuberculosis. The ancient Greeks called it phthisis or consumption, names still familiar in the early twentieth century. They knew that coughing up or spitting of blood were bad signs. Through the Medieval Period to the modern day, Helen Bynum explores the history and development of TB throughout the world, touching on the various discoveries that have emerged about the disease, and focusing on the clinical and experimental approaches of Rene Laennec (1781-1826) and Robert Koch (1842-1910). Therapies included miraculous touching, bleeding, travel, vaccines, sanatoria, open-air therapy, and surgery, although none proved successful. A real cure finally arrived after World War II, with anti-tuberculosis drugs, characterizing a new optimism about science, health, and society. Although concerns about TB faded away in the mid-twentieth century, the disease has now returned with a vengeance. Bynum describes the emerging picture from the World Health Organization of the difficulties in managing new drug-resistant forms of the disease that have established themselves in the developing world, and in poorer parts of large cities worldwide. The story of tuberculosis, it seems, is far from over."--