Rolle, Andrew

English

Histoire sociale / Social History (E-Journal, York University)

COMPTES RENDUS -BOOK REVIEWS 395 Par ailleurs, le mot venu, au XVI• siecle, fait allusion beaucoup plus souvent a I'etre qu'au faire; et I' etre est largement determine par Ia naissance. Lorsque, pour prendre un exemple chez un auteur qu 'Ellery Schalk cite beaucoup, ~is de I' Alouete evoque Ia vertu du noble dans son Traite des Nobles et des venus dont ils sontformes (1577), il parle de« vertu herolque et excellente, ge-nereuse et magnanime, par laquelle il sert et honore le Roi et Ia chose publique, s'adonnant a choses nobles et grandes >>. C'est I' excellence de Ia nature du noble, de son etre meme, qui le pousse aux actes vertueux, qu 'ils soient civils ou militaires : elle leur preexiste et les explique. Or cette vertu est << nature lie et hereditaire >>; elle est une « eugenie et vertu de race >>, liee a Ia naissance dans une lignee illustre. La liaison entre vertu et naissance n 'est nullement remise en cause par I' affirmation si repandue qu'un roturier vertueux vaut mieux qu'un noble vicieux :presque tousles auteurs du XVI• siecle, si I' on met a part ceux que j'appellerai les extrernistes de la race, estiment que Ia naissance donne ce qu'ils nomment des« semences >>de vertu, qu'il faut fortifier par I' education et I' effort pourqu'elles parviennent a maturite. D'ou Ia possibilite pour le noble, si ces semences ne sont pas convenablement cultivees, de « se devoyer de son propre nature I >>, selon I' expression de Pierre de Saint-Julien de Balleure (Melanges Historiques, 1588). ll n'en reste pas rnoins que Ia vertu est selon eux rendue plus facile et plus accomplie par Ia « bonne naissance >>, c'est-a-dire Ia naissance dans une lignee noble. La liaison de Ia noblesse avec Ia vertu, et de celle-ci avec Ia naissance, perdure sans doute plus longtemps que ne le pense Ellery Schalk (bien qu 'elle so it remise en cause bien avant Ia fin du siecle par tout un courant de pensee auquel appartiennent des juristes comme Etienne Pasquier et surtout Jean Bodin): on Ia trouve, par exernple, exprimee pratiquement dans les memes termes qu'au XVI• siecle, dans Ie chapitre consacre a Ia noblesse dans les Discours Politiques ( 1652) de Daniel de Priezac. Ce qui change, a partir du debut du XVII• siecle, c'est plutot le rapport de Ia noblesse au pouvoir et aux charges : alors qu' au XVI• siecle les nobles fondent Ia legitirnite de leurs reven-dications politiques sur une superiorite de nature, justifiee par I'histoire, ils prennent peu a peu conscience que cette legitimite est insuffisante, et qu 'ils doivent y ajouter celle de Ia culture, voire de Ia competence technique. Autrement dit, s'ils croient toujours que leur naissance leur appotte les « germes >>de I'excellence humaine, ils ne pensent plus, au XVII• siecle, sauf exceptions, que celle-d suffise a leur permettre d'exercerdes responsabilires rnilitaires ou civiles . C'est par l'insistance sur I' importance de cette conversion a Ia competence que I' apport d'Ellery Schalk est interessant, car c 'est Ia Ia veritable mutation dans I 'histoire des representations de Ia no-blesse. A cet egard, Ia demonstration qu 'il donne de Ia convergence entre les interets des nobles les plus conscients de cette necessire et ceux de I'Etat absolu est particulierement eclairante. Sur tous ces aspects, son livre fait utilement progresser notre connaissance de Ia noblesse fran<;aise . *** Arlette Jouanna Universite Paul-Valery S.E.D. Shortt- Victorian Lunacy: Richard M. Bucke and the Practice of Late Nineteenth-Century Psychiatry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Pp. xvi, 207. Practitioners of pre-Freudian psychiatry, once called ''alienists,'' did not operate within a systematic framework of biomedical knowledge. The study of'' lunacy'' was fragmented into con-flicting schools of thought reflective of the great social turmoil of the late-Victorian world. The theory and practice of Richard Bucke, a Canadian physician, departed even further from that of other trial-by-error contemporaries. Bucke worked up to fourteen hours each day, seeing patients who suffered maladies from typhoid fever to migraine headaches. His surgical procedures were crude; almost any abdominal 396 HISTOIRE SOCIALE- SOCIAL HISTORY operation led to fatal