Les données médicales dans les consultations épistolaires d’Étienne-François Geoffroy (1672-1731)

Abstract

The correspondence of Etienne-François Geoffroy (1672-1731), a famous Parisian physician, allows us to approach medical data in the 18th century from different perspectives. Firstly, epistolary consultations actually involve some material reality of the data that will “travel” from the experience of the diseased body to the written words, from the patient to the doctor. Then, there is a dichotomy between the medical data produced by patients and their kin – in so far as all information seems to become data in the absence of any physical consultation with a doctor – and the medical data obtained from practitioners and the information that will actually make sense in the explanation of the pathology provided by Etienne-François Geoffroy. Medical data then take on characteristics that are strongly linked to the context in which they are developed, be it individual or collective, profane or scholarly.

Keywords

• medical data
• epistolary consultations
• Etienne-François Geoffroy
• 18th century
• subjectivities