• Reading Themselves Sick:Consumption and Women's Reading in the Early Republic, 1780–1860
• Carrie N. Knight (bio)

Sickness is the mildew of life. It mars the fairest hours of enjoyment. In the morning the spirits are refreshed—the heart is rife with ambition. Herculean obstacles cower beneath your touch. But a little exertion & fatigue spirits Ambition and all are gone and you wonder at the power that could have nerved you to make the effort which has now prostrated your strength. The fever mantles your cheek… pain in your side and chest and these are the precursors of a restless sleepless night. You change your position for ease but pain also changes—a dry hard cough breaks the monotony of a midnight hour and leaves you exhausted.

—Middlesex Diary of Adaline Lindsley, August 26, 18411

When Adaline Lindsley set her pen to the diary she kept between 1840 and 1843, she was participating in a tradition that subsequent historians have used to piece together a picture of women's lives in the early republic that would otherwise be lost to time. Lindsley's diary is typical in its record of the daily encounters and occurrences that colored her life in Middlesex, New York. In other respects, however, it is strikingly singular. The diary reveals a woman of considerable literary proficiency, both in its style and manner of writing and in its record of Lindsley's prolific reading. The diary is also a narrative of disease. Adaline Lindsley was dying of consumption.² Some would have said her reading was the cause.

Consumption is essential to any discussion of life in the early American republic. In the second half of the eighteenth century, its presence first among colonists and then among citizens of the new nation was ubiquitous. Some historians have attributed this prevalence to population growth and commercial expansion, a theory supported by a peak in cases around 1800 in Atlantic coastal cities.³ And yet, little scholarship has been devoted to its study within this period. This inequity is the result of diverse factors including an early ambiguity surrounding the disease, skepticism or outright derision of illness narratives, and a historiographical bias toward the disease as it affected European populations—the last a consequence of the relative [End Page 37] dearth of disease narratives or pathology treatises produced in America relative to those produced in Britain and France at the time.

In addition to these impediments, scholars have not sufficiently addressed how consumption in early America might have been differently understood and therefore exist as a separate disease from its European counterpart. Susan Sontag has sensitively observed that tuberculosis constitutes a set of cultural metaphors that evolve over time and space. Her observation supports the idea that the disease reflected the concerns and values of early republicans. These concerns and values confronted observable differences between life in America and elsewhere, as well as imagined differences rooted in feeling and sentiment. Difference was a volatile construct used to assert a national identity alternately set apart from and intimately linked with a European past. Citizens of the early republic grappled with how to reconcile these differences, to turn back or to look forward, choosing instead to fashion a hybrid culture responsive to a rapidly evolving national and global identity. The American response to consumption followed a similar trajectory, taking many of its cues from earlier European conceptions of the disease while shaping it to its own needs.

Consumption and the marketplace were early partners in this process. By the late eighteenth century, the marketplace was a preeminent ground for testing America's hybrid identity. Regulation and policing of material consumption were conspicuously tested as forms of dissent and individuation as evidenced in earlier pre-revolutionary consumer boycotts of British goods.⁴ Proscriptive discourse against the consumption of foreign goods, particularly the tragic novels of Samuel Richardson and others British and French writers, persisted well into the early republican period, focusing its harshest criticism on the corrupting influence of such goods upon the polity, despite or perhaps in consequence of their continued popularity among American consumers.⁵

Janice Radway reminds us that "'to consume'… was originally understood to refer to fire...

• 读书生病：共和国初期的消费与妇女读书，1780–1860年
• 嘉莉·奈特（Carrie N.Knight）（生物）

疾病是生命的霉菌。它破坏了最美好的享受时光。早晨，精神焕发—雄心勃勃。巨大的障碍在您的触碰下畏缩。但是一点点的劳累和疲劳精神，野心和所有的一切都消失了，您想知道可能令您不安的力量使您现在付出的努力变得虚弱了。发烧掩盖了您的脸颊……您的侧面和胸部疼痛，这些是不眠之夜的前兆。您可以轻松地改变姿势，但疼痛也可以改变-干硬的咳嗽打破了午夜时分的单调感，使您筋疲力尽。

— Adaline Lindsley的Middlesex日记，18411年8月26日

当阿达琳·林德斯利（Adaline Lindsley）将笔放在1840年至1843年间保存的日记上时，她正在参加一种传统，后来的历史学家习惯于将一幅关于共和国早期妇女生活的照片拼凑在一起，否则，这些女人的生活将不复存在。Lindsley的日记在记录她每天在纽约Midsex的生活中所经历的日常遭遇和事件中很典型。但是，在其他方面，它是非常奇异的。这本日记从风格和写作方式以及林德斯利多产读物的记录上揭示了一位具有相当文学水平的女性。日记也是疾病的叙事。阿达琳·林兹利（Adaline Lindsley）快要消费了。²有些人会说她的读书是原因。

消费对于美国早期共和国生活的任何讨论都是必不可少的。在18世纪下半叶，它的存在首先在殖民者中出现，然后在新国家的公民中普遍存在。一些历史学家将这种流行归因于人口增长和商业扩张，这一理论得到了大西洋沿岸城市1800年左右病例高峰的支持。³然而，在此期间，很少有学者专门研究它。这种不平等是多种因素共同作用的结果，包括围绕疾病的早期歧义，对疾病叙述的怀疑或直截了当，以及该病影响欧洲人口时对该病的史学偏见-这是相对疾病的最后一个结果[End Page 37] 与当时的英国和法国相比，美国缺乏有关疾病的叙述或病理学论文。

除了这些障碍外，学者们还没有充分地解决美国早期的消费方式可能会被不同地理解，因此作为一个单独的存在而存在的问题。疾病来自其欧洲同行。苏珊·桑塔格（Susan Sontag）敏感地观察到，结核病构成了一系列随着时间和空间演变的文化隐喻。她的观察支持这种疾病反映了早期共和党人的关注和价值观的想法。这些担忧和价值观面临着美国和其他地区生活中可观察到的差异，以及想象中的根植于感觉和情感上的差异。差异是一种不稳定的结构，用于断言与欧洲的过去并与欧洲的过去密切相关的国家身份。共和国初期的人们竭力解决和解这些分歧，回头或向前看，取而代之的是根据对国家和全球身份的迅速发展，选择形成一种混合文化。

消费和市场是这一过程的早期合作伙伴。到18世纪后期，市场已经成为测试美国混合身份的一个重要平台。物质消费的管制和维持治安作为异议和个性化的形式受到了明显的检验，这一点在革命前的消费者对英国商品的抵制中得到了证明。⁴反对外国商品消费的说明性话语，特别是塞缪尔·理查森（Samuel Richardson）以及其他英法作家的悲剧小说，一直持续到共和初期，将最严厉的批评集中在这类商品对政体的腐败影响上，尽管有可能，也有可能。由于它们在美国消费者中持续受欢迎。⁵

珍妮丝·拉德威（Janice Radway）提醒我们，“'消费'...”最初被理解为指火...