ELIZABETH GREEN MUSSELMAN. Nervous Conditions: Science and the Body Politic in Early Industrial Britain. (Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century; Science, Technology, and Society.) Albany: State University of New York Press. 2006. Pp. xi, 276. $75.00

Abstract

Elizabeth Green Musselman views early industrial Britain—defined here as the years between 1780 and 1860—as a critical period in the development of modern science and the modern sensibility. In this era natural philosophy, that amorphous predisciplinary practice, became differentiated into modern sciences, and the quintessentially amateur natural philosopher became the professional scientist. Green Musselman tracks this process by looking at some individual men of science and the functioning, or malfunctioning, of their bodies. In particular, these men suffered from various nervous conditions, and Green Musselman argues that these conditions were emblematic of the larger transitions in science and society in this era, and that the solution to these ills represented a triumph of will over the body, of management over disorder, that was also occurring in society at large. Green Musselman's first two chapters lay out her argument. The early nineteenth century was an era of enormous political and social change in Britain. Green Musselman focuses closely on science, so we hear little of politics per se, but she touches on issues of class, gender, religion, and national identity in her discussion of the relationship between individual subjectivity and the objective aims of science. She argues that natural philosophers largely accepted hierarchical divisions of labor in the practice of science in the interests of maintaining rationally governed systems in both science and society. Green Musselman emphasizes the role of communication in the hierarchy between the top and the lower ranks—women, workers, provincials—but she does not fully address the modes of communication available to the natural philosopher in this era; I would have liked to have seen more discussion of periodical literature and the development of the scientific journal.