The brigands of medicine: Charlatanry, sexuality, and medical demonstration in late nineteenth century France
Abstract
This chapter examines nineteenth century French medicine’s ‘“forbans,” or Tartuffe-like brigands. Europe had a lively medical demonstration culture with practitioners jockeying for authority within a mediatised environment. Hypnosis and associated topics constituted a theatrical set of biomedical practices, with fugues and seizures offering spectacular visual proofs presented at lecture halls and in published reports. Hypnotic conditions were linked to hysterical nervousness, with demonstrations touching issues of sexuality, gender, and super-sensory perception. Most hypnotists employed electrical stimulators for gynaecological, anal and muscular therapies, causing implications of sexual impropriety and magic to permeate demonstrations. Lacking unambiguous evidence, distinctions between proper and improper revolved around the topics performed, the qualifications and settings for demonstrations, but crucially upon aesthetic and rhetorical tropes. The chapter considers those presentations staged by French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot and his para-scientific peers as seen by proto-fascist playwright Léon Daudet and in a text which Daudet wrote an endorsement for, which was authored by the Dax baths’ head of hydrotherapy Charles Lavielle, as well as accounts from Jules Bois (Symbolist playwright and Spiritist) and Charles Richet. In these critiques, the separation between physicians like Charcot and Richet versus performing brigands – or for that matter Lavielle and his supporters – dissolved, all becoming implicated in a deceptive medical mise en scène.
Document Type
Book Chapter
Date of Publication
1-1-2025
Publication Title
The Routledge Companion to Performance and Science
Publisher
Taylor & Francis
School
Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA)
RAS ID
86263
Copyright
subscription content
First Page
71
Last Page
88
Comments
Marshall, J. W. (2025). The brigands of medicine: Charlatanry, sexuality, and medical demonstration in late nineteenth century France. In The Routledge companion to performance and science (pp. 71–88). Taylor & Francis. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003231394-7