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Woman as a Model of Pathology in the Eighteenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Michael Crawcour  and
François Azouvi
François Azouvi
Affiliation:
C.N.R.S.
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Extract

Doctors have always thought, it seems, that the female body is more susceptible to illness than the male. Ancient medicine founded this dogma on the doctrine of elementary qualities, in attributing to woman a cold and humid constitution. As heat is the principal instrument which nature uses to produce the forces of the body and to maintain them, it must be lacking in woman, as is proved by her weakness, the softness of her limbs, her lack of external sexual organs and the crudeness of her menstrual blood. If the Aristotelians and the Galenists diverge, in the Renaissance and in the XVIIth century, about the nature—fertile or not—of the “female seed,” they agree to pledge the female body to illnesses. Such a predisposition is explained by the female constitution: its coldness and its humidity, as well as retaining women's strength badly, contribute to giving them a “soft, slack body, of rare texture,” little suited to letting the body fluids, of which it is full, circulate correctly; their blood, corrupted by humidity, instead of being properly heated like it is in men, accumulates, blocks up the too small blood-vessels and causes all the illnesses of which they are the habitual victims. To this it is necessary to add the pathogenic importance of the womb, “a part of the body so sensitive and so easily upset, that its least indisposition causes an infinity of strange and almost unbearable evils.” The indispositions which affect this part of the body are always in relation to humidity or dryness, that is with “the two excrements” which it receives: sperm and menstrual blood. Whether, insufficiently impregnated by the virile liquor, “it mounts to the liver and other higher parts of the body to suck humidity from them until it becomes moist,” or it retains for an abnormally long time the seed, which decays inside it; or the periods are suppressed, or on the other hand they are produced too often; all womens illnesses are a question of impeded or excessive discharge.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 29 , Issue 115 , September 1981 , pp. 22 - 36
Copyright
Copyright © 1981 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

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References

1 Galen, De l'usage des parties du corps humain, Lyon, 1566, p. 836.

2 J Liébaut, Trois livres des maladies et infirmitez des femmes (1582), Roucn, 1649, p. 5.

3 Ibid., p. 411.

4 Cf. for example, J. Varandal, Traité des maladies des femmes, Paris, 1666.

5 Aristotle, Generation of the Animals, II, 3, 737 a 29; IV, 1, 765 b 31.

6 Galen, op. cit., p. 836.

7 For a good exposition of this thesis, M. Cureau de La Chambre, L'Art de connoistre les hommes, Paris, 1659, p. 54.

8 Sydenham, Médecine pratique, tr., Paris, 1659, p. 54.

9 Malebranche, Recherche de la vérité, II, 11, I, § 1.

10 Cf. on this point J. Roger, Les Sciences de la vie dans la pensée française du XVIIIe siècle, 2nd ed., Paris, 1971, pp. 636-639.

11 On all these authors, cf. P. Hoffmann, La Femme dans la pensée des Lumières, Paris, 1976.

12 Fr. Hoffmann, La Médecine raisonnée, French trans., Paris, 1739-1743, vol. 1, p. 114. Cf. also Ph. Hecquet, De la digestion et des maladies de l'estomac, vol. 1, Paris, 1730, Discours préliminaire sur la Trituration.

13 Hoffmann, op. cit., vol. 4, p. 135-136, 152, 170.

14 Hecquet, Le Naturalisme des convulsions, Soleure, 1733, vol. 1, p. 2.

15 Hoffmann, op. cit., vol. 5, p. 55.

16 Ibid., p. 57.

17 Hecquet, op. cit., p. 4.

18 Ibid., p. 9; cf. Hoffmann, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 353, vol. 5, 5; p. 78.

19 L. La Caze, Idée de l'homme physique et moral, Paris, 1755, p. 11.

20 Ibid., p. 74.

21 Ibid., p. 328; cf. also the exposition of La Caze's thought by Ménuret, in the article "Spasme" in the Encyclopédie.

22 Ibid., p. 68.

23 Ibid., p. 420. One finds extensions of this thesis in Diderot, particularly in the Réve de d'Alembert. Cf. on this point M. Hobson, "Sensibilité et spectacle: le contexte médical du ‘Paradox sur le comédien' de Diderot," Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, 1977, n. 2.

