From Lesion to Metaphor

Chronic Pain in British, French and German Medical Writings, 1800-1914
Erscheinungsjahr 2000
ISBN: 978-90-420-0821-2
Verlag: Brill | Rodopi

Buch, Englisch, Band 58, 220 Seiten, Format (B × H): 150 mm x 225 mm, Gewicht: 372 g

Reihe: Clio Medica

Most non-malignant chronic pain is medically unexplained. But that has not stopped doctors from trying. These improvisations at the limit of medical knowledge offer a way into the history of neurosis.
Lesionless pain was a paradigmatic problem of clinical method after 1800. It was central to the emergence of neuralgia, spinal irritation, surgical hysteria, railway spine and hysterical conversion. Evidence of a nineteenth-century tradition of theoretical discussion about the relationship between chronic pain and pathological lesion, trauma, mood, memory and personality is brought together here for the first time. A wide range of medical texts is surveyed, including pathology, surgery, physiology, neurology, psychiatry and psychoanalysis. We see the medical gaze first penetrate the tissues of the body then extend to examine the language and mental state of the pain patient.
This history of chronic pain should be of interest to medical historians, pain clinicians, liaison psychiatrists, clinical psychologists and psychotherapists.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Hodgkiss, Andrew

Fachgebiete

• Medizin | Veterinärmedizin Medizin | Public Health | Pharmazie | Zahnmedizin Medizin, Gesundheitswesen Geschichte der Medizin
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Wissenschafts- und Universitätsgeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Abstract

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Secondary Literature Review and Methodological Remarks

1. The Birth of a Problem

2. A Local Irritation. Pain without lesion in the writings of French and British physicians and surgeons: 1820-40

3. Gemeingefühl. German Romanticism, cenesthesis and subjective pain: 1794-1846

4. Reflexion and Depression. Pain without lesion in mid-century German and British ‘neurological' and ‘psychiatric' writings: 1840-55

5. Functional Nervous Disorders in French and British Medical Texts: 1859-71

6. Functional Nervous Disorders in French and British Medical Texts: 1866-1886

7. Psychalgia and Conversion. Pain without lesion in late nineteenth-century psychiatric and psychoanalytic writings: 1872-95

8. Pain ans Psychopathology in Early Twentieth-Century French and German Psychiatric Writings: 1900-14

Conclusions

Bibliography

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Dr Andrew Hodgkiss is consultant Liaison Psychiatrist and Honorary Senior Lecturer in Liaison Psychiatry at St Thomas’ Hospital & King’s College, London. Lacanian Psychoanalyst, Member of the Centre for Freudian Analysis & Research, London.