The time and place of nostalgia: Re-situating a french disease

Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences

Volumn 67, Issue 4, 2012, Pages 626-649

  Osullivan, Lisa ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY   (Australia)

Author keywords

France; Honor de Balzac; Id ologues; imagination; nationalism; nostalgia

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; EMOTION; FRANCE; HISTORY; HUMAN; IMAGINATION; LONELINESS; MORALITY; POLITICS; PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT; THINKING; TIME;

EMOTIONS; FRANCE; HISTORY, 18TH CENTURY; HISTORY, 19TH CENTURY; HUMANS; IMAGINATION; LONELINESS; MORALS; POLITICS; THINKING; TIME;

EID: 84867429736     PISSN: 00225045     EISSN: 14684373     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/jhmas/jrr058     Document Type: Article

References (120)

1. Jacques-Louis Moreau de la Sarthe, "Un Soldat nostalgique, promptement gueri par quelques entretiens avec un de ses compatriots," in "Morale et physiologie: Reflexions et observations sur l'influence du moral sur le physique," La Decade philosophique, litteraire et politique, nos. 11, 12 (1801), 69-75, 134-67, 134. All translations from the French are my own.
2. Alan Forrest, Conscripts and Deserters: The Army and French Society during the Revolution and the Empire (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 20-21.
3. G. La Chese, "Essai sur l'hygiene militaire" (medical thesis, Paris, 1803), vol. 4, no. 120, 36.
4. Philippe Pinel, "Nostalgie," Encyclopedie methodique: Medecine, par une societe de medecins, vol. 10 (NES-NOU) (Paris: Vve Agasse, 1821), 661-63.
5. C. A. Gaillardot, "Considerations sur la nostalgie" (medical thesis, Paris, 1803), vol. 9, no. 287, 13.
6. Percy and Laurent, "Nostalgie," Dictionnaire des sciences medicales, vol. 6 (Paris: C.L.F. Panckoucke, 1812-22), 265-81, 269.
7. Bretons were regarded as particularly prone to nostalgia, a propensity linked to Brittany's association for much of the nineteenth century with Catholicism, reactionary politics, and resistance to centralization, all characteristics that carried a connotation of "backwardness." See Martyn Lyons, "Regionalism and Linguistic Conformity in the French Revolution," in Reshaping France: Town, Country and Region during the French Revolution, ed. Alan Forrest and Peter Jones (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1991), 179-92.
8. Francois Boissier de Sauvages, "Nostalgie," vol. 7, Nosologie methodique (Lyon: Gouvion, 1772), 237-41.
9. "Medical Dissertation on Nostalgia by Johannes Hofer, 1688," trans. Carolyn Kiser Anspach, Bull. Inst. Hist. Med., 1934, 11, 376-91.
10. See Anspach's introduction to Hofer's "Medical Dissertation"
11. George Rosen, "Nostalgia: A 'Forgotten' Psychological Disorder," Psych. Med., 1975, 5, 340-54
12. Jean Starobinski, "The Idea of Nostalgia," Diogenes, 1966, 53, 81-103.
13. See, for instance, Louis Jean Barnetche, "Essai sur la nostalgie" (medical thesis, Montpellier, 1831), vol. 2, no. 44, 18. In contrast, German theories situated nostalgia as a feminine condition, while in North America the diagnosis was largely gender-neutral. For accounts of nostalgia's history in Germany and North America, see, respectively, Charles Zwingmann, "'Heimweh' or 'Nostalgic Reaction': A Conceptual Analysis and Interpretation of a Medico-psychological Phenomenon" (PhD diss., Stanford, 1959)
14. Lisa Herschbach Fragmentation and Reunion: Medicine, Memory and Body in the American Civil War" (PhD diss Harvard University 1997).
