Nervous Conditions explores the role of the body in the development of modern science, challenging the myth that modern science is built on a bedrock of objectivity and confident empiricism. In this fascinating look into the private world of British natural philosophers--including John Dalton, Lord Kelvin, Charles Babbage, John Herschel, and many others--Elizabeth Green Musselman shows how the internal workings of their bodies played an important part in the sciences' movement to the center of modern life, and how a scientific community and a nation struggled their way into existence.