“The Wonders of Medicine in Literary Education”: Teaching Eighteenth-Century Hysteria

Abstract

The study of medical discourse and, more specifically, the literature of eighteenth-century hysteria has the unique ability to produce more thoughtful students of literature. The growing legitimacy of literature as a pedagogical tool in medical schools has broadened the field of literary studies, but the field of literature and medicine also has the potential to affect positive change within the English department. For students of English, to study the evolution of hysteria in the eighteenth century is to witness a steady increase in complexity, a kind of coming into ambiguity. Students become more skilled readers as they recognize hysteria not only as a ver itable medical ailment, but also as an elusive construction that laypeople, men and women of letters, and medical professionals alike agreed was difficult, if not impossible, to define. Students learn to understand more deeply the value of metaphor, to examine the literary qualities of medical discourse, and to interrogate the physician-patient hierarchy; they move towards becoming more sophisticated and critical thinkers.