Literature and Medicine in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical Press

The first major study of the relationship between Scottish Romanticism and medical culture

In the early nineteenth century, Edinburgh was the leading centre of medical education and research in Britain. It also laid claim to a thriving periodical culture. Literature and Medicine in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical Press investigates how Romantic periodicals cultivated innovative literary forms, ideologies and discourses that reflected and shaped medical culture in the nineteenth century. It examines several medically-trained contributors to Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, the most influential literary periodical of the time, and draws upon extensive archival and bibliographical research to reclaim these previously neglected medico-literary figures. Situating their work in relation to developments in medical and periodical culture, Megan Coyer's book advances our understanding of how the nineteenth-century periodical press cross-fertilised medical and literary ideas.

Key Features

Describes a distinctive Scottish medical culture of the Romantic-era and its synergistic relationship with literary cultureAdvances our understanding of the medical content of key periodicals of the nineteenth centuryDraws upon extensive archival and bibliographical research to reclaim several previously neglected medico-literary figuresExamines the ideological roots of nineteenth-century popular medical writing

Case Studies

Medical Discourse and Ideology in the Edinburgh ReviewThe Tale of Terror and the 'Medico-Popular''Delta': The Construction of a Nineteenth-Century Literary Surgeon Professionalisation and the Case of Samuel Warren's Passages from the Diary of a Late PhysicianThe Rise of Public Health in the Popular Periodical Press: The Political Medicine of W. P. Alison, Robert Gooch, and Robert Ferguson