Hysteria complicated by ecstasy
An edition of Hysteria complicated by ecstasy (2010)
the case of Nanette Leroux
By Jan Goldstein
Publish Date
2010
Publisher
Princeton University Press
Language
eng
Pages
246
Description:
"Hysteria Complicated by Ecstasy offers a rare window into the inner life of a person ordinarily inaccessible to historians: a semiliterate peasant girl who lived almost two centuries ago, in the aftermath of the French Revolution. Eighteen-year-old Nanette Leroux fell ill in 1822 with a variety of incapacitating nervous symptoms. Living near the spa at Aix-les-Bains, she became the charity patient of its medical director, Antoine Despine, who treated her with hydrotherapy and animal magnetism, as hypnosis was then called. Jan Goldstein translates, and provides a substantial introduction to, the previously unpublished manuscript recounting Nanette's strange illness - a manuscript coauthored by Despine and Alexandre Bertrand, the Paris physician who diagnosed Nanette as suffering from "hysteria complicated by ecstasy.""--Jacket.