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The body electric: how strange machines built the modern American

Carolyn Thomas de la Peña c2003 © New York University Press
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ISBN(s)
  • 081471966X (E-Book)
Subject
  • Science & Technology
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Table of Contents

  • Cover
  • Title Page
  • Copyright and Permissions
  • List of Illustrations
  • Acknowledgments
  • Preface
  • Introduction
  • Chapter 1 The Machine-Built Body
    • [Intro]
    • Premachine Fitness: The Acrobatic Athlete
    • The Body as Machine: A Metaphor of Power
    • Empty Buckets: Neurasthenia and Physical Breakdown
    • Chiosso and Windship: Building Machines for Modern Energy
    • David P. Butler: When Only Cannon Balls Will Do
  • Chapter 2 Measuring Mechanical Strength
    • [Intro]
    • Turning to Machines: Sargent's Early Life
    • Harvard and the Hemenway: Building a System of Machine Energy
    • Measuring Mechanized Progress: Sargent's Anthropometric System
    • Gustav Zander and Spas: Trotting Toward Modern Energy
    • Zander Case Studies: Mechanizing the Business Body
    • Nature's Energy under Man's Control: Zanders in the Spa Context
    • The Mental Benefits of Zander Therapy
  • Chapter 3 Exploring Electric Limits
    • [Intro]
    • Building the Body Electric
    • Mesmerism, Popular Culture, and the Electric Hand
    • Fantastic Spaces, Neurasthenic Bodies, and the Rise of Electric Theology
    • George Beard: Disproving the Electric Evil
    • From Prizes to Products: The Popular World of Electric Cures
    • Electric Belts, Ozone, and the Cultural Cure
    • Electric Belts and Industrial Supremacy
    • The Electropoise, Violet Rays, and the Beautiful Death of Decay
    • Henry Gaylord Wilshire's I-ON-A-CO: "Plugging in" to the Modern Era
  • Chapter 4 Powering the Intimate Body
    • [Intro]
    • The Seed of Modernity: Why the Penis Must Be Powered
    • Holding Back the Vital Force: Nineteenth-Century Impotence and Masturbation
    • Electrifying the Penis: A Modern Cure for a Victorian Malaise
    • Electric Belts and the End of Masturbatory Decline
    • Defining the Problem and Prescribing the Cure: American Electric Belts
    • Electric Bodies, Superior Glands, and Modern Sex Roles
    • Beyond Normal: Electric Glands and the Quest for Supervirility
  • Chapter 5 "Radiomania" Limits the Energy Dream
    • [Intro]
    • William Hammer and the "American Radium Discovery," 1902-1907
    • The Rise of "Radiomania": Radium and American Popular Culture, 1900-1915
    • The Parable of Liquid Sunshine: Shedding Light on a Radium Body
    • Up Close and Personal: The Radium Fantasy Takes Hold, 1905-1915
    • In Pursuit of "Liquid Sunshine": Radium Waters Away and at Home, 1915-1925
    • Realizing Radium's Superman Dreams: The Radithor Controversy, 1925-1932
    • Epilogue: Radium Triumph or Radium Terror?
  • Conclusion The End of an Era?
  • Additional Resources Historical Pamphlets and Advertisements
    • 1 Pall Mall Electric Co.: Electricity and Electro Magnetism ("The Doctor's Story")
    • 2 Electrolibration Co.: The Electropoise
    • 3 Halliwell-Shelton Electric Corporation: High Frequency Violet Ray
    • 4 The Medical Battery Co., Ltd.: Harness Electropathic Belt
    • 5 Vit-O-Net Corp.: Vit-O-Net
  • Notes
    • Notes to the Preface
    • Notes to the Introduction
    • Notes to Chapter 1
    • Notes to Chapter 2
    • Notes to Chapter 3
    • Notes to Chapter 4
    • Notes to Chapter 5
    • Notes to the Conclusion
  • Bibliography
    • Manuscript Collections
    • Interviews
    • Newspapers
    • Trade Magazines
    • Contemporary Sources
      • Articles, Catalogues, Pamphlets, Reports
      • Books
    • Secondary Sources
      • Articles and Reports
      • Books
  • Index
  • About the Author

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Reviews

Reviews
Journal AbbreviationLabelURL
AHR 109.2 (April 2004) http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ahr/109.2/br_74.html
TC 45.3 (2004): 653-654 http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/technology_and_culture/v045/45.3maines.html
BHM 79.3 (2005): 601-602 http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/bulletin_of_the_history_of_medicine/v079/79.3sappol.html

Related Titles

Related Titles
HEB IdTitleAuthorsPublication Information
Modernism, Technology and the Body: A Cultural Study. Armstrong, Tim. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
heb02528.0001.001 Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917. Bederman, Gail, and Catherine Stimpson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.
Radium Girls, Women and Industrial Health Reform: 1910-1935. Clark, Claudia. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997.
Fit for America: Health, Fitness, Sport and American Society. Green, Harvey. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988.
Amusing the Millions: Coney Island at the Turn of the Century. Kasson, John F. New York: Hill and Wang, 1978.
Houdini, Tarzan and the Perfect Man: The White Male Body and the Challenge of Modernity in America. Kasson, John F. New York: Hill and Wang, 2001.
heb00062.0001.001 The Technology of Orgasm: Hysteria, the Vibrator and Women's Sexual Satisfaction. Maines, Rachel P. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.
When Old Technologies Were New: Thinking about Electric Communication in the Late Nineteenth Century. Marvin, Carolyn. New York: Oxford University Press USA, 1988.
heb00179.0001.001 Electrifying America: Social Meanings of a New Technology, 1880-1940. Nye, David E. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1990.
heb02533.0001.001 The Fordyce Bathhouse, Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas. Petravage, Carol A. Harpers Ferry: National Park Service, 1988.
The Human Motor: Energy, Fatigue and the Origins of Modernity. Rabinbach, Anson. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.
heb02535.0001.001 American Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity from the Revolution to the Modern Era. Rotundo, E. Anthony. New York: Basic Books, 1993.
Shifting Gears: Technology, Literature, Culture in Modernist America. Tichi, Cecelia. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987.
Crusaders for Fitness: The History of American Health Reformers. Whorton, James C. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982.

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