Scurvy

The Disease of Discovery

Jonathan Lamb (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

328 Seiten

2016
Princeton University Press (Verlag)
978-0-691-14782-6 (ISBN)

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Scurvy, a disease often associated with long stretches of maritime travel, generated sensations exceeding the standard of what was normal. Eyes dazzled, skin was morbidly sensitive, emotions veered between disgust and delight. In this book, Jonathan Lamb presents an intellectual history of scurvy unlike any other, probing the speechless encounter with powerful sensations to tell the story of the disease that its victims couldn't because they found their illness too terrible and, in some cases, too exciting. Drawing on historical accounts from scientists and voyagers as well as major literary works, Lamb traces the cultural impact of scurvy during the eighteenth-century age of geographical and scientific discovery. He explains the medical knowledge surrounding scurvy and the debates about its cause, prevention, and attempted cures. He vividly describes the phenomenon and experience of "scorbutic nostalgia," in which victims imagined mirages of food, water, or home, and then wept when such pleasures proved impossible to consume or reach.
Lamb argues that a culture of scurvy arose in the colony of Australia, which was prey to the disease in its early years, and identifies a literature of scurvy in the works of such figures as Herman Melville, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Francis Bacon, and Jonathan Swift. Masterful and illuminating, Scurvy shows how the journeys of discovery in the eighteenth century not only ventured outward to the ends of the earth, but were also an inward voyage into the realms of sensation and passion.

Jonathan Lamb is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities at Vanderbilt University. His many books include The Things Things Say (Princeton) and The Evolution of Sympathy in the Long Eighteenth Century.

List of Illustrations ix Acknowledgments xi Abbreviations xiii Prolegomena 1 1. Enigma 27 2. Effluvia 64 3. Nostalgia 109 4. Australia 153 5. Genera Mixta 217 Coda 268 Bibliography 279 Index 299

Zusatzinfo	27 halftones.
Verlagsort	New Jersey
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 235 mm
Gewicht	624 g
Themenwelt	Sonstiges ► Geschenkbücher
Themenwelt	Studium ► Querschnittsbereiche ► Geschichte / Ethik der Medizin
ISBN-10	0-691-14782-5 / 0691147825
ISBN-13	978-0-691-14782-6 / 9780691147826
Zustand	Neuware