[ExI] Is the cinematograph making us stupid? (from mindhacks.com)

Emlyn emlynoregan at gmail.com
Wed Jul 30 05:04:20 UTC 2008


http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2008/07/is_the_cinematograph.html

>From the site:

"I've just found an eye-opening 2003 article in the Journal of the
American Medical Association on the work on 19th century neurologists
George Beard and Silas Weir Mitchell, who thought the pace of life and
the effect of new technology was harming the mind and brain of
citizens in 1800s America - echoing similar concerns we still hear
today.

The two physicians were influential in pushing the idea that these
effects resulted in 'neurasthenia', a kind of fuzzy catch-all
diagnosis for mental or emotional malaise.

What's interesting is we're experiencing something almost identical
over 100 years later.

As we've noted several times, leading scientists or commentators can
make international headlines by simply suggesting that new technology
is harming the mind, brain and relationships of the modern citizen,
despite a general lack of evidence or flat out evidence to the
contrary.

The JAMA article notes how neurasthenia was associated with the
cultural concerns of the time:

Families migrated from the countryside to the city, men left
traditional jobs as tradesmen and farmers to join the growing ranks of
businessmen and office workers, women went from being mothers and
daughters to also being university students and physicians, and
technological developments such as telegraphs, telephones, and
railroads became increasingly common parts of everyday life. As a
diagnosis, neurasthenia commanded an intuitive legitimacy because it
incorporated the anxieties that arose from these changes into the way
people thought of their health. It could attribute a bank manager's
headaches to his hectic schedule and the obsession for detail his job
demanded.

Similarly, a young woman's depression could be understood as
neurasthenia brought on by the mental drain of attending a newly
founded coeducational university, where she competed for grades. In
many cases, diagnoses of neurasthenia attached themselves to
traditional ideals, such as the restorative virtues of farming
vis-à-vis the fast-paced stress of modern business or the Victorian
belief in women's disposition for motherhood rather than scholarship.
For Beard and Mitchell, neurasthenic patients were casualties of
modern society whose bodies and minds simply could not keep up with
the seemingly accelerated lifestyles of men and women in the latter
part of the 19th century.

It's a lovely illustration of the fact that since the dawn of popular
medicine, our cultural concerns about changes in society are likely to
be expressed in the language of illness and disease.

The article also notes that then, like now, the concerns are
accompanied by an encouragement to return to the traditional ways of
doing things (in this day and age - encouraging kids to 'play proper
games' or have 'genuine relationships') rather than highlighting ways
of healthy adaptation to the new technology.

This is not to say that all fears about new technologies are
unfounded, but its clear that they are quickly medicalised and get far
more prominence than the evidence supports, both in the 19th century
and in the 21st.

Link to JAMA article 'Neurasthenia and a Modernizing America'.

—Vaughan. "

--
Emlyn

http://emlynoregan.com



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