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Medical Paris, 1852

I’ve enjoyed reading David McCullough’s The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris (2011), somewhat to my own surprise.  Not that he’s a bad author in any way, but I have sometimes been disappointed by the “history-lite” tone of some of his writing (1776 is the most flagrant example that comes to mind). But The Greater Journey does not disappoint in this manner.  It delves into the experience of Americans drawn to Paris in the 19th century, including a legion of American medical students and doctors flocking to Paris between 1815 and 1860.  Having read John Harley Warner’s masterful Against the Spirit of System: The French Impulse in Nineteenth-Century...

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Monstrous History Part III: The “Gothic” Influence of Ambroise Paré

Welcome back to the Dittrick Museum Blog! Last week, we discussed some of the finer points of birth anomaly in the 18th century. Today, we will consider the ways in which Paré’s work influenced the writers of the nineteenth century! As the Age of Enlightenment, the eighteenth-century promoted scientific and philosophical progress. By the latter part of the century, causation (in reproduction but also in relation to disease) had largely left Pare’s metaphysical behind in medical treatises—but it enjoyed renewed fervor in the popular press. Two broad categories of work regularly printed stories of monster birth. The first were collections...

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Monstrous History Part II: The “Gothic” Influence of Ambroise Paré

Last week, I introduced the "monsters and marvels" of Ambroise Paré. This unique text is not a collection only (or even primarily) of cases witnessed by the good doctor. Such treatises also existed, and became more popular over time. Both Dr. William Smellie and Dr. William Hunter published extensively about their practices, and many doctors described difficult labors or unusual births. Paré's 15th century text is, however, much more a compendium; he collects tales from afar, gathers anecdotes from ancient manuscripts and compiles accounts from myth and local legend. Parts of the book actually discuss strange animals from foreign...

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Monstrous History: The “Gothic” Influence of Ambroise Paré

Monsters are things that appear outside the course of Nature (and are usually signs of forthcoming misfortune).--Ambroise ParéWelcome back to the Dittrick Museum Blog!Last week, we discussed the "curious machine" of man-midwife Dr. William Smellie. This week, I will introduce Ambroise Pare and the birth of "monsters." The images that Dr. Parécollected in Des Monstres et prodigies(1573) continued to fire the imagination well into the 18th and 19th centuries, a time that witness the "birth" of Gothic monsters, as well. The Dittrick's collection includes a fine edition of this work, and it is replete with fascinating images, some of which...

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