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"Visceral Consciousness": The Gut-Brain Axis in Sleep and Sleeplessness in Britain and America, 1850–1914

Lookup NU author(s): Dr Kristin HusseyORCiD

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Abstract

Sleeplessness was a quotidian yet challenging problem for medical practitioners in Britain and America in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While physiologists endeavored to unravel the secrets of sleep by examining the brain, in the clinic doctors looked to the gut as a site through which sleeplessness was both caused and cured. This article explores the gut-brain axis in medical literature on sleep and sleep loss in this period. It argues that despite the lack of a coherent understanding of the gut-brain connection, the digestive system was central to how physiologists and clinicians approached sleeplessness. It employs Victorian physician Joseph Mortimer Granville's (1833–1900) concept of "visceral consciousness" to better understand the varied and often contradictory explanatory constellations that emerged to elucidate the role of digestion in sleeplessness.

Publication metadata

Author(s): Hussey KD

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: Bulletin of the History of Medicine

Year: 2021

Volume: 95

Issue: 3

Pages: 350-378

Print publication date: 13/12/2021

Online publication date: 13/12/2021

Acceptance date: 29/07/2020

ISSN (print): 0007-5140

ISSN (electronic): 1086-3176

Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press

URL: https://doi.org/10.1353/bhm.2021.0033

DOI: 10.1353/bhm.2021.0033

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