Joseph mortimer granville wife stories

A few years ago I published a paper (available open access here) on the anti-temperance writings of Joseph Mortimer Granville (1833-1900), a Victorian doctor and writer who died on this day. Granville was a peculiar man, and his work included both useful contributions to medicine and outrageous quackery and self-promotion. He wrote/edited the report of the Lancet’s Commission on Lunatic Asylums in 1877, but he was also a London ‘Society physician’ with clients like Stafford Henry Northcote (then Conservative leader in the Commons, later first earl of Iddesleigh). He wrote many letters to the papers, as well as a series of self-help books suggesting cures for sleeplessness, the common cold, and excessive dreaming. (A selection: Minds and Moods: Gossiping papers on mind-management and morals; ‘Fish as food and physic’; ‘Dreams and the making of dreams’; ‘The wooing of sleep.’) The idea that wearing a night-cap could keep dreams away tickled Funny Folks:

In 1891 Granville wrote to the Times to argue that the British public were not drinking anything like enough alcohol, and that moderation was making them sick and shortening their lives. Given the tone of contemporary arguments about licensing and drinking, Granville’s letter p

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