Endless Possibilities of Rejuvenation: Defining Youth, Defying Ageing in Britain, 1919-1948

Human beings have always worried about ageing, with special worry reserved for premature ageing. Consequently, we have tried numerous different methods to try and achieve rejuvenation - a state of renewed youth or the appearance of youth. The everyday methods with which we are perhaps most familiar - skin care products, dietary and exercise regimes - have long histories but were transformed in the decades following the First World War, when a wealth of scientific research and new anti-ageing products appeared to promise the ability to prolong youthfulness, fertility and vitality.

This Fellowship sets out to examine the impact of the most widespread methods of rejuvenation - injection and application of hormones, using electricity on the body, skincare products, specific diets and exercise regimes - on post-WWI Britain. We already know from previous historical work that the unique socio-political context of interwar Germany precipitated the rise of eugenic ideals about race and biology, as well as beauty and ugliness, whilst at the same time the rising consumer-culture context of the United States enthusiastically embraced technological and scientific developments linked to human ageing. However, Britain in this period has remained largely unstudied, and consequently we risk overstating the significance of developments elsewhere. Concerns about the overall fitness (and fertility) of the population were increased by Britain's participation in the two World Wars, and it is clear that the perceived need for rejuvenation of both individuals and society became a topic of intense debate both in medical and scientific circles and in the wider public sphere. Especially prior to the NHS, manufacturers and entrepreneurs attempted to exploit this fascination, and they claimed that a number of existing therapies had rejuvenating properties, as well as trying to introduce new devices and products. The domestication of electrical lighting and the increasingly wide reach of cinema and photography also placed added pressure on the British public, and particularly women, to look at their best. The Fellowship will explore why rejuvenation was such a prominent matter of public interest in this period, and it will show in what ways the methods used to slow, stop or even reverse ageing helped to define some of the most fundamental elements of what it means to be human.

The principal goals are to (i) explain the diversity of approaches to rejuvenation, (ii) examine the different advertising and marketing strategies and their relationship with contemporary scientific perspectives on ageing, and (iii) uncover how everyday habits were changed by anti-ageing products, procedures and lifestyles. Allied to this, the Fellowship will explain how manufacturers of rejuvenation preparations and devices attempted to convince British publics of the efficacy of their products, and show to what extent the target audiences of these products were persuaded by such claims. The Fellowship seeks to explain how and why this period in Britain became such a fruitful environment for different rejuvenation strategies. Drawing on a wide range of archival materials, including the papers of manufacturers and retailers of rejuvenation-related products (such as Boots, Pond's and Elizabeth Arden), newspaper and periodical sources, objects, specialist scientific and medical texts, personal accounts and fictional representations of rejuvenation, the project will link together histories of the body, ageing, the limits of biomedical explanation, everyday medical practice, the impact of global conflict on health and wellbeing, and the medical marketplace, amongst other themes. The Fellowship will consequently deepen our understanding of the historical body and the human condition by demonstrating that ageing and rejuvenation were intimately connected with a wide range of medial, social, cultural and economic factors, including beauty, gender, class, race, warfare, and eugenics.

There are four distinct groups who will be the primary beneficiaries of this research.

1. Museum and heritage professionals

The postdoctoral Engagement Fellow (EF) will work closely with key staff at all three project partners - the National Trust, Thackray Medical Museum and Boots - to develop resources and exhibition materials to maximise the value of their collections and offer new interpretative strategies for their collections, particularly medical objects and collections regarded as 'fringe' or 'quack'. From these institutions Lucinda Heron (Operations Manager, Overbeck's), Joanne Bartholomew (Chief Executive, Thackray Medical Museum) and Sophie Clapp (Senior Archive and Records Manager, Boots) will meet regularly with the EF to ensure that their work feeds directly into their programmes of activity. All three will also attend the project conference (January 2018), ensuring that the three partners receive reciprocal benefits from working with one another. Broader impact will be guaranteed for the heritage community though the Thackray's leading role in the Medical Museum Subject Specialist Network and UK Medical Collections Group, the wider National Trust network of properties and Boots' involvement with the national Archives and Records Association.

2. Public audiences

My earlier research in this area has already generated substantial interest amongst public audiences through a variety of means. These have included a public panel debate for the British Science Festival (September 2015) on the subject 'Who Wants to Live Forever?' featuring biomedical scientists and social gerontologists alongside historians, and a major feature article in New Scientist magazine (16 February 2013). Through the work with the project partners, the EF will generate public-facing outputs based on Fellowship research. By accessing these new narratives about the history of rejuvenation in Britain public audiences will look with a more informed eye on current anti-ageing products and procedures such as cosmetic surgery, the place of these in society, and the types of claim made by manufacturers. They will also have an enhanced appreciation for the far-reaching influence of global conflict, scientific knowledge claims and commercial interests on seemingly unconnected everyday, domestic habits, enabling them to better reflect on their own experiences of ageing and youthfulness.

3. Commercial medical companies

One of the key areas of focus of the Fellowship is advertising and product development. By examining numerous collections of historic advertising, as well as first-hand accounts of using rejuvenating products and methods, the research will offer new insights into the habits of consumers, and in particular their engagement with advertising and marketing strategies. There is therefore significant potential for this Fellowship to provide important evidence about the changing patterns of consumer culture and the different ways in which social groups were persuaded by advertising which made appeals to scientific authority.

4. Healthcare professionals and policymakers

The emergence of regenerative medicine as a major area of biomedical endeavour has the potential to radically alter medical practice. This Fellowship will examine how the immediate aftermath of the First World War became such a fruitful ground for new regenerating therapies. By identifying the role of the scientific and medical communities in shaping and responding to these new (and reconfigured) treatments, the Fellowship will provide an important historical case study in the relationship between everyday domestic practices and professional medical activity. Professional bodies such as the British College of Aesthetic Medicine might therefore benefit from a clearer understanding of the longer-term origins of public desire to maintain a youthful appearance.