This study, based on extensive use of eighteenth-century newspapers, hospital registers and case notes, examines the experience of suffering from nervous disease - a supposedly upper-class malady. Beatty concludes that 'nervousness' was a legitimate medical diagnosis with a firm basis in eighteenth-century medical theory.

This study, based on extensive use of eighteenth-century newspapers, hospital registers and case notes, examines the experience of suffering from nervous disease - a supposedly upper-class malady. Beatty concludes that, far from the stereotyped portrayal of nervous patients in contemporary fiction, 'nervousness' was a legitimate medical diagnosis with a firm basis in eighteenth-century medical theory.