Dr Jennifer Wallis

Jennifer Wallis
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).

    December 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.

    September 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).

    March 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

    January 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

    January 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
    • More