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Fashionable Discourse of Disease at the Watering‐Places of Literature, 1770‐1820
Author(s) -
O'Connell Anita
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
journal for eighteenth‐century studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.129
H-Index - 11
eISSN - 1754-0208
pISSN - 1754-0194
DOI - 10.1111/1754-0208.12513
Subject(s) - conversation , destinations , disease , terrain , sociology , aesthetics , history , medicine , geography , art , communication , tourism , cartography , archaeology , pathology
As centres for health as well as fashionable holiday destinations, spas and seaside resorts provided rich terrain for the intersection of fashion and illness. The combination of sociability and ill health gave rise to a fashionable discourse of disease as an increasingly intensive focus on medicalisation was perpetuated by fashionable conversation. Many complained that such talk led to imagining illnesses, thus spreading trends for certain diseases. This article examines satires of the fashionable conversation of disease at the watering‐places, arguing that they take issue with a perceived rising vein of hypochondria within these centres for illness and sociability.