The Creepy Factor in Victorian Medicine

To create strange and creepy Victorian fiction, a writer needs to be aware of the major fears and anxieties of Victorians that can be played upon. A huge anxiety during the Victorian era revolved around the advances and continued failures of medicine. Much of this will sound like the workings of horror fiction, but I use this type of information in my books not because they are frightening but to create a strange atmosphere where anything could happen.

photo credit: Robert T Bell via photopin cc

During the first half of the nineteenth century through the Civil War, medicine was a frightening concept because doctors lacked knowledge of anesthesia and believed that bloodletting, purging, and puking were useful tools, so most people who were treated were merely tortured until they died. Without the knowledge of sanitation and germs, those who survived treatment often contracted some type of blood pathogen and died anyway. 

Not to mention with little means to license doctors, there were quacks everywhere! By the mid-nineteenth century, most people were suspicious of doctors and would resort to home or folk remedies before calling upon a “professional.” Many of these issues were addressed toward the end of the century when medical licensing became enforced. However, this also eradicated midwives and other knowledgeable healers.

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The end of the century was also blessed with the discovery of germs, sanitation procedures and most important anesthesia, particularly chloroform. Several useful pain killers were also in use, particularly morphine and a diluted mixture of opium call laudanum. However, some were frightened of addiction and avoided these medicines, and some did in fact become addicted. The effects of addiction were played upon in Charles Lutwidge Dodgson wrote Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Also in the late nineteenth century, the advent of electricity began to change medicine. Doctors conducted experiments and rural doctors went ahead and started to charge for coursing low levels of electric current through the body in an effort to cure a variety of ailments.

The New York State Senate also decided to use electricity for the death penalty in 1890. After much research into various killing practices, a death commission decided electricity would be a humane for of death at least more humane than hanging. Even though an overdose of morphine would kill a human being by putting them into a deep sleep, the council passed over it for fear that it would cause society anxieties regarding the new hypodermic needle. Although the very first electrocution ended with a burnt corpse and a room of horrified journalists, doctors, and scientists, within a month those same individuals rallied behind the electric chair in the press. The story of the first electrocution is incredibly interesting, which is why it’s the topic of my second novel TheBinding of Saint Barbara.

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Speaking of death, this was another area of growing research and fear as doctors began to express concerns that the absence of a heart beat might not equal death. With the invention of an electrical machine to jolt the heart back into a state of pumping, the question of at what point is someone dead became a huge topic. Many feared being buried alive while others immediately thought of the fact that some people may have been murdered from an autopsy after merely having a fainting spell. This became a media spectacle after a well-known magician was pronounced dead and autopsied despite a note in his pocket explaining that he was prone to hypnotic episodes where he may appear dead. Frightening possibilities of electricity and death were evident in Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein. 

On the fringes of medicine also came psychology, a field born in the nineteenth century that created entire new ways of explaining why certain individuals were the way they were and providing a curable explanation for abnormal behavior and lifestyle choices including lesbianism, homosexuality, and hyper-sexuality. With discoveries regarding the inner workings of the human mind came anxieties displayed in Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which suggested concerns of criminality lurking inside the minds of any and all.

Women were a large area of focus for the new brain medicine as doctors coined the mental illness of hysteria an explanation for female emotional episodes, depression, and frustration. Unfortunately, much of the treatment could cause further insanity through sensory deprivation, isolation, and even surgery to remove the uterus. Doctors and psychologists theorized that female hysteria was caused by the detachment of the uterus which then floated around the body irritating various functions. This was just one of many odd and absurd theories surrounding hysteria.

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Although women were targeted for mental disturbances, anyone could be condoned insane, and there certainly were people who were mentally ill. However, nineteenth century hospitals and mental institutions were truly frightening places and without any certainties about how to diagnose mental illness, all sorts of people were sent there. Dorothea Dix was a huge proponent of prison and asylum reform, witnessing and testifying to patients being locked in closets and beaten into submission. The horror of insane asylums was brought to life in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

This is really just a brief overview. I'm not even going into Victorian dentistry!

For more information check out these websites:

BBC Victorian Medicine from Fluke to Theory

Victorian Medicine Resource

Antique Shop Image of Victorian Electric Shock Machine

Health and Medicine in the 19th Century - More on use of Electricity

The History Channel's Information Page on Dorothea Dix and her Asylum Reform

Dorothea Dix's Actual Reports of Atrocities Witnessed in Asylums

Comments: How do you think you can use this information in your story?

About Stephanie Carroll
Stephanie Carroll is the author of A White Room and "Forget Me Not" featured in Legacy: An Anthology. She blogs about magical realism, her research into the Victorian Era and Gilded Age, writing, and life in general at www.stephaniecarroll.net and at The Unhinged Historian. She also founded Unhinged and Empowered, a blog for Navy wives and girlfriends.

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