ABSTRACT
I have been scrutinizing Thomas Beddoes’s dread that modern ity was creating a sickness culture in which illness became a modish language o f self and of social exchange. This chapter will touch upon other commentaries on the new world of the ‘valetudinarian’, before examining in greater detail Beddoes’s exposes of the institutions created by the collusion of the sick and the medical profession to articulate its sickness culture.