15. For medically focused expressions of this program, see Sean Quinlan, "Physical and Moral Regeneration after the Terror: Medical Culture, Sensibility, and Family Politics in France, 1794-1804," Soc. Hist., 2004, 29, 139-64. On the idea of the "new man" more generally
16. Mona Ozouf, "La Revolution francaise et l'idee de l'homme nouveau," in The Political Culture of the French Revolution, vol. 2, The French Revolution and the Creation of Modern Political Culture, ed. Colin Lucas (Oxford, New York: Pergamon Press, 1988), 213- 32, 219-22. Ozouf develops these arguments in L'Homme Regenere: essais sur la Revolution Francaise (Paris: Gallimard, 1989).
17. Accounts notable for their inclusion of nostalgia's clinical past are Suzanne Nash, ed., Home and Its Dislocations in Nineteenth-Century France (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993)
18. Ann C. Colley, Nostalgia and Recollection in Victorian Culture (Houndmills: Macmillan Press, 1998)
19. and Richard Terdiman, Past/Present: Modernity and the Memory Crisis (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1993).
20. Andre Bolzinger, "Jalons pour une historie de la nostalgie," Bull. Psychologie, 1988- 89, 389, 310-21
21. Andre Bolzinger, "Pour le Tricentenaire de la nostalgie," E volution Psychiatrique, 1989, 54, 219-25
22. William Bynum, "Nostalgia," Lancet, 2001, 358, 2176
23. Rosen, "Nostalgia"; Starobinski, "The Idea of Nostalgia
24. Jean Starobinski, "La Nostalgie: theories medicales et expression litteraire," Stud. Voltaire Eighteenth Century, 1963, 27, 1505-18
25. Jean Starobinski, "La Lecon de la nostalgie," Medecine et Hygiene 1961, 20, 683-85
26. Stanley W. Jackson, Melancholia and Depression: From Hippocratic Times to Modern Times (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1986), 373-80. Michael Roth is an exception to this tendency, having examined French nostalgia in a number of papers. His analysis, however, situates nostalgia as a disease of the memory, rather than imagination, a correlation that only becomes the dominant reading of the condition in the later part of the nineteenth century.
27. See Michael S. Roth, "Remembering Forgetting: Maladies de la Memoire in Nineteenth-Century France," Representations, 1989, 26, 49-68
28. "Dying of the Past: Medical Studies of Nostalgia in Nineteenth-Century France," Hist. Mem., 1991, 3, 5-29
29. "The Time of Nostalgia: Medicine, History and Normality in Nineteenth-Century France," Time Soc., 1992, 1, 271-86.
30. See Frances Clarke, "So Lonesome I Could Die: Nostalgia and Debates over Emotional Control in the Civil War North," J. Soc. Hist., 2007, 41, 253-82
31. Lisa Herschbach, "Fragmentation and Reunion"; Alice Bullard, "Fatal Nostalgia," Exile to Paradise: Savagery and Civilization in Paris and the South Pacific, 1790-1900 (California: Stanford University Press, 2000), 182-209
32. Warwick Anderson, Colonial Pathologies: American Tropical Medicine, Race, and Hygiene in the Philippines (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2006), 40, 76-77.
33. Andre Bolzinger, Histoire de la nostalgie (Paris: Campagne Premiere, 2006)
34. Marcel Reinhard, "Nostalgie et service militaire pendant la Revolution," Ann. Hist. Revolution Francaise, 1958, 30, 1-15
35. Odile Roynette, "Bons pour le service": L'experience de la caserne en France a la fin du XIXe siecle (Paris: Belin, 2000), 31-40.
36. On the role of officiers de sante during the revolutionary period, and particularly in the armed forces, see Maurice Crosland, "The Officiers de Sante of the French Revolution: A Case Study in the Changing Language of Medicine," Med. Hist., 2004, 48, 229-44, 236-37. Military service as an officier de sante was a common method for poorer students to fund their medical studies. At the end of their service, they were required to obtain a degree from one of the recognized medical schools. The majority of medical theses produced after 1815 were overwhelmingly produced by such practitioners who had gained their experience of nostalgia in a military context, and continued to discuss the disease in the context of earlier conflicts.
