Winfried Schleiner

The medical world of early modern France

The Medical World of Early Modern France recounts the history of medicine in France between the sixteenth century and the French Revolution. Physicians, surgeons and apothecaries are centre-stage, and the study provides an overview of long-term changes in their ideas about medicine and their craft. Other denizens of the medical world - quacks, charlatans, wise women, midwives, herbalist and others - are also brought into the analysis, which is set within the broader context of social, economic, demographic and cultural change. The breadth of the chronological and analytical framework, and the depth of the archival research behind it, makes this a unique account of the evolution of medical ideas and practices in one of the major countries of early modern Europe.

Early modern green sickness and pre-Freudian hysteria.

In early modern medicine, both green sickness (or chlorosis) and hysteria were understood to be gendered diseases, diseases of women. Green sickness, a disease of young women, was considered so serious that John Graunt, the father of English statistics, thought that in his time dozens of women died of it in London every year. One of the symptoms of hysteria was that women fell unconscious. The force of etymology and medical tradition was so strong that in one instance the gender of the patient seems to have been changed by the recorder to make the case fit medical theory.

Linguistic Xenohomophobia in sixteenth-century France: The case of Henri Estienne

Henri Estienne (also Henricus Stephanus, called le Grand) is one of the most important printers, editors, dictionary writers, philologists, and religious controversialists of the sixteenth century. This essay argues that allegations of unmanliness and sodomy against (Catholic) Italians - in short, forms of xenohomophobia - inform not only his writings that participate in the post-Reformational controversies of his day, but they enter deeply also into his philological speculations and observations. Estiennes gendered speculations and prejudices were adapted to use in England.

The Melancholy Muse: Chaucer, Shakespeare and Early Medicine.

Melancholy is so much part of human experience that it is no surprise that, in its clinical dimension, it has been written about by physicians for hundreds of years, from antiquity into the twentieth century. Heffernans study correlates views of melancholy appearing in ancient, medieval, and Renaissance medical treatises with poetic treatments of melancholy drawn from the early and later stages of the careers of Chaucer and Shakespeare. As this study shows, these two poets had an enduring interest in this subject, and both also demonstrated considerable medical knowledge for that time. The Melancholy Muse works toward new formulations and syntheses of two largely isolated areas: medical theory and literary criticism. It thereby becomes a study both in medico-literary relations and in the history of ideas. Heffernans useful approach to literature concentrates on Chaucer and Shakespeare, whose works are rich in the expression of melancholy.