Preliminary Material -- Acknowledgements / Ann La Berge and Mordechai Feingold -- Notes on Contributors / Ann La Berge and Mordechai Feingold -- Preface / Ann La Berge and Mordechai Feingold -- Introduction / Ann La Berge and Mordechai Feingold -- Academic Medicine and Medical Industrialism: The Regulation of Secret Remedies in Nineteenth-Century France / Matthew Ramsey -- Consultation by Letter in Early Eighteenth-Century Paris: The Medical Practice of Etienne-François Geoffroy / Laurence Brockliss -- Private Practice and Public Research: The Patients of R. T. H. Laennec / Jacalyn Duffin -- The Development of Medical Specialization in Nineteenth-Century Paris / George Weisz -- Doctors and Families in France, 1880-1930: The Cultural Reconstruction of Medicine / Martha L. Hildreth -- The Uses of Male Hysteria: Medical and Literary Discourse in Nineteenth-Century France / Jan Goldstein -- From Religious to Bio-Medical Anti-Semitism: The Career of Jules Soury / Toby Gelfand -- Vicq d'Azyr, Anatomy and a Vision of Medicine / Caroline Hannaway -- Medical Microscopy in Paris, 1830-1855 / Ann La Berge -- Bacteriological Research and Medical Practice in and out of the Pastorian School / Anne Marie Moulin -- La Visite: Mary Putnam Jacobi and the Paris Medical Clinics / Joy Harvey -- Index / Ann La Berge and Mordechai Feingold.

The eleven essays in this volume illustrate the richness, complexity, and diversity of French medical culture in the nineteenth century, a period that witnessed the medicalization of French society. Medical themes permeated contemporary culture and politics, and medical discourse infused many levels of French society from the bastions of science - the medical faculties and research institutions - to novels, the theater, and the daily lives of citizens as patients. The contributors to this volume - all established scholars in the history of medicine - present the French medical experience from the point of view of both practitioners and patients, and show how medical themes colored popular perceptions and shaped public policies. Topics addressed range from popular medicine to elite Parisian medicine, the interaction of literary and medical discourse, social theater, medical research and practice, medical specialization and education. The essays reflect current trends of medico-historical analysis which emphasize the centrality of class, race, and gender in understanding concepts of disease and the practice of medicine. They show how the medical experience of patients, practitioners, students, and researchers varied according to social class, gender, and geography and the importance of these factors for the construction of disease.

Description based on print version record.