Christopher Milnes - A History of Euphoria: The Perception and Misperception of Health and Well-Being

Very few people have not at some point in their lives believed themselves or their loved ones to be reasonably healthy when sickness was encroaching or never went away. Health has been deceiving us for millennia, but rarely have we entirely dispensed with it as a concept. This book sets out to establish why and how that might be. The first of its kind, this longue dure historical study explores some of the ways in which people in western societies and cultures have come to believe that they, or other people, have perceived or misperceived health, well-being and euphoriaa word which, before the twentieth century, usually named the experience of health. This book draws from a number of areas of historical research, including the histories of convalescence, addiction, madness and Sigmund Freuds interest in Euphorie in his pre-psychoanalytical period.

Christopher Milnes is an early career scholar and History tutor based in London.

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A History of Euphoria

The Perception and Misperception of Health and Well-Being

Christopher Milnes

For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/Routledge-Studies-in-Cultural-History/book-series/SE0367

First published 2019

by Routledge

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2019 Taylor & Francis

The right of Christopher Milnes to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Milnes, Christopher, author.

Title: A history of euphoria : the perception and misperception of health and

well-being / by Christopher Milnes.

Description: New York : Routledge, 2019. | Series: Routledge studies in

cultural history ; 67 | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018046045 (print) | LCCN 2018046880 (ebook) |

ISBN 9780429028298 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367137229 (hbk) |

ISBN 9780429028298 (ebk)

Subjects: MESH: Euphoria | Attitude to Health | History of Medicine |

Psychiatryhistory

Classification: LCC RA441 (ebook) | LCC RA441 (print) |

NLM BF 575.E5 | DDC 362.1dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018046045

ISBN: 978-0-367-13722-9 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-429-02829-8 (ebk)

Typeset in Sabon

by Apex CoVantage, LLC

This book began as a PhD research project in 2009. I wanted to explore the meaning of euphoria. There had been histories of happiness, ecstasy and joy. Very little, however, of euphoria. The Ancient Greek etymology of this word fascinated me: Bearing or carrying well. A designation for any human being, for surely we are all bearing and carrying. To be euphoric, at least at some point in human history, meant to exist as a burdened creature: and to be judged, by people who believed they could make such judgements, to be bearing the burden well. As the years flew by, the doctoral project became a thesis about the pleasure of medical recovery: euphoria, at certain points in its history, sometimes named such an experience. And then, at last, the thesis became a book about the ways in which people perceive and misperceive their health and well-being (or good existence) and the health and well-being (or good existence) of others, the ideas and the words that help them to create meaning in a world where, fundamentally, such experiences are not wholly understandable. What began as a study of euphoria has become a history of living well or, more precisely, a history of knowing (and not knowing) that we and the people we care about are living well. Healthy, we hope, and good.

That is, perhaps, everybodys preoccupation. Still, I find it curious that I seem to have found an aspect of myself in the following pages that I could never have expected. When I was very young, I fell in love with someone who was sometimes very sick, and who would never be completely better. He lived far away from me. Even when he was close, however, I never was entirely sure exactly how he was. Much of this book has to do with the uncertainty we sometimes feel for the health and well-being of ourselves and the ones we love; and with the little reassurances we have created, which can work against this uncertainty: those moments, we have told ourselves, when our health and well-being and that of the people we care about seems to come into wonderful focus. The wish to perceive with clarity and thus know with certainty that we and our loved ones are healthy and existing well is the wish that appears to drive this history, sometimes moving against the things in our societies, cultures and medicines that seem to tell us that we really cannot perceive and know.

This wish is, perhaps, attractive and universal enough to be called a force. Does it drive medicine? Does it drive every human thing? Euphoria is part of it. This word in Ancient Greece could express considerable joy, and it seems to have been rooted in joy: the celebratory judgement of good existence, and even sometimes health, in a world of endless burdens. The meaning of euphoria has changed across the centuries, but I have found that this word still ultimately emerges as part of our perception of the condition of ourselves and others, and our wish to know that we and the people we care for are okay. It has taken many years and a much rewritten book for me to explain to myself what I mean by this. Still, I guess that is where my initial interest in the word and particularly its etymology must have come from. The writer Alan Bennett has said that you dont put your life into your books. You find it there (Bennett 2008, 102). I am bound to agree with him.