Women and Medicine in the French Enlightenment: The Debate over Maladies Des Femmes - Rilegato

Wilson, Lindsay B.

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 080184438X ISBN 13: 9780801844386

Casa editrice: Johns Hopkins Univ Pr, 1993

Riassunto

In Women and Medicine in the French Enlightenment Lindsay Wilson takes a new approach to the social history of medicine by focusing on the key role that women played as both providers and recipients of health care during the Ancien Regime. Wilson pays special attention to three medical controversies involving maladies des femmes in eighteenth-century France: the "miraculous cures" claimed by the Convulsionaries of St. Medard, the uncertainty over the maximum length of pregnancy (and its implications for the legitimacy of heirs) and the debate over the medical effectiveness of mesmerism.
Wilson's analysis of these debates reveals how social and political concerns affected the medical community's efforts to establish an enlightened science of medicine which would, in turn, legitimize its own authority. But because the issues of legitimacy, hierarchy and authority raised by the medical causes celebres resonated so deeply throughout French society, debate extended far beyond medical circles to an increasingly engaged public. Such debate reflected a significant shift in the center of politics from the institutions of court, academy, and parlement to journals, theaters, and the streets.
Wilson's description of these debates provides insight into the forces that were transforming the family, the church, corporate society, and the state on the eve of the Revolution. She argues for a re-assessment of a period that has been all too easily categorized as an age of triumph - either for enlightenment or for repression. Her work also offers concrete examples of the ways in which sexual symbolism can he employed to maintain social order or promote change. Based on medical treatises, medical topographies, official reports, judicial documents, physicians' correspondence, and memoirs of eighteenth-century women, Women and Medicine in the French Enlightenment is a thoroughly interdisciplinary work that will appeal to anyone with an interest in the social history of medicine, women's studies, Enlightenment thought, and French social history.

Su questo libro

Recensione:

"The value of this closely argued and well-researched study of pre-scientific medicine lies precisely in demonstrating the discrepancy... between the soaring aspirations of professional knowledge and its fractured achievements in practice." -- Times Literary Supplement

"Well-organized, well-written, and highly informative, this book should appeal to the woman who is thinking about a career in medicine." -- Science Books

Product Description:

Book by Wilson Professor Lindsay

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Johns Hopkins Univ Pr
• Data di pubblicazione: 1993
• ISBN 10: 080184438X
• ISBN 13: 9780801844386
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 256