37. On the Ideologues and their program, see Sergio Moravia, "Les Ideologues et l'age des Lumieres," Stud. Voltaire Eighteenth Century, 1976, 154, 1465-86
38. Georges Gusdorf, La Conscience revolutionnaire, les Ideologues, vol. 8, Les Sciences humaines et la pensee occidentale (Paris: Payot, 1978)
39. Francois Azouvi, ed., L'Institution de la Raison: la revolution culturelle des Ideologues (Paris: J. Vrin, 1992).
40. Elizabeth A. Williams, The Physical and the Moral: Anthropology, Physiology, and Philosophical Medicine in France, 1750-1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 78. Williams also provides a summary of historiographical positions on the Ideologue group, The Physical and the Moral, 76-78.
41. Pinel's influence on French medicine and psychiatry is explored in Dora B. Weiner, Comprendre et soigner: Philippe Pinel, 1745-1826: la Medecine de l'esprit (Paris: Fayard, 1999)
42. Jan Goldstein, Console and Classify: The French Psychiatric Profession in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987)
43. Andre Soubiran, Le Baron Larrey: chirurgien de Napoleon (Paris: Fayard, 1966)
44. Martin Staum, Cabanis: Enlightenment and Medical Philosophy in the French Revolution (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1980)
45. Emmet Kennedy, A Philosophe in the Age of Revolution: Destutt de Tracy and the Origins of Ideology (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1978).
46. Moreau gave up surgical practice due to an injury, becoming librarian at the Paris School of Medicine and lecturing on hygiene at the Lycee republicain. He published prolifically in journals such as the Decade Philosophique, and took over from Felix Vicq-d'Azyr as an editor of the medical section of the Encyclopedie methodique. See Paul Delaunay, "La Medecine et les Ideologues: L.J. Moreau de la Sarthe," Bull. Soc. francaise d'histoire de la medecine, 1920, 14, 24-70;
47. Martin S. Staum Labeling People: French Scholars on Society Race and Empire 1815- 1848 (Montreal, London: McGill-Queen's University Press 2003 36-38.
48. See Joanna Kitchin, Un Journal philosophique: La Decade: 1794-1807 (Abbeville: F. Paillart, 1966)
49. Marc Regaldo, Un Milieu intellectuel: La Decade philosophique, 1974-1807 (Paris: Champion, 1976).
50. Jacques-Louis Moreau de la Sarthe, "Passions," Encyclopedie methodique, medecine, par une societe de medecins, vol. 11 (NOY-PHT) (Paris: Vve Agasse, 1824), 432-33. On the importance and impact of the Encyclopedie methodique project
51. see Claude Blanckaert, Michel Porret, and Fabrice Brandli, eds., L'Encyclopedie methodique (1782-1832): des Lumieres au positivism (Geneva: Droz, 2006).
52. Philippe Pinel, "Nostalgie," Encyclopedie methodique, 661-63
53. Jean-Louis Alibert, "De l'amour de la terre natale" and "Courame, ou l'amour de la terre natale," Physiologie des passions : Ou nouvelle doctrine des sentiments moraux, vol. 2 (Paris: Bechet Jeune, 1825), 315- 28, 329-72
54. Dominique-Jean Larrey, "Memoire sur le siege et les effets de la nostalgie," Recueil de memoires de chirurgie (Paris: Compere Jeune, 1821), 161-222.
55. See Goldstein, Console and Classify, 81-89
56. Weiner, Comprendre et soigner, 16-17, 243-46.
57. See Williams, The Physical and the Moral, 8
58. Goldstein, Console and Classify, 49-55.
59. Moreau argued that passions, affections, and emotions were generally confused, but should be subject to distinct analysis to determine how each operated and affected health. See Jacques-Louis Moreau de la Sarthe, "Morale et physiologie: Reflexions et observations sur l'influence du moral sur le physique," 69.
