The Neuroses of the Railway: Trains, Travel and Trauma in Britain, c.1850-c.1900
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CONTRIBUTORS:
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UNIVERSITY / COLLEGE:
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YEAR:
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1999
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PUB TYPE:
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Thesis/Dissertation
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PAGES:
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18,
266 p.
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SUBJECT(S):
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history; history of medicine; history of transport; railway history; modern British history; Victorian; neurosis
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DISCIPLINE:
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History
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HTTP:
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LANGUAGE:
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English
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PUB ID:
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103-438-164
(Last edited on
2007/10/28 09:15:41 GMT-6)
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SPONSOR(S):
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ABSTRACT:
This thesis explores some aspects of the cultural history of the railways in Britain during the latter half of the nineteenth century. It argues that the railway was of central importance in creating and shaping Victorian attitudes to the machine and to mechanized civilization in a world increasingly dominated by large-scale technologies. In particular, it explores the significance of negative responses to the railway - fear, anxiety, nervousness, alarm, revulsion - in influencing a range of social, cultural and medical responses to the perceived degenerative threat of technological civilization. A primary focus is on the phenomenon of 'Railway Spine', an obscure nervous condition suffered by railway accident victims who had seemingly received no actual organic injury, but nonetheless displayed nervous, mental and physical symptoms of serious bodily disorder. This condition is seen to be both a culmination of the perceptions of anxiety and alarm with which the Victorian railway was viewed and as an expression of the response of the human mind and body to the pressures exerted by a society dominated by ever more powerful technological systems.
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