Nervous Conditions: Science and the Body Politic in Early Industrial Britain

Examines nineteenth-century scientists' obsession with nerves and the nervous system.

Nervous Conditions explores the role of the body in the development of modern science, challenging the myth that modern science is built on a bedrock of objectivity and confident empiricism. In this fascinating look into the private world of British natural philosophers-including John Dalton, Lord Kelvin, Charles Babbage, John Herschel, and many others-Elizabeth Green Musselman shows how the internal workin...