Medicine And Narration In The Eighteenth Century

This title provides an analysis of how literary fiction borrowed narratorial devices from medical texts and vice-versa.

How did doctors argue in eighteenth-century medical pamphlet wars? How literary, or clinical, is Diderot’s depiction of mad nuns? What is at stake in the account of a cataract operation at the beginning of Jean-Paul’s novel Hesperus? In this pioneering volume, contributors extend current research at the intersection of medicine and literature by examining the overlapping narrative strategies in the writings of both novelists and doctors.Focusing on a wide variety of sources, an interdisciplinary team of researchers explores the nature and function of narration as an underlying principle of such writing. From a reading of correspondence between doctors as a means of continuing professional education, to the use of inoculation as a plotting device, or an examination of Diderot’s physiological approach to mental illness inLa Religieuse, contributors highlight:how doctors exploited rhetorical techniques in both clinical writing and correspondence with patients.how novelists incorporated medical knowledge into their narratives.how models such as case-histories or narrative poetry were adopted and transformed in both fictional and actual medical writing.how these narrative strategies shaped the way in which doctors, patients and illnesses were represented and perceived in the eighteenth century. ‘[...] the essays improve our knowledge of how the history of science and medicine converge with the literature of the eighteenth century. This book must be commended for each piece’s lively and accessible writing, making it an enjoyable read for both historians and literary scholars.’- Eighteenth-Century Fiction

First published in 1993, Literature & Medicine During the Eighteenth Century analyses the close interplay of medicine and literature by paying special attention to questions of body language and the representation of inner life. Although today, medicine and literature are widely seen as falling on different sides of the ‘two cultures’ divide, this was not so in the eighteenth century when doctors, scientists, writers, and artists formed a well-integrated educated elite. Locke, Smollett and Goldsmith were doctors, and physicians such as Erasmus Darwin doubled as poets. Written by leading historians of medicine and eighteenth-century literary critics, this book uncovers the interconnections between medical and psychological theory and ideas of taste, beauty, and genius. Its contributors explore the rich cultural milieu of the period and investigate the ways in which medicine itself contributed to informing a gendered discourse of the world. This book will be of interest to historians, literary scholars and medical historians.

Offers an authoritative account of literature and medicine at a vital point in their emergence during the eighteenth century.

Excerpt from A Narrative of Medicine in America Throughout history the man of action comes first; the fighting male, with his fists, his club, his battle-axe, and his sword. After him the poet, telling of his deeds. Then, after a long interval, the philosopher and the man of science. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

This work reflects on hypochondria as well as on the global functioning of the human mind and on the place of the patient/physician relationship in the wider organisation of society. First published in 1711, revised and enlarged in 1730, and now edited and published with a critical apparatus for the first time, this is a major work in the history of medical literature as well as a complex literary creation. Composed of three dialogues between a physician and two of his patients, Mandeville’s Treatise mirrors the digressive structure of a talking cure. Thanks to the soothing and enlightening effects of this casual conversation, the physician Mandeville demonstrates the healing power of words for a class of patients that he presents as men of learning who need above all to be addressed in their own language. Mandeville’s aim was to delineate his own cure for hypochondria and hysteria, which consisted of a talking cure followed by diet and exercise, but also to discuss the practice of medicine in England and continental Europe at a time when physicians were beginning to lose ground to apothecaries. Opposing a purely theoretical approach to medicine, Mandeville takes up the principles presented by Francis Bacon, Thomas Sydenham, and Giorgio Baglivi, and advocates a medical practice based on experience and backed up by time-tested theories.

In early modern England, housewives, clergymen, bloodletters, herb women, and patients told authoritative tales about the body. By the end of the eighteenth century, however, medicine had begun to drown out these voices. This book argues that changes in the relationship between rich and poor underlay this rise in medicine's authority.