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 INTERMEDIAL
PERFORMANCE AND
POLITICS IN THE
PUBLIC SPHERE
EDITED BY KATIA ARFARA,
ANETA MANCEWICZ, RALF REMSHARDT
Avant-Gardes in Performance

Series Editor
Sarah Bay-Cheng
Bowdoin College
Brunswick, ME, USA
Despite the many acts of denial and resistance embodied in the phrase
“death of the avant-garde,” interest in experimental, innovative, and
politically radical performance continues to animate theatre and perfor-
mance studies. For all their attacks upon tradition and critical institutions,
the historical and subsequent avant-gardes remain critical touchstones for
continued research in the disciplines of theatre, performance studies, film
and cinema studies, media study, art history, visual studies, dance, music,
and nearly every area of the performing arts. “Avant-Gardes in
Performance” features exciting new scholarship on radical and avant-
garde performance. By engaging with the charged term “avant-garde,”
we consider performance practices and events that are formally avant-
garde, as defined by experimentation and breaks with traditional struc-
tures, practices, and content; historically avant-garde, defined within the
global aesthetic movements of the early twentieth century, including
modernism and its many global aftermaths; and politically radical, defined
by identification with extreme political movements on the right and left
alike. The series brings together close attention to a wide range of inno-
vative performances with critical analyses that challenge conventional
academic practices.

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14783
 Katia Arfara
Aneta Mancewicz
Ralf Remshardt
Editors

Intermedial
Performance and
Politics in the Public
Sphere
Editors
Katia Arfara Aneta Mancewicz
Onassis Cultural Center University of Birmingham
Athens, Greece Birmingham, UK

Ralf Remshardt
School of Theatre & Dance
University of Florida
Gainesville, FL, USA

Avant-Gardes in Performance
ISBN 978-3-319-75342-3    ISBN 978-3-319-75343-0 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75343-0

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018937671

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in
this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher
nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material
contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains
neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Cover credit: Stavros Petropoulos / Onassis Cultural Centre

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer

International Publishing AG part of Springer Nature.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
 Acknowledgments

The editors wish to acknowledge with gratitude the courtesies extended

by the Onassis Cultural Centre, Athens (OCC) and its Fast Forward
Festival (FFF) that made the original symposium possible from which the
book project sprang. Particular appreciation goes to Marina Troupi for her
tireless work in coordinating the symposium and securing images for this
book. Warm thanks are also due the artists, groups, and organizations who
have shared their work with us in many settings, chief among them the
FFF, as well as the photographers who generously gave their permission to
reprint pictures of events and productions.

v
 Contents

1 Introduction: In and Out: Intermedial Practices

in the New Public Sphere   1
Katia Arfara, Aneta Mancewicz, and Ralf Remshardt

2 Intermedial Theatre in a Mediatized Culture and Society  15

Chiel Kattenbelt

3 Intermedial Performance as a Public Sphere  27

Aneta Mancewicz

4 Mirrors of Public Space: An Interview with

Dries Verhoeven  43
Liesbeth Groot Nibbelink

5 Democracy with a Toothbrush: Protest, Performance,

and the Public Sphere  61
Christopher Balme

6 Refugee Theatre in the (Inter)medial Matrix: Die

Schutzbefohlenen and the Limits of Theatre
as Public Sphere  73
Ralf Remshardt

vii
viii Contents

7 ‘Heterotopian Transformations’: An Interview with

Akira Takayama  91
Natsuko Odate

8 Troubled Feedback Loop: The Rise and Fall of Estonia

by Theatre NO99 107
Riina Oruaas

9 Between Art, Society, Representation, and Subjectivity:

Wojtek Ziemilski’s Prolog 125
Anna R. Burzyńska

10 ‘The Intimacy of Public Space’: An Interview with Kris

Verdonck 143
Kristof van Baarle

11 Empire Strikes Back: The 2014 Maidan Revolution

in Ukraine, Postmodern Spectatorship, and the Battle
of Perception in the Public Sphere 157
Olga Danylyuk

12 The Politics of the Digital Public Sphere: On Rabih

Mroué’s The Pixelated Revolution 173
Katia Arfara

13 ‘Almost Like a Teaching Play’: Daniel Wetzel/Rimini

Protokoll in a Conversation with Florian Malzacher 191
Florian Malzacher

14 Re-Materialising the Theatrical Public Sphere Through

Intermediality in Grass Stage’s World Factory 209
Zheyu Wei
 Contents 
   ix

15 Intermediating Immanence: On Ho Tzu Nyen’s

Ten Thousand Tigers 229
Mi You

16 ‘Reality is the Best Scenario’: An Interview with BERLIN 245

Kurt Vanhoutte and Charlotte De Somviele

Index 259
 Notes on Contributors

Katia Arfara is the Theatre and Dance Artistic Director of the Onassis
Cultural Centre in Athens (Greece) There she founded the Fast Forward
Festival, which commissions socially engaged public works, in 2014. She
holds an MA in theatre studies (Athens University) and a PhD in art his-
tory (Sorbonne University). Her essays have appeared in various journals
and critical anthologies. Dr Arfara is the author of the book Théâtralités
contemporaines (2011) and the editor of the special issue ‘Scènes en tran-
sition-Balkans et Grèce’ for Théâtre/Public (2016). She is a member of the
Prize Council for 2016–2018 Vera List Center Prize for Art and Politics.
Christopher Balme holds the chair in theatre studies at LMU Munich
(Germany). His publications include Decolonizing the Stage: Theatrical
syncretism and postcolonial drama (1999); Pacific Performances:
Cultural Encounter in the South Seas (2007);
Theatricality and Cross-­
Cambridge Introduction to Theatre Studies (2008); The Theatrical Public
Sphere (2014). He is principal investigator of the ERC Advanced Grant
‘Developing Theatre: Building Expert Networks for Theatre in Emerging
Countries after 1945’.
BERLIN is a Belgian performance group that was founded in 2003 by
Bart Baele and Yves Degryse together with Caroline Rochlitz. They started
the series Holocene with the performances Jerusalem, Iqaluit, Bonanza,
Moscow, and Zvizdal. Currently, BERLIN is producing a new cycle, Horror
Vacui, of which Tagfish, Land’s End, and Perhaps All The Dragons are the
first three episodes. Focusing on a specific research question, the company
engages different media depending on the content of the project. In 2013,

xi
xii Notes on Contributors

BERLIN was awarded a Total Theatre Award for Innovation,

Experimentation & Playing with Form at the Edinburgh International
Festival, and in 2016 the Flemish Cultural Prize for Performing Arts.
Anna R. Burzyńska is assistant professor at the department of theatre at
Jagiellonian University (Poland) and a theatre critic. She is editor of the
Didaskalia theatre journal and has published the books Mechanika cudu
(on Polish avant-garde drama, 2005), The Classics and the Troublemakers:
Theatre Directors from Poland (2008), Maska twarzy (on Stanisław
Grochowiak’s plays, 2011), and Małe dramaty (on Stanisław Grochowiak’s
poetry, 2012). As dramaturg and curator, she has collaborated with Stefan
Kaegi (Rimini Protokoll), Lars Jan (Early Morning Opera), Barbara
Wysocka, Goethe Institut, and Cricoteka—the Centre for the
Documentation of the Art of Tadeusz Kantor.
Olga Danylyuk is a curator of Theatre Lab in ArtArsenal in Kiev
(Ukraine), researcher, and theatre director. Her PhD thesis, completed at
the RCSSD Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (UK) under the
title ‘Virtually True.’ Intermedial Strategies in the Staging of War Conflict,
explores the relation between art and politics in the form of war conflicts
and reconsiders mainstream narratives of war representations. Olga con-
tinues her research by conducting fieldwork in the war zone in Eastern
Ukraine. Currently, she is a Research Fellow at Global Europe Centre,
School of Politics & International Relations, University of Kent (UK) and
Research Fellow/Member at the Law and Theory Lab, University of
Westminster (UK).
Charlotte De Somviele obtained a Master’s degree in Theatre and Film
Studies at the University of Antwerp (Belgium). She worked in Berlin as
an assistant dramaturg for Martin Nachbar and Jeroen Peeters and as a
dramaturg for Johan Leysen/Kasemattentheater (Luxembourg) and Kris
Verdonck/A Two Dogs Company (Brussels). Currently, she works as a
teaching assistant at the Department of Theatre and Film Studies,
University of Antwerp, and as a freelance dance critic for, among others,
De Standaard. She is also co-editor-in-chief of the performing arts maga-
zine Etcetera (www.e-tcetera.be).
Liesbeth Groot Nibbelink is lecturer and researcher in Theatre Studies
at the Media and Culture Studies Department of Utrecht University (The
Netherlands), and coordinator of the Master’s programme in Contemporary
Theatre, Dance, and Dramaturgy. Her research interests include drama-
 Notes on Contributors 
   xiii

turgy, scenography, site-specific performance, and spatial theory. Liesbeth

is co-founder of the Dutch Platform-Scenography, an open source plat-
form for scenographers and dramaturgs. In 2015 she successfully defended
her PhD Research, entitled Nomadic Theatre: Staging Movement and
Mobility in Contemporary Performance (cum laude). She has published in
Contemporary Theatre Review, Performance Research and in Mapping
Intermediality in Theatre and Performance (ed. Bay-­Cheng et al., 2010).
Chiel Kattenbelt is Associate Professor in Intermediality and Media
Comparison in the Department of Media and Culture Studies at Utrecht
University (The Netherlands). In teaching as well as in research, his fields
of interest are theatre and media theory, intermediality and media com-
parison, and aesthetics and semiotics. He is co-founder and former conve-
ner of the working group Intermediality in Theatre and Performance
under the auspices of the International Federation for Theatre Research
(IFTR) and board member of the International Society for Intermedial
Studies (ISIS). He has co-edited Intermediality in Theatre and Performance
(2006) and Mapping Intermediality in Performance (2010), which were
also initiated by the IFTR working group.
Florian Malzacher is a performing arts curator, dramaturg, and writer.
From 2013 to 2017 he was artistic director of Impulse Theatre Festival
(Germany) and from 2006 to 2012 co-programmer of steirischer herbst
festival in Graz (Austria). As a dramaturg he has worked with artists like
Rimini Protokoll, Lola Arias, and Nature Theater of Oklahoma. He
curated or co-curated numerous projects, performative conferences, mara-
thons, and so on, and is editor or co-editor of books on theatre companies
like Forced Entertainment and Rimini Protokoll. Among his latest publi-
cations are Not Just a Mirror. Looking for the Political Theatre of Today
(2015), and Empty Stages, Crowded Rooms. Performativity as Curatorial
Strategy (2017).
Aneta Mancewicz is a Lecturer in Drama and Theatre Arts at the
University of Birmingham (UK). Her articles on Shakespearean perfor-
mance, intermediality, and European theatre have appeared in Literature
Compass, The Shakespearean International Yearbook, Slavic and East
European Performance, Forum Modernes Theater, and Multicultural
Shakespeare. She is the author of Intermedial Shakespeares on European
Stages (2014) and Biedny Hamlet [Poor Hamlet] (2010). She is a former
co-convener of the Intermediality in Theatre and Performance working
group of the IFTR.
xiv Notes on Contributors

