Some ideas return after the briefest of exiles: reductionism is back in vogue. Existential questions -about who we are, about our origins and future, about what is valuable -no longer require difficult soul searching, especially when straightforward answers are expected from the neurosciences. History is being rewritten with the brain as its centrepiece; the search for great men and big ideas of the past begins again. William Cullen (1710-90), whose work on neurosis was once part of the history of psychoanalysis, is now well placed to become part of such a neuro-history. This article attempts to subvert this process, by rebuilding the original meaning of neurosis through Cullen's physiological and medical works, in comparison with his predecessor, Robert Whytt (1714-66), and illustrating this meaning using one particular neurosis: hypochondriasis. The result is a more complicated version of neurosis which, importantly, carries significant insights into the nature and practice of medicine. Moreover, this article examines how Cullen's standing fell in the 1820s as British physicians and surgeons turned to an idea which promised to reform medicine: pathological anatomy. When these hopes faded, Cullen became a figure obsessed with the nerves. This image has survived to the present, a blank canvas onto which any theory can be projected. It also values precisely what Cullen warned against: simplistic explanations of the body and disease, and unthinking confidence in the next big idea or silver bullet. Neurosis was not simply a nervous ailment, but it is a warning against reductionism in history making.
Soldier's heart was a medico-psychiatric condition that was first documented during the American Civil War. This condition affected British and American soldiers during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries; doctors recorded patients experiencing palpitations, breathlessness, headaches, and praecordial pain among other symptoms. While the number of cases of this disorder reached its peak in the First World War, it disappeared shortly afterwards. Based on an analysis of experimental results published in generalist and specialized medical journals as well as the correspondence between physicians and researchers that these journals maintained, this study challenges the view that soldier's heart disappeared because doctors realized that the disorder was, in fact, psychosomatic. Instead, this article shows that this notion was an unintentional by-product of the research conducted into the condition, the results of which opposed the somaticist philosophy that many of the researchers had tried to uphold.
This article examines the history of two fields of enquiry in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Scotland: the rise and fall of the common sense school of philosophy and phrenology as presented in the works of George Combe. Although many previous historians have construed these histories as separate, indeed sometimes incommensurate, I propose that their paths were intertwined to a greater extent than has previously been given credit. The philosophy of common sense was a response to problems raised by Enlightenment thinkers, particularly David Hume, and spurred a theory of the mind and its mode of study. In order to succeed, or even to be considered a rival of these established understandings, phrenologists adapted their arguments for the sake of engaging in philosophical dispute. I argue that this debate contributed to the relative success of these groups: phrenology as a well-known historical subject, common sense now largely forgotten. Moreover, this history seeks to question the place of phrenology within the sciences of mind in nineteenth-century Britain.
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