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SUMMARY:Dr Lauder Lindsay's lemmings: mad beasts and misanthropy in a Vict
 orian asylum - Richard Barnett (Department of History and Philosophy of Sc
 ience)
DTSTART:20091022T153000Z
DTEND:20091022T170000Z
UID:TALK20366@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Alex Broadbent
DESCRIPTION:If you read the DNB entry on William Lauder Lindsay\, you migh
 t be forgiven for concluding that the high point of this Scottish physicia
 n's career was his _Memoir on the Spermogones and Pycnides of Lichens_\, p
 ublished in 1870. But in _Mind in the Lower Animals in Health and Disease_
 \, written at the end of his life in 1879\, Lindsay ranged across continen
 ts and millennia\, pillaging writers from Pliny to Darwin and ushering his
  readers into a dark\, destabilised world of simian neurosis and reptilian
  psychosis\, suicidal scorpions and deranged\, Prufockian lemmings. In thi
 s talk I want to grab _Mind in the Lower Animals_ by its provocatively twi
 tching tail. I will argue that Lindsay's sentimental anthropomorphism\, an
 d his engagement with both evolutionary theory and Spiritualism\, marked h
 im out as distinctively Victorian\, responding to the hopes and anxieties 
 of the British nineteenth century.
LOCATION:Seminar Room 2\, History and Philosophy of Science\, Department o
 f
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