Natsuko Odate has been managing many leading Japanese contempo-

rary artists since 2000, including Nobuyoshi Araki, Yasumasa Morimura,
Emiko Kasahara, Miwa Yanagi, and Hikaru Fujii. She has also served as an
editor of the online magazine ART iT since 2010. She was a Curatorial
Associate of the Yokohama Triennale 2014. Her other art exhibitions and
events include Miwa Yanagi: Windswept Woman—The Old Girls’ Troupe
(Venice Biennale, Japan Pavilion, 2008), Yasumasa Morimura: Theater of
Self (Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, 2013), Nobuyoshi Araki: Ojo
Shashu (Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, Niigata City Art Museum,
Shiseido Gallery, et al., 2014), Optional Art Activity/Letters (Take
Ninagawa, Tokyo, 2017).
Riina Oruaas is Lecturer and PhD candidate in theatre research at the
Institute of Cultural Research, University of Tartu (Estonia). Her PhD
thesis topic is Postmodernist Aesthetics in Estonian Theatre. Her research is
focused on transforming aesthetics in Estonian theatre since the 1990s,
including dramaturgy, performing, scenography, and new media. She was
a visiting scholar at the University of Surrey in 2015 and chaired the
Estonian Association of Theatre Researchers and Theatre Critics from
2012 to 2015. She co-edited an essay collection Views on Contemporary
Estonian Theatre (original title: Vaateid Eesti nüüdisteatrile), University of
Tartu Press, 2016.
Ralf Remshardt is Professor of Theatre at the University of Florida
(USA) where he headed the graduate programme in acting. He attended
universities in Munich and Berlin, Germany, and received a PhD in
Dramatic Art at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Remshardt
has worked in professional and university theatres as a director, translator,
and dramaturg. His publications have appeared in many journals and
edited collections. His book, Staging the Savage God: The Grotesque in
Performance, was published in 2004. He also co-produced a documentary
film about New York Hispanic theatre in 2015. He is past co-­convener of
the Intermediality in Theatre and Performance working group of the
IFTR.
Akira Takayama is a Japanese director who founded Port B in 2002. He
develops projects that take theatre outside its existing frameworks to con-
nect collaboratively with other media. He works to update what he calls
the ‘architecture of theatre’ by expanding the conventions of theatre and
the audience in society and urban space. His audience-centred work is an
 Notes on Contributors 
   xv

attempt to create theatre beyond the physical theatre space as a new social
platform and function. In recent years he has been developing work within
a wide range of fields, including tourism, urban planning, art, literature,
fashion, and mass media, using ideas from theatre to cultivate new possi-
bilities across a variety of mediums and genres.
Kristof van Baarle is a research scholar at Ghent University (Belgium)
with a PhD fellowship from the Research Foundation—Flanders (FWO).
His research focuses on critical posthumanism in the contemporary per-
forming arts, the work of theatre maker and visual artist Kris Verdonck
and the philosophy of Giorgio Agamben. He also works as a dramaturg for
Kris Verdonck/A Two Dogs Company and is an editor of the Belgian
theatre journal Etcetera.
Kurt Vanhoutte is professor of Theatre and Performance Studies at the
University of Antwerp (Belgium), where he is also the director of the
Research Centre for Visual Poetics (www.visualpoetics.be), a research
group in theatre, film, and related artistic media. Vanhoutte’s research
investigates processes of intermediality emerging under the cultural and
technological conditions of modernity and late modernity. His interest
more specifically concerns the effects of science and technologies on nar-
rative and stylistic characteristics of performance art as well as the ensuing
impact on notions of theatricality, performance, and text. His most recent
publications introduce a media-archaeological approach to the study of
theatre (www.parsnetwork.org).
Kris Verdonck is the artistic director of A Two Dogs Company in
Belgium. He studied visual arts, architecture, and theatre and this training
is evident in his work. His creations are positioned in the transit zone
between visual arts and theatre, between installation and performance,
between dance and architecture. As a theatre maker and visual artist, he
can look back over a wide variety of projects, including most recently,
ISOS (2015) and CONVERSATIONS (at the end of the world) (2017).
Dries Verhoeven is an international theatre maker and visual artist from
the Netherlands. Verhoeven creates installations, performances and hap-
penings in museums, on location, and in the public spaces of cities. On the
boundary between performance and installation art, he critically investi-
gates the relationships between the spectators, performers, everyday real-
ity, and art, often with a special focus on the spectator as an accomplice in
the events. In recent years, the current crisis mind-set and the influence of
xvi Notes on Contributors

digital media on interpersonal relationships in particular inspired projects

such as No Man’s Land (2008–2014), Ceci n’est pas (2013–2016), Songs
for Thomas Piketty (2016), Guilty Landscapes (2016–2017), and
Phobiarama (2017).
Zheyu Wei is a teacher in the Department of Drama, Film and Television
Literature at Guangxi Arts University, China. A Trinity Long Room Hub
Graduate Fellow (2013–2017), Wei received his PhD from Trinity College
Dublin in 2017 and his doctoral thesis was entitled Post-Cold War
Experimental Theatre of China: Staging Globalization and Its Resistance.
Besides conducting research on theatre and cosmopolitanism, multi-media
performances, and comedy, he also translates plays, one of which was
Spanish playwright Juan Mayorga’s Himmelweg (Way to Heaven).
Daniel Wetzel is a member of the theatre company Rimini Protokoll,
founded in 2000 in Giessen and resident at HAU Berlin (Germany). The
company works in the realm of theatre, sound and radio plays, film, and
installation. It is well known for developing its own formats for documen-
tary theatre, and it has exerted strong influence on the international the-
atre scene in recent years. Each project is developed through an intense
exploratory process, focusing on the continuous development of the tools
of the theatre to allow unusual perspectives on reality. Since 2000, Rimini
Protokoll have brought their ‘theatre of experts’ to the stage and into
urban spaces, interpreted by non-professional actors whom they called
‘experts’ because they are not supposed to act but to share.
Mi You is a curator, researcher, and academic staff at Academy of Media
Arts, Cologne (Germany). Her long-term research and curatorial project
takes the Silk Road as a figuration for deep-time, de-centralized and
nomadic imageries. She has curated a series of performative p
­ rogrammes
at Asian Culture Center Theater in Gwangju, South Korea, and the inau-
gural Ulaanbaatar International Media Art Festival, Mongolia (2016).
Her academic interests are in performance philosophy and science and
technology studies. Her writings appear in Performance Research, PARSE,
MaHKUscript: Journal of Fine Art Research, among others. She is fellow
of Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (Germany), and serves as direc-
tor of Arthub (Shanghai) and advisor to The Institute for Provocation
(Beijing).
 List of Figures

Fig. 3.1 No Man’s Land. Dries Verhoeven. Photo: Stavros

Petropoulos. Courtesy Onassis Cultural Centre/Fast Forward
Festival 1, Athens 35
Fig. 3.2 No Man’s Land. Dries Verhoeven. Photo: Stavros Petropoulos.
Courtesy Onassis Cultural Centre/Fast Forward
Festival 1, Athens 37
Fig. 4.1 No Man’s Land. Dries Verhoeven. Photo: Stavros Petropoulos.
Courtesy Onassis Cultural Centre/Fast Forward
Festival 1, Athens 47
Fig. 4.2 Ceci n’est pas. Dries Verhoeven. Photo: Willem Popelier 53
Fig. 4.3 Phobiarama. Dries Verhoeven. Photo: Willem Popelier 57
Fig. 6.1 Die Schutzbefohlenen. Thalia Theater, Hamburg.
Photo: Krafft Angerer 78
Fig. 6.2 Sanctuary. Photo: Andreas Simopoulos. Courtesy Onassis
Cultural Centre/Fast Forward Festival 4, Athens 87
Fig. 7.1 Heterotopia Piraeus. Akira Takayama. Photo: Vaggelis Lainas.
Courtesy Onassis Cultural Centre/Fast Forward Festival 4,
Athens93
Fig. 7.2 McDonald’s Radio University. Akira Takayama.
Photo: Masahiro Hasanuma 99
Fig. 8.1 The Rise and Fall of Estonia. Theatre NO99, Tallinn.
Photo: Okeiko Oo 117
Fig. 9.1 Prolog. Wojtek Ziemilski. Photo: Yulka Wilam 135

xvii
xviii List of Figures

Fig. 10.1 STILLS. Kris Verdonck. Photo: Stavros Petropoulos. Courtesy

Onassis Cultural Centre/Fast Forward Festival 2, Athens 145
Fig. 10.2 ISOS (Two Tawnies). Kris Verdonck. Photo: Kris Verdonck/
A Two Dogs Company 150
Fig. 12.1 The Pixelated Revolution. Rabih Mroué. Photo: Olaf Pascheit.
Courtesy the artist and Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Beirut/Hamburg 177
Fig. 12.2 The Pixelated Revolution. Rabih Mroué. Photo: Olaf Pascheit.
Courtesy the artist and Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Beirut/Hamburg 183
Fig. 13.1 Situation Rooms. Rimini Protokoll. Photo: Pigi Psimenou 194
Fig. 13.2 Weltklimakonferenz. Rimini Protokoll. Photo: Benno Tobler 197
Fig. 14.1 World Factory. Grass Stage. Photo: Liu Nian 222
Fig. 15.1 Ten Thousand Tigers. Ho Tzu Nyen. Photo: Ken Cheong 231
Fig. 15.2 Japanese soldier depicted in Ten Thousand Tigers. Ho Tzu
Nyen. Photo: Ken Cheong 237
Fig. 16.1 Jerusalem. BERLIN. Photo: BERLIN 248
Fig. 16.2 Zvizdal, BERLIN. Photo: Frederik Buyckx 254
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction: In and Out: Intermedial

Practices in the New Public Sphere

Katia Arfara, Aneta Mancewicz, and Ralf Remshardt

We are now almost two turbulent decades into the twenty-first century,
years marked by the advance of populism and nationalism in many Western
and Eastern European countries (including Hungary, Poland, Romania,
and Ukraine). These developments have brought into sharp relief chal-
lenges to the vaunted notion of the public sphere, which was first proposed
by German social philosopher Jürgen Habermas in the early 1960s.
Transformations of the public sphere and its attendant politics have urged
performance artists to unlock alternative modes of expression, which has
provoked a shift in aesthetics but also in curatorial practices. This has
revealed increasingly complex interactions between performance, politics,
and the public sphere.

