Quin, Grégory (Author)
Bohuon, Anaïs (Author)
From the early nineteenth century in France, the treatment of hysteria was connected to both physical and moral development. As a result, therapeutic treatments envisaged by medical practitioners were influenced by and related to the formulation of precepts of medical gymnastics. This article considers how `physical education' for women became part of medical discourse, specifically the elaboration of `body treatment' as a remedy against nervous disorders including hysteria. From the Second Republic (1848) to the years of the belle epoque (1914), the discourse concerning the medical cause of `hysterical madness' is marked by the progressive discrediting of reflections that located the causes of pathology in the genitals. However, the shaping of a neuro-cerebral etiology did not fully replace discussions of the relationship between hysteria, female bodies and the uterus. While the current historiography emphasises the participation of doctors in the production and legitimation of physical exercises in the nineteenth century, some aspects of this process are not yet fully explored. We examine the ambivalences of medical discourse, between the rhetoric of the eternally wounded woman and the need to develop women's abilities (intellectual, moral, and physical) to ensure healthy children. And despite the shadows that still obscure the etiology of nervous disorders, there is, in our period, a genuine dynamic favouring experimental therapeutics. The `movement disorders', such as chorea, hysteria or neurasthenia, were handled by increasingly well-established regimes utilising physical exercise. The introduction of gymnastics in the hospital played a fundamental role in this process; it enabled experimentation and lent legitimacy to physical exercise as therapy.
...More
Article
Chen, Hsiu-fen;
(2011)
Between Passion and Repression: Medical Views of Demon Dreams, Demonic Fetuses, and Female Sexual Madness in Late Imperial China
(/isis/citation/CBB001231843/)
Chapter
Micale, Mark S.;
(2004)
Discourses of Hysteria in Fin-de-Siècle France
(/isis/citation/CBB000550992/)
Book
Amy Koerber;
(2018)
From Hysteria to Hormones: A Rhetorical History
(/isis/citation/CBB570745124/)
Thesis
Smith, Jennifer;
(2006)
Mysticism as an Escape from Scientific Discourse: Eluding Female Subjectivity in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Spain
(/isis/citation/CBB001561723/)
Book
Goldstein, Jan;
(2009)
Hysteria Complicated by Ecstasy
(/isis/citation/CBB001020598/)
Article
Segrest, Mab;
(2014)
Exalted on the Ward: “Mary Roberts,” the Georgia State Sanitarium, and the Psychiatric “Speciality” of Race
(/isis/citation/CBB001201824/)
Article
Lois P Rudnick;
Alison M Heru;
(2017)
The ‘secret’ source of ‘female hysteria’: the role that syphilis played in the construction of female sexuality and psychoanalysis in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
(/isis/citation/CBB726473206/)
Book
Scull, Andrew T.;
(2009)
Hysteria: The Disturbing History
(/isis/citation/CBB001251287/)
Book
Finn, Michael R.;
(2009)
Hysteria, Hypnotism, the Spirits, and Pornography: Fin-de-siècle Cultural Discourses in the Decadent Rachilde
(/isis/citation/CBB001212914/)
Article
Westerink, Herman;
(2014)
Demonic Possession and the Historical Construction of Melancholy and Hysteria
(/isis/citation/CBB001451208/)
Article
Carlos S Alvarado;
(2019)
Jules Bernard Luys on magnetic pathology
(/isis/citation/CBB875248563/)
Chapter
Finn, Michael R.;
(2003)
Retrospective Medicine, Hypnosis, Hysteria and French Literature, 1875-1895
(/isis/citation/CBB000501998/)
Thesis
Arnaud, Sabine M.;
(2007)
Narratives and Politics of a Diagnosis: The Construction and Circulation ofHysteria as a Medical Category, 1730--1820
(/isis/citation/CBB001561347/)
Article
Møllerhøj, Jette;
(2009)
Encountering Hysteria: Doctors' and Patients' Perspectives on Hysteria in Denmark, 1875--1918
(/isis/citation/CBB000932516/)
Article
Alison M Moore;
(2018)
Conceptual layers in the invention of menopause in nineteenth-century France
(/isis/citation/CBB015280131/)
Article
Cryle, Peter;
(2012)
Vaginismus: A Franco-American Story
(/isis/citation/CBB001250105/)
Chapter
Männistö-Funk, Tiina;
(2008)
The Body of a Real Woman: Medicine in the Young Women's Guidebooks Published in Finland, 1890--1923
(/isis/citation/CBB000760629/)
Article
Löwy, Ilana;
(2011)
“Because of Their Praiseworthy Modesty, They Consult Too Late”: Regime of Hope and Cancer of the Womb, 1800--1910
(/isis/citation/CBB001250083/)
Article
Cryle, Peter;
(2009)
“A Terrible Ordeal from Every Point of View”: (Not) Managing Female Sexuality on the Wedding Night
(/isis/citation/CBB001030577/)
Article
Schleiner, Winfried;
(2009)
Early Modern Green Sickness and Pre-Freudian Hysteria
(/isis/citation/CBB000932591/)
Be the first to comment!