Health and British Magazines in the Nineteenth Century

Health and headlines were serious matters in nineteenth-century Britain. With the arrival of the perception of objectivity in medical care and an interest in scientific research about human anatomy and physiology, the Victorian reader in Britain was flooded with "new" information about the health and the operation of the human body. The aim of this book is to present a broad survey of those captions and headlines that demonstrate the evolution of popular thinking about the practice of human health. Themes of the headlines include the role of government, the effects of medical research, professionalization of medical staff and its effect on folk methods of medicine, and the maintenance of standards for public health. The periodicals, ranging in date from 1824 to 1900, were selected primarily from The Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals. An introduction provides a useful synopsis of health issues during this period, and outlines major concepts and investigates the formation of essential categories still in use, such as ideas of wellness and unwellness, the meaning of care and care-givers, and the productive status of being healthy. The annotated bibliography contains 2604 entries, indexed by author and subject.