France 1715-1804 by Gwynne Lewis

Author:Gwynne Lewis [Lewis, Gwynne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Europe, France, Modern, 18th Century, General
ISBN: 9781317891673
Google: 53t_DwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2018-12-14T02:59:15+00:00

Medicine and health

Death as the ‘wages of sin’ was an explanation proffered by many eighteenth-century doctors, if only because they were ignorant of the pathology of venereal diseases, indeed, ignorant of the pathology of most diseases. Nothing in the history of the ancien regime surprises or shocks one more than the continuation of medieval approaches to the practice of medicine. It is true that improvements were recorded in surgical practice, midwifery and, towards the very end of the century, in the treatment of mental illness. Jones and Brockliss also argue that there was a gradual, ideological shift from a medieval ‘Galenist’ to an ‘iatro-mechanist’ conception of medical practice. The latter was clearly influenced by applied Newtonian theories on the movement of matter, and may well have heralded a new era of empirical medical enquiry.21 Despite these indications of a more modern approach to medical care, however, far too many physicians risked purging and bleeding their patients into the next world. The majority of the population – fortunately too poor to pay the fees demanded by most professional physicians – continued to treat themselves, relying on traditional remedies and the assistance of the village blacksmith to set bones, the village ‘wise-woman’ to deliver babies and travelling quacks to provide the latest ‘miracle cures’.

The relationship between ‘elite’ and ‘popular’ medicine has provoked lively debate and provided revealing glimpses into the cultures of both worlds. Mathew Ramsay suggests that there were ‘grey areas’ between elite physicians, surgeons and apothecaries. The mass of the people only saw the divide separating an elite order of classically trained and expensive doctors from the thousands of untrained, or semi-trained, practitioners to the poor. Country-dwellers, as well as many of the poor in the towns, were obliged to rely on traditional, homespun remedies: they could rarely obtain, or indeed pay for, anything else. As Ramsey concludes, the medical profession in 1789, ‘had yet to win a substantial popular clientele’. The poorer sections of the rural community first sought treatment from neighbours with a reputation for healing, including the curé. If this failed, they might turn to the legions of travelling empirics, charlatans, quacks, ‘teeth-pullers’ and faith healers. Ramsay divides popular healers into two categories – itinerary and sedentary – explaining that the ‘classic charlatanism’ of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries flourished in an ‘era of mercantile capitalism in the commercial centres, market towns and fairs’. By the late eighteenth century, popular healers were advertising in local and regional gazettes. In 1785, monsieur Le Brun used the Affiche du Mans to promise an ‘appropriate remedy for [treating] ruptures in the two sexes’. Many travelling medicine men and women used techniques common to the ‘snake-oil salesmen’ of the American West, affecting a certain learning and professional training, and talking down to their potential customers.22

The ailments and diseases which popular healers promised to cure reveal a great deal about the more common diseases suffered during the ancien regime, which included cataracts, hernias and broken bones. ‘Bone-setters’ (bailleuls or rebouteurs) were to be found in most localities, frequently forming a bridge between elite and popular medicine.

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