Skip Navigation

Social History of Medicine 2006 19(2):241-259; doi:10.1093/shm/hkl037
This Article
Right arrow Full Text
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in ISI Web of Science
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Morus, I. R.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for the Social History of Medicine. All rights reserved

Bodily Disciplines and Disciplined Bodies: Instruments, Skills and Victorian Electrotherapeutics

Iwan Rhys Morus*

* Department of History and Welsh History, Hugh Owen Building, University of Wales, Aberystwyth SY23 3DY, UK. E-mail: irm{at}aber.ac.uk

Electricity and the kinds of instruments, practices and skills that defined it were important resources for managing the body throughout the Victorian period. Late Victorian medical electricians differed vociferously over the vexed question of the relationship between the bodies they treated and the kinds of skills and practices needed for such treatment. This paper suggests that arguments about how to treat the body through electricity were also arguments about what the body was. Marginal medical men trying to carve out careers for themselves by turning to medical electricity redefined the body so that it became subject to their discipline and their technologies. To some degree at least, our own contemporary perception of how Victorians viewed their own bodies as a source of sexual danger in need of careful and rigorous discipline is the outcome of nineteenth-century medical electricians' efforts to define the body in such a way that it could become subject to electrical intervention.

Keywords: medical electricity; measurement; medical instruments; sexuality; specialisation


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer: Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.