K. Arfara (*)
Onassis Cultural Centre, Athens, Greece
e-mail: k.arfara@sgt.gr
A. Mancewicz
University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK
e-mail: a.mancewicz@bham.ac.uk
R. Remshardt
University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA
e-mail: rremshardt@arts.ufl.edu

© The Author(s) 2018 1

K. Arfara et al. (eds.), Intermedial Performance and Politics
in the Public Sphere, Avant-Gardes in Performance,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75343-0_1
2 K. ARFARA ET AL.

One of the epicentres of this violent transformation has been in Greece,

where the pressure of globalization and a regime of forced austerity have
created often-vehement public protests. Within that volatile context, in
Athens in May 2014, the Intermediality Group of the International
Federation for Theatre Research (IFTR) and the Onassis Cultural Centre
(OCC) organized the symposium ‘Media, Politics, Performance: Intermedial
Theatre in the Public Sphere.’ The symposium ran in the framework of the
first iteration of the OCC’s Fast Forward Festival (FFF). A significant num-
ber of projects that are discussed in this collection of essays and interviews
were produced by this international interdisciplinary festival, which annually
commissions site-specific works in public or private spaces privileging inter-
actions and exchanges between various cultures and communities. More
specifically, the FFF is developing a critique of the heterogeneous urban
landscape of Athens by questioning the role of the curator, the artist, and
the spectator in the current decade which saw grave economic and political
crises, alongside the rise of populism and xenophobia.
The distinctive feature of this book is that it examines multiple ways in
which interdisciplinary artistic practices are contributing globally to
counter-­hegemonic discourses and proposing alternative arrangements of
the dominant social order while giving visibility to those who are silenced
and marginalized. Unlike previous conceptions of the liberal and bour-
geois division between the gendered private and the politically connoted
public sphere (Lorey 2015b, 78), this publication problematizes the rela-
tionship between the public and the private sphere within a historic and
social context, drawing our attention to the convergences and divergences
on the international scene. Though the volume does not claim to be geo-
graphically exhaustive, its wide-ranging examples are variously drawn from
the ‘mature’ Western European democracies (The Netherlands, Belgium,
Germany), countries formerly within the Communist bloc (Poland,
Ukraine), the Middle East (Lebanon/Syria), and Asia (Japan, China,
Singapore), and many of the artists are active transnationally.

Trouble in the Public Sphere

The original title of Habermas’s influential treatise, Structural
Transformations of the Public Sphere (which was published in 1962 in
German, but only saw its translation into English in 1989, going off
much like a delayed depth charge in the political discourses of the
Anglophone world) could not be more apropos to the rapidly shifting
 INTRODUCTION: IN AND OUT: INTERMEDIAL PRACTICES IN THE NEW… 3

configurations of social, political, and medial formations of the current

moment. And yet its fundamental assumptions have been forced to retreat
under the assault of those very structural transformations. The neat, even
precious, dialectical structure of the bourgeois public sphere envisioned
in Habermas’s ideal-typical analysis has yielded to a smudged ideological
landscape in which counterfactual information or ‘fake’ news circulates
through a contentious array of social and mainstream media. Often, these
compete and collude with commercial interests masquerading as demo-
cratic institutions to shape social perception and political action in a
decentred, globalized, cloud-based medial space in which the vectors of
authority and responsibility have become blurred or wholly invisible.
Habermas’s original theorization of the public sphere as ‘first of all a
realm of our social life in which something approaching public opinion
can be formed’ (1974 [1964], 49) assumed that the rational exchange of
information between polity and state and the subsequent configuration of
political institutions and manifestations of popular will in the post-feudal
nation state was a normative, though not transhistorical, development. Of
the many objections that may be raised, one is that the same mechanisms
of social consensus-building can be used to create conformity or complic-
ity. Public communication is vulnerable to co-optation as a way to exercise
what Pierre Bourdieu calls social control through ‘symbolic power,’ which
is ‘that invisible power which can be exercised only with the complicity of
those who do not want to know that they are subject to it or even that
they themselves exercise it’ (1991, 164).
The notion of this unitary space of public debate now seems quaint and
reductive as well as imbricated with the specific identity formation of a
Western European bourgeoisie. Strong critical voices have been raised more
recently for instance by Nancy Fraser, who has castigated the blindness of
Habermasian theory to underlying structures of economic inequality and
masculinism and has introduced the idea of ‘counterpublics’ (1990). From
the vantage point of the present, it is apparent that we must conceive of
the public sphere in terms of multiplicity, or, as Janelle Reinelt observes,
‘as a network or a rhizome with a plurality of entry points and, indeed, of
publics’ (2011, 18).
However, even a plurality of public opinions formed in a multiplicity of
public spheres is not assured of creating an efficacious thrust for political
action in the interest of constituting a just and stable social order. Political
theorist Chantal Mouffe (whose work is a frequent touchstone for
­contributions in this book) indeed rejects the very idea of liberal pluralism
4 K. ARFARA ET AL.

in favour of what she calls an ‘agonistic’ view of the political process in

which hierarchies of power and hegemonic interests are not subsumed or
erased but revealed to be ineradicable, a pluralism that ‘implies the impos-
sibility of the final reconciliation of all views’ (2013a, 130). It is not by
coincidence that Mouffe’s agonistic conception of the public sphere(s)
draws on the Greek principle of agon that undergirded both the aetiology
of Attic democracy and the structure of ancient drama and dramatic
contests.
But if performances in the Greek public arena were designed to affirm
the existing authority of the state and the social order by purging dissent
through katharsis, for Mouffe art, and performance in particular, is one of
the most potent cultural practices for fostering forms of identity that resist
incorporation into the neoliberal order. In her view, art and politics share
mutual discursive dimensions, and one crucial aspect of promoting ‘radical
democracy’ is to establish a ‘chain of equivalence’ (99) between levels of
social struggles or, one could say, to see politics aesthetically through the
lens of metaphor. Not incidentally, such politically productive, even jar-
ring, revelation of equivalence is found in many of the practices discussed
in this volume, from the documentary practices of the Antwerp-based
BERLIN group addressed in their interview with Kurt Vanhoutte and
Charlotte De Somviele to the game-based participatory performances of
the Swiss-German group Rimini Protokoll such as Weltklimakonferenz,
detailed in Florian Malzacher’s conversation with Daniel Wetzel.
Configuring the public sphere as an aesthetic problem is likewise intrin-
sic to Jacques Rancière’s critique of the problematic ideological nature of
any social consensus or conformity. His central term dissensus points first
of all to a perceived discontinuity or rupture within the structure of social
reality or ‘being together.’ Aesthetic responses (to fiction or performance)
are, in Rancière’s view principally individual responses of ‘dis-­identification’
with the given order and acts of intellectual emancipation which only sec-
ondarily become political as they allow for ‘new modes of political con-
struction of common object and new possibilities of collective enunciation’
(2009, 72–73).

Art and/as Politics

Such collective enunciation, an interweaving of theory and the making of
art, organizes this collection of essays and interviews, which focuses on
major companies and artists from Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. It
 INTRODUCTION: IN AND OUT: INTERMEDIAL PRACTICES IN THE NEW… 5

examines the recent uprisings in the public sphere, while critically

approaching artistic strategies of interconnections and exchanges between
various cultures and communities. As Mouffe points out, art and politics
are not defined in terms of two separately constituted fields, ‘art on one
side and politics on the other, between which a relation needs to be estab-
lished’ (2013a, 91). Politics refers to an ensemble of practices, discourses,
and institutions that seek to establish a certain order and to organize
human coexistence in conditions that are always potentially in conflict.
The artistic practices examined in this collection aim to contribute to the
questioning and the unsettling of the neoliberal hegemony (what Mouffe
in reference to Antonio Gramsci calls ‘common sense’), precisely in the
‘places’ where this hegemony is constructed, that is in the domain of the
public sphere. The relations between art and politics are articulated within
the public realm where we are exposed to the presence of others. Thus, at
the heart of this book lies a rather ‘agonistic’ conception of the public
sphere as a platform where different and oppositional subjectivities, poli-
tics, and economies are confronted. The intermedial practices examined
here can potentially introduce spectators to a ‘radical democratic citizen-
ship,’ which according to Mouffe does not aim at ‘a neutral conception of
citizenship applicable to all members of the political community,’ but has
the power to challenge them into an active participation in the political
and social process (Mouffe 2005, 6–7).
The distinction between private and public sphere is certainly main-
tained in the same way as the distinction between individual and citizen;
nevertheless, these distinctions ‘do not correspond to discrete separate
spheres. We cannot say: here end my duties as a citizen and begins my
freedom as an individual’ (Mouffe 2005, 72). The blurring of the clear
distinction between the private ‘seen as the realm of particularity and dif-
ference’ and the public sphere defined as a homogeneous universalism
oriented toward consensus (Mouffe 2005, 71) as conceived by Habermas
and Hannah Arendt, constitutes one of the key arguments of this collec-
tion. As Andy Lavender points out, two developments to this conception
in twenty-first-century culture are worth noting here: ‘Firstly there is the
incursion of the private as a feature of public discourse—partly due to the
privileging of subjectivity in late capitalist culture; and amply demon-
strated by the curated selves of social media, tweeting, blogging and
Facebooking away … Which brings us to the second development: the
growth of plural public spheres, rather than a single regulated space of
discursive consensus along Enlightenment lines’ (Lavender 2016, 41–42).
6 K. ARFARA ET AL.

