Medical muses : hysteria in nineteenth-century Paris /
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| Author / Creator: | Hustvedt, Asti. |
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| Edition: | 1st ed. |
| Imprint: | New York : W.W. Norton & Co., c2011. |
| Description: | x, 372 p. : ill. ; 22 cm. |
| Language: | English |
| Subject: | |
| Format: | Print Book |
| URL for this record: | http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/8441549 |
| Summary: | Blanche, Augustine, and Genevieve found themselves in the hysteria ward of the Salpetriere Hospital in 1870s Paris, where their care was directed by the prominent neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot. They became medical celebrities: every week, eager crowds arrived at the hospital to observe their symptoms; they were photographed, sculpted, painted, and transformed into characters in novels. The remarkable story of their lives as patients in the clinic is a strange amalgam of intimate details and public exposure, science and religion, medicine and the occult, hypnotism, love, and theater.<br> <br> <br> <br> But who were Blanche, Augustine, and Genevieve? What role did they play in their own peculiar form of stardom? And what exactly were they suffering from? Hysteria--with its dramatic seizures, hallucinations, and reenactments of past traumas--may be an illness of the past, but the notions of femininity that lie behind it offer insights into disorders of the present. |
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| Physical Description: | x, 372 p. : ill. ; 22 cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: | 9780393025606 0393025608 |
