Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Stolberg, M

Titel

Experiencing Illness and the Sick Body in Early Modern Europe

Auflage

1

Ort / Verlag

London: Palgrave Macmillan

Erscheinungsjahr

2011

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• 01 02 Illness was ubiquitous in early modern society. Health was constantly threatened and medicine often proved powerless. Based on his analysis of contemporary autobiographical writing, of thousands of letters which the sick and their relatives sent to physicians of the time and of a wide range of other sources, Michael Stolberg describes how early modern people coped with pain and disease, how they interacted with physicians and other healers and how they tried to make sense of their suffering. He presents the ideas and imagesthat peopleassociated with commonly diagnosed diseases such as phthisis, gout, cancer, dropsy or fever. The first thorough and comprehensive overview of the early modern experience and lay interpretation of illness, Stolberg also traces the impact of new medical theories on ordinary people's medical views. 04 02 Some Thoughts on Theory Sources Acknowledgements Introduction PART I: ILLNESS IN EVERYDAY LIFE The Concern for Oneself Disease and the Self The Experience of Pain The Search for Meaning: Religion, Witchcraft and Astrology The Search for Meaning: Illness, Way of Life and Biography The Narrative Reconstruction of Personal History Anxieties The Physician's Audience: Illness and the Bedside Community Nursing Care The Medical Marketplace The Doctor-Patient Relationship PART II: PERCEPTIONS AND INTERPRETATIONS Medical Popularization From Temperament to Character Plethora and Apoplexy Fluxes, Gout and Rheumatism 'Gichter' and Cramps Acrimonies Red Murrain (Erysipelas) Scurvy The Therapy of Acrimonies Miasms and Contagia: Plague, French Disease and English Sweat Indigestion, Winds and Slime Obstruction and Disrupted Excretion Stagnation and Deposits Cancer Pathological Heat Vapors Fever Consumption and Consumptive Fever Expenditure and Exhaustion Dropsy Seminal Economy PART III: DOMINANT DISCOURSE AND THE EXPERIENCE OF DISEASE The Sensible Body A New Disease: the Vapors Historical Roots: 'Vapores', Hypochondria and Hysteria The Rise of the Nerves Embodiment Critique of Civilization The Sensible Woman The Cult of Sensibility Illness as Protest Conclusion: A New Bourgeois Habitus Manuscript Sources Printed Sources 13 02 MICHAEL STOLBERG was trained as both an historian and a physician. He has worked in Germany, Italy and the UK and, since 2004, has been chair of History of Medicine at the University of Würzburg, Germany. He has published widely on the historical anthropology of illness and the body and on the theory and practice of learned medicine in the early modern period. 31 02 A fascinating and provocative account of the experience and lay understanding of illness in early modern Europe 02 02 Based on thousands of letters written by patients and their relatives and on a wide range of other sources, this book provides the first comprehensive account of how early modern people understood, experienced and dealt with common diseases and how they dealt with them on a day-to-day basis. 19 02 The first thorough and comprehensive overview of the early modern experience and lay interpretation of illness Original and provocative content Based on an unparalleled wealth of manuscript sources from France, Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Great Britain Delivers a sophisticated theoretical framework in a very readable text