Morbid Undercurrents

Rezensionen / Stimmen

Quinlan's illuminating and thoroughly researched study makes a comprehensive case for the ways in which political upheaval not only galvanised connections between the 'two cultures' of science and the arts at the beginning of the long nineteenth century in France, but how the work of some lesser-known physician-writers, inspired by rather unconventional medical ideas, had a significant ideological impact on attempts to reimagine the body and self in a rapidly changing society. * Modern and Contemporary France * Medical historians and revolutionary historians will find Morbid Undercurrents entertaining, informative and useful. They will also admire Quinlan for his ambition in tackling such a wide-ranging history. * HISTORY: Reviews of New Books * A richly researched and long-considered book; in its careful contextualizing, nontechnical language, and pedagogic tone, Morbid Undercurrents will lend itself well to course reading assignments for those teaching history of science and medicine. * Isis: A Journal of the History of Science Society * This study is a compelling cultural history of weird science that could only have thrived, as Quinlan notes, 'in the cultural anarchy and porous medical world of the post-revolutionary period.' * Social History of Medicine * This book provides an entertaining and wide-ranging account of its subject. * H-France * Sean Quinlan's new monograph aims to shed light on aspects of nineteenth-century French medicine that are sometimes overlooked in accounts of the major transformations which that field underwent in the tumultuous aftermath of the French Revolution. Morbid Undercurrents reflects its author's deep commitment to making sense of the many and varied medical genres and subcultures that proliferated in postrevolutionary France. * Journal of Modern History *