The History of Hysteria as a Medical Concept Spring 2017

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1 Basic Course Information The History of Hysteria as a Medical Concept Spring 2017 Course Title: The History of Hysteria as a Medical Concept Spring 2017 Course Information: Medicine: Extracurricular Elective (formerly known as Bluebook Credit ) Course Director: Alina Bennett, MPH, PhD (alina.bennett@uth.tmc.edu) Prerequisites: None Semester Hours: Medicine = Extracurricular Elective (formerly known as Bluebook Credit ) Method of Instruction: Discussion Target Audience: Graduate Level Medical Students Course Description This course traces the historical rise of hysteria as a medical category. In contrast to a traditional linear study of seventeenth and eighteenth European medical century texts, this focuses on the rhetorical depictions of patients as narrated by physicians. The political backdrop of the royal courts frame how medical people sought to establish intellectual authority over the body thereby demonstrating not only their utility to a single patient but to the health of the public, specifically to the members of the aristocracy. The case study of hysteria provides a lens through which we can assess how medicine understood itself as an enterprise for the creation and dissemination of knowledge related to the moral, physical, and environmental determinants of this vexing condition. The techniques invented to accomplish this goal will be of particular importance with regards to the potentially infectious nature of the condition and the publicly available cures. The course is reading-intensive and includes both primary source material from and secondary sources by contemporary historians. We are privileged to have access to the rare books collections housed within the TMC library. As such, all course sessions will be held in the rare books room on the 1 st floor of the library. The will be run as a discussion section where students will each select a day to serve as a facilitator. Course Learning Objectives After taking this course, students will be able to: 1. define, in discussions, the condition of hysteria as described by physicians writings from ; 2. learn and apply archival methods utilizing primary sources; and 3. identify, in discussions, the techniques used by physicians to discover, diagnose and treat the condition of hysteria. Evaluation and Requirements Participation 100% (minimum of 4 sessions) Participation. Participation in four of the five sessions is required for credit. Make-up papers (a 1-page/500 words, single-spaced summary and analysis of the assigned reading) will be required for any missed sessions. The assessment rubric for participation is listed in the appendix of this syllabus. 1

2 Course Limit Enrollment will be limited to: 7 Medical Students; 7 Public Health Students Course Day and Time Thursdays 12pm-12:50pm Course Location Jesse Jones Library Building (TMC Library) Rare books room, 1 st floor. Course Dates January 12 th January 19 th January 26 th February 2 nd February 9 th Course Texts All course materials will be provided. 2

3 1. JANUARY 19 TH, 12PM-12:50PM Course Schedule Creating a Medical Category through Naming and Classifying 1) Mark S. Micale, Approaching Hysteria: Disease and its Interpretations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), Introduction. 2) Helen King, Once Upon a Text: Hysteria from Hippocrates, in Hippocrates Woman: the Female Body in Ancient Greece (New York, NY: Routledge, 1998), ) William Cullen, First Lines of the Practice of Physic, for the Use of Students in the University of Edinburgh (Edinburgh, SCT: 1783), selections. 4) John Theobald, Every Man His Own Physician (Philadelphia, PA: 1764), selections. 2. JANUARY 26 TH, 12PM-12:50PM Metaphors of Hysteria as Used in Political and Religious Approaches to the Condition 1) Lauren Otis, Virchow and Koch: The Cell and the Self in the Age of Miasmas and Metaphors, in Membranes: Metaphors of Invasion in Nineteenth-Century Literature, Science, and Politics (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), ) Lindsay B. Wilson, Women and Medicine in the French Enlightenment: The Debate over Maladies des Femmes (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), Chapter 1. 3) John Purcell, A Treatise of Vapours or Hysterick Fits Containing an Analytical Proof of its Causes, Mechanical Explanations of All its Symptoms and Accidents According to the Newest and Most Rational Principles: Together with its Cure at Large (London, UK, 1707), ) Anne Finch, A Pindaric Ode on the Spleen, in W. Stukeley, Of the Spleen, its Description and History, Uses and Disease To Which is Added Some Anatomical Observations in the Dissection of an Elephant, (Londres, UK: 1732),

