Start Date
5-1-2019 12:30 PM
End Date
5-1-2019 1:45 PM
Disciplines
European History | History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
Subjects
French Revolution -- Social aspects, Medicine -- France -- History -- 18th century
Abstract
Modern practice of medicine is reliably grounded in thorough observation and experimental study before application in a clinical setting. Yet before the universality of verifiable scientific justification, theoretical—and generally fallacious—models for the workings of the human body predominated, including the philosophy of the four elemental humors introduced by Hippocrates and Galen. In France, the decline of humorism’s supremacy did not occur until the late 17th and early 18th centuries, the same time period during which the long-standing convention of absolute monarchy was violently eradicated by the French Revolution. How, if at all, was the ending of humoral remedies like bloodletting connected to demands for liberty, equality, and reason? This paper examines how revolutionary values incited and were mirrored in French medical reform at the time, specifically presenting the unification of physicianship and surgery and the institutional shift towards empirical methodology as key contributors to the deposition of humorism.
Rights
© Copyright the author(s)
IN COPYRIGHT:
http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).
DISCLAIMER:
The purpose of this statement is to help the public understand how this Item may be used. When there is a (non-standard) License or contract that governs re-use of the associated Item, this statement only summarizes the effects of some of its terms. It is not a License, and should not be used to license your Work. To license your own Work, use a License offered at https://creativecommons.org/
Persistent Identifier
https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/28508
Liberté, Égalité, Santé: The Evolution of Medicine in Revolution-Era France
Modern practice of medicine is reliably grounded in thorough observation and experimental study before application in a clinical setting. Yet before the universality of verifiable scientific justification, theoretical—and generally fallacious—models for the workings of the human body predominated, including the philosophy of the four elemental humors introduced by Hippocrates and Galen. In France, the decline of humorism’s supremacy did not occur until the late 17th and early 18th centuries, the same time period during which the long-standing convention of absolute monarchy was violently eradicated by the French Revolution. How, if at all, was the ending of humoral remedies like bloodletting connected to demands for liberty, equality, and reason? This paper examines how revolutionary values incited and were mirrored in French medical reform at the time, specifically presenting the unification of physicianship and surgery and the institutional shift towards empirical methodology as key contributors to the deposition of humorism.
Notes
3rd place winner of the Karen E. Hoppes Young Historians Award for Outstanding Research and Writing.