[Between furor and consumption: love, soul and body in medical and literary Western tradition]
- PMID: 25807727
[Between furor and consumption: love, soul and body in medical and literary Western tradition]
Abstract
Love is a psychic force capable of converting itself into a real disease, as abundantly demostrated by the medical contemporary literature and by the interest of the law to the issue of protection of the objects of persecution of unrequited love. The dual nature of love, capable of harmful or sel- destructive metamorphoses, is a common topic of medical thought from Greek antiquity, even if it is openly thematized only from Late Antiquity and more deeply in Westerm medical medieval tradition. Nevertheless, it remains to analyze some aspects of the definition of lovesickness, especially in long-term perspective: what are the relations that lovesickness has with the more general category of medical melancholy? Is it a real disease or just one oftheforms of madness and fiury? Does it affect women more than men? Is it in some way linked to hysteria, greensickness, uterine fury and womb diseases as codified by medical and philosophical ancient thought?
Similar articles
-
The anatomic location of the soul from the heart, through the brain, to the whole body, and beyond: a journey through Western history, science, and philosophy.Neurosurgery. 2009 Oct;65(4):633-43; discussion 643. doi: 10.1227/01.NEU.0000349750.22332.6A. Neurosurgery. 2009. PMID: 19834368 Review.
-
Dysfunctional doctour of physik.West J Med. 1994 Jan;160(1):70-2. West J Med. 1994. PMID: 8128713 Free PMC article. No abstract available.
-
[Rheumatism in the non-medical French literature].Rev Rhum Mal Osteoartic. 1987 Jul-Sep;54(7-9):583-7. Rev Rhum Mal Osteoartic. 1987. PMID: 3313669 French. No abstract available.
-
Arrhythmias in the History: Lovesickness.Card Electrophysiol Clin. 2017 Sep;9(3):341-344. doi: 10.1016/j.ccep.2017.05.008. Epub 2017 Jun 12. Card Electrophysiol Clin. 2017. PMID: 28838544 Review.
-
The Rise of Chinese Acupuncture in the West: How an Ancient Eastern Tradition Became an American Medical Staple.Vet Herit. 2015 May;38(1):1-9. Vet Herit. 2015. PMID: 26255322 No abstract available.