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.