Diseases of Modern Life

Nineteenth Century Perspectives

Themes > technology

Blogs

Laennec stethoscope

A Very Trump of Doom: How the Simple Stethoscope Transformed Medial Diagnosis

Dr Melissa Dickson's piece on the history of the stethoscope has been published on the Medium channel at The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities.

Along the Lines event and blog post

‘Along The Lines’ was an immersive, virtual workshop and performance that took place in September and October 2020.

Laennec stethoscope

Be Still My Beating Heart

One frequently made observation about the nineteenth century is that it was marked by a number of breakthroughs in medicine and the sciences which revealed forces that shape humanity.

Captivating Respiration: the 'Breathing Napoleon'

I’ve always felt uncomfortable around waxworks and dummies.

Black-and-white print of a dozing man with alarm clock

Confusing Times: Communicating, 24/7

In the age of smartphones, broadband internet access, and cheap(ish) air travel, the vision of the ‘global village’, appears to have become a reality.

Screenshot of article from Dutch newspaper (2/2)

Diseases in the News: The Heavy Burden of a Modern Age

On 10th September 2016, the Diseases of Modern Life project was featured in the Dutch national newspaper Trouw.

Photograph of the audience as the Dracula performance

Dracula and Modern Life

Dr Emilie Taylor-Brown, Dr Hosanna Krienke, and Dr Sarah Green recently led a post-performance panel discussion for Creation Theatre’s production of Dracula, which was staged at Blackwell’s Bookshop.

Machinery Gallery

Electric Stair-Climbers and Mobility in the Nineteenth Century

In his book on machines and modernity in India, historian David Arnold rightly points out that ‘big technologies’ like the telegraph and the railways have received more attention from scholars than smaller, ‘everyday technologies’.

Picture of proposed katzenclavier

File It Under C...

There is a folder in my desk-drawer at the moment, one of several containing the fruits of months of research into various aspects of nineteenth-century science and disease.

Podcast series: Diseases in Dialogue

Researchers from the ERC-funded "Diseases of Modern Life" project at the University of Oxford join experts from a range of fields to discuss some of the major questions surrounding scientific, technological and medical developments.

20000 leagues under sea

Requiem for a Cliché

One of the hallmarks of the sci-fi horror genre is its tendency to generate instant clichés.

Punch image of advertisements in London

Something in the Air: Dr Carter Moffat’s Ammoniaphone and the Victorian Science of Singing

Dr Melissa Dickson's article, Something in the Air: Dr Carter Moffat's Ammoniaphone and the Victorian Science of Singing, has been published in the Spring 2017 edition of the Science Museum Group Journal.

Temperature and mortality of London, 1840-50, from William Farr, Report on the mortality of cholera in England, 1848-49 (1852)

Stormy Weather and Human Barometers

In 1873, a speaker at the Royal Dublin Society declared that ‘many persons are inclined to deny altogether the existence of a weather-science'.

Strauss Telegram

Telegraphs, Electromagnetic Polkas and the Vienna New Year’s Day Concert

I remember being fascinated by the glittering chandeliers, the massive, colourful bouquets of flowers, the guests from all over the world sporting their traditional attires and, of course, the music.

Telephone, telegraph, and power lines over the streets of New York City, 1888. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Telegraphy's Trials, Tribulations and Triumphs

My research aims to uncover the lesser-known twists and turns in this narrative, to explore both the hopes and the frustrations, the anxieties as well as the excitement which were associated with telegraphy in nineteenth-century Europe.

Cartoon from Punch, 'Forecasts for 1907'

The Bane of Modern Technology

The tragedy of comedy, for those who work at creating it, at least, is that jokes will go off.

The Brain Child of Mariano Luigi Patrizi

If the project of medical science may be described as the exploration of the human body, then surely its final, vastest, most mysterious frontier is the brain.

Frame from the Living and the Dead

The Living and the Dead captures Victorian anxieties about science and the supernatural

From telegraphs to television sets, new technologies have often been imagined as strange or magical in the popular consciousness.

A street scene with people and carriages deep in mud, street traders and musicians and hot-air balloons in the distance. Coloured etching by Paul Pry, 1828

The Nausea of Noise

We are big on peace and quiet in Oxford. For eight hours a day, the most that is likely to disturb me from my research is the faint lowing of cattle in the fields behind the college, or the movement of papers around me in the Bodleian.

image 20160609 7069 y51w83

The Victorians had the Same Concerns about Technology as We Do

We live, we are so often told, in an information age. It is an era obsessed with space, time and speed.

Events

The supposed effect of storms on the minds and bodies of asylum patients was one question considered by Thomas Crallan at Sussex Asylum.

Inside and Outside Bodies at the University of Glasgow

Dr Melissa Dickson and Dr Jennifer Wallis will be speaking about two moments of Victorian social and cultural anxiety in a panel entitled ‘Inside and Outside Bodies: the Science of Micro and Macrocosms’

University of Glasgow

Figure of a sphygmograph, used to chart the pulse

Panel on Technology and Disease at the 41st Symposium of ICOHTEC

Two of our project members, Dr. Amelia Bonea and Dr. Jennifer Wallis, will be presenting aspects of their research at the 41st Symposium of the International Committee for the History of Technology, to be held in Braşov, Romania.

Braşov, Romania

Principal Investigator Sally Shuttleworth presenting her projects

Project Launch Event at St Anne's College

On November 6, Professor Sally Shuttleworth’s two research projects, ‘Diseases of Modern Life: Nineteenth-Century Perspectives’ and ‘Constructing Scientific Communities: Citizen Science in the 19th and 21st Centuries’ were launched at St Anne’s College.

Anatomical drawing of an ear

Science, Medicine and Culture in the Nineteenth Century: Seminars in Hilary Term 2016

Our programme for Hilary Term 2016 is now announced with two seminars taking place at St Anne’s College.

St. Anne's College

Natural History Chart

Science, Medicine and Culture in the Nineteenth Century: Seminars in Trinity Term 2016

Our programme for Trinity Term is now announced with three seminars taking place at St Anne's College.