Title The body electric : how strange machines built the modern American / Carolyn Thomas de la Peña

Published New York : New York University Press, ©2003

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Description 1 online resource (xvi, 329 pages) : illustrations Series American history and culture American history and culture (New York University Press) Contents The machine-built body -- Measuring mechanical strength -- Exploring electric limits -- Powering the intimate body -- "Radiomania" limits the energy dream -- Conclusion: the end of an era? Summary Between the years 1850 and 1950, Americans became the leading energy consumers on the planet, expending tremendous physical resources on energy exploration, mental resources on energy exploitation, and monetary resources on energy acquisition. A unique combination of pseudoscientific theories of health and the public's rudimentary understanding of energy created an age in which sources of industrial power seemed capable of curing the physical limitations and ill health that plagued Victorian bodies. Licensed and "quack" physicians alike promoted machines, electricity, and radium as invigorating cures, veritable "fountains of youth" that would infuse the body with energy and push out disease and death.The Body Electric is the first book to place changing ideas about fitness and gender in dialogue with the popular culture of technology. Whether through wearing electric belts, drinking radium water, or lifting mechanized weights, many Americans came to believe that by embracing the nation's rapid march to industrialization, electrification, and "radiomania," their bodies would emerge fully powered. Only by uncovering this belief's passions and products, Thomas de la Peña argues, can we fully understand our culture's twentieth-century energy enthusiasm Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index Notes Print version record Subject Quacks and quackery -- United States -- History -- 19th century Quacks and quackery -- United States -- History -- 20th century Medical instruments and apparatus -- United States -- History -- 19th century Medical instruments and apparatus -- United States -- History -- 20th century Electrotherapeutics -- United States -- History -- 19th century Electrotherapeutics -- United States -- History -- 20th century Electric Stimulation Therapy -- history Exercise Therapy -- history History, 19th Century History, 20th Century MEDICAL -- Pharmacology. Electrotherapeutics Medical instruments and apparatus Quacks and quackery Medische techniek. Kwakzalverij. Elektrotherapie. Elektrostimulatie. United States Verenigde Staten. Genre/Form History Form Electronic book ISBN 081471966X 9780814719664 9780814785492 0814785492

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