3rd November 2010
Doors at 6 pm, Talk commences at 7 pm
In 'Mind in the Lower Animals in Health and Disease', published in
1879, the Scottish psychiatrist William Lauder Lindsay abandoned his
human patients and turned to madness in the animal kingdom. Lindsay
ranged across continents and centuries, pillaging writers from Pliny
to Darwin, and ushering his readers into a dark, destabilised world of
simian neurosis and reptilian psychosis, suicidal scorpions and
deranged, Prufockian lemmings. In this talk I will grab Lindsay’s work
by its provocatively twitching tail, tracing its roots in European
culture and uncovering the hidden history of animal madness in
Victorian science.
Richard Barnett dropped out of medical school in London to become a
historian. He has taught the history of science & medicine at UCL and
Cambridge, and is the author of the immensely successful 'Medical
London: City of Diseases, City of Cures' (Strange Attractor, 2008). He
is currently writing the Dedalus Book of Gin.
Talk at 11 Mare Street - please click here to buy tickets
