{"title":"Sensation Fiction, Sexual Health, and Medical Prose: John Milner Fothergill and the Late Victorian Novel.","authors":"Doug Battersby","doi":"10.1353/lm.2022.0032","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This essay examines how cultural anxieties about the impact of novels on mental and physical health sparked by the sensation novel permeated late Victorian medical discourse, focusing on the prominent physician and novelist, John Milner Fothergill (1841-1888). I argue, firstly, that the articulation of these anxieties in medical writing was shaped by contemporary attitudes towards women and the working class, and secondly, that, despite his explicit censures, Fothergill's medical and literary works evince narrative and stylistic affinities with sensation fiction. The essay delineates the context behind physicians' opposition to the consumption of certain kinds of fiction in the period, demonstrating how the cultural impact of the sensation novel phenomenon can be more fully charted by incorporating explicitly medical responses. I conclude by emphasizing the need for medical humanists to attend to the diverse ways that contemporary literary developments shape medical prose, whether in the spirit of repudiation or appropriation.</p>","PeriodicalId":44538,"journal":{"name":"LITERATURE AND MEDICINE","volume":"40 1","pages":"375-400"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2000,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"LITERATURE AND MEDICINE","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1353/lm.2022.0032","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LITERATURE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This essay examines how cultural anxieties about the impact of novels on mental and physical health sparked by the sensation novel permeated late Victorian medical discourse, focusing on the prominent physician and novelist, John Milner Fothergill (1841-1888). I argue, firstly, that the articulation of these anxieties in medical writing was shaped by contemporary attitudes towards women and the working class, and secondly, that, despite his explicit censures, Fothergill's medical and literary works evince narrative and stylistic affinities with sensation fiction. The essay delineates the context behind physicians' opposition to the consumption of certain kinds of fiction in the period, demonstrating how the cultural impact of the sensation novel phenomenon can be more fully charted by incorporating explicitly medical responses. I conclude by emphasizing the need for medical humanists to attend to the diverse ways that contemporary literary developments shape medical prose, whether in the spirit of repudiation or appropriation.
期刊介绍:
Literature and Medicine is a journal devoted to exploring interfaces between literary and medical knowledge and understanding. Issues of illness, health, medical science, violence, and the body are examined through literary and cultural texts. Our readership includes scholars of literature, history, and critical theory, as well as health professionals.