60. See Jean-Louis Alibert, "De l'Influence des causes politiques sur les maladies et la constitution physique de l'homme," Magasin encyclopedique, ou journal des sciences, des lettres, et des arts, V (1795), 298-305. Elizabeth Williams has suggested that a proliferation of medical publications on the need to understand, and regulate, the passions, can be seen in part as a reaction to the violence of the early Revolutionary period. Williams, The Physical and the Moral, 94-95.
61. Michael A. Osborne, "The Geographical Imperative in Nineteenth-Century French Medicine," Med. Hist., 2000, Suppl. 20, 31-50.
62. Ludmilla J. Jordanova, "Earth Science and Environmental Medicine: The Synthesis of the Late Enlightenment," in Images of the Earth: Essays in the History of the Environmental Sciences, ed. Ludmilla J. Jordanova and Roy. S. Porter (Chalfont St. Giles: British Society for the History of Science, 1979), 119-46, 120-21.
63. Elizabeth A. Williams, A Cultural History of Medical Vitalism in Enlightenment Montpellier (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), 4-5, and The Physical and the Moral, 57.
64. On the relationship between Montpellier and Ideologue thinking, see Williams, A. Cultural History of Medical Vitalism, 326-28.
65. Pierre-Jean-Georges Cabanis, Rapports du physique et du moral de l'homme, vol. 2 (Paris: Crapart, Caille et Ravier, 1805 [1802]), 163-64.
66. Louis-Alexandre-Hippolyte Leroy-Dupre, "De la Nostalgie" (medical thesis, Paris, 1846), vol. 9, no. 134, 30.
67. The connections between environment, or climate, and-individual or group- character were commonly assumed during the later part of the eighteenth century, based in particular on the work of Charles Louis de Secondat Montesquieu (1689-1755). Montesquieu, in his 1748 l'Esprit des Lois (The Spirit of Laws), consolidated the idea that physical influences were fundamental to both physical and moral development. See Charles Louis de Secondat Montesquieu, Book 14, "Des Lois dans le rapport qu'elles ont avec la nature du climat," vol. 3, De l'Esprit des lois (Paris: E ditions Gallimard, 1995 [1748]). While the Ideologues questioned Montesquieu's emphasis on climate, they retained the idea that human variability was tied to differences in environmental influences. See "Introduction," Charles Louis de Secondat Montesquieu, The Spirit of Laws, ed. David Wallace Carrithers (Berkeley: University of California Press), 23
68. Williams, The Physical and the Moral, 94-95.
69. Jose-Feliciano Castilho, "Dissertation sur la nostalgie" (medical thesis, Paris, 1831), vol. 7, no. 235, 14.
70. The question of European acclimatization to other environments in the French and British empires is explored in: Eric T. Jennings, Curing the Colonizers: Hydrotherapy, Climatology, and French Colonial Spa (London and Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2006), 8-39
71. David N. Livingstone, "The Moral Discourse of Climate: Historical Considerations on Race, Place and Virtue," J. Hist. Geog., 1991, 17, 413-34
72. Michael A. Osborne, Nature, the Exotic and the Science of French Colonialism (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1994)
73. Warwick Anderson, The Cultivation of Whiteness: Science, Health and Racial Destiny in Australia (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press (2002)
74. On the historical analysis of emotions, see William M. Reddy, The Navigation of Feeling (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001)
75. for recent essays on emotions and health, see Fay Bound Alberti, ed., Medicine, Emotion and Disease, 1700-1950 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). On the imagination
76. see Stanley W. Jackson, "The Imagination and Psychological Healing," J. Hist. Behav. Sci., 1990, 26, 345-58.
77. See Stanley W. Jackson, "The Use of the Passions in Psychological Healing," J. Hist. Med. Allied Sci., 1990, 45: 150-75, 169-75.
