Introduction This unit is on Christopher Marlowe's famous play Doctor Faustus. It considers the play in relation to Marlowe's own reputation as a rule-breaker and outsider and asks whether the play criticises or seeks to arouse audience sympathy for its protagonist, who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for 24 years of power and pleasure. Is this pioneering drama a medieval morality play or a tragedy? This unit is an adapted extract from the Open University courseAuthor(s):
5.1 Introduction When people did seek help for their ailments, most sought some form of outpatient care. For the upper and middle classes, during much of the nineteenth century, this meant calling in a general practitioner. The poorest could apply for help at the outpatient department of a charitable hospital or dispensary. Another source of help was to apply for assistance from local government – in some countries the local authorities employed doctors to care for the poor. In Britain, medical help was ava
4 Domestic care Despite their best efforts, everyone fell ill at some point in their lives. Although historians of medicine write a great deal about how the sick were cared for by doctors and in hospitals, in the past (as nowadays) minor complaints were diagnosed and treated at home, almost entirely without the help of medical professionals, using special diets and home-made or bought-in remedies. As with preserving health, poor families had relatively few resources for treatment. They might seek advice from
1 Access to healthcare, 1880–1930 The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have often been described as a period of progress, when the poorer classes gained access to a whole range of medical services previously reserved for the wealthy. In the past, this opening up of care was largely attributed to the state. Across Europe, central and local governments created health insurance schemes and new welfare services to provide the poor with access to care, from general practitioners (GPs) to outpatient and hospital care,
Learning outcomes After studying this unit, you should be able to do the following: describe the wide range of methods of promoting health, preventing disease and providing care that were available to patients of different social groups and classes; be aware of the inequalities of services – in terms of both quality of care and access to different services – open to different social groups and classes; assess the significance of the roles of central and local gov
Introduction This unit examines the roles of Scots who contributed to the comprehensive transformation of medicine in the nineteenth century. It begins by observing how laboratory practices led to improved techniques of medical diagnosis. This is followed by assessing how Scots contributed to the emerging collective identity of medical practitioners, as well as the improvements in licensing that led to reform of the medical professions. Many new developments in medical education also enabled women to qual
12 Glossary Millenialism (or Millenarianism): the belief and practices, religious and/or political, which seek a comprehensive, salvationary solution for social, political, economic and personal issues. Although originally pre-Christian, the term became identified with the myth of Christ's return after a thousand years. Millenialism, which appealed to some Dissenting sects and other non-religious groups in Britain and the US, played a part in Owen's thinking after 1816. From time to time he announ
6.6 Fourth Essay Having discussed the relationship between environment and character formation in individuals and in society, shown the application of these principles using New Lanark as a test-bed, and described future plans, Owen turns finally to explaining how his reforms can be applied nationally and universally. Much of what follows shows how government might adopt his ideas, highly practical for the most part, but increasingly described in millenialist tones, anticipating a coming golden (or more enlig
6.5 Third Essay By the time Owen got round to writing Essays Three and Four, probably at the end of 1813 or the beginning of 1814, events had moved on, particularly the success of his new partnership in purchasing the mills and placing him again in full control. But his presentation increasingly leaves much to be desired, and here I have tried to focus on Owen's key proposals. Notice another homily, again derived from Enlightenment notions, and widely adopted by Owen's followers, that ‘truth must ultimatel
6.4 Second Essay As a preliminary to the Second Essay, Owen says that he will enhance further his discussion of his underlying principles and then begin to explain to his readers how they can be applied in practice. Notice too the prologue for the Second Essay (p. 113) , quoting Vansittart's view that ‘if we cannot reconcile, all opinions, let us endeavour to unite all hearts’, a ringing phrase often quoted by Owen in later publications and widely adopted as one of the most popular Owenite homilies
