Medical Muses: Hysteria in Nineteenth-Century Paris
New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2011.
Stated First Edition. Hardcover. Stated First Edition with full number line indicating first printing. 8 1/2" X 5 1/2". x, 372pp. Very mild shelf wear to covers, corners, and edges of unclipped dust jacket. Tan paper over boards with spine backed in red and lettered in gilt. Top edge of front board is gently bumped. Pages are clean and unmarked. Binding is firm and sound. Includes 40 black-and-white illustrations.
ABOUT THIS BOOK:
A fascinating study of three young female hysterics who shaped our early notions of psychology.
Blanche, Augustine, and Genevieve found themselves in the hysteria ward of the Salpetriere Hospital in 1870s Paris, where their care was directed by the prominent neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot. They became medical celebrities: every week, eager crowds arrived at the hospital to observe their symptoms; they were photographed, sculpted, painted, and transformed into characters in novels. The remarkable story of their lives as patients in the clinic is a strange amalgam of intimate details and public exposure, science and religion, medicine and the occult, hypnotism, love, and theater.
But who were Blanche, Augustine, and Genevieve? What role did they play in their own peculiar form of stardom? And what exactly were they suffering from? Hysteria with its dramatic seizures, hallucinations, and reenactments of past traumas may be an illness of the past, but the notions of femininity that lie behind it offer insights into disorders of the present.(Publisher). Very good / very good. Item #7214
ISBN: 9780393025606
Price: $15.00