‘The Grand Organ of Sympathy’: ‘Fashionable’ Stomach Complaints and the Mind in Georgian Britain

Speaker: Dr James Kennaway

The nerves have been the principal focus of ‘fashionable disease’ studies, but the stomach arguably has an equal claim for consideration. The stomach and bowels were not only implicated in a wide range of digestive diseases, but also in almost all à la mode conditions, from nervousness to the ‘flying gout’. This was due both to the connotations of over-eating with wealth, and because of the assumed link between the digestive system and the mind. This talk examines the development of thinking on the mind-stomach nexus, and how such thinking was incorporated into critiques of modern Britain.