Transatlantic Irritability : Brunonian Sociology, America and Mass Culture in the Nineteenth Century

The widespread influence exerted by the medical theories of Scottish doctor, John Brown, whose eponymously named Brunonianism radically simplified the ideas of his mentor, William Cullen, has not been generally recognised. However, the very simplicity of the Brunonian medical model played a key role in ensuring the dissemination of medical ideas about nervous irritability and the harmful effects of overstimulation in the literary culture of the nineteenth century and shaped early sociological thinking. This chapter suggests the centrality of these medical ideas, as mediated by Brunonianism, to the understanding of Romanticism in the nineteenth century, and argues that Brunonian ideas shaped nineteenth-century thinking about the effects of mass print culture in ways which continue to influence contemporary thinking about the effects of media.