Abstract
Issues of ‘popularization’ and ‘public understanding of science’ have attracted considerable interest in recent historical and sociological writing.1 Work on the history of medical popularization, in particular, has so far focused almost exclusively on ‘popular’ medical texts and their (often academic) authors, however. Extant studies tend to present bio-bibliographical data and editorial information, and some of them proceed to embark on a provocative analysis of rhetorical strategies, implicit agendas and ideological backgrounds.2 This kind of work can throw a welcome light on the authors’ intentions and the readership they anticipated. It can tell us very little, however, about the actual impact of such ‘popularizing’ texts on the general public, let alone on readers of different occupation, class, education and gender.3 These texts do not reveal how they were read and used, in what way they influenced the medical ideas, the illness experience and the coping strategies of their prospective readers and how influential they were compared to other sources of medical knowledge.
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Notes
For a good general overview see A. Irwin and B. Wynne (eds), Misunderstanding Science? The Public Reconstruction of Science and Technology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); the best introduction to
the history of medical popularisation is still R. Porter (ed.), The Popularization of Medicine 1650–1850 (London and New York: Routledge, 1992).
In addition to the contributions to Porter, Popularization see e.g., W. Coleman, ‘The People’s Health. Medical Themes in Eighteenth-century French Popular Literature’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 51 (1977), 55–74;
V. S. Smith, ‘Cleanliness: Idea and Practice in Britain, 1770–1850’, PhD thesis, University of London (London, 1985);
L. Jordanova, ‘The Popularization of Medicine: Tissot on Onanism’, Textual Practice, 1 (1987), 68–79;
R. Rey, ‘La vulgarisation médicale au XVIIIe siècle: le cas des dictionnaires portatifs de santé’, Revue d’histoire des sciences, 44 (1991), 413–33;
M. Lindemann, ‘“Aufklärung” and the Health of the People. “Volksschriften” and Medical Advice in Braunschweig–Wolfenbüttel, 1756–1803’, in R. Vierhaus (ed.), Kultur und Gesellschaft in Nordwestdeutschland zur Zeit der Aufklärung (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1992), pp. 101–20;
C. Verry-Jolivet, ‘Les livres de médecine des pauvres aux XVII et XVIIIe siècles. Les débuts de la vulgarisation médicale’, in: Maladies médecines et sociétés. Approches historiques pour le présent, vol. 1 (Paris, Histoire au présent, 1993), pp. 51–66;
D. Teysseire (ed.), La médecine du peuple de Tissot à Raspail (1750–1850) (Créteil: Conseil général du Val-de-Marne, Archives départementales, 1994).
For a critical assessment of this ‘papyrization’ see R. Cooter and S. Pumfrey, ‘Separate Spheres and Public Places. Reflections on the History of Science Popularization and Science in Popular Culture’, History of Science, 32 (1994), 237–67.
S. A. Tissot, Avis au peuple sur sa santé (Lausanne, Grasset, 1761);
W. Buchan, Domestic Medicine, or, a Treatise on the Prevention and Cure of Diseases by Regimen and Simple Medicines (London, 1765);
on Tissot see A. Emch-Dériaz, Tissot: Physician of the Enlightenment (New York: Lang, 1992);
on Buchan see C. E. Rosenberg, ‘Medical Text and Social Context: Explaining William Buchan’s “Domestic Medicine”‘, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 57 (1983), 22–42.
J.-A. Helvétius, Traité des maladies les plus fréquentes, et des remèdes propres à les guérir (Paris: d’Houry, 1703).
Th. Zwinger, Sicherer und Geschwinder Artzt Oder Neues Artzney-Buch (Basel: Richter, 1695).
H. C. Abel, Wohlerfahrner Leib-Medicus der Studenten (Leipzig: Groschuff, 1699).
C.-A. Vandermonde, Dictionaire portatif de santé, 2 vols (Paris: Vincent, 1760);
to my knowledge a thorough survey of this genre has so far been done only for the German literature; see H. Böning, ‘Medizinische Volksaufklärung und Öffentlichkeit. Ein Beitrag zur Popularisierung aufklärerischen Gedankengutes und zur Entstehung einer Öffentlichkeit über Gesundheitsfragen. Mit einer Bibliographie medizinischer Volksschriften’, Internationales Archiv für Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur, 15 (1990), 1–92.
