14 ms·

> that no train should be allowed to go faster than 50km/h "There was some wonderful stuff about [railway trains] too in the U.S., that women's bodies were not

> that no train should be allowed to go faster than 50km/h "There was some wonderful stuff about [railway trains] too in the U.S., that women's bodies were not designed to go at 50 miles an hour. Our uteruses would fly out of our bodies as they were accelerated to that speed." https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-TEB-2814 https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-TEB-2814

5040 3y ago
The book Spinal Catastrophism has a great section on "railway spine"--really weird stuff. >Of particular interest to me as a Victorianist is Moynihan’s account of “railway spine” or “Erichsen’s disease,” a name for an amorphous set of neurological conditions believed to be caused by the jolting experiences of acceleration during railway travel. When autopsies revealed no somatic sources that could cause such effects like loss of memory, sleep disturbances, or back pain, the condition came under increasing scrutiny as such conditions were being inconsistently claimed by people who were not even present at any railway accidents but were merely witnesses. Used by some to sue the railways and others to claim disability to avoid work, “railway spine” became the center of debates about its veracity, resulting in contrasting theories that modern train travel led to the devolution of the spine itself to its primordial layers or that such conditions were merely another manifestation of hysteria and hypochondria. Given that hysteria was typically associated with women (the disease of the “wandering womb”), “railway spine” became the hysterical condition of men whose traumatic experiences of modernity were leaving them recumbent, as opposed to firm and upright. https://medicalhealthhumanities.com/2021/11/06/notes-on-spinal-catastrophism/ https://medicalhealthhumanities.com/2021/11/06/notes-on-spin...

14 ms·

> that no train should be allowed to go faster than 50km/h "There was some wonderful stuff about [railway trains] too in the U.S., that women's bodies were not

by zikduruqe 3y ago

5040 3y ago
The book Spinal Catastrophism has a great section on "railway spine"--really weird stuff. >Of particular interest to me as a Victorianist is Moynihan’s account of “railway spine” or “Erichsen’s disease,” a name for an amorphous set of neurological conditions believed to be caused by the jolting experiences of acceleration during railway travel. When autopsies revealed no somatic sources that could cause such effects like loss of memory, sleep disturbances, or back pain, the condition came under increasing scrutiny as such conditions were being inconsistently claimed by people who were not even present at any railway accidents but were merely witnesses. Used by some to sue the railways and others to claim disability to avoid work, “railway spine” became the center of debates about its veracity, resulting in contrasting theories that modern train travel led to the devolution of the spine itself to its primordial layers or that such conditions were merely another manifestation of hysteria and hypochondria. Given that hysteria was typically associated with women (the disease of the “wandering womb”), “railway spine” became the hysterical condition of men whose traumatic experiences of modernity were leaving them recumbent, as opposed to firm and upright. https://medicalhealthhumanities.com/2021/11/06/notes-on-spinal-catastrophism/ https://medicalhealthhumanities.com/2021/11/06/notes-on-spin...