Overview

The fascinating--and often secret--history of the body's most fascinating system: the gut. The stomach is notoriously outspoken. It growls, gurgles, and grumbles while other organs remain silent, inconspicuous, and content. For centuries humans have puzzled over this rowdy, often overzealous organ, deliberating on the extent of its influence over cognition, mental well-being, and emotions, and wondering how the gut became so central to our sense of self. Traveling from ancient Greece to Victorian England, eighteenth-century France to modern America, cultural historian Elsa Richardson leads us on a lively tour of the gut, exploring all the ways that we have imagined, theorized, and probed the mysteries of the gastroenterological system. We'll meet a wildly diverse cast of characters including Edwardian bodybuilders, hunger-striking suffragettes, demons, medieval alchemists, and one poor teenage girl plagued by a remarkably vocal gut, all united by this singular organ. Engaging, eye-opening, and thought-provoking, Rumbles leaves no stone unturned, scrutinizing religious tracts and etiquette guides, satirical cartoons, and political pamphlets, in its quest to answer the millennia-old question: Are we really ruled by our stomachs?

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9781639367245

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Reviews

"""A brilliant new cultural history of the gut.""--The Daily Mail ""A vivid cultural history of changing metaphorical, political, and scientific visions of our guts."" --The Guardian ""Fascinating. A window into our relationship with the gut as mediated by medicine, literature, politics, and language."" --Times Literary Supplement ""A fascinating, erudite, and entertaining journey through the gut-brain connection."" --Tiffany Smith, author of The Book of Human Emotions ""A thrilling and surprising journey into the science and culture of an organ that refuses to be civilized.""--Paul Craddock, author of Spare Parts ""Marshaling a wealth of resources, Richardson offers eye-popping (and sometimes gut-wrenching) insight into how our presumed cutting-edge understanding of the gut is not as new as we might want to believe. Rumbles will persuade you that to listen to the 'rumbles' of our gut is to immerse ourselves in an abiding historical legacy, for better or for worse."" --Professor Jean Walton, author of Dissident Gut"

"""A fascinating, erudite, and entertaining journey through the gut-brain connection."" --Tiffany Smith, author of The Book of Human Emotions ""A thrilling and surprising journey into the science and culture of an organ that refuses to be civilized.""--Paul Craddock, author of Spare Parts ""Marshaling a wealth of resources, Richardson offers eye-popping (and sometimes gut-wrenching) insight into how our presumed cutting-edge understanding of the gut is not as new as we might want to believe. Rumbles will persuade you that to listen to the 'rumbles' of our gut is to immerse ourselves in an abiding historical legacy, for better or for worse."" --Professor Jean Walton, author of Dissident Gut"

Author Information

Elsa Richardson is an academic at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. She holds a Chancellor's Fellowship in the History of Health and Wellbeing at the Center for the Social History of Health and Healthcare. In addition to lecturing in the history of medicine, she also curates arts and science events for public institutions, including the Wellcome Collection. Recently she was named one of the BBC Radio 3/AHRC New Generation Thinkers. Elsa lives in Glasgow.

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