James Kennaway

The Cost of Living Like this

Susan Kennaway

The Kennaway Papers

Music has been used as a cure for disease since as far back as King David's lyre, but the notion that it might be a serious cause of mental and physical illness was rare until the late eighteenth century. At that time, physicians started to argue that excessive music, or the wrong kind of music, could over-stimulate a vulnerable nervous system, leading to illness, immorality and even death. Since then there have been successive waves of moral panics about supposed epidemics of musical nervousness, caused by everything from Wagner to jazz and rock 'n' roll. It was this medical and critical debate that provided the psychiatric rhetoric of "degenerate music" that was the rationale for the persecution of musicians in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. By the 1950s, the focus of medical anxiety about music shifted to the idea that "musical brainwashing" and "subliminal messages" could strain the nerves and lead to mind control, mental illness and suicide. More recently, the prevalence of sonic weapons and the use of music in torture in the so-called War on Terror have both made the subject of music that is bad for the health worryingly topical. This book outlines and explains the development of this idea of pathological music from the Enlightenment until the present day, providing an original contribution to the history of medicine, music and the body.

The History of the Idea of Music as a Cause of Disease

Bad Vibrations

Rina Knoeff

The biggest challenges in public health today are often related to attitudes, diet and exercise. In many ways, this marks a return to the state of medicine in the eighteenth century, when ideals of healthy living were a much more central part of the European consciousness than they have become since the advent of modern clinical medicine. Enlightenment advice on healthy lifestyle was often still discussed in terms of the six non-naturals – airs and places, food and drink, exercise, excretion and retention, and sleep and emotions. This volume examines what it meant to live healthily in the Enlightenment in the context of those non-naturals, showing both the profound continuities from Antiquity and the impact of newer conceptions of the body.

The Six Non-Naturals in the Long Eighteenth Century

Lifestyle and Medicine in the Enlightenment

Introduced by Douglas Gifford. Mr Alfred is an elderly schoolteacher dogged by a sense of failure. The rejection of his poetry and his nightly escape to the pub all contribute to his malaise. Perhaps most harrowing is his innocent but obsessive love for Rose, one of his pupils. This ‘affair’ is maliciously reported and he is torn from his familiar job and transferred to an even rougher school. Against a nightmarish background of gang warfare and public desecration the story reaches a frightening climax. This novel provides significant observation of a critical period in the saga of modern, urban youth. But its most striking achievement is in its portrait of Mr Alfred whose values and sensitive nature are so tragically at odds with his environment. ‘A bright book, full of perceptions.’ The Times ‘Skillfully done . . . the strange totemism of city gangs is used to great effect.’ TLS ‘This book has a rough and gutsy authenticity; it is entertaining and perceptive.’ Oxford Mail

James Kennaway

About

Books

Join the club