4 5) William Perfect, Methods of Cure in Some Particular Cases of Insanity: The Epilepsy Hypochondriacal Affection, Hysteric Passion, and Nervous Disorders, Prefixed with Some Accounts of Each of Those Complaints (Rochester, NY: 1780), 75. 6) Thomas Willis, An Essay of the Pathology of the Brain and Nervous Stock in which Convulsive Diseases are Treated of, Translated out of the Latine into English by S.P. in the Remaining Medical Works of that Famous and Renowned Physician Dr. Thomas Willis of Christ Church in Oxford, and Sidley, Professor of Natural Philosophy in that Famous University, (London: UK: T. Dring, C. Harper, J. Leigh and S. Martyn), FEBRUARY 2 ND, 12PM-12:50PM Narrating Illness and Approaching Patients from a Court Physician s Perspective 1) Roy Porter, Introduction, in George Cheyne: The English Malady (London, UK: Routledge, 1991), ix-xlii. 2) Steven Shapin, Trusting George Cheyne: Scientific Expertise, Common Sense, and Moral Authority in Early Eighteenth-Century Dietetic Medicine. Bulletin of the History of Medicine 77, no. 2 (2003), ) Anne C. Vila, Sensibility, Anthropology and Libertinage in Laclos and Sade, in Enlightenment and Pathology: Sensibility in the Literature and Medicine of Eighteenth-Century France (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), ) Francis Fuller, Medicina Gymnastica: or a Treatise Concerning the Power of Exercise with Respect to the animal æconomy: and the Great Necessity of it in the Cure of Several Distemper, (London, UK: Robert Knaplock, 1705), selections. 5) George Cheyne, The English Malady or, a Treatise of Nervous Diseases of all Kinds as Spleen, Vapors, Lowness of Spirits, Hypochondriacal and Hysterical Distempers, & in Three Parts, (London, UK: S. Powell, 1733), selections. 6) George Cheyne, The Case of the Honourable Colonel Townshend, and The Case of the Learned and Ingenious Dr. Cranstoun in a Letter to the Author at His Desire, in Dr. Cranstoun s Own Words, in The English Malady or, a Treatise of Nervous Diseases of all Kinds as Spleen, Vapors, Lowness of Spirits, Hypochondriacal and Hysterical Distempers & in Three Parts, (London, UK: S. Powell, 1733), selections. 7) Samuel-Auguste Tissot, An Essay on the Disorders of People of Fashion (London, UK: 1771), Title page-12, 20-38,

5 4. FEBRUARY 9 TH, 12PM-12:50PM Constructing Sexual Difference 1) Elizabeth Williams, Hysteria and the Court Physician in Enlightenment France, in Eighteenth-Century Studies 35, no. 2 (Winter, 2002) ) Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex, Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), ) Elizabeth Fissell, The Womb Goes Bad, in Vernacular Bodies: The Politics of Reproduction in Early Modern England (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2004), ) Thomas Trotter, A View of the Nervous Temperament being a Practical Inquiry into the Increasing Prevalence, Prevention and Treatment of Those Diseases, Commonly Called Nervous, Bilious, Stomach and Liver Complaints (London, UK: 1807), FEBRUARY 16 TH, 12PM-12:50PM The Roles of Imagination, Magnetism and Somnambulism as Sources of Illness 1) Henri Ellenberger, The Discovery of the Unconscious (New York, NY: Basic Books, 1970), selections. 2) Robert Whytt, Observations on the Nature, Causes, and Cure of those Disorders Which have been Commonly Called Nervous Hypochondriac, or Hysteric: to Which Are Prefixed some Remarks on the Sympathy of the Nerves (Edinburgh, SCT: J. Balfour, 1764), selections. 3) William Cullen, Clinical Lectures, Delivered in the Years 1765 and 1766 by William Cullen, Taken in Short-Hand by a Gentleman Who Attended (London, UK, 1979), selections. 4) Nicholas Robinson, A New System of the Spleen and Vapours and Hypochondriack Melancholly (London, UK: Rinvington, 1729), selections. 5) James Blondel The Strength of the Imagination in Pregnant Women Consider d (London, UK: C Dilly, 1788), selections. 6) John Haygarth, Of the Imagination, as a Cause and as a Cure of disorders of the Body (London, UK: 1800), selections. 5

6 7) Johann Caspar Lavater, Physiognomy: or the Corresponding Analogy Between the Conformation of the Features and the Ruling Passions of the Mind, xxvi (p. 135)- xxviii (p. 145). 8) Anton Mesmer, Propositions Concerning Animal Magnetism (London, UK, 1779), selections. 6

7 Class Performance Assessment Rubric Components of Class Participation Prepared for (on time, has course materials) Completes and consistently understanding of reading assignments Contributes to discussion Fail Marginal Pass Pass High Pass Honors none of the participation. 1-2 of the participation. 3-4 of the participation. all the components participation, but one or two elements are not on a distinguished level. always or very nearly always all the participation on a distinguished level a model for other students. Positive attitude toward the Supportive attitude toward members 7

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