"The History of Half the Sex": Fashionable Disease, Capitalism, and Gender in the Long Eighteenth Century. 2017

Clark Lawlor

This essay examines the way in which disease was framed and narrated as fashionable in the long eighteenth century, and argues that the intensifying focus on women's fashionable disorders in the period grew in tandem with the rise of an unstable capitalism in its manifold forms. Using the satirical articles written by Henry Southern in the London Magazine-"On Fashions" (August 1825), "On Fashions in Physic" (October 1825), and "On Dilettante Physic" (January 1826)-and the literature that led to them, I analyze the role that women were now taking in the newly capitalized world of the early nineteenth century. This world was characterized by a burgeoning medical market, a periodical and print market which could adequately reflect and promote fashionable diseases and the medical market that spawned them, and the nexus of actors in the whole drama of the production, maintenance, and dissolution of fashionable diseases.

UI MeSH Term Description Entries
D008297 Male Males
D004194 Disease A definite pathologic process with a characteristic set of signs and symptoms. It may affect the whole body or any of its parts, and its etiology, pathology, and prognosis may be known or unknown. Diseases
D004739 England A part of Great Britain within the United Kingdom.
D005060 Europe The continent north of AFRICA, west of ASIA and east of the ATLANTIC OCEAN. Northern Europe,Southern Europe,Western Europe
D005260 Female Females
D005783 Gender Identity A person's concept of self as being male and masculine or female and feminine, or ambivalent, based in part on physical characteristics, parental responses, and psychological and social pressures. It is the internal experience of gender role. Gender,Gender Identities,Identity, Gender
D006801 Humans Members of the species Homo sapiens. Homo sapiens,Man (Taxonomy),Human,Man, Modern,Modern Man
D000076207 Popular Culture Choices and ways of doing things that predominate or are fashionable among ordinary people in a society during a point in time. Mass Culture,Pop Culture,Culture, Mass,Culture, Pop,Culture, Popular
D013001 Somatoform Disorders Disorders having the presence of physical symptoms that suggest a general medical condition but that are not fully explained by another medical condition, by the direct effects of a substance, or by another mental disorder. The MEDICALLY UNEXPLAINED SYMPTOMS must cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other areas of functioning. In contrast to FACTITIOUS DISORDERS and MALINGERING, the physical symptoms are not under voluntary control. (APA, DSM-V) Briquet Syndrome,Pain Disorder,Somatization Disorder,Medically Unexplained Syndrome,Medically Unexplained Syndromes,Disorder, Somatoform,Somatization Disorders,Somatoform Disorder,Syndrome, Briquet,Syndrome, Medically Unexplained,Unexplained Syndrome, Medically
D014481 United States A country in NORTH AMERICA between CANADA and MEXICO.

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