'A panoramic history of exhibitions, 1600 - 1862.' Encyclopedic account of every kind of published exhibition in London from the 17th to the 19th centuries. Describes the growth of museums; showmen with strange sights; the eidophusikon; panoramas; dioramas; optical and mechanical shows like the cosmorama, phantasmagoria, magic lantern shows; scientific displays, including the panopticon; wild beast shows; the Great Exhibition; art shows; photography. Fully illustrated in black and white.

The Shows of London

This paper outlines the contours of a historical geography of science. It begins by arguing for the relevance of spatially oriented histories of scientific thought and practice. The paper then considers three different historical geographies of science: those concerned with the places and spaces of science, those that detail the spatial contexts of scientific endeavour, and those that analyse the internal 'cartographies' of scientific theories and methods. The paper concludes with a discussion of other possible avenues of investigation in this field. Scientific knowledge is made in a lot of different places. Does it matter where? Can the location of scientific endeavour make any difference to the conduct of science ? And even more important, can it affect the content of science? In my view the answer to these questions is yes.' So begins David N. Livingstone's meditation on the geographies of science. Livingstone's book is an extended defence of his contention on page 1, although it is probably fair to say that much has already been done to put this particular argument to rest. Livingstone himself, along with a cast of other historical geographers, historians and sociologists, has laboured over the past fifteen years or so to cement the claim that science should be treated like any other form of knowledge; that is, as 'a cultural formation, embedded in wider networks of social relations and political power, and shaped by the local environments in which its practitioners carry out their tasks'. 2 Livingstone has produced a number of papers that have argued for a more spatially sensitive history of science. Acknowledging in 1995 that historians of science were increasingly taking account of spatial issues, he nevertheless noted, somewhat damningly, that historical geographers had 'remained oblivious' to this turn of events. This lacuna was even present, he contended, in geographers' treatment of the history of their own discipline.3

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Introduction: historical geographies of science - places, contexts, cartographies

The expansion of print and the rise of specialist disciplines from the early nineteenth century are usually associated with a decline in informed conversation about the sciences and other forms of learning among the aristocracy, gentry and professional classes. Yet an extensive body of evidence suggests that the sciences remained a vital part of conversational culture in England at least through the 1860s. Ultimately, however, discussing specialist knowledge at parties became condemned as 'talking shop'. This was not so much the result of changes within science, as is usually assumed, but was instead a byproduct of the increasing differentiation of roles throughout society. By the early twentieth century, scientific practitioners had created new places for broad-ranging talk about their subjects, most characteristically in the tea rooms attached to university laboratories. With the English, conversation is a languid silence broken by occasional monosyllables,

How scientific conversation became shop talk

This book examines the historic lunatic asylum from an interdisciplinary perspective, employing methods drawn from archaeology, social geography, and history, to create a holistic view of the built heritage of the asylum as a distinctive building type. This study combines critical analysis of the architecture, material remains, and historical documentary sources for lunatic asylums in England and Ireland.

An archaeology of lunacy: Managing madness in early nineteenth-century asylums

In the final third of the nineteenth century, British asylums were backwaters. Custodians of the insane but curative failures, they lagged far behind the successes of their Continental counterparts and colleagues in other branches of medicine. Yet between 1866 and 1876, a British asylum – the West Riding Lunatic Asylum, under the direction of James Crichton-Browne – became one of the most active and important centres of scientific research in the world. This thesis is about that asylum – long recognised but little studied until now – and its pivotal role in the development of the modern sciences of mind and brain in Victorian Britain. Drawing on a wealth of published and archival sources, the thesis reconstructs the working practices of the asylum, explaining the intellectual and institutional background to its activities and describing its legacy in the field of medical science. In doing so, four new points are made. Firstly, it is argued that, through Crichton-Browne, the discredited ideas of phrenology had a more tangible link with the modern brain sciences than has previously been recognised. Secondly, it is explained how and why the ostensibly unpromising site of a Victorian asylum was made into a flourishing school of research. Thirdly, it is shown how the novel doctrine of cerebral localisation – the theory of localised brain functions – came to be fundamentally associated with the asylum’s programme of study. And fourthly, it is contended that the disciplinary split which occurred between neurology and psychiatry in the late nineteenth century was a legacy of the asylum’s work.

The West Riding Lunatic Asylum and the making of the modern brain sciences in the nineteenth century

(2003). Conversaziones and the Experience of Science in Victorian England. Journal of Victorian Culture: Vol. 8, No. 2, pp. 208-230.

Samuel J.M.M. Alberti

Papers

Conversaziones and the Experience of Science in Victorian England