6.3 First Essay The earliest essay, written under the nom de plume of ‘one of His Majesty's Justices of the Peace for the County of Lanark’ (if intended to provide Owen with anonymity this was a thin disguise, given the content) and entitled ‘On the Formation of Character’, is prefixed by the famous precept, central to the ‘New View’, that: Any general character, from the best to the worst, from the most ignoran 6.2 The dedications Let us start with the dedications, which are both intriguing and of considerable interest. Read Owen's dedications heading each essay. To whom are the essays dedicated and can you suggest why? Click 'View docum 4.5 Owen at New Lanark 1800–c.1812 At New Lanark Owen quickly initiated changes, some of which he describes in the Second Essay. As in Manchester he placed much emphasis on environmental improvements such as street cleansing, better domestic hygiene, sanitation and water supply. Those designed to enhance efficiency and productivity included new rules and regulations about factory discipline and in 1803–4 installing new machinery. By 1806, and partly on the grounds of cost, he was abandoning the system of pauper apprentices ( 2.7 Conclusion: Culloden in its wider context Moving back out to look at Culloden in its wider context, what can we say that we have learned about the site and its meanings? For international visitors with few or no connections to the battle or to Scotland, it appears to be a site of pilgrimage that is functioning as a place to begin to decode the Scottish identity and the Scottish nation. At home, the major narrative of Culloden for Scots for more than two centuries has been one of tragedy, grief and loss. Once a signifier for the state 2.2 Battlefield sites Battlefields are ‘increasingly being taken up as part of a nation's “official” heritage’ (Carman and Carman, 2006, p. 1) so it is essential to consider their role in the construction of individual and group identity, and in developing a sense of nationhood. As heritage sites, battlefields are a paradox: on the one hand, their qualities as deeply experiential places have long been recognised and are well documented; on the other hand, battlefield sites are often unprepossessing places. 6.3.2 Heat of vaporisation Black read a paper on these experiments to the Glasgow Literary Society in April 1762, and then turned to the investigation of vaporisation. For reasons he himself found difficult to explain, Black was initially reluctant to accept that there was a similar heat of vaporisation. This was in spite of the fact that he (and presumably many cooks) had observed that it takes far longer to boil off water than it takes to raise water to boiling point. In October 1762, he devised a very simple experim 6.3.1 Latent heat The origins of Black's interest in the phenomenon of melting have been the subject of some debate. John Robison remarked, in his edition of Black's lectures, that Black had been struck by the simple fact that snow does not melt instantly on a sunny winter's day nor does a sharp night-time frost cause ponds to form thick layers of ice immediately (Robison, 1803, vol. 1, pp. xxxvi-xxxvii). It is now generally agreed, however, that Black's interest in heat arose from his study of the temperature 6.1 A lifelong academic Hutton can in many ways stand as a representative of the intellectuals of the Scottish Enlightenment. But they were not entirely homogeneous in their intellectual and religious outlooks. The chemist Joseph Black (1728–99) was a close friend of James Hutton (and Adam Smith), but the two men were quite different. Whereas Hutton was robust and disorganised, Black was pallid and precise. Hutton operated outside the universities, but Black was a lifelong academic. If Hutton gained his interest i 3.3 Architecture Printing and publishing, then, had their connections with the Enlightenment programme. Architecture too was related. The Adam family of architects (the father and his two sons) moved in the Edinburgh circle of the intellectuals. The young Robert Adam, for example, attended both McLaurin's mathematics lectures and Monro's anatomy lectures at the university, and his home life was enlivened by regular visits from the leading lights of the city. As one contemporary described the household, in a r 3.2 Publishing One of the strongest impulses in the Enlightenment was to codify knowledge and publish it widely. The most notable example of this impulse is the French Encyclopedic, 'a rational dictionary of the sciences, art and trades’, published chiefly in Paris in the 1750s and 1760s, under the indomitable editorship of Denis Diderot. The seventeen volumes of text and eleven volumes of plates were intended to summarise and clearly present everything that was worth knowing, from the construction
Exercise 7
