In Charcot’s Shadow: On the Allure of 'Great Men' and the Privileging of Epistemology in the History of Science and Medicine
| Autor: | Courtney E. Thompson |
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| Rok vydání: | 2023 |
| Předmět: | |
| Zdroj: | Canadian Journal of Health History. 40:253-279 |
| ISSN: | 2371-0179 0823-2105 |
| DOI: | 10.3138/cjhh.534-052021 |
| Popis: | Abstract. This article explores the allure of “great men” in medical history through a comparative account of the work and lives of Jean-Martin Charcot and his student and collaborator, Désiré-Magloire Bourneville, in late nineteenth-century France. While historians of science and medicine have self-consciously rejected Whiggish and hagiographic “great man” history, the fixity of certain historical actors within our social and cultural histories reveals the continued hold of these figures and what they stand for within the grand narrative. The privileging of institutional and intellectual contributions has been perpetuated in such a way that bottom-up experiences and contributions in realms such as public health have been neglected. I argue that the continued prominence of certain historical medical figures, like Charcot, over forgotten contemporaries, like Bourneville, is representative of the way that historians of science and medicine have implicitly privileged intellectual contributions over social, political, or structural contributions. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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