The Tale of Terror and the ‘Medico-Popular’

This chapter argues that the ‘tale of terror’ may be read as a form of hybrid ‘medico-popular’ writing to be classed alongside non-fiction medical texts such as Robert Macnish’s The Anatomy of Drunkenness (1827) and The Philosophy of Sleep (1830), as well as one of the most canonical ‘literary’ medical case histories, Thomas De Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1822). The first section introduces Macnish’s first medico-literary project in relation to De Quincey’s Confessions, before moving on to an examination of the development of the tale of terror in relation to the type of popular medical material previously published in monthly magazines and the case history tradition. The chapter closes by discussing the engagement with the genre by three medical contributors to Blackwood’s, the surgeons, Robert Macnish (1802–37), John Howison (1797–1859) and William Dunlop (1792–1848).