78. Goldstein, Console and Classify, 53-54.
79. Jules-M-E-B Moreau, "Considerations sur la nostalgie" (medical thesis, Paris, 1848), vol. 10, no. 138, 9. Julien-Vincent Huet-Bienville, "Dissertation sur la nostalgie" (medical thesis, Paris, 1821), vol. 6, no. 190, 5.
80. Jean-Joseph de Brieude, "Imagination," Encyclopedie methodique: Medecine, par une societe de medecins, vol. 7 (NES-NOU) (Paris: Henri Agasse, 1798 [An VI]), 474-91, 474, 488.
81. For a discussion of the ways in which Ideologue writers adapted Condillac's thinking, particularly on the imagination, see Goldstein, Console and Classify, 90-94.
82. On the differences between imagination and memory theorized by Condillac, see "Que l'usage des Signes est la vraie cause des progres de l'imagination, de la contemplation et de la memoire," Essai sur l'origine des connaissances humaines, 75-87, especially 85-87. This distinction was re-worked in terms of voluntary and involuntary memory later in the century, when memory became the subject of considerable medical and psychological attention.
83. Denis Francois Noel Guerbois, "Essai sur la nostalgie: appelee vulgairement maladie du pays" (medical thesis, Paris, 1803), vol. 31, no. 290, 18.
84. For discussion of post-Revolutionary models of nationalism, see Maurice Cranston, "The Sovereignty of the Nation," and Norman Hampson, "La Patrie," The French Revolution and the Creation of Modern Political Culture, 97-104, 125-32.
85. See Anspach, Introduction to Hofer's "Dissertation," 376
86. Rosen, "Nostalgia," 343-45
87. and Starobinski, "The Idea of Nostalgia," Diogenes, 87-89.
88. Such practitioners were often regarded as somewhat backward, and theoretically out of touch. See Bertrand Taithe, Defeated Flesh: Welfare, Warfare and the Making of Modern France (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), 29. This reputation was to affect the reception of later works by military writers insisting on the clinical coherence of nostalgia.
89. J. P. L. Theodore Paulinier, "Sur la Nostalgie (vulgairement mal ou maladie du pays)" (medical thesis, Montpellier, 1837), vol. 6, no. 157, 39-40.
90. A similar willingness to analyze nostalgia without reference to the physical landscape, but rather in terms of political or social identity can be found in a number of accounts in this period, including Francois-Joseph Lacordaire, "Essai sur la nostalgie" (medical thesis, Montpellier, 1837), vol. 1, no. 26
91. On the decline of ideologie and the rise of dualist theories of mind and body, especially those identified with Victor Cousin, see Williams, The Physical and the Moral, 115-22
92. Jan Goldstein, "An A Priori Self for the Bourgeois Male: Victor Cousin's Project," The Post-Revolutionary Self: Politics and Psyche in France, 1750-1850 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2005), 139-81.
93. Jean-Baptiste-Felix Descuret, La Medecine des passions ou les passions considerees dans leurs rapports avec les maladies, les lois et la religion (Paris: Bechet and Labe, 1841), 395-96.
94. Mo?se Le Yaouanc, Nosographie de l'humanite Balzacienne (Paris: Maloine S.A., 1959), 420-23.
95. All references to La Comedie humaine are from the Furne edition, La Comedie humaine, OEuvres completes de M. de Balzac (Paris: Furne, 1842-48). Louis Lambert, E tudes philosophiques et etudes analytiques, 16.3, 132
96. Pierrette, Les Celibataires, Scenes de la vie de province, E tudes de moeurs, 5.1, 439.
97. Ursule Mirouet, Scenes de la vie de province, E tudes de moeurs, 5.1, 124
98. Le Cousin Pons, Les Parents pauvres, Scenes de la vie parisienne, 17, 425
99. J. Bergeron, "E loge de M. Michel Levy," Memoires de l'Academie de medecine, 37 (Paris: G. Masson, 1895), 1-30
100. Alphonse Guerard, "Michel Levy, "Notice biographique," Ann. d'hygiene publique, industrielle et sociale, 1872, 37, 473-78.
