The soul in the entrails: the experience of the sick in the eighteenth century

Abstract

This chapter discusses the close link between emotional and cognitive dysfunctions and visceral disturbances, in the experience of melancholia and nervous diseases in the eighteenth century. It is based on epistolary consultations sent to Dr S.-A. Tissot between 1750 and 1797. According to the patients, their belly was a complex zone of internal movements and sensations, which coexisted, in the same narrative movement, with mental troubles. The aerial and hydropneumatic element of the body – such as winds, vapours, animal spirits – played an important role in describing mind-body suffering. This element found pathways throughout in the body, even outside the humoural and nervous system. These aerial movements generated pain, disquiet, sadness or disgust.