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Medical Tourism in Victorian Edinburgh: Writing Narratives of Healthy Citizenship

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Abstract

This chapter explores travel guides to study representations of medicine in Victorian Edinburgh and focuses on three interlocking themes—the significance of Edinburgh as a city of cultural value; the centrality of charitable benevolence to Edinburgh’s citizens; and the relationship between representations of environmental health and modern culture. These themes reveal how travel guides interpolate Edinburgh as a modern city rooted in an ethic of civic empathy that is regarded also as a unique local and national trait. The chapter concludes by asking what this civic nationalism may tell us of the relationship between writing, medicine and the city, and what directions potential future scholarship might take that will initiate further studies of the relationship between the humanities and the sciences.

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Willis, M. (2017). Medical Tourism in Victorian Edinburgh: Writing Narratives of Healthy Citizenship. In: Hilger, S. (eds) New Directions in Literature and Medicine Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-51988-7_20

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