Abstract
Montaigne’s writings on medicine and the body have always been seen as part of a larger project about knowing ourselves. Responding to medical developments that seemed to privilege the anatomical body over the mind or the emotions, Montaigne defended the humoral link between mind and body. His essays make use of word play, puns, and anecdotes based on his own experience and reports from antiquity to counter what he perceived to be an increasingly one-sided approach to medicine. The result is a witty but nuanced argument for a more balanced outlook to what is now known as psychosomatic medicine.
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1 Hereafter, all references to the French version of Les Essais refer to the 2001 Céard edtion, unless otherwise noted, and will be designated solely with the page number. Any accompanying English translations will be drawn from Screech’s translation (1993) and will be similarly designated only by the page number.
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2 Sain, the French adjective for both “healthy” and “sane” reflects not only the overlap of cognitive and curative meanings, but moreover emphasizes the tension between these two fields that is inherent in any matter of what is now recognized as mental health.
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3 One could argue that Montaigne’s omission of Vesalius in this list of three “reckless” innovators suggests that he sees the anatomist (much like Vesalius argued of himself) as working within an existing paradigm and not as disregarding it and those who articulated it in the first instance.
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4 The literature on curative aspects of pathography (Frank 1995; Hunsaker-Hawkins 1999; Charon 2006) itself hinges on a binary of physical and psychological effects. Some scholars, such as James Pennebaker (2000), cite scientific studies where patients who write about their condition or their stresses experience appreciable improvements in immune function, pain, medication use and lung function. A good deal of work also centers on the anecdotal accounts of patients who feel better or more empowered by recounting and writing the stories of their illness.
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Robert, J. Pa/enser bien le corps: Cognitive and Curative Language in Montaigne’s Essais . J Med Humanit 36, 241–250 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-015-9327-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-015-9327-7