Doctoring the Novel : Medicine and Quackery From Shelley to Doyle

If nineteenth-century Britain witnessed the rise of medical professionalism, it also witnessed rampant quackery. It is tempting to categorize historical practices as either orthodox or quack, but what did these terms really signify in medical and public circles at the time? How did they develop and evolve? What do they tell us about actual medical practices?__Doctoring the Novel__ explores the ways in which language constructs and stabilizes these slippery terms by examining medical quackery and orthodoxy in works such as Mary Shelley’s __Frankenstein__, Charles Dickens’s __Bleak House__ and __Little Dorrit__, Charlotte Brontë’s __Villette__, Wilkie Collins’s __Armadale__, and Arthur Conan Doyle’s __Stark Munro Letters__. Contextualized in both medical and popular publishing, literary analysis reveals that even supposedly medico-scientific concepts such as orthodoxy and quackery evolve not in elite laboratories and bourgeois medical societies but in the rough-and-tumble of the public sphere, a view that acknowledges the considerable, and often underrated, influence of language on medical practices. If nineteenth-century Britain witnessed the rise of medical professionalism, it also witnessed rampant quackery. It is tempting to categorize historical practices as either orthodox or quack, but what did these terms really signify in medical and public circles at the time? How did they develop and evolve? What do they tell us about actual medical practices? Doctoring the Novel explores the ways in which language constructs and stabilizes these slippery terms by examining medical quackery and orthodoxy in works such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein , Charles Dickens’s Bleak House and Little Dorrit , Charlotte Brontë’s Villette , Wilkie Collins’s Armadale , and Arthur Conan Doyle’s Stark Munro Letters . Contextualized in both medical and popular publishing, literary analysis reveals that even supposedly medico-scientific concepts such as orthodoxy and quackery evolve not in elite laboratories and bourgeois medical societies but in the rough-and-tumble of the public sphere, a view that acknowledges the considerable, and often underrated, influence of language on medical practices. Introduction: False Professions: Defining Orthodoxy And Quackery -- Orthodoxy Or Quackery? Anatomy In Frankenstein -- Doctoring In Little Dorrit And Bleak House -- Legerdemain And The Physician In Charlotte Bronte's Villette -- Poisons And The Poisonous In Wilkie Collins's Armadale -- The Quackery Of Arthur Conan Doyle -- Conclusion: The In-laws: Orthodoxy And Quackery In Vernon Galbray. Sylvia A. Pamboukian. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 189-199) And Index. Preface 10 Contents 8 Acknowledgments 14 Introduction: False Professions 16 Chapter One: Orthodoxy or Quackery? Anatomy in Frankenstein 32 Chapter Two: Doctoring in Little Dorrit and Bleak House 64 Chapter Three: Legerdemain and the Physician in Charlotte Brontë’s Villette 89 Chapter Four: Poisons and the Poisonous in Wilkie Collins’s Armadale 113 Chapter Five: The Quackery of Arthur Conan Doyle 137 Conclusion: The In-Laws 162 Notes 172 Bibliography 203 Index 216