A Cultural History of Medical Vitalism in Enlightenment Montpellier

by Williams,Elizabeth A.

• ISBN13: 9780754608813
• ISBN10: 0754608816
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-01-28
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

This study is a cultural history of Montpellier vitalism, regarded by many historians as the leading school of medicine in the French Enlightenment. Offering a holistic understanding of physical-moral relation in place of Descartes' mind-body dualism, Montpellier vitalism supplied essential discursive foundations of the medical enlightenment.

Author Biography

Elizabeth A. Williams is Professor of History in the Department of History at Oklahoma State University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
A Note on Translation	x
Abbreviations	xi
Introduction	1	(15)
A Medical Town: Montpellier in the Eighteenth Century	16	(34)
At the ``elbow'' of the south	18	(1)
University and town	19	(6)
The gardens	25	(1)
Promoting and disseminating knowledge	26	(5)
In the hospitals of Montpellier	31	(4)
Practice and practitioners	35	(2)
The waters	37	(13)
A University in the Enlightenment: The University of Medicine of Montpellier	50	(30)
Institutional hierarchy	52	(4)
Professors and students	56	(7)
Student life	63	(4)
The teachers of Bordeu	67	(13)
Boissier de Sauvages and the Emergence of Vitalism in Montpellier	80	(32)
Against Descartes: Sauvages's early career	81	(5)
Predictable and unpredictable remedies	86	(4)
Sauvages's nosology	90	(3)
Pathology and physiology	93	(2)
Forces, faculties, and the action of the soul	95	(6)
Classifying disease	101	(11)
The Ascent to Paris: Montpellier Physicians in the Capital of Enlightenment	112	(35)
``This vile country''	113	(2)
``Hommes du Midi'' in Paris	115	(1)
The lure of surgery	116	(2)
Students again	118	(2)
The Montpellier Encyclopedists	120	(4)
Montpellierains and Paris medical journalism	124	(5)
Vitalism in the salon	129	(3)
Montpellier and the court	132	(15)
Vitalism and the Encyclopedist Movement	147	(38)
Celebrating Bearn	148	(3)
A family collaboration in Paris	151	(3)
Vital force in the body	154	(6)
Vitalism in the Encyclopedie	160	(3)
Medicine and chemistry	163	(5)
Barthez as Encyclopedist	168	(4)
Vitalists and materialists	172	(13)
Time of Troubles: The University--Court Connection in the late Ancien Regime	185	(30)
Untenable practices	186	(3)
At war with the town doctors	189	(5)
The clinic thwarted	194	(3)
Internecine struggle	197	(7)
A world away: Bordeu at court	204	(11)
Semiotics, Smallpox, Sex: From the Practical to the Philosophical in Vitalist Medicine	215	(40)
Semiotics and the search for certainty	217	(3)
``A frightful and treacherous malady''	220	(5)
``Practical medicine'' in the Encyclopedie	225	(5)
Vital variability: the case of women	230	(25)
Barthez and the ``Science of Man''	255	(32)
Infinity of ills, infinity of cures	257	(3)
The vital principle	260	(5)
Forces of the animal economy	265	(6)
``Modifications'' of the vital principle: temperament and age	271	(4)
Barthez and the ``vitalist sect''	275	(12)
Vitalism in the Late Enlightenment	287	(34)
The reception of Barthez's synthesis	290	(3)
Montpellier and the Societe royale de medecine	293	(12)
Vitalism and Mesmerism	305	(16)
Conclusion: The End of the Enlightenment and the Eclipse of Montpellier	321	(14)
Select Bibliography	335	(19)
Index	354