An Undefinable Disease? Hysteria from Metaphor to Narrative in the 18th Century

From the 17th century onward, doctors insisted on the difficulty of accounting for the enormous scope of hysteric affections. This article studies two strategies doctors developed to illustrate hysteric troubles: metaphors & narratives of individual patients' cases. An initial period saw an...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Annales : histoire, sciences sociales (French ed.) sciences sociales (French ed.), 2010-01, Vol.65 (1), p.63-85
Main Author: Arnaud, Sabine
Format: Article
Language:fre
Subjects:
18th century
Diseases
Doctors
Eighteenth Century
Knowledge
Medicine
Narratives
Patients
Physicians
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:From the 17th century onward, doctors insisted on the difficulty of accounting for the enormous scope of hysteric affections. This article studies two strategies doctors developed to illustrate hysteric troubles: metaphors & narratives of individual patients' cases. An initial period saw an abundance of metaphors (Proteus, Chameleon, Hydra) & the article follows the transformation of their uses between 1570 & 1820. From the 18th century on, narratives of patients' cases were favored, inscribing the comprehension of the malady in terms of a reconstruction of its evolution over time. Through the study of two types of enunciation, this article analyzes how political & epistemological stakes informed these texts & led to the construction of a medical category. Beyond the theorization of hysteria, the study of this corpus illustrates the transformation of medical knowledge & the changes in doctors perceptions of their role. Adapted from the source document.
ISSN:0395-2649