1 Keeley Street
London WC2B
UK
In Mind in the Lower Animals in Health and Disease, a sprawling two-volume treatise published in 1879, the Scottish “mad-doctor” William Lauder Lindsay abandoned his “human lunatics” and turned to the animal kingdom. Lindsay ranged across continents and centuries, pillaging writers from Pliny to Darwin ushering his readers into a dark world of ape neurosis and snake psychosis, suicidal scorpions and deranged, Prufockian lemmings.
In this talk, join Richard Barnett as he grabs Lindsay’s work by its provocatively twitching tail, and uncover the hidden history of animal minds in the human sciences. Taking the dog for a walk will never be the same.
Dr Richard Barnett studied medicine in London before becoming a historian. He has taught the history of science, medicine and evolutionary theory at the universities of Cambridge and London, and he now holds one of the first Wellcome Trust Engagement Fellowships. He runs the Sick City Project, and spends his time writing, walking, talking and broadcasting his way around the history of life and death in London.