Artists interviewed in this book, like Dries Verhoeven, Kris Verdonck, and
Akira Takayama confront this blurring of boundaries and the pluralism of
the public sphere. Moreover, they share a common interest in the reactiva-
tion of the polis (agora) through rather intimate discursive intermedial
practices, which are taking place in public spaces.
In his discussion with Liesbeth Groot Nibbelink in this book, Verhoeven
explains the multiple ways in which his public works challenge the para-
doxical and often controversial relation between analogue and digital pub-
lic spaces (where social media is still regarded as a private space). In his
conversation with Kristof van Baarle, Verdonck elaborates on the micro-­
macro perspective of his performative installations, insisting on the blur-
ring of boundaries between inside and outside, public and private, and
their confusing consequences on our own lives. Takayama, in an interview
with Natsuko Odate, discusses how he inserts the Foucauldian concept of
‘heterotopia’ into artistic practices that deliberately move from theatre
spaces to public venues of ordinary encounters, such as fast food restau-
rants. All three artists are confronted with the current political turbu-
lences, openly challenging the issues of rampant nationalism and oppressive
conservative regimes, while attempting to articulate counter-narratives
and new possibilities for critical analysis within the public realm.
Performance scholars must seek to ground the account of the public
sphere again in the spaces of performative encounter, whether in theatres
or other public spaces. That means acknowledging that public space and
public sphere are distinct domains, however much they overlap, as Setha
Low and Neil Smith (2006) have argued, and that a repoliticization of
public space (think the Occupy movement) is concurrent with a ‘respa-
tialisation of our sense of the public’ (7). Performance is capable of sutur-
ing these complementary tendencies even as it exposes their contingency.
Olga Danylyuk’s chapter on the Maidan uprising in the Ukraine for exam-
ple reads the protests as a performance of sorts taking place in a repoliti-
cized public space, dramaturgically inflected and refracted by both old and
new media configurations.
If the space of politics within which the public spheres are shaped and
contested has been increasingly subject to performative interventions,
what of the theatre itself? In his book on the theatrical public sphere, Chris
Balme (another contributor to this volume) argues that the manner in
which theatre has become institutionalized in late capitalism (a ‘black
box’) has blunted even its most transgressive tendencies; it has been
t­ransformed from ‘a rowdy, potentially explosive gathering into a place of
 INTRODUCTION: IN AND OUT: INTERMEDIAL PRACTICES IN THE NEW… 7

concentrated aesthetic absorption’—‘to all intents and purposes a private

place’ (2014, 3). Reinelt, too, concedes that we ‘need a way of under-
standing the relationship of various forms of performance to the forma-
tion of counterpublics and their ultimate relations to the macrosphere of
power and influence’ (2011, 22), but acknowledges that the institutional-
ized theatre has little ‘direct political efficacy’ (21).
It is hard to disagree with Hans-Thies Lehmann when he argues that
politics in the contemporary theatre have migrated into the realm of sign
usage. ‘The politics of theatre,’ he writes, ‘is a politics of perception. To
define it we have to remember that the mode of perception in theatre can-
not be separated from the existence of theatre in a world of media which
massively shapes all perception’ (2006, 185). Staging media can dispel the
medial gaze and break down the spectator’s conditioned reflex response to
images, potentially rekindling a critical engagement with medial represen-
tation. As for instance Katia Arfara shows in her study of Rabih Mroué in
this volume, the mobilization of presence in the form of live performance
combined with hypermediacy are what endows theatre with a certain
politically resistant potential. This political potential, as Chiel Kattenbelt
argues in his chapter, needs to be urgently deployed now, when
Habermasiam ideals of rational debate, free from pressures of power and
propaganda, are increasingly threatened by discourses of neoliberalism,
populism, and globalization.
All artistic projects examined in this volume claim a clear aesthetic qual-
ity and suggest a socially engaged authorship which questions the rigidity
of collective identities developed around homogeneous forms of identifi-
cation in the contemporary urban environments. At the same time, they
expand the notion of spectatorship to a ‘relational,’ often uncomfortable
experience which remains open to the risk and the unpredictability of the
public realm. Participation and interaction are here redefined as a complex
relationship between the work, the city, and the spectator trying to unset-
tle binaries, such as activity and passivity, social efficacy and aesthetic legiti-
macy (Jackson 2011, 45).
This book examines the politics of intermedial performances not as an
interruption of the public sphere, in other words ‘an interruption of the
solidified structures according to which public life in the city takes place,
day in day out’ (Bax et al. 2015, 14), but rather as a disarticulation of the
reproduction of the common sense and an articulation of counter possibili-
ties of being together (Mouffe 2013b, 67). For example, in their inter-
view with Vanhoutte and De Somviele, the BERLIN group unfolds the
8 K. ARFARA ET AL.

cinematic ways in which in their Holoceen cycle gathers its material from
different countries and cultures. They transpose them from cities and
social milieus all around the world into theatrical installations that prob-
lematize the relationship between fact and fiction, reality and its mediati-
zation within an intermedial framework.

Intermediality as a Political Practice

The definition of intermediality in the book draws on a specific line of
prior research. This is the third collection of essays emerging from the
Intermediality in Theatre and Performance Working Group of the
International Federation for Theatre Research (IFTR). It follows from
Intermediality in Theatre and Performance, edited by Freda Chapple and
Kattenbelt (2006) and Mapping Intermediality in Performance, edited by
Sarah Bay-Cheng et al. (2010). Similar to its predecessors, this volume
examines intermediality as a self-reflexive interplay of live and digital media
in performance. It evokes the definition of theatre as a ‘hypermedium,’ a
medium that incorporates other media without altering their inherent
nature, and that offers an ideal stage for intermediality (see also Kattenbelt
2008, 23). The concept of hypermedium emerges explicitly in some chap-
ters (e.g., by Ralf Remshardt and Zheyu Wei), while providing an implicit
framework for other contributions. Finally, like the two previous collec-
tions, this book affirms that intermediality is an effect of perception, and
that it has a potential to change the perception of the audience.
These defining features of intermediality encourage the emphasis on
politics and the public sphere in the present volume. The intermedial self-­
reflexivity stimulates a critical understanding of the functions of liveness
and mediatization, as well as the growing role of digital media in contem-
porary culture. The concept of theatre as a hypermedium opens the pos-
sibility of reconfiguring the intermedial stage as a public sphere that allows
the audience to engage directly with live and digital media. The perceptual
shift in intermedial performance, in turn, offers the audience a novel per-
spective and perhaps even an alternative identity. This is particularly true
of virtual environments, which Robin Nelson sees as capable of i­ nfluencing
the senses of the audience at a more fundamental level than in the case of
other forms of representation (2010, 19). Such virtual perspective might
result in an intense experience and emotion in the receiver, leading to a
heightened awareness of one’s own body and a clearer understanding of a
particular situation—compare for instance Anna Burzyńska’s discussion of
 INTRODUCTION: IN AND OUT: INTERMEDIAL PRACTICES IN THE NEW… 9

Wojtek Ziemilski’s Prolog as an example of where intermedial performance

creates an intense, revelatory intimacy whose dimensions are at once pri-
vate and social. In fact, as Chapple and Kattenbelt note, the change in the
audience perception might produce political insights, concerning ‘the
constructions of class, race and gender’ or more broadly ‘constructions of
reality in the social and psychological reality of this world’ (2006, 22).
Remshardt’s and Aneta Mancewicz’s chapters, which address the current
migration crisis through the lens of intermedial performance, show how
intermedial practice can effectively engage with key societal issues by acti-
vating its performative potential, but also point to its limitations.
The intermedial productions analysed in this book take place not in an
a-historic, endless present but in a socially and historically constructed and
circumscribed here and now. It is a political present as it aims to destabilize
the bourgeois idea of history as a linear, continuous narrative of time that
preserves and reproduces power relations and colonial perceptions of the
world. As Isabell Lorey argues, ‘the now-time is specifically not a tempo-
rality that remains self-identical in itself, as an immediate presence, as an
authenticity of body and affect, or as a pure emotional state. It is construc-
tive temporality, in which the slivers of history are newly composed, in
which history persistently emerges’ (2015a, 188).
The Tallinn-based theatre company NO99 and the Singaporean visual
artist Ho Tzu Nyen are two excellent, highly heterogeneous attempts to
critically recompose the theatrical here and now through a political and
historical transfiguration of the public sphere that lies at the intersection of
live and mediated presence, analogue and digital media. Riina Oruaas
analyses NO99’s project The Rise and Fall of Estonia (2011) as a subver-
sive work with ‘cinematic and theatrical techniques for representing trau-
mas of Soviet Occupation, (neo-)capitalist society, the end of the nation
state, the revelation of disruptions and discordances in the national iden-
tity, and key events of the dominant history narrative.’ Similarly, Mi You
approaches Ho’s Ten Thousand Tigers (2014) as ‘a meta-historical com-
mentary that goes beyond immediate judgement of good and evil and
makes possible the comparison between distinctive historical periods,
­figures, and events’ which continue to define present-day Asian politics
and postcolonial discourses.
Taking into account Groot Nibbelink and Sigrid Merx’s argument
about the ‘dynamic interplay between location and dislocation, placement
and displacement’ which according to them characterizes the ‘intermedial
experience’ (2010, 223), this publication operates in an expanded field of
10 K. ARFARA ET AL.

