History Affect

The latest issue of Revista de Estudios Sociales (62) is out, edited by Javier Moscoso and Juan Manuel Zaragoza Bernal , on the subject of Emotional Communities and Social Change. Most of it is in Spanish, but the writing, especially in the introduction, is so sparklingly clear that google translate does a half-decent job of making it English if you need it. I was asked to write a general appraisal of the field for this issue (in English), which also serves as a handy signpost for my new book on the history of emotions, to be published in January by Manchester University Press. All the articles in the issue are open access and free to download. 

This post, originally published in History of Emotions - Insights into Research , October 2013, DOI: 10.14280/08241.10 , is the impetus behind my new project on the strategic defence of experimental medicine between c.1870 and 1914. Read more about the project here . A prone rabbit, bolted to an operating table, stares sightlessly upwards into the glare of an electric light. Above its head a scalpel, held like a pen in the hand of a white-coated, white-bearded physiologist, is poised to make an incision. The raking light also illuminates the wraiths of the sick, the physically disabled, and the diseased, drawn to the scene in the hope of an end to their suffering. These abundant phantoms stalk the physiologist’s laboratory: a child on crutches, an ailing baby writhing in the arms of a frantic mother, a blind man. The other faces are those of the poor, whose own lives and the lives of their families are exposed to the ravages of polio, diphtheria, tuberculosis, and a host o...