Gut Feeling and Digestive Health in Nineteenth-Century Literature, History and Culture (Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine)

This book considers the historical and cultural origins of the gut-brain relationship now evidenced in numerous scientific research fields. Bringing together eleven scholars with wide interdisciplinary expertise, the volume examines literal and metaphorical digestion in different spheres of nineteenth-century life. Digestive health is examined in three sections in relation to science, politics and literature during the period, focusing on Northern America, Europe and Australia. Using diverse methodologies, the essays demonstrate that the long nineteenth century was an important moment in the Western understanding and perception of the gastroenterological system and its relation to the mind in the sense of cognition, mental wellbeing, and the emotions. This collection explores how medical breakthroughs are often historically preceded by intuitive models imagined throughout a range of cultural productions. Front Matter ....Pages i-xi The Gut Feelings of Medical Culture (Manon Mathias, Alison M. Moore)....Pages 1-14 The Great American Evil—Indigestion: Digestive Health and Democratic Politics in Walt Whitman (Tripp Rebrovick)....Pages 15-35 The “Second Brain”: Dietetics and Ideology in Nineteenth-Century France (Bertrand Marquer)....Pages 37-54 Situating the Anal Freud in Nineteenth-Century Imaginaries of Excrement and Colonial Primitivity (Alison M. Moore)....Pages 55-83 Food for Thought: Consuming and Digesting as Political Metaphor in French Satirical Prints (Dorothy Johnson)....Pages 85-108 Being “Hangry”: Gastrointestinal Health and Emotional Well-Being in the Long Nineteenth Century (Emilie Taylor-Brown)....Pages 109-132 Visceralism and the Superior Mind in French Medicine and Literature, 1750–1850 (Anne Vila)....Pages 133-154 Digestion and Brain Work in Zola and Huysmans (Manon Mathias)....Pages 155-176 Textual (In)Digestions in Flaubert, Zola and Huysmans: Accumulation, Extraction, Regulation (Larry Duffy)....Pages 177-204 Hygiene, Food and Digestion in Post-Unified Italy: Paolo Mantegazza’s Medicine in the Kitchen and Beyond (1861–1900) (Cristiano Turbil)....Pages 205-224 The State and the Stomach: Feeding the Social Organism in 1830s New England (Molly S. Laas)....Pages 225-242 Food Faiths: Gut Science and Spiritual Eating (Catherine L. Newell)....Pages 243-259 Back Matter ....Pages 261-276