intermedial performances, shifting these strategies of displacement from

medial realities to politics. A key question that this collection of essays and
interviews seeks to address is how these intermedial artistic practices can
contribute to the reconstitution of a politically connoted public sphere
and to the development of multiple modes of perception in which specta-
tors constantly shift positions thinking of their commonalities and particu-
larities in contemporary multi-ethnic societies.
Examining how several practitioners have used the political potential of
intermediality in various cultural and social contexts, this book offers a
new take on previous paradigms of digital performance. The first collec-
tion of the IFTR Working Group advocated for an ‘in-between’ approach,
which defined intermediality as ‘a tripartite phenomenon’ situated ‘at a
meeting point in-between the performers, the observers, and the conflu-
ence of media involved in a performance at a particular moment in time’
(Chapple and Kattenbelt 2006, 12). This approach was revised in the sec-
ond collection, which argued for the ‘both-and’ view that emphasized the
networked nature of intermediality (Nelson 2010, 17). Foregrounding
the political potential as inherent in an intermedial performance, the pres-
ent volume proposes the perspective of being both ‘in and out’ of the
media within a social and political context.
Being both ‘in and out’ of the media in an intermedial performance
makes it possible for the audience to experience a shift in perception while
reflecting on their subjectivity and agency. Digital technologies may
expand the theatrical here and now, while offering an interactive experi-
ence to the participants, so that they can play different roles and assume
various identities. Oscillating between what Jay David Bolter and Richard
Grusin identify as ‘transparency and opacity’ of digital media (2000, 19),
the audiences encounter both immediacy and hypermediacy as two inher-
ent strategies of remediation, understood as ‘the representation of one
medium in another’ (2000, 45). The participants in an intermedial perfor-
mance are thus both drawn inside the illusion of the medium and become
conscious of its operation, in a postmodern interplay of perspectives, hier-
archies, and identities.
An excellent example of this interplay is Rimini Protokoll’s Situation
Rooms (2013), ‘a multiplayer video piece’ (Rimini Protokoll 2013), dis-
cussed in the collection by Daniel Wetzel of Rimini Protokoll and Florian
Malzacher. In this production, the participants, equipped with iPads and
headphones, navigate a series of rooms, each a theatrical set on its own, to
become immersed in stories of real people whose lives have been shaped
 INTRODUCTION: IN AND OUT: INTERMEDIAL PRACTICES IN THE NEW… 11

by global war conflicts and the arms trade. The moments of immersion,
however, are continuously disrupted by the visibility of the technology
and the encounters with other participants. Consequently, the players in
Situation Rooms do not function exclusively as ‘immersants’ or observers,
but instead they are self-consciously moving between these roles. While
immersed, they have to take responsibility for their position in different
stories. While watching the immersion of others, they gain awareness of
how these stories are presented. Such explicit experience of remediation in
which live performance remediates documentary material is inherently
political, since it foregrounds the perspective and the agency of the
participants.
The ‘in and out’ perspective might encourage further political insights
when the choice of the material and the framework of the performance
work together to establish a public sphere in which the audience directly
debates current economic and social issues. In Grass Stage’s performance
World Factory (2014), examined in this volume by Zheyu Wei, the live
action includes documentary footage produced by the company. The
video material investigates the working conditions in Chinese factories
against the backdrop of the nineteenth-century British Industrial
Revolution and in the aftermath of the workers’ suicides at the Foxconn
factory in Shenzhen in 2010. The footage gives the audience a commen-
tary on the human cost of China’s industrialization and provides them
with ideas for a post-show discussion. Similarly, a production parallel to
this performance, METIS’s World Factory (2015), which draws on a
research collaboration with Grass Stage, incorporates videos documenting
working conditions in Chinese factories. During the performance, the
audience members become participants in a game, in which they act as
owners of clothing factories in China, weighing their own pursuit of
wealth against the welfare of the workers. In both these projects, a broadly
defined medium of theatre provides one possible model of the public
sphere, in which the audience engages in an actual debate that draws on
the live and mediated stimuli.
Intermedial practice might function as, interact with, or intervene in the
public sphere in a number of ways, as shown by contributions in this collec-
tion, but each case is a response to the increasing role of media in contempo-
rary society. The consequences of this process are complex and contradictory.
Douglas Kellner observed that radio, television, and c­omputers have estab-
lished ‘new public spheres and spaces for information, debate, and participa-
tion’ that might find opposing applications—encouraging democracy and
12 K. ARFARA ET AL.

social progress as much as enabling ‘manipulation, social control, and the

promotion of conservative positions’ (n.d.). Kellner gave a crucial responsibil-
ity for managing these applications to intellectuals, arguing that the ‘the future
of democracy depends in part as to whether new technologies will be used for
domination or democratization, and whether intellectuals sit on the sidelines
or participate in the development of new democratic public spheres’ (n.d.).
Social media in particular have recharged the theory of intermediality
by both dematerializing social interactions and complicating the very
question of what it means to have an authentic embodied experience in
urban spaces. Platforms such as Facebook and Twitter spread a mostly
invisible but extremely potent layer of virtual sociality, connectivity, and
communication over the bricks-and-mortar urban landscape, a layer that
functions much like a neural network. Social media, as Jen Harvie points
out, ‘create more contexts for performative interventions, for coordinat-
ing communication in the planning of resistant performance practices, and
for new digital psycho-geographies’ (2009, 56). Protests and other politi-
cal manifestations have increasingly tended to integrate performative strat-
egies or indeed turn wholly into autonomous performances, as chronicled
in Balme’s essay about the ‘toothbrush protest’ in this volume, where he
observes that the ‘three ps’ of protest, performance, and the public sphere
have been transformed by the advent of social media.
The present volume suggests that practitioners in theatre and perfor-
mance might also play a key role in responding to the challenges of a
mediatized public sphere and the dangers of social polarization. The
interviews with artists in this collection testify to their receptiveness to
political, economic, and cultural crises of the twenty-first century.
Today’s web-­driven public discussion, perhaps even more than the bour-
geois public sphere envisaged by Habermas, calls for a critical attitude
and social responsibility. As Martin Lister et al. rightly argue, internet-
based media offer ‘an extraordinary enlargement of the possibilities of
the public sphere,’ but at the same time cause ‘its commodification
through user surveillance’ (2009, 219). This double-edged aspect of
digital media poses exciting opportunities for contemporary stage prac-
titioners, particularly that theatre as a hypermedium provides them with
a perfect opportunity to establish a public sphere that combines liveness
and mediatization. The intermedial practice harnesses the intimacy, the
authenticity, and a sense of communion, inherent in live performance,
while capitalizing on the accessibility, the rapidity, and the variability that
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
indeed, I may go so far as to say that, as a rule, it is almost a sure sign
that the patient is in the first stage of a consumption.
There is usually hoarseness, not constant, but coming on if the
patient be tired, or toward the evening; there is also a sense of
lassitude and depression, shortness of breathing, a feeling of being
quickly wearied—more especially on the slightest exertion. The hair
of a consumptive person usually falls off, and what little remains is
weak and poor; the joints of the fingers become enlarged, or clubbed
as it is sometimes called; the patient loses flesh, and, after some
time, night-sweats make their appearance; then we may know that
hectic fever has commenced.
Hectic begins with chilliness, which is soon followed by flushings
of the face, and by burning heat of the hands and feet, especially of
the palms and the soles. This is soon succeeded by perspirations. The
patient has generally, during the day, two decided paroxysms of
hectic fever—the one at noon, which lasts about five hours, the other
in the evening, which is more severe, and ends in violent
perspirations, which perspirations continue the whole night through.
He may, during the day, have several attacks of hectic flushes of the
face, especially after eating; at one moment he complains of being
too hot, and rushes to the cool air; the next moment he is too cold,
and almost scorches himself by sitting too near the fire. Whenever
the circumscribed hectic flush is on the cheek, it looks as though the
cheek had been painted with vermilion, then is the time when the
palms of the hands are burning hot.
The expectoration at first is merely mucus, but after a time it
assumes a characteristic appearance; it has a roundish, flocculent,
woolly form, each portion of phlegm keeping, as it were, distinct; and
if the expectoration be stirred in water, it has a milk-like appearance.
The patient is commonly harassed by frequent bowel complaints,
which rob him of what little strength he has left. The feet and ankles
swell. The perspiration, as before remarked, comes on in the evening,
continues all night, more especially toward morning and while the
patient is asleep; during the time he is awake, even at night, he
seldom sweats much. The thrush generally shows itself toward the
close of the disease, attacking the tongue, the tonsils, and the soft
palate, and is a sure harbinger of approaching death. Emaciation
rapidly sets in.
 If we consider the immense engines of destruction at work—viz.,
the colliquative (melting) sweats, the violent bowel complaints, the
vital parts that are affected, the harassing cough, the profuse
expectoration, the hectic fever, the distressing exertion of struggling
to breathe,—we cannot be surprised that “consumption had hung out
her red flag of no surrender,” and that death soon closes the scene. In
girls, provided they have been previously regular, menstruation
gradually declines, and then entirely disappears.
362. What are the causes of Consumption?
The predisposing causes of consumption are the scrofulous habit
of body, hereditary predisposition, narrow or contracted chest,
deformed spine, delicacy of constitution, bad and scanty diet, or food
containing but little nourishment, impure air, close in-door
confinement in schools, in shops, and in factories, ill-ventilated
apartments, dissipation, late hours, overtaxing with book learning
the growing brain, thus producing debility, want of proper out-door
exercises and amusements, tight lacing—indeed, anything and
everything that either will debilitate the constitution, or will interfere
with or will impede the proper action of the lungs, will be the
predisposing causes of this fearful and lamentable disease.
An ill, poor, and insufficient diet is the mother of many diseases,
and especially of consumption: “Whatsoever was the father of a
disease, an ill diet was the mother.”
The most common exciting causes of consumption are slighted
colds, neglected inflammation of the chest, long continuance of
influenza, sleeping in damp beds, allowing wet clothes to dry on the
body, unhealthy employments—such as needle grinding, pearl-
button making, etc.
363. Supposing a youth to have spitting of blood, what
precautions would you take to prevent it from ending in
Consumption?
I should let his health be the first consideration; I should throw
books to the winds; if he be at school, I should advise you to take him
away; if he be in trade, I should cancel his indentures; if he be in the
town, I should send him to a sheltered healthy spot in the country, or
to the south coast; as, for instance, either to St. Leonards-on-Sea, or
to Torquay.
 I should be particular in his clothing, taking especial care to keep
his chest and feet warm. If he did not already wear flannel
waistcoats, let it be winter or summer, I should recommend him
immediately to do so; if it be winter, I should advise him also to take
to flannel drawers. The feet must be carefully attended to; they ought
to be kept both warm and dry, the slightest dampness of either shoes
or stockings should cause them to be immediately changed. If a boy,
he ought to wear double-breasted waistcoats; if a girl, high dresses.
The diet must be nutritious and generous; he should be
encouraged to eat plentifully of beef and mutton. There is nothing
better for breakfast, where it agrees, than milk; indeed, it may be
frequently made to agree by previously boiling it. Good home-brewed
ale or sound porter ought, in moderation, to be taken. Wine and
spirits must on no account be allowed. I caution parents in this
particular, as many have an idea that wine, in such cases, is
strengthening, and that rum and milk is a good thing either to cure
or to prevent a cough!
If it be summer, let him be much in the open air, avoiding the
evening and the night air. If it be winter, he should, unless the
weather be mild for the season, keep within doors. Particular
attention ought to be paid to the point the wind is in, as he should
not be allowed to go out if it is either in the north, in the east, or in
the northeast; the latter is more especially dangerous. If it be spring,
and the weather be favorable, or summer or autumn, change of air,
more especially to the south coast—to the Isle of Wight, for instance
—would be desirable; indeed, in a case of spitting of blood, I know of
no remedy so likely to ward off that formidable, and, generally,
intractable complaint—consumption—as change of air. The
beginning of the autumn is, of course, the best season for visiting the
coast. It would be advisable, at the commencement of October, to
send him either to Italy, to the south of France—to Mentone[300]—or
to the mild parts of England—more especially either to Hastings, or
to Torquay, or to the Isle of Wight—to winter. But remember, if he be
actually in a confirmed consumption, I would not, on any account
whatever, let him leave his home; as then the comforts of home will
far, very far outweigh any benefit of change of air.
364. Suppose a youth to be much predisposed to a Sore-Throat,
what precautions ought he to take to ward off future attacks?
 He must use every morning thorough ablution of the body,
beginning cautiously; that is to say, commencing with the neck one
morning, then by degrees, morning after morning, sponging a larger
surface, until the whole of the body be sponged. The chill at first
must be taken off the water; gradually the temperature ought to be
lowered until the water be quite cold, taking care to rub the body
thoroughly dry with a coarse towel—a Turkish rubber being the best
for the purpose.
He ought to bathe his throat externally every night and morning
with lukewarm salt and water, the temperature of which must be
gradually reduced until at length no warm water be added. He should
gargle his throat either with barm, vinegar, and sage tea,[301] or with
salt and water—two teaspoonfuls of table salt dissolved in a tumbler
of water. He ought to harden himself by taking plenty of exercise in
the open air. He must, as much as possible, avoid either sitting or
standing in a draught; if he be in one he should face it. He ought to
keep his feet warm and dry. He should take as little aperient
medicine as possible, avoiding especially both calomel and blue-pill.
As he grows up to manhood he ought to allow his beard to grow, as
such would be a natural covering for his throat: I have known great
benefit to arise from this simple plan. The fashion is now to wear the
beard, not to use the razor at all, and a sensible fashion I consider it
to be. The finest respirator in the world is the beard. The beard is not
only good for sore throats, but for weak chests. The wearing of the
beard is a splendid innovation; it saves no end of trouble, is very
beneficial to health, and is a great improvement “to the human face
divine.”
365. Have you any remarks to make on the almost universal
habit of boys and of very young men smoking?
I am not now called upon to give an opinion of the effects of
tobacco smoking on the middle-aged and on the aged. I am
addressing a mother as to the desirability of her sons, when boys,
being allowed to smoke. I consider tobacco smoking one of the most
injurious and deadly habits a boy or a young man can indulge in. It
contracts the chest and weakens the lungs, thus predisposing to
consumption. It impairs the stomach, thus producing indigestion. It
debilitates the brain and nervous system, thus inducing epileptic fits
and nervous depression. It stunts the growth, and is one cause of the
present race of pigmies. It makes the young lazy and disinclined for
work. It is one of the greatest curses of the present day. The following
cases prove, more than any argument can prove, the dangerous and
deplorable effects of a boy smoking. I copy the first case from Public
Opinion.[302] “The France mentions the following fact as a proof of
the evil consequences of smoking for boys: ‘A pupil in one of the
colleges, only twelve years of age, was some time since seized with
epileptic fits, which became worse and worse in spite of all the
remedies employed. At last it was discovered that the lad had been
for two years past secretly indulging in the weed. Effectual means
were adopted to prevent his obtaining tobacco, and he soon
recovered.’”
The other case occurred about five years ago, in my own practice.
The patient was a youth of nineteen. He was an inveterate smoker.
From being a bright, intelligent lad, he was becoming idiotic, and
epileptic fits were supervening. I painted to him, in vivid colors, the
horrors of his case, and assured him that if he still persisted in his
bad practices, he would soon become a driveling idiot! I at length,
after some trouble and contention, prevailed upon him to desist from
smoking altogether. He rapidly lost all epileptic symptoms, his face
soon resumed its wonted intelligence, and his mind asserted its
former power. He remains well to this day, and is now a married
man with a family.
366. What are the best methods to restrain a violent Bleeding
from the Nose?
Do not interfere with a bleeding from the nose unless it be violent.
A bleeding from the nose is frequently an effort of Nature to relieve
itself, and therefore, unless it be likely to weaken the patient, ought
not to be restrained. If it be necessary to restrain the bleeding, press
firmly for a few minutes the nose between the finger and the thumb
—this alone will often stop the bleeding; if it should not, then try
what bathing the nose and the forehead and the nape of the neck
with water quite cold from the pump will do. If that does not
succeed, try the old-fashioned remedy of putting a cold large door-
key down the back. If these plans fail, try the effects either of
powdered alum or of powdered matico, used after the fashion of
snuff—a pinch or two, either of the one or the other, or of both,
should be sniffed up the bleeding nostril. If these should not answer
the purpose, although they almost invariably will, apply a large lump
of ice to the nape of the neck, and put a small piece of ice into the
patient’s mouth for him to suck.
If these methods do not succeed, plunge the hand and the forearm
into cold water, keep them in for a few minutes, then take them out,
and either hold or let be held up the arms and hands high above the
head; this plan has frequently succeeded when others have failed. Let
the room be kept cool, throw open the windows, and do not have
many in the room to crowd around the patient.
Doubtless, Dr. Richardson’s local anæsthetic—the ether spray—
playing from a few seconds to a minute on the nose and up the
bleeding nostril, would act most beneficially in a severe case of this
kind, and would, before resorting to the disagreeable operation of
plugging the nose, deserve a trial. I respectfully submit this
suggestion to my medical brethren. The ether—rectified ether—used
for the spray ought to be perfectly pure, and of the specific gravity of
0.723.
If the above treatment does not soon succeed, send for a medical
man, as more active means, such as plugging of the nostrils—which
is not done unless in extreme cases—might be necessary.
But before plugging of the nose is resorted to, it will be well to try
the effects of a cold solution of alum:
Take of—Powdered Alum, one drachm;
Water, half a pint:

