Bernard Mandeville: A Treatise of the Hypochondriack and Hysterick Diseases (1730)
Title | Bernard Mandeville: A Treatise of the Hypochondriack and Hysterick Diseases (1730) PDF eBook |
Author | Sylvie Kleiman-Lafon |
Publisher | Springer |
Pages | 242 |
Release | 2017-09-18 |
Genre | Philosophy |
ISBN | 3319577816 |
This work reflects on hypochondria as well as on the global functioning of the human mind and on the place of the patient/physician relationship in the wider organisation of society. First published in 1711, revised and enlarged in 1730, and now edited and published with a critical apparatus for the first time, this is a major work in the history of medical literature as well as a complex literary creation. Composed of three dialogues between a physician and two of his patients, Mandeville’s Treatise mirrors the digressive structure of a talking cure. Thanks to the soothing and enlightening effects of this casual conversation, the physician Mandeville demonstrates the healing power of words for a class of patients that he presents as men of learning who need above all to be addressed in their own language. Mandeville’s aim was to delineate his own cure for hypochondria and hysteria, which consisted of a talking cure followed by diet and exercise, but also to discuss the practice of medicine in England and continental Europe at a time when physicians were beginning to lose ground to apothecaries. Opposing a purely theoretical approach to medicine, Mandeville takes up the principles presented by Francis Bacon, Thomas Sydenham, and Giorgio Baglivi, and advocates a medical practice based on experience and backed up by time-tested theories.
A Treatise of the Hypochondriack and Hysterick Diseases
Title | A Treatise of the Hypochondriack and Hysterick Diseases PDF eBook |
Author | Bernard Mandeville |
Publisher | |
Pages | 412 |
Release | 1730 |
Genre | Hypochondria |
ISBN |
A Treatise of the Hypochondriack and Hysterick Diseases
Title | A Treatise of the Hypochondriack and Hysterick Diseases PDF eBook |
Author | Bernard Mandeville |
Publisher | |
Pages | 380 |
Release | 2012 |
Genre | Hysteria |
ISBN |
A Treatise of the Hypochondriack and Hysterick Diseases
Title | A Treatise of the Hypochondriack and Hysterick Diseases PDF eBook |
Author | Bernard Mandeville |
Publisher | |
Pages | 412 |
Release | 1976 |
Genre | |
ISBN | 9780598937711 |
Man-Devil
Title | Man-Devil PDF eBook |
Author | John J. Callanan |
Publisher | Princeton University Press |
Pages | 328 |
Release | 2025-01-14 |
Genre | Biography & Autobiography |
ISBN | 0691165440 |
A lively and provocative account of Bernard Mandeville and the work that scandalized and appalled his contemporaries—and made him one of the most influential thinkers of the eighteenth century In 1714, doctor, philosopher and writer Bernard Mandeville published The Fable of the Bees, a humorous tale in which a prosperous hive full of greedy and licentious bees trade their vices for virtues and immediately fall into economic and societal collapse. Outrage among the reading public followed; philosophers took up their pens to refute what they saw as the fable’s central assertion. How could it be that an immoral community thrived but the introduction of morality caused it to crash and burn? In Man-Devil, John Callanan examines Mandeville and his famous fable, showing how its contentious claim—that vice was essential to the economic flourishing of any society—formed part of Mandeville’s overall theory of human nature. Mandeville, Callanan argues, was perfectly suited to analyze and satirize the emerging phenomenon of modern society—and reveal the gap between its self-image and its reality. Callanan shows that Mandeville’s thinking was informed by his medical training and his innovative approach to the treatment of illness with both physiological and psychological components. Through incisive and controversial analyses of sexual mores, gender inequality, economic structures, and political ideology, Mandeville sought to provide a naturalistic account of human behavior—one that put humans in close continuity with animals. Aware that his fellow human beings might find this offensive, he cloaked his theories in fables, poems, anecdotes, and humorous stories. Mandeville mastered irony precisely for the purpose of making us aware of uncomfortable aspects of our deepest natures—aspects that we still struggle to acknowledge today.
Health for Sale
Title | Health for Sale PDF eBook |
Author | Roy Porter |
Publisher | Manchester University Press |
Pages | 304 |
Release | 1989 |
Genre | Health & Fitness |
ISBN | 9780719019036 |
Fables of Modernity
Title | Fables of Modernity PDF eBook |
Author | Laura Brown |
Publisher | Cornell University Press |
Pages | 292 |
Release | 2001 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 9780801488443 |
This text expands the territory for cultural and literary criticism by introducing the concept of the cultural fable. In connecting imagination and history through the category of the cultural fable, Brown illuminates the nature of modern experience in the growing metropolitan centres.