1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910824581203321

Autore

Pamboukian Sylvia A

Titolo

Doctoring the novel : medicine and quackery from Shelley to Doyle / / Sylvia A. Pamboukian

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Athens, : Ohio University Press, c2012

ISBN

0-8214-4406-9

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (222 p.)

Disciplina

823/.92093561

Soggetti

English fiction - 19th century - History and criticism

Literature and medicine - Great Britain - History - 19th century

Quacks and quackery in literature

Physicians in literature

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Introduction: False professions: defining orthodoxy and quackery -- Orthodoxy or quackery? anatomy in Frankenstein -- Doctoring in Little Dorrit and Bleak House -- Legerdemain and the physician in Charlotte Bronte's Villette -- Poisons and the poisonous in Wilkie Collins's Armadale -- The quackery of Arthur Conan Doyle -- Conclusion: The in-laws: orthodoxy and quackery in Vernon Galbray.

Sommario/riassunto

If nineteenth-century Britain witnessed the rise of medical professionalism, it also witnessed rampant quackery. It is tempting to categorize historical practices as either orthodox or quack, but what did these terms really signify in medical and public circles at the time? How did they develop and evolve? What do they tell us about actual medical practices?   Doctoring the Novel explores the ways in which language constructs and stabilizes these slippery terms by examining medical quackery and orthodoxy in works such as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Charles Dickens's Bleak House and Little Do