To make a Lotion.
A little of the lotion should be put into the palm of the hand and
sniffed up the bleeding nostril; or, if that does not succeed, some of
the lotion ought, by means of a syringe, to be syringed up the nose.
367. In case of a young lady Fainting, what had better be done?
Lay her flat upon her back, taking care that the head be as low as
or lower than the body; throw open the windows; do not crowd
around her;[303] unloosen her dress as quickly as possible; ascertain if
she have been guilty of tight lacing, for fainting is sometimes
produced by that reprehensible practice. Apply smelling-salts to her
nostrils; if they be not at hand, burn a piece of rag under her nose;
dash cold water upon her face; throw open the window; fan her; and
do not, as is generally done, crowd round her, and thus prevent a free
circulation of air.
As soon as she can swallow, give her either a draught of cold water,
or a glass of wine, or a teaspoonful of sal-volatile in a wineglassful of
water.
To prevent fainting for the future.—I would recommend early
hours; country air and exercise; the stays, if worn at all, to be worn
slack; attention to diet; avoidance of wine, beer, spirits, excitement,
and fashionable amusements.
Sometimes the cause of a young lady fainting is either a disordered
stomach or a constipated state of the bowels.
If the fainting have been caused by disordered stomach, it may be
necessary to stop the supplies, and give the stomach, for a day or
two, but little to do; a fast will frequently prevent the necessity of
giving medicine. Of course, if the stomach be much disordered, it will
be desirable to consult a medical man.
If your daughter’s fainting have originated from a costive state of
the bowels (another frequent cause of fainting), I beg to refer you to
a subsequent Conversation, in which I will give you a list of remedies
for the prevention and the treatment of constipation.
A young lady’s fainting occasionally arises from debility—from
downright weakness of the constitution; then the best remedies will
be change of air to the coast, good nourishing diet, and the following
strengthening mixture:
Take of—Muriated Tincture of Iron, one drachm and a half;
Tincture of Calumba, six drachms;
Distilled Water, seven ounces.

Two tablespoonfuls of this mixture to be taken three times a day.

Or, for a change, the following:
Take of—Wine of Iron, one ounce and a half;
Distilled Water, six ounces and a half:

To make a Mixture. Two tablespoonfuls to be taken three times a day.

Iron medicines ought always to be taken after instead of before a
meal. The best times of the day for taking either of the above
mixtures will be eleven o’clock, four o’clock, and seven o’clock.
 368. You had a great objection to a mother administering calomel
either to an infant or to a child, have you the same objection to a
boy or a girl taking it when he or she requires an aperient?
Equally as great. It is my firm belief that the frequent use, or rather
the abuse, of calomel and of other preparations of mercury, is often a
source of liver disease, and an exciter of scrofula. It is a medicine of
great value in some diseases, when given by a judicious medical man;
but, at the same time, it is a drug of great danger when either given
indiscriminately, or when too often prescribed. I will grant that in
liver diseases it frequently gives temporary relief; but when a patient
has once commenced the regular use of it, he cannot do without it,
until, at length, the functional ends in organic disease of the liver.
The use of calomel predisposes to cold, and thus frequently brings on
either inflammation or consumption. Family aperient pills ought
never to contain, in any form whatever, a particle of mercury.
369. Will you give me a list of remedies for the prevention and for
the cure of Constipation?
If you find it necessary to give to your son or to your daughter
aperient medicine, the mildest ought to be selected; for instance, an
agreeable and an effectual one is an electuary composed of the
following ingredients:
Take of—Best picked Alexandria Senna, one ounce;
Best Figs, two ounces;
Best Raisins (stoned), two ounces:

All chopped very fine. The size of a nutmeg or two to be occasionally eaten.
Or, one or two teaspoonfuls of compound confection of senna
(lenitive electuary) may occasionally, early in the morning, be taken.
Or, for a change, a teaspoonful of Henry’s magnesia, in half a
tumblerful of warm water. If this should not be sufficiently active, a
teaspoonful of Epsom salts should be given with the magnesia. A
Seidlitz powder forms another safe and mild aperient; or one or two
compound rhubarb pills may be given at bedtime. The following
prescription for a pill, where an aperient is absolutely necessary, is a
mild, gentle, and effective one for the purpose:
Take of—Extract of Socotrine Aloes, eight grains;
Compound Extract of Colocynth, forty-eight grains:
 Hard Soap, twenty-four grains;
Treacle, a sufficient quantity:

To make twenty-four Pills. One or two to be taken at bedtime occasionally.

