Themes > mental illness

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

This is a guest post by Dr. Jennifer S. Kain, a Junior Research Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London, and author of ‘The Ne-er-do-well: Representing the Dysfunctional Migrant Mind, New Zealand 1850-1920’.

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

As a research assistant with Diseases of Modern Life, I will be looking at fin-de-siècle representations of mental illness and addiction, especially as these afflictions were conceived as being transferred among hereditary lines.

The phrase "black dog", when it doesn’t bring to mind Led Zeppelin IV, is usually associated with Winston Churchill, whose favoured term it was to refer to his depression.