Dr Jennifer Wallis

Diseases of Modern Life

Nineteenth Century Perspectives

Postdoctoral Research Assistant

Jennifer became a Teaching Fellow in Medical Humanities at Imperial College London in 2018, following a fixed-term lectureship in Cultural and Intellectual History at Queen Mary University of London (2016-18).

Prior to these appointments, she worked on the 'Diseases of Modern Life' project as a Research Assistant, where she conducted research in two of the project's key areas: 'Addiction' and 'Climate and Health'. Jennifer's research explored concepts of alcoholism and addiction in the nineteenth-century, particularly in relation to women drinkers; relationships between individuals and 'air technologies' such as the compressed-air bath and respirator; and the role of the press in disseminating medical and scientific ideas.

Publications

Jonathan Sadowsky , Electroconvulsive Therapy in America: The Anatomy of a Medical Controversy. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2017. Pp. 172. ISBN 978-1-138-69696-9. £110.00 (hardcover).

2017
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Journal article
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The British Journal for the History of Science
Bloody technology: the sphygmograph in asylum practice.

2017
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Journal article
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History of psychiatry

The sphygmograph, an instrument to measure and visually chart the pulse, was used by a number of asylum researchers in the late nineteenth century in an attempt to better understand mental disease. In charting the use of such a medical technology in the asylum, this article explores the utility of a practice-oriented approach in the history of psychiatry - as a window onto the alienist profession and as a means of investigating how new medical technologies were assimilated into everyday practice.

Humans, Pulse, Mental Disorders, Biomedical Technology, History, 19th Century, Hospitals, Psychiatric
Rina Knoeff and Robert Zwijnenberg (eds.), The Fate of Anatomical Collections. Farnham: Ashgate, 2015. Pp. 336. ISBN 978-1-4094-6815-8. £67.50 (hardback).

2016
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Journal article
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The British Journal for the History of Science
In the shadow of the asylum: the Stanley Royd Salmonella outbreak of 1984

2015
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Journal article
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Medical Humanities

history of psychiatry, barrier nursing, risk, food poisoning
'Atrophied', 'Engorged', 'Debauched': Muscle Wastage, Degenerate Mass and Moral Worth in the General Paralytic Patient

2015
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Chapter
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Insanity and the Lunatic Asylum in the Nineteenth Century

history of psychiatry, history of medicine, asylums