On this type of source see G. B. Risse, ‘Doctor William Cullen, Physician, Edinburgh. A Consultation Practice in the Eighteenth Century’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 48 (1974), 338–51;
L. W. B. Brockliss, ‘Consultation by Letter in Early Eighteenth-century Paris: the Medical Practice of Étienne-François Geoffroy’, in Ann F. LaBerge (ed.), French Medical Culture in the Nineteenth Century (Amsterdam/Atlanta: Rodopi, 1994), 79–117;
M. Stolberg, ‘“Mein äskulapisches Orakel”. Patientenbriefe als Quellen einer Kulturgeschichte der Körper- und Krankheitserfahrung im 18. Jahrhundert’, Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaften, 7 (1996), 385–404 (on patient letters to Tissot).
L. W. B. Brockliss and C. Jones, The Medical World of Early Modern France (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), p. 283 similarly found ‘a basically unitary medical universe’ in early modern France.
While the theories and discoveries of famous early modern physicians have been studied extensively, we still lack a comprehensive, experience-near historical ethnography of ordinary medical culture and of prevailing views on the body and its diseases; for a brief but useful overview see A. Wear, ‘Popularized Ideas of Health and Illness in Seventeenth-century France’, Seventeenth-century French Studies, 8 (1986), 229–42,
and for women’s diseases in particular (but based on a physician’s case reports) see B. Duden, The Woman Beneath the Skin: a Doctor’s Patients in Eighteenth-century Germany (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1991);
my own account draws primarily on my current research on patient letters and autobiographical writings, supplemented by physicians’ consilia, case histories and similar practice-near sources (cf. M. Stolberg, Homo patiens. Krankheits- und Körpererfahrung in der Frühen Neuzeit (Köln: Böhlau, 2003)).
S. Chassagne (ed.), Une femme d’affaires au XVIIIe siècle. La correspondance de Mme de Maraise, collaboratrice d’Oberkampf (Toulouse: Privat, 1981), pp. 105–7, 27 May 1780; in treating members of her family she relied, among others, on Tissot’s Avis.
S. A. Tissot, Anleitung für das Landvolk in Absicht auf seine Gesundheit (Augsburg/Innsbruck: Wolff, 1772), copy in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, shelfmark Path. 1258, pp. 159–68.
P. Guérin, Traité sur les maladies des yeux (Lyon: Reguilliat, 1769).
Hoffmann , Medicina consultatoria, vol. 5 (1726), pp. 326–33, undated letter from a vice-rector.
Cf. M. Stolberg, ‘La négociation de la thérapie dans la pratique médicale du XVIIIe siècle’, in O. Faure (ed.), Les thérapeutiques: savoirs et usages (Lyon: Collection Fondation Marcel Merieux, 1999), pp. 357–68.
Onania or the heinous sin of self-pollution (London, [P. Varenne, 1716]); on the historical background and date of publication see M. Stolberg, ‘Self-pollution, Moral Reform, and the Venereal Trade. Notes on the Sources and Historical Context of Onania (1716)’, Journal of the History of Sexuality, 9 (2000), 37–61.
S. A. Tissot, L’onanisme, dissertation sur les maladies produites par la masturbation (Lausanne: Chapuis, 1760).
For a more detailed account see M. Stolberg, ‘An Unmanly Vice. Self-pollution, Anxiety, and the Body in the Eighteenth Century’, Social History of Medicine, 13 (2000), 1–21.
The literature on the ‘nerves’ and the related issue of ‘sensibility’ is extensive; useful starting points are G. S. Rousseau, ‘Cultural History in a New Key. Towards a Semiotics of the Nerve’, in: J. H. Pittock and A. Wear (eds), Interpretation and Cultural History (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991), pp. 25–81;
G. J. Barker-Benfield, The Culture of Sensibility: Sex and Society in Eighteenth-century Britain (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1992);
E. A. Williams, The Physical and the Moral: Anthropology, Physiology, and Philosophical Medicine in France, 1750–1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). For a detailed account of the shift from ‘vapours’ to ‘nerves’ in medical lay culture, see Stolberg, Homo patiens, 220–60.
See on this point R. L. Martensen, ‘Alienation and the Production of Strangers. Western Medical Epistemology and the Architectonics of the Body. An Historical Perspective’, Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 19 (1995), 141–82.
Cf. M. Stolberg, ‘A Woman’s Hell? Medical Perceptions of Menopause in Pre-industrial Europe’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 73 (1999), 408–28.
Cf. the ground-breaking work by N. D. Jewson, ‘Medical Knowledge and the Patronage System in 18th Century England’, Sociology, 8 (1974), 369–85.
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Stolberg, M. (2004). Medical Popularization and the Patient in the Eighteenth Century. In: de Blécourt, W., Usborne, C. (eds) Cultural Approaches to the History of Medicine. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230287594_6
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