Invention of Hysteria
Invention of Hysteria

Author: Georges Didi-Huberman

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2004-09-17

Total Pages: 387

ISBN-13: 0262541807

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The first English-language publication of a classic French book on the relationship between the development of photography and of the medical category of hysteria. In this classic of French cultural studies, Georges Didi-Huberman traces the intimate and reciprocal relationship between the disciplines of psychiatry and photography in the late nineteenth century. Focusing on the immense photographic output of the Salpetriere hospital, the notorious Parisian asylum for insane and incurable women, Didi-Huberman shows the crucial role played by photography in the invention of the category of hysteria. Under the direction of the medical teacher and clinician Jean-Martin Charcot, the inmates of Salpetriere identified as hysterics were methodically photographed, providing skeptical colleagues with visual proof of hysteria's specific form. These images, many of which appear in this book, provided the materials for the multivolume album Iconographie photographique de la Salpetriere. As Didi-Huberman shows, these photographs were far from simply objective documentation. The subjects were required to portray their hysterical "type"—they performed their own hysteria. Bribed by the special status they enjoyed in the purgatory of experimentation and threatened with transfer back to the inferno of the incurables, the women patiently posed for the photographs and submitted to presentations of hysterical attacks before the crowds that gathered for Charcot's "Tuesday Lectures." Charcot did not stop at voyeuristic observation. Through techniques such as hypnosis, electroshock therapy, and genital manipulation, he instigated the hysterical symptoms in his patients, eventually giving rise to hatred and resistance on their part. Didi-Huberman follows this path from complicity to antipathy in one of Charcot's favorite "cases," that of Augustine, whose image crops up again and again in the Iconographie. Augustine's virtuosic performance of hysteria ultimately became one of self-sacrifice, seen in pictures of ecstasy, crucifixion, and silent cries.

Abnormal
Abnormal

Author: Michel Foucault

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2016-09-01

Total Pages: 485

ISBN-13: 1784786403

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Three decades after his death, Michel Foucault remains one of the towering intellectual figures of the last half-century. His works on sexuality, madness, the prison, and medicine are enduring classics. From 1971 until his death in 1984, Foucault gave public lectures at the famous Collge de France. These seminal events, attended by thousands, created the benchmarks for contemporary social enquiry. The lectures comprising Abnormal begin by examining the role of psychiatry in modern criminal justice, and its method of categorising individuals who "resemble their crime before they commit it." Building on the themes of societal self-defence developed in earlier works, Foucault shows how defining "normality" became a prerogative of power in the nineteenth century, shaping the institutions-from the prisons to the family-meant to deal with "monstrosity," whether sexual, physical, or spiritual. The Collge de France lectures add immeasurably to our appreciation and understanding of Foucault's thought.

Diabetes Its Medical and Cultural History
Diabetes Its Medical and Cultural History

Author: Dietrich v. Engelhardt

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 492

ISBN-13: 364248364X

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Diabetes. Its Medical and Cultural History covers the history of scientific inquiry into this affliction from antiquity to the discovery of insulin (1921) with concurrent consideration of the history of the patient and the cultural historical background. The reprints of medical historical studies discuss general relationships as well as specific details and exceptional research achievements of the past. Included in the bibliography of primary sources are the most important historical contributions in diabetic research and diabetic therapy with the author's name and information on the place of publication. The bibliography of secondary literature consolidates international studies from the past century to the present on the history of the theory of diabetes and therapeutic approaches. Illustrations and literary texts document cultural historical relationships. In index of persons and items facilitates use of this work which is intended to provide a stimulus for the physician, medical historian, medical student, general historian as well as diabetics themselves.

The Making of a Social Disease
The Making of a Social Disease

Author: David S. Barnes

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2023-11-10

Total Pages: 484

ISBN-13: 0520915178

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In this first English-language study of popular and scientific responses to tuberculosis in nineteenth-century France, David Barnes provides a much-needed historical perspective on a disease that is making an alarming comeback in the United States and Europe. Barnes argues that French perceptions of the disease—ranging from the early romantic image of a consumptive woman to the later view of a scourge spread by the poor—owed more to the power structures of nineteenth-century society than to medical science. By 1900, the war against tuberculosis had become a war against the dirty habits of the working class. Lucid and original, Barnes's study broadens our understanding of how and why societies assign moral meanings to deadly diseases.

Endometriosis in Adolescents
Endometriosis in Adolescents

Author: Ceana H. Nezhat

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2020-11-13

Total Pages: 745

ISBN-13: 3030529843

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Adolescent endometriosis is a previously overlooked disease in children, the true prevalence of which is still unknown but has been estimated between 19-73%. There are numerous initial challenges faced by adolescents suffering from delayed or undiagnosed endometriosis apart from experiencing chronic pain, such as: school/work absenteeism, false diagnoses/treatments, erroneous physician referrals, unnecessary radiological studies, radiation exposure, and emergency room visits as well as early exposure to narcotic pain medications and subsequent drug tolerance, resistance or even addiction. This text presents a clear history of physician and patient understanding and awareness of endometriosis in adolescents. It lays the groundwork for this condition with background information on endometriosis in general followed by a more focused look at endometriosis in adolescents. Leading experts in the field provide chapters on the different locations where endometriotic lesions can present in adolescents as well as identified risk factors and concomitant diseases of which it is important to be aware. In addition to the clinical presentation, this book also provides information on breaking down existing barriers, such as stigma, and current activism and awareness of this condition. Adolescent Endometriosis is a first-of-its-kind text that focuses exclusively on endometriosis in the adolescent population. Written by experts in the field, this book is a comprehensive resource for clinicians in all medical disciplines that treat adolescent age girls.

A History of Disability
A History of Disability

Author: Henri-Jacques Stiker

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Published: 2019-12-09

Total Pages: 279

ISBN-13: 0472037811

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The first book to attempt to provide a framework for analyzing disability through the ages, Henri-Jacques Stiker's now classic A History of Disability traces the history of western cultural responses to disability, from ancient times to the present. The sweep of the volume is broad; from a rereading and reinterpretation of the Oedipus myth to legislation regarding disability, Stiker proposes an analytical history that demonstrates how societies reveal themselves through their attitudes towards disability in unexpected ways. Through this history, Stiker examines a fundamental issue in contemporary Western discourse on disability: the cultural assumption that equality/sameness/similarity is always desired by those in society. He highlights the consequences of such a mindset, illustrating the intolerance of diversity and individualism that arises from placing such importance on equality. Working against this thinking, Stiker argues that difference is not only acceptable, but that it is desirable, and necessary. This new edition of the classic volume features a new foreword by David T. Mitchell and Sharon L. Snyder that assesses the impact of Stiker’s history on Disability Studies and beyond, twenty years after the book’s translation into English. The book will be of interest to scholars of disability, historians, social scientists, cultural anthropologists, and those who are intrigued by the role that culture plays in the development of language and thought surrounding people with disabilities.