A compelling analysis of hysteria told through the stories of three young women afflicted with the illness.
In the late 1800s, the Salpetriere Hospital in Paris was notorious for its controversial director, neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot, and for its large population of women diagnosed as hysterics. The illness was mysterious, as Charcot's careful clinical methods failed to reveal a biological source of symptoms, and its treatment equally opaque; hypnosis, ether and metallotherapy are a few examples of Charcot's experimental methods. Three of the hysterics, Blanche, Augustine and Genevieve, all young women when they were admitted, became celebrities under Charcot's care. Their dramatic physical transformations when suffering a hysterical attack, and Charcot's ability to direct their minds and bodies while they were hypnotized, fascinated the public that clamored to see the spectacle for themselves. Hustvedt (A Society without Fathers or Husbands: The Na of China, 2001, etc.) delves into the stories of these three women, exploring how their experiences inform modern psychology and medicine, as well as revealing the true stories behind their treatment and exposure. The author questions whether these women were truly afflicted, or were they playing a role? Was Charcot truly reaching medical breakthroughs with his analysis, or was he manipulating his clients in order to gain prestige? Citing ample historical evidence, Hustvedt contends that the women were legitimately affected by chronic physical symptoms that fell into the grey area between psychosomatic and somatic disorder. In some ways, she suggests, it's possible that the manner in which women were treated in 19th-century French society may have been manifested through these symptoms. Many of the women at the hospital were unmarried, poor, fatherless or abused, and strange myths about femininity abounded. Charcot was a pioneer for treating hysteria as a legitimate medical affliction, but after his death, his reputation suffered. However, he—and the stories of his three star patients—raise important questions about the mind-body paradigm, especially in women, a tension that the author suggests remains misunderstood in modern medicine. Insightful, provocative medical history.
Pub Date: May 23, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-393-02560-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2011
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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