Health and headlines were serious matters in nineteenth-century Britain.
With the arrival of the perception of objectivity in medical care and an
interest in scientific research about human anatomy and physiology, the
Victorian reader in Britain was flooded with new information about the
health and the operation of the human body. The aim of this book is to
present a broad survey of those captions and headlines that demonstrate
the evolution of popular thinking about the practice of human health.
Themes of the headlines include the role of government, the effects of
medical research, professionalization of medical staff and its effect on
folk methods of medicine, and the maintenance of standards for public
health. The periodicals, ranging in date from 1824 to 1900, were
selected primarily from The Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals. An
introduction provides a useful synopsis of health issues during this
period, and outlines major concepts and investigates the formation of
essential categories still in use, such as ideas of wellness and
unwellness, the meaning of care and care-givers, and the productive
status of being healthy. The annotated bibliography contains 2604
entries, indexed by author and subject.