Author : Laura Morris
Publisher :
Page : 174 pages
File Size : 28,30 MB
Release : 2009
Category :
ISBN :
"Scholars from a range of disciplines have been compelled by French neurologist and clinician Jean Martin Charcot (1825-1893) and his work with hysterical patients at the Salpêtrière hospital in Paris. From 1862, when he began work at the hospital, until his death thirty-one years later, Charcot's influence in French medical circles grew exponentially, as did his notoriety in popular culture. The Salpêtrière, whose structure originally served as an arsenal during Louis XIII's early thirteenth century reign, was the largest medical establishment in the world during Charcot's tenure as Chair of Neuropathology. Although he conducted research in many areas, he is most renowned for his work on hysteria. This work involved the publication of patients' photographs to create a so-called iconography of the disease, the ordering and classification of each physical manifestation of hysteria that might occur in the successive "stages" of a hysteric attack, and staged lessons that Charcot carried out each Tuesday in the hospital's amphitheater. These lessons became spectacles, performed not only for physicians in training but also for curious members of the general public, and the were later published, in a form remarkably similar to a play script, for distribution across Europe. The abundance of visual and textual records generated by Charcot and his followers has provided scholars--with interests ranging from cultural history to art history, gender theory to performance studies--a remarkably fertile collection of sources and information to incorporate in, and appropriate for, their own studies" -- Introduction.