This seminar will consider the complex relationship between pleasure, medical recovery and the word ‘euphoria’ in the history of European medicine. Prior to the late 18th century there appeared to have been an assumption that pleasure in the sick could sometimes be interpreted as a sign of medical recovery or health. The pleasure that was understood to accompany ongoing sickness or deteriorating health was usually constructed as singularly intense, creating a clear and recognisable distinction between the spectrum of pleasures associated with medical recovery and health and the singular intensity associated with ongoing sickness or deteriorating health. As a result of developments from the late 18th century onwards, however, it became clearer that a variety of pleasures of variable intensities could be experienced by both people recovering their health, enjoying good health, still experiencing sickness and also experiencing deterioration in health. The meaning of pleasure, its promise of the occasional moment of clarity within the mysterious realms of disease and otherness and health and sameness, became less reliable. This seminar will examine this phenomenon as it appears to have emerged in the 19th century and it will identify parallels between this history and the evolving meaning of the word euphoria, a word that by the close of the 19th century had taken on the ability to both console and trouble the people who used it.
This seminar takes place at 1.00 in Francis Bancroft building room 3.15, on the Mile End campus
Attendance is free and lunch is provided. Please email us to reserve your place. These relaxed and informal research seminars are scheduled to finish at 2pm but participants are welcome to stay and extend discussion beyond that time if they are available to do so.
OTHER SEMINARS THIS SEMESTER
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19th MARCH 2014
Juan Zaragoza (Queen Mary, University of London)
‘Places to Care, Places to Heal: Building ‘Caring Spaces’ in the Late 19th Century’ -
7th MAY 2014
Kirsty Martin (University of Exeter)
‘‘We must make happiness’: Virginia Woolf, Creativity and Contentment in the Early 20th Century’