24 The article "Spasme," in Encyclopédie.

25 La Caze, op. cit., p. 279.

26 Ibid., p. 420.

27 Ibid,. pp. 280 and 421.

28 Ibid., p. 280.

29 Ibid., pp. 369-370.

30 See on this point the analyses of G. Canguilhem in La Connaissance de la vie, 2nd ed., Paris, 1967, p. 156 et seq., and in the article "Vie" of the Encyclopaedia Universalis, vol. 16, p. 764. On the vitalism of La Caze, cf. J. Roger, "Méthodes et modèles dans la préhistoire du vitalisme français," in Science et philosophie. XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, XIIe Congrès international d'Histoire des Sciences, vol. 3, Paris, 1971.

31 See on this subject the just remarks of K. Sprengel, Histoire de la médecine, French trans., Paris, 1815, vol. 5, pp. 357-359, and of Ch. Daremberg, Histoire des sciences médicales, Paris, 1870, vol. 2, p. 1083.

32 La Caze, op. cit., p. 29.

33 D. de Laroche, Analyse des fonctions du système nerveux, Genève, 1778, vol. 1, p. 4.

34 Bordeu, Recherches sur les maladies chroniques (1775), 1818 ed., vol. 2, p. 923.

35 Barthez, Nouveaux éléments de la science de l'homme (1778), Paris, 1858, vol. 1, p. 252: "One cannot help assigning the production of the principal phenomena of irritability to the sensitivity of a living animal body."

36 C.-N. Le Cat, Traité des sensations et des passions en général, Paris, 1767, vol. 1, p. 85.

37 P. Fabre, Essai sur différents points de physiologie, de pathologie et de thérapeutique, Paris, 1770, vol. 1, p. 38.

38 Le Camus, Médecine de l'esprit, 2nd ed., Paris, 1769, p. 9.

39 R. Whytt, Traité des malades nerveuses, vol. 1.

40 S. Musgrave, Considérations sur les maladies des nerfs, Bouillon, 1779, p. 9.

41 Tissot, Traité des nerfs et de leurs maladies, Paris, 1778, vol. 3, p. 280.

42 Tissot, Essai sur les maladies des gens du monde, 3rd ed., Lyon, 1771, pp. 9-13.

43 De Sèze, Recherches physiologiques et philosophiques sur la sensibilité ou la vie animale, Paris, 1786, p. 79.

44 Le Cat, op. cit., p. 99.

45 J. Raulin, Traité des affections vaporeuses du sexe, Paris, 1758, p. XIX.

46 Whytt, op. cit., p. 126.

47 Beauchêne, De l'influence des affections de l'âme dans les maladies nerveuses des femmes, Amsterdam, 1783, p. 13.

48 De Sèze, op. cit., p. 220.

49 De Laroche, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 251. Cf. J. P. Peter, "Entre femmes et médecins. Violence et singularités dans les discours du corps et sur le corps d'après les manuscrits médicaux de la fin du XVIIIe siècle," Ethnologie française, 3/4, 1976, pp. 341-348.

50 Chambon de Montaux, Des maladies des femmes, Paris, 1784, vol. 1, p. XXVI.

51 Raulin, op. cit., p. 39.

52 Beauchêne, op. cit., p. 1.

53 Roussel, Système physique et moral de la femme, (1775), 5th ed., Paris, 1809, p. 28.

54 Cabanis, Oeuvres philosophiques, Paris, P.U.F., 1956, vol. 1, p. 284.

55 Roussel, op. cit., p. 17.

56 De Sèze, op. cit., p. 65.

57 De Sèze, op. cit., p. 79.