ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

The Science and Medicine of Habits III: Habits, the Body and Disorder

Session Submission Type: Organized Session

English Abstract

These symposia will engage with scientific and medical writings on bodily habits from the medieval to the modern periods. Over the centuries, people have sought to explain the apparent regularity of bodily phenomena such as eating, sleeping and evacuating. In particular, debates emerged about the extent to which these activities are amenable to human control. When framed as habits, such phenomena may be regarded as subject to control – although deeply entrenched habits may be very hard to shift. Alternatively, viewing these phenomena as instincts may place them beyond the reach of medical or social transformation. Papers in these panels will address the subject of habit around three themes: Habits, the Body and Space; Habits, the Body and Health; Habits, the Body and Disorder. Papers will be drawn from a variety of periods to explore the extent to which supposedly automatic bodily processes may be responsive to control or shaping. Topics will include, food and eating, sex and sexuality, pain, movement, clothing, body temperature, hygiene and sleep.

Sub Unit

• Organized Session

Chair

• Kristin Hussey, Newcastle University

Individual Presentations

• Habit, Disease, and Heredity in Europe, 1750-1830 - Alexander Wragge-Morley, Lancaster University

• ‘Something may be said in favour of those whom Disease hath brought to a Dog-like appetite’: Medicalising excessive appetites in the seventeenth century - Helena Constance Aeberli, University of Oxford

• Do (Don’t?) Make a Habit of It: Sex and Sin Circa 1300 - Racha Kirakosian, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg; Philip Liston-Kraft

• “Ten Steps from Patient to Person”: The American Chronic Pain Association and the Habits of Self-Help - Matthew Soleiman, University of California, San Diego