101. Michel Levy, Traite d'hygiene publique et privee, 2 vols. (Paris: Bailliere, 1844), 222-23.
102. Michel Levy, Rapport sur les progres de l'hygiene militaire (Paris: Hachette, 1867), printed under the auspices of Ministry of Public Instruction, series Recueil de rapports sur le progres des lettres et des sciences en France, 50-51.
103. Levy, "Rapport," 52-53. On the emergence of public health in France and the importance of statistics to public health programs, see Ann F. La Berge, Mission and Method: The Early Nineteenth-Century French Public Health Movement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), especially "The Methodology of Public Hygiene," 49-81.
104. The Societe began its active life in 1852. See Ian R. Dowbiggin, "The Societe medico-psychologique," Chapter 4 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991)
105. P. Marchais, "Ro le de la Societe medico-psychologique dans l'evolution des connaissances en psychiatrie," Ann. Medico-psychologiques, revue psychiatrique, 2002, 160, 723-29.
106. Bull. Soc. Medico-psychologique, 1871, 5, 410-15. Alcohol was to become a major preoccupation of public health and a perceived social threat. See William H. Schneider, Quantity and Quality: The Quest for Biological Regeneration in Twentieth Century France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 20-22
107. Robert A. Nye, "Metaphors of Pathology in the belle epoque: The Rise of a Medical Model of Cultural Crisis," Crime, Madness and Politics in Modern France: The Medical Concept of National Decline (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 132-70.
108. Bull. Soc. Medico-psychologique, 1871, 5, 411-12.
109. The Prize was awarded in the name of Dr. Lefevre who in 1847 left the Academy a legacy of 20,000 francs for a triennial prize to be awarded in perpetuity for the best work against melancholia-the wording was specific "against and not on melancholia" ("contre et pas sur la melancolie"). In previous years, the competition had attracted between two and thirteen entries. See "Rapport sur le concours du Prix Lefevre en 1887, au nom d'une commission compose de MM Empis, Mesnet et Blanche, rapporteur," Bull. l'Academie de medecine, 2nd ser., 1887, 18, 572-78, 573.
110. Francs were awarded to Haspel and 500 to La Grandiere. See Bull. l'Academie de medecine, 2nd ser., 1873, 2, 700-701.
111. On the psychological impact of the siege, see Taithe, Defeated Flesh, 101.
112. Doctor Artance de Clermont-Ferrand, "Nostalgie," essay for the Prix Lefevre, 30 July 1872. Manuscript held at l'Academie de medecine, Paris.
113. Review, Auguste Haspel, De la nostalgie, Arch. Generales de Medecine, 6th ser., 1875, 25, 760-63, 760.
114. For instance, see "Nostalgie" in the Arch. Medecine Navale et Colonial, 1891, 56, 409. Here, nostalgia is described as a cause of illness, rather than an illness in itself.
115. V. Widal, "Nostalgie," Dictionnaire Encyclopedique des sciences Medicales, ed. Jacques Raige-Delorme and Amedee Dechambre, 2nd ser., vol. 13 (NEZ-NYS) (Paris: P. Asselin, G. Masson, 1879), 1879, 357-81, 380.
116. See Raoul Chenu, De la nostalgie (Paris: A. Parent, Imprimeur de la faculte de medecine, 1877), 31, 95
117. Victor Le Go?c, La nostalgie et son diagnostic (medical thesis, Lyon, 1890), vol. 54, no. 569, 12.
118. The enormous changes in European experiences of time, space, and distance during the latter part of the nineteenth century are explored in Stephen Kern, The Culture of Time and Space, 1880-1918 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983)
119. Wolfgang Schivelbusch, The Railway Journey: The Industrialisation of Time and Space in the Nineteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986).
120. M. Reynal, "Dissertation sur la nostalgie" (medical thesis, Paris, 1819) vol. 2, no. 35, 7.