But, after all, the best opening medicines are—cold ablutions every
morning of the whole body; attention to diet; variety of food; bran-
bread; grapes; stewed prunes;[304] French plums; Muscatel raisins;
figs; fruit both cooked and raw—if it be ripe and sound; oatmeal
porridge; lentil powder, in the form of Du Barry’s Arabica Revalenta;
vegetables of all kinds, especially spinach; exercise in the open air;
early rising; daily visiting the water-closet at a certain hour—there is
nothing keeps the bowels open so regularly and well as establishing
the habit of visiting the water-closet at a certain hour every morning;
and the other rules of health specified in these Conversations. If
more attention were paid to these points, poor school-boys and
school-girls would not be compelled to swallow such nauseous and
disgusting messes as they usually are.
Should these plans not succeed (although in the majority of cases,
with patience and perseverance, they will), I would advise an enema
once or twice a week, either simply of warm water, or of one made of
gruel, table salt, and olive oil, in the proportion of two tablespoonfuls
of salt, two of oil, and a pint of warm gruel, which a boy may
administer to himself, or a girl to herself, by means of a proper
enema apparatus.
Hydropathy is oftentimes very serviceable in preventing and in
curing costiveness; and as it will sometimes prevent the necessity of
administering medicine, it is both a boon and a blessing.
“Hydropathy also supplies us with various remedies for constipation.
From the simple glass of cold water, taken early in the morning, to
the various douches and sea-baths, a long list of useful appliances
might be made out, among which we may mention the ‘wet
compresses’ worn for three hours over the abdomen [bowels], with a
gutta-percha covering.”[305]
I have here a word or two to say to a mother who is always
physicking her family. It is an unnatural thing to be constantly
dosing either a child or any one else with medicine. One would
suppose that some people were only sent into the world to be
physicked! If more care were paid to the rules of health, very little
medicine would be required! This is a bold assertion; but I am
confident that it is a true one. It is a strange admission for a medical
man to make, but, nevertheless, my convictions compel me to avow
it.
370. What is the reason girls are so subject to Costiveness?
The principal reason why girls suffer more from costiveness than
boys, is that their habits are more sedentary; as the best opening
medicines in the world are an abundance of exercise, of muscular
exertion, and of fresh air.
Unfortunately, poor girls in this enlightened age must be engaged,
sitting all the while, several hours every day at fancy work, the piano,
and other accomplishments, they, consequently, have little time for
exercise of any kind. The bowels, as a matter of course, become
constipated; they are, therefore, dosed with pills, with black
draughts, with brimstone and treacle—oh! the abomination!—and
with medicines of that class, almost ad infinitum. What is the
consequence? Opening medicines, by constant repetition, lose their
effects, and, therefore, require to be made stronger and still stronger,
until at length the strongest will scarcely act at all, and the poor
unfortunate girl, when she becomes a woman, if she ever does
become one, is spiritless, heavy, dull, and listless, requiring daily
doses of physic, until she almost lives on medicine!
All this misery and wretchedness proceed from Nature’s laws
having been set at defiance, from artificial means taking the place of
natural ones—from a mother adopting as her rule and guide fashion
and folly, rather than reason and common sense. When will a mother
awake from her folly and stupidity? This is strong language to
address to a lady; but it is not stronger than the subject demands.
Mothers of England! do, let me entreat you, ponder well upon
what I have said. Do rescue your girls from the bondage of fashion
and folly, which is worse than the bondage of the Egyptian task-
masters; for the Israelites did, in making bricks without straw, work
in the open air—“So the people were scattered abroad throughout all
the land of Egypt to gather stubble instead of straw;”[306] but your
girls, many of them at least, have no work, either in the house or in
the open air—they have no exercise whatever. They are poor,
drawling, dawdling, miserable nonentities, with muscles, for the
want of proper exercise, like ribbons; and with faces, for the lack of
fresh air, as white as a sheet of paper. What a host of charming girls
are yearly sacrificed at the shrine of fashion and of folly!
Another, and a frequent cause of costiveness, is the bad habit of
disobeying the call of having the bowels opened. The moment there
is the slightest inclination to relieve the bowels, instantly ought it to
be attended to, or serious results will follow. Let me urge a mother to
instill into her daughter’s mind the importance of this advice.
371. Young people are subject to Pimples on the Face, what is the
remedy?
These hard red pimples (acne) are a common and an obstinate
affection of the skin, principally affecting the forehead, the temples,
the nose, and the cheeks; occasionally attacking the neck, the
shoulders, the back, and the chest; and as they more frequently affect
the young, from the age of 15 to 35, and are disfiguring, they cause
much annoyance. “These pimples are so well known by most persons
as scarcely to need description; they are conical, red, and hard; after
awhile, they become white, and yellow at the point, then discharge a
thick yellow-colored matter, mingled with a whitish substance, and
become covered by a hard, brown scab, and lastly, disappear very
slowly, sometimes very imperfectly, and often leaving an ugly scar
behind them. To these symptoms are not unfrequently added
considerable pain, and always much unsightliness. When these little
cones have the black head of a ‘grub’ at their point, they constitute
the variety termed spotted acne. These latter often remain stationary
for months, without increasing or becoming red; but when they
inflame, they are nowise different in their course from the common
kind.”[307]
I find, in these cases, great benefit to be derived from bathing the
face, night and morning, with strong salt and water—a tablespoonful
of table salt to a teacupful of water; by paying attention to the
bowels; by living on plain, wholesome, nourishing food; and by
taking a great deal of out-door exercise. Sea bathing, in these cases,
is often very beneficial. Grubs and worms have a mortal antipathy to
salt.
372. What is the cause of a Gum-boil?
A decayed root of a tooth, which causes inflammation and abscess
of the gum, which abscess breaks, and thus becomes a gum-boil.
 373. What is the treatment of a Gum-boil?
Foment the outside of the face with a hot chamomile and poppy-
head fomentation,[308] and apply to the gum-boil, between the cheek
and the gum, a small white-bread and milk poultice,[309] which renew
frequently.
As soon as the gum-boil has become quiet, by all means have the
affected tooth extracted, or it might cause disease, and consequently
serious injury of the jaw; and whenever the patient catches cold there
will be a renewal of the inflammation, of the abscess, and of the gum-
boil, and, as a matter of course, renewed pain, trouble, and
annoyance. Moreover, decayed fangs of teeth often cause the breath
to be offensive.
374. What is the best remedy for a Corn?
The best remedy for a hard corn is to remove it. The usual method
of cutting, or of paring a corn away, is erroneous. The following is the
right way: Cut with a sharp pair of pointed scissors around the
circumference of the corn. Work gradually round and round and
toward the center. When you have for some considerable distance
well loosened the edges, you can either with your finger or with a
pair of forceps generally remove the corn bodily, and that with little
pain and without the loss of any blood.
If the corn be properly and wholly removed, it will leave a small
cavity or round hole in the center, where the blood-vessels and the
nerve of the corn—vulgarly called the root—really were, and which,
in point of fact, constituted the very existence or the essence of the
corn. Moreover, if the corn be entirely removed, you will, without
giving yourself the slightest pain, be able to squeeze the part affected
between your finger and thumb.
Hard corns on the sole of the foot and on the sides of the foot are
best treated by filing—by filing them with a sharp cutting file (flat on
one side and convex on the other), neither too coarse nor too fine in
the cutting. The corn ought, once every day, to be filed, and should
daily be continued until you experience a slight pain, which tells you
that the end of the corn is approaching. Many cases of hard corn,
that have resisted every other plan of treatment, have been entirely
cured by means of the file. One great advantage of the file is, it
cannot possibly do any harm, and may be used by a timid person, by
one who would not readily submit to any cutting instrument being
applied to the corn.
The file, if properly used, is an effectual remedy for a hard corn on
the sole of the foot. I myself have seen the value of it in several cases,
particularly in one case, that of an old gentleman of ninety-five, who
had had a corn on the sole of his foot for upwards of half a century,
and which had resisted numerous, indeed, almost innumerable
remedies; at length I recommended the file, and after a few
applications entire relief was obtained, and the corn was completely
eradicated.
The corns between the toes are called soft corns. A soft corn is
quickly removed by the strong acetic acid—acid. acetic. fort.—which
ought to be applied to the corn every night by means of a camel’s-
hair brush. The toes should be kept asunder for a few minutes, in
order that the acid may soak in; then apply between the toes a small
piece of cotton wool.
Hard corns, then, on the sole and on the side of the foot, are best
treated by the file; hard corns on the toes by the scissors; and soft
corns between the toes by the strong acetic acid.
In the generality of cases the plans recommended above, if
properly performed, will effect a cure; but if the corn, from pressure
or from any other cause, should return, remove it again and proceed
as before directed. If the corn have been caused either by tight or by
ill-fitting shoes, the only way to prevent a recurrence is, of course, to
have the shoes properly made by a clever shoemaker—by one who
thoroughly understands his business, and who will have a pair of
lasts made purposely for the feet.[310]
The German method of making boots and shoes is a capital one for
the prevention of corns, as the boots and shoes are made
scientifically, to fit a real and not an ideal foot.
One of the best preventives of, as well as of the best remedies for
corns, especially of soft corns between the toes, is washing the feet
every morning, as recommended in a previous Conversation,[311]
taking especial care to wash with the thumb, and afterward to wipe
with the towel between each toe.
375. What is the best remedy to destroy a Wart?
 Pure nitric acid,[312] carefully applied to the wart by means of a
small stick of cedar wood, a camel’s-hair pencil-holder, every other
day, will soon destroy it. Care must be taken that the acid does not
touch the healthy skin, or it will act as a caustic to it.
The nitric acid should be preserved in a stoppered bottle, and must
be put out of the reach of children.
376. What is the best remedy for Tender Feet, for Sweaty Feet,
and for Smelling Feet?
Cold water: bathing the feet in cold water, beginning with tepid
water; but gradually from day to day reducing the warm until the
water be quite cold. A large nursery-basin, one-third full of water,
ought to be placed on the floor, and one foot at a time should be put
