LLCU 237: Key Ideas

• Belief that illness stems from imbalance or blockage in a person’s life force.

• Health is linked to morality and the soul.

• Invisible forces like electricity, magnetism, and Lebenskraft connect all of nature.

• Emphasis on holistic treatment rather than curing single symptoms.

Romantic Vitalism

• Preventative care is central to prolonging life.

• Health, morality, and ethical living are interconnected.

• Proper diet, exercise, sleep, and mental wellbeing are essential.

• Life can be prolonged by natural, non-invasive means rather than treating disease alone.

Hufeland, macrobiotics

• llness occurs when animal magnetism or invisible forces are blocked/unbalanced.

• Mesmerism blurs lines between medicine, magic, and religion.

• Healing depends on the patient’s receptivity to these forces.

• Demonstrates cultural anxieties about the limits of scientific medicine.

Mesmerism, Franz Anton Mesmer, ETA Hoffman

• Principle of “like cures like” (similia similibus curentur).

• Law of Minimum: lower doses have stronger effects when potentiated.

• Dilution and succussion activate the life force (Lebenskraft).

• Individualized treatment; moral and physical vitality matter.

• Connected to Enlightenment ideas: observation, laws of nature.

Homeopathy, Hahnemann

• Doctors objectify patients as subjects of knowledge.

• Separates body from mind, detaching the doctor from the human patient.

• Epistemic shift: from mystical/mesmeric medicine to modern clinical science.

• Clinics and hospitals regulate behaviour, morality, and social norms.

Foucault and the medical gaze

• TB seen as a “beautiful death” in Romantic culture.

• Associated with creativity, purity, and sensitivity.

• Disease representation reflects cultural attitudes toward mortality and morality.

• Artistic and literary portrayals reinforce the link between illness and social identity.

Consumption - Sontag, Gilman, Shelley

Madness is socially and historically constructed. Asylums and clinics normalize and control behaviour rather than “cure” patients; focuses on power and social discipline.

Foucault

Advocated moral treatment; patients should be treated as human beings; believed in humane care to aid recovery.

Pinel

Early moral treatment pioneer; emphasized kindness, work, and ethical environment in recovery; focused on social and religious morality.

Tuke

Hysteria arises from trauma or psychological conflict, cured by the “talking cure”

Freud and Breuer

hysteria has physical manifestations but is observable and describable.

Charcot

normality is contextual; cannot define people solely by measurements.

Canguilhem on anthropometrics

Attempt to quantify human traits to identify criminals or diseased individuals.

Lombroso

Photography and measurement were used to “make the invisible visible.”

Galton

• Emphasis on moral, physical, and spiritual self-care.

• Connection between body, nature, and life force.

• Preventative health practices: exercise, diet, abstinence, ascetic retreats.

• Progressive in empowering health, but exclusionary due to cost/access and social ideals.

Life Reform movement