infections. Pharmaceutical interventions were equally primitive, limited to the use of vast quantities of alcohol as well as opium and quinine for malaria, then endemic to the Great Lakes area. Deaths from tuberculosis, typhoid, cholera, smallpox, scarlet fever, and measles were common. Accompanying these and other undiagnosed illnesses were forms of emotional stress, some quite severe. For the most part, Bucke found both his practice and home life boring and monotonous. Subject to personal attacks of what today would be called ''acute anxiety,'' he interested himself increasingly in the psychosomatic origins of disease. At the London Asylum in Ontario, Dr. Bucke carried out hair-raising gynecological operations upon women patients in an age when hysteria was thought to originate in the quivering wombs of females. Physicians then argued that there was a connection, via the sympathetic nervous system, between the brain and the pelvic irritations of women. The removal of ovaries to improve mental disorders became routine under Bucke. One critic labeled these procedures the "surgical mutilation of helpless lunatics" (p. 152). For years psychogynecology continued to be practiced by physicians as a specific against bodily and mental irritations. The author of this little book demonstrates a capacity of clear analysis of the psychosocial setting within which mental health practitioners operated before Bucke' s theory of' 'reflex action'' between various organs of the body finally fell into ill-repute. At the turn of the century pioneer psychiatrists would next turn to the notion that glandular secretions were related to physical as well as mental disorders. Endocrinological experimentation seemed to hold promise for the understanding of human ailments of all sorts. Neurological investigation also held widespread appeal in an age before Freud and Jung focused attention upon the role of the dynamic forces below the level of consciousness. Pessimistic Victorian doctrines of degeneracy and somatic pathology gave way only slowly to in-vestigation of the unconscious mind. Bucke also indulged in what William James called a classic example of "mystical illumi-nation" (p. 23), or extrasensory experience. He developed some of his ideas about such phenomena in a book on neuroscience. The author points out that he ''lived out his professional life in a time of turmoil for psychological medicine.'' Therapeutic conservatism made it impossible for his generation to make the leaps forward that the cathartic, or psychoanalytic, "talking cures" would later promise. Nor were effective psychotropic drugs yet available. Had Bucke not died accidentally in 1902, Shortt avers that he might have seen modem psy-chiatry move beyond its "asylum phase," during which patients were still viewed as nature's misfits with little hope of cure. Such despair helped to explain justification of the horrific surgical experiments to which physicians like Bucke subjected their charges. While neither he nor his methods evoke great sympathy, Bucke was a pioneer among medical pioneers. He is deserving of such a study as this one. * * * Andrew Rolle Occidental College T.C. Smout-A Century of the Scottish People, 1830-1950. New Haven and London: Yale Uni-versity Press, 1986. Pp. xiv, 318. This book is a continuation ofT.C. Smoot's 1969 A History of the Scottish People 1560-1830 but it is a rather different study. His earlier volume paid more attention to technology, politics, higher culture and the Highlands. It also devoted more space to the middle and upper classes which are not here a principal part of 'the people'. About 20% of the nineteenth century Scots are thus excluded even though they disposed of about half of the national income. The chronological limits of this history are also a bit deceptive. Although the terminal date is 1950 there is virtually nothing on World War li 

S.E.D. Shortt — Victorian Lunacy: Richard M. Bucke and the Practice of Late Nineteenth-Century Psychiatry.

https://hssh.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/hssh/article/download/37471/34016

S.E.D. Shortt — Victorian Lunacy: Richard M. Bucke and the Practice of Late Nineteenth-Century Psychiatry.

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Histoire sociale / Social History (E-Journal, York University)