in the water, washing the while with a sponge the foot, and with the
thumb between each toe. Each foot should remain in the water about
half a minute. The feet ought after each washing to be well dried,
taking care to dry with the towel between each toe. The above
process must be repeated at least once every day, every morning,
and, if the annoyance be great, every night as well. A clean pair of
stockings ought in these cases to be put on daily, as perfect
cleanliness is absolutely necessary both to afford relief and to effect a
cure.
If the feet be tender, or if there be either bunions or corns, the
shoes and the boots made according to the German method (which
are fashioned according to the actual shape of the foot) should alone
be worn.
377. What are the causes of so many young ladies of the present
day being weak, nervous, and unhappy?
The principal causes are—ignorance of the laws of health, Nature’s
laws being set at naught by fashion and by folly, by want of fresh air
and exercise, by want of occupation, and by want of self-reliance.
Weak, nervous, and unhappy! Well they might be! What have they to
make them strong and happy? Have they work to do to brace the
muscles? Have they occupation—useful, active occupation—to make
them happy? No! they have neither the one nor the other!
378. What diseases are girls most subject to?
The diseases peculiar to girls are—Chlorosis, Greensickness, and
Hysterics.
 379. What are the usual causes of Chlorosis?
Chlorosis is caused by torpor and debility of the whole frame,
especially of the womb. It is generally produced by scanty or by
improper food, by the want of air and exercise, and by too close
application within doors. Here we have the same tale over again—
close application within doors, and the want of fresh air and exercise!
When will the eyes of a mother be opened to this important subject?
—the most important that can engage her attention!
380. What is the usual age for Chlorosis to occur, and what are
the symptoms?
Chlorosis more frequently attacks girls from fifteen to twenty years
of age; although unmarried women, much older, occasionally have it.
I say unmarried, for, as a rule, it is a complaint of the single.
The patient, first of all, complains of being languid, tired, and out
of spirits; she is fatigued with the slightest exertion; she has usually
palpitation of the heart (so as to make her fancy that she has a
disease of that organ, which, in all probability, she has not); she has
shortness of breath, and a short dry cough; her face is flabby and
pale; her complexion gradually assumes a yellowish or greenish hue
—hence the name of chlorosis; there is a dark, livid circle around her
eyes; her lips lose their color, and become almost white; her tongue
is generally white and pasty; her appetite is bad, and is frequently
depraved—the patient often preferring chalk, slate-pencil, cinder,
and even dirt, to the daintiest food; indigestion frequently attends
chlorosis; she has usually pains over the short-ribs, on the left side;
she suffers greatly from “wind,” and is frequently nearly choked by it;
her bowels are generally costive, and the stools are unhealthy; she
has pains in her hips, loins, and back; and her feet and ankles are
oftentimes swollen. The menstrual discharge is either suspended, or
very partially performed; if the latter, it is usually almost colorless.
Hysterical fits not unfrequently occur during an attack of chlorosis.
381. How may Chlorosis be prevented?
If health were more and fashion were less studied, chlorosis would
not be such a frequent complaint. This disease generally takes its rise
from mismanagement—from Nature’s laws having been set at
defiance. I have heard a silly mother express an opinion that it is not
genteel for a girl to eat heartily! Such language is perfectly absurd
and cruel. How often, too, a weak mother declares that a healthy,
blooming girl looks like a milkmaid! It would be well if she did! How
true and sad it is, that “a pale, delicate face, and clear eyes, indicative
of consumption, are the fashionable desiderata at present for
complexion.”[313]
A growing girl requires plenty of good nourishment—as much as
her appetite demands; and if she have it not, she will become either
chlorotic, or consumptive, or delicate. Besides, the greatest
beautifier in the world is health; therefore, by a mother studying the
health of her daughter, she will, at the same time, adorn her body
with beauty! I am sorry to say that too many parents think more of
the beauty than of the health of their girls. Sad and lamentable
infatuation! Nathaniel Hawthorne gives a graphic description of a
delicate young lady. He says: “She is one of those delicate, nervous
young creatures not uncommon in New England, and whom I
suppose to have become what we find them by the gradually refining
away of the physical system among young women. Some
philosophers choose to glorify this habit of body by terming it
spiritual; but, in my opinion, it is rather the effect of unwholesome
food, bad air, lack of out-door exercise, and neglect of bathing, on the
part of these damsels and their female progenitors, all resulting in a
kind of hereditary dyspepsia.”
Nathaniel Hawthorne, a distinguished American, was right. Such
ladies, when he wrote, were not uncommon; but within the last two
or three years, to their great credit be it spoken, “a change has come
o’er the spirit of their dreams,” and they are wonderfully improved in
health; for, with all reverence be it spoken, “God helps them who
help themselves,” and they have helped themselves by attending to
the rules of health: “The women of America are growing more and
more handsome every year for just this reason. They are growing
rounder of chest, fuller of limb, gaining substance and development
in every direction. Whatever may be urged to the contrary, we believe
this to be a demonstrable fact.... When the rising generation of
American girls once begin to wear thick shoes, to take much exercise
in the open air, to skate, to play croquet, and to affect the saddle, it
not only begins to grow more wise but more healthful, and—which
must follow as the night the day—more beautiful.”[314]
 If a young girl had plenty of wholesome meat, varied from day to
day, either plain roast or boiled, and neither stewed, nor hashed, nor
highly seasoned, for her stomach; if she had an abundance of fresh
air for her lungs; if she had plenty of active exercise, such as
skipping, dancing, running, riding, swimming, for her muscles; if her
clothing were warm and loose, and adapted to the season; if her
mind were more occupied with active, useful occupation, such as
household work, than at present, and if she were kept calm and
untroubled from the hurly-burly and excitement of fashionable life,—
chlorosis would almost be an unknown disease. It is a complaint of
rare occurrence with country girls, but of great frequency with fine
city ladies.
382. What treatment should you advise?
The treatment which would prevent should be adopted when the
complaint first makes its appearance. If the above means do not
quickly remove it, the mother must then apply to a medical man, and
he will give medicines which will soon have the desired effect. If the
disease be allowed for any length of time to run on, it might produce
either organic—incurable—disease of the heart, or consumption, or
indigestion, or confirmed ill health.
383. At what period of life is a lady most prone to Hysterics, and
what are the symptoms?
The time of life when hysterics occur is generally from the age of
fifteen to fifty. Hysterics come on by paroxysms—hence they are
called hysterical fits. A patient, just before an attack, is low spirited;
crying without a cause; she is “nervous,” as it is called; she has
flushings of the face; she is at other times very pale; she has
shortness of breath and occasional palpitations of the heart; her
appetite is usually bad; she passes quantities of colorless limpid
urine, having the appearance of pump-water; she is much troubled
with flatulence in her bowels, and, in consequence, she feels bloated
and uncomfortable. The “wind” at length rises upward toward the
stomach, and still upward to the throat, giving her the sensation of a
ball stopping her breathing, and producing a feeling of suffocation.
The sensation of a ball in the throat (globus hystericus) is the
commencement of the fit.
She now becomes partially insensible, although she seldom loses
complete consciousness. Her face becomes flushed, her nostrils
dilated, her head thrown back, and her stomach and bowels
enormously distended with “wind.” After a short time she throws her
arms and legs about convulsively, she beats her breast, tears her hair
and clothes, laughs boisterously, and screams violently; at other
times she makes a peculiar noise; sometimes she sobs, and her face is
much distorted. At length she brings up enormous quantities of
wind; after a time, she bursts into a violent flood of tears, and then
gradually comes to herself.
As soon as the fit is at an end she generally passes enormous
quantities of colorless limpid urine. She might, in a short time, fall
into another attack similar to the above. When she comes to herself
she feels exhausted and tired, and usually complains of slight
headache, and of great soreness of the body and limbs. She seldom
remembers what has occurred during the fit. Hysterics are
sometimes frightful to witness; but, in themselves, are not at all
dangerous.
384. What are the causes of Hysterics?
Delicate health, chlorosis, improper and not sufficiently
nourishing food, grief, anxiety, excitement of the mind, closely
confined rooms, want of exercise, indigestion, flatulence, and tight
lacing are the causes which usually produce hysterics. Hysterics are
frequently feigned; indeed, oftener than any other complaint; and
even a genuine case is usually much aggravated by a patient herself
giving way to them.
385. What do you recommend an Hysterical lady to do?
To improve her health by proper management; to rise early and to
take a walk, that she may breathe pure and wholesome air,—indeed,
she ought to live nearly half her time in the open air, exercising
herself with walking, skipping, etc.; to employ her mind with botany,
croquet, archery, or with any other out-door amusement; to confine
herself to plain, wholesome, nourishing food; to avoid tight lacing; to
eschew fashionable amusements; and, above all, not to give way to
her feelings, but if she feel an attack approaching, to rouse herself.
If the fit be upon her, the better plan is to banish all the male sex
from the room, and not even to have many women about her, and for
those around to loosen her dress; to lay her in the center of the room,
flat upon the ground, with a pillow under her head; to remove combs
and pins and brooches from her person; to dash cold water upon her
face; to apply cloths, or a large sponge wetted in cold water, to her
head; to throw open the window, and then to leave her to herself; or,
at all events, to leave her with only one female friend or attendant. If
such be done, she will soon come round; but what is the usual
practice? If a girl be in hysterics, the whole house, and perhaps the
neighborhood, is roused; the room is crowded to suffocation; fears
are openly expressed by those around that she is in a dangerous
state; she hears what they say, and her hysterics are increased
tenfold.

If this book is to be of use to mothers and to the rising generation,

as I humbly hope and trust that it has been, and that it will be still
more abundantly, it ought not to be listlessly read, merely as a novel,
or as any other piece of fiction, but it must be thoughtfully and
carefully studied, until its contents, in all its bearings, be completely
mastered and understood.
In conclusion, I beg to thank you for the courtesy, confidence, and
attention I have received at your hands, and to express a hope that
my advice, through God’s blessing, may not have been given in vain.