Get Your Hands On Enlightenment And Pathology: Sensibility In The Literature And Medicine Of Eighteenth-Century France Imagined By Anne C. Vila In Brochure

took me a long time to finish this book, I was interested in her account ofth century French medical vitalism, She does a beautiful job of this in the early chapters of the book, The second half of the book is a discussion of various literary works, by Diderot, Rousseau, Laclos, Sade etc, that relate to vitalism.
These were intimidating for me as I had not read the novels she discusses, The key concept is, as stated in the title, sensibility, Most people have heard of sensibility as a cultural and literary notion, but Vila shows that there was a medical discourse that ran along side of this.
I think a reader would need a rather specific interest and background to find this book helpful, Of the chapters on literature, I thought the one on Rousseau was particularly healthy, She describes a 'therapy' that occurs in Julle that fits nicely in my work on understanding the origins of psychological thinking in theth century.
In Enlightenment and Pathology Anne Vila surveys the various understandings of sensibility that passed back and forth between different professional modes of discourse in eighteenthcentury France.
The thrills of the nervous system, the delectations of taste, and the pangs of the heart mattered

as much in the laboratory as in literature.
Vila shows that the multiple junctures between the body and the mind promoted a steady commerce between science and the salons,

Vila looks deeply into that commerce and its changing purposes in the course of the eighteenth century, She examines key works by influential authorsDiderot, Rousseau, de Laclos, Sadeto determine the significance of the sentimentality which they both absorbed and helped to define.
But she also steps beyond belles lettres and investigates the medical, biological, and philosophical literature of the period to reveal deep and continuous interrelations.
If moods are as contagious as colds, and wickedness is as debilitating as a bad diet, the inquiries of the eighteenth century still have much to tell.
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