Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

Examines how literature mediated a convergence of militarism and medicine in Victorian culture that continues into the present via a widespread martial metaphor. Medicine is most often understood through the metaphor of war. We encounter phrases such as "the war against the coronavirus," "the front lines of the Ebola crisis," "a new weapon against antibiotic resistance," or "the immune system fights cancer" without considering their assumptions, implications, and history. But there is nothing natural about this language. It does not have to be, nor has it always been, the way to understand the relationship between humans and disease. Medicine Is War shows how this "martial metaphor" was popularized throughout the nineteenth century. Drawing on the works of Mary Shelley, Charles Kingsley, Bram Stoker, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Joseph Conrad, Lorenzo Servitje examines how literary form reflected, reinforced, and critiqued the convergence of militarism and medicine in Victorian culture. He considers how, in migrating from military medicine to the civilian sphere, this metaphor responded to the developments and dangers of modernity: urbanization, industrialization, government intervention, imperial contact, crime, changing gender relations, and the relationship between the one and the many. While cultural and literary scholars have attributed the metaphor to late nineteenth-century germ theory or immunology, this book offers a new, more expansive history stretching from the metaphor's roots in early nineteenth-century militarism to its consolidation during the rise of early twentieth-century pharmacology. In so doing, Servitje establishes literature's pivotal role in shaping what war has made thinkable and actionable under medicine's increasing jurisdiction in our lives. Medicine Is War reveals how, in our own moment, the metaphor remains conducive to harming as much as healing, to control as much as empowerment. Lorenzo Servitje is Assistant Professor of Literature and Medicine at Lehigh University. He has published several books, including Syphilis and Subjectivity: From the Victorians to the Present (coedited with Kari Nixon); Endemic: Essays in Contagion Theory (coedited with Kari Nixon); and The Walking Med: Zombies and the Medical Image (coedited with Sherryl Vint).

English fiction --- Medicine in literature. --- Diseases in literature. --- History and criticism --- History and criticism.

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

This book develops a new multimodal theoretical model of contagion for interdisciplinary scholars, featuring contributions from influential scholars spanning the fields of medical humanities, philosophy, political science, media studies, technoculture, literature, and bioethics. Exploring the nexus of contagion's metaphorical and material aspects, this volume contends that contagiousness in its digital, metaphorical, and biological forms is a pervasively endemic condition in our contemporary moment. The chapters explore both endemicity itself and how epidemic discourse has become endemic to processes of social construction. Designed to simultaneously prime those new to the discourse of humanistic perspectives of contagion, complicate issues of interest to seasoned scholars of science and technology studies, and add new topics for debate and inquiry in the field of bioethics, Endemicwill be of wide interest for researchers and educators.

Social sciences. --- Social media. --- Bioethics. --- Philosophy and social sciences. --- Sociology. --- Social medicine. --- Social Sciences. --- Sociological Theory. --- Medical Sociology. --- Knowledge - Discourse. --- Social Media. --- Philosophy of the Social Sciences. --- Communicable diseases --- Epidemiology. --- Social sciences --- Social philosophy --- Social theory --- User-generated media --- Communication --- User-generated content --- Biology --- Biomedical ethics --- Life sciences --- Life sciences ethics --- Science --- Medical care --- Medical sociology --- Medicine --- Medicine, Social --- Public health --- Public welfare --- Sociology --- Medical ethics --- Medical sociologists --- Philosophy. --- Moral and ethical aspects --- Social aspects --- Social sciences and philosophy

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

This book develops a new multimodal theoretical model of contagion for interdisciplinary scholars, featuring contributions from influential scholars spanning the fields of medical humanities, philosophy, political science, media studies, technoculture, literature, and bioethics. Exploring the nexus of contagion's metaphorical and material aspects, this volume contends that contagiousness in its digital, metaphorical, and biological forms is a pervasively endemic condition in our contemporary moment. The chapters explore both endemicity itself and how epidemic discourse has become endemic to processes of social construction. Designed to simultaneously prime those new to the discourse of humanistic perspectives of contagion, complicate issues of interest to seasoned scholars of science and technology studies, and add new topics for debate and inquiry in the field of bioethics, Endemicwill be of wide interest for researchers and educators.

Philosophy --- Theory of knowledge --- Professional ethics. Deontology --- Social sciences (general) --- Sociology of health --- Sociology --- Social medicine --- Mass communications --- kennis --- psychosociale wetenschappen --- sociologie --- sociale media --- sociale filosofie --- sociale wetenschappen --- bio-ethiek --- medische ethiek

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)