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Medical Muses: Hysteria in Nineteenth-Century Paris
by Hustvedt, Asti
- Used
- very good
- Hardcover
- first
- Condition
- Very good/very good
- ISBN 10
- 0393025608
- ISBN 13
- 9780393025606
- Seller
-
Carrollton, Georgia, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2011. Stated First Edition. Hardcover. Very good/very good. Stated First Edition. Hardcover. Stated First Edition with full number line indicating first printing. 8 1/2" X 5 1/2". x, 372pp. Very mild shelf wear to covers, corners, and edges of unclipped dust jacket. Tan paper over boards with spine backed in red and lettered in gilt. Top edge of front board is gently bumped. Pages are clean and unmarked. Binding is firm and sound. Includes 40 black-and-white illustrations.
ABOUT THIS BOOK:
A fascinating study of three young female hysterics who shaped our early notions of psychology.
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.
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.(Publisher).
ABOUT THIS BOOK:
A fascinating study of three young female hysterics who shaped our early notions of psychology.
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.
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.(Publisher).
Synopsis
Hysteria as a disease no longer exists, but in the nineteenth century hysteria was thought to affect half of all women in one of its myriad forms. In 1862 the famous and infamous Salpetriere Hospital in Paris, under the reign of renowned neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot, became the focal point for study of the mysterious illness. Physicians could find no cause, which meant a cure was not possible, but Charcot concentrated on treating the symptoms; with hypnosis, gongs, tuning forks, piercing and the evocation of demons and saints. Charcot's studies at the hospital were controversial, and brought him into conflict with the church as well as his colleagues. But despite this, Charcot was known as hysteria's ultimate authority and his experiments became both a fascinating and a fashionable spectacle. The women were photographed, sculpted, painted and sketched, and demonstrations attracted eager crowds of medical students, physicians, writers, artists and socialites. Medical Muses tells the stories of Blanche, Augustine and Genevieve, young women who found themselves in Charcot's ward as medical celebrities. But who were they? What were they suffering from? And what role did they play in their own curious celebrity? The stories of these women, and in fact, of all of the women institutionalised for hysteria in the Salpetriere, have never been fully told. Theirs is a strange tale of science and ideology, medicine and the occult, of hypnotism, sadism, love and theatre. Combing hospital records, municipal archives, memoirs and letters, Asti Hustvedt uncovers fascinating new material and sheds new light on a crucial moment in psychiatric history.
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Details
- Bookseller
- Underground Books, ABAA
(US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 7214
- Title
- Medical Muses: Hysteria in Nineteenth-Century Paris
- Author
- Hustvedt, Asti
- Format/Binding
- Hardcover
- Book Condition
- Used - Very good
- Jacket Condition
- very good
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Edition
- Stated First Edition
- ISBN 10
- 0393025608
- ISBN 13
- 9780393025606
- Publisher
- W.W. Norton and Company
- Place of Publication
- New York
- Date Published
- 2011
Terms of Sale
Underground Books, ABAA
30 day return guarantee, with full refund including shipping costs for up to 30 days after delivery if an item arrives misdescribed or damaged.
About the Seller
Underground Books, ABAA
Biblio member since 2009
Carrollton, Georgia
About Underground Books, ABAA
Underground Books is an online rare and antiquarian bookshop as well as a brick and mortar general bookstore of the same name in downtown Carrollton, Georgia. Sister store Hills & Hamlets Bookshop is located in the nearby planned eco-community of Serenbe.
Co-owners Josh Niesse and Megan Bell met in 2011, just 10 days or so after Josh opened the doors of Underground Books, literally underground, several steps below street level in a 100-year-old basement in our historic downtown. Megan, an English student at the University of West Georgia, walked in, fell down the rabbit hole, and never left! Reader, we married in May of 2014, under the book arch that now resides at the bookshop. We are both proud alumni of the Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar (CABS), and Megan additionally of Rare Book School at the University of Virginia and of the ABAA Women's Initiative Mentorship Program.
We have two open bookshops that carry new, used, bargain, rare, and antiquarian books, as well as our online office, impossible without our incredible team of booksellers, including two fellow CABS graduates, Miranda McMillan and Suzanne Carnes.
Like many booksellers with open brick-and-mortar stores, we are passionate generalists, but our specialties are in decorative publisher's cloth bindings; fairy tales, folklore, and mythology; popular science and natural history; the occult; and fine press books.
Co-owners Josh Niesse and Megan Bell met in 2011, just 10 days or so after Josh opened the doors of Underground Books, literally underground, several steps below street level in a 100-year-old basement in our historic downtown. Megan, an English student at the University of West Georgia, walked in, fell down the rabbit hole, and never left! Reader, we married in May of 2014, under the book arch that now resides at the bookshop. We are both proud alumni of the Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar (CABS), and Megan additionally of Rare Book School at the University of Virginia and of the ABAA Women's Initiative Mentorship Program.
We have two open bookshops that carry new, used, bargain, rare, and antiquarian books, as well as our online office, impossible without our incredible team of booksellers, including two fellow CABS graduates, Miranda McMillan and Suzanne Carnes.
Like many booksellers with open brick-and-mortar stores, we are passionate generalists, but our specialties are in decorative publisher's cloth bindings; fairy tales, folklore, and mythology; popular science and natural history; the occult; and fine press books.
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- Gilt
- The decorative application of gold or gold coloring to a portion of a book on the spine, edges of the text block, or an inlay in...
- Spine
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- The collective of the top, fore and bottom edges of the text block of the book, being that part of the edges of the pages of a...
- Shelf Wear
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- Number Line
- A series of numbers appearing on the copyright page of a book, where the lowest number generally indicates the printing of that...
- First Edition
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