Women and medicine in the French Enlightenment : the debate over "maladies des femmes"

Bibliographic Information

Women and medicine in the French Enlightenment : the debate over "maladies des femmes"

Lindsay Wilson

Johns Hopkins University Press, c1993

Available at  / 7 libraries

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Note

Includes bibliographical references (p. 215-236) and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

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 focuses on three medical controversies - the "miraculous cures" claimed by the convulsionaries of St Medard, the uncertainty over the maximum length of pregnancy, and the debate over the medical effectiveness of Mesmerism.

Table of Contents

  • The debate over late births (1764-1806)
  • drawing the lines of the debate - opponents, proponents, mediators
  • the effect of the debate on medical jurisprudence
  • defining the 18th-century physician - scientists, "Philosophe", man of society?
  • the problem of convulsions
  • the debate over the convulsionaries of St. Medard (1727-1765)
  • the debate over mesmerism (1778-1787)
  • ignorant and superstitious or overly refined? - the convulsive female in physicians' critiques of culture
  • the legacy of the enlightenment.

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