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  • Suffering Scholars: Pathologies of the Intellectual in Enlightenment France by Anne C. Vila
  • T. Jock Murray
Suffering Scholars: Pathologies of the Intellectual in Enlightenment France Anne C. Vila Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018, vii + 267 p., $65

Most academics would sympathize with the view that the hard work and long hours of study, research, and writing can put stress on the mind and body.

Professor Vila notes that the view that overusing the mind can result in mental and physical infirmity has a history stretching back to Aristotle and, although a generally widespread belief, it was particularly prominent in France during the eighteenth century. Society has always admired creative minds, but Vila says her research was an effort to "put intellectuals back in their bodies."

The French interest in intellectual effort as a special social and medical issue was at its peak from 1720 to 1840. After 1840, physicians still believed that overusing the brain could affect the mind and body, but had come to the view that this was a risk to anyone, not just the intellectual elite.

The core of this idea was that intellectual pursuits led to both physical and mental stresses, particularly because of the excessive zeal the intellectual brought to their work. Intellectual concentration could drive them to neglect eating, exercise, and even the calls of their bowels and bladder. They would probably neglect their families, friends, and communities. They were sometimes described as being in the grip of a form of ecstasy or mania. Their environment also contributed to their poor health, as their rooms were dark, dingy, and dusty, and the air nasty. Because they spent so much of their time bent over books, their posture was poor and their internal organs were constricted.

Those engaged in intellectual pursuits, especially in the arts, were believed to have many characteristics that separated them from the general population. They were "other," reclusive, a cult of thinkers – but martyrs to their art, sacrificing their mental and physical health to their passions. Some thought this sacrifice in the search for knowledge was a heroic act, while others believed that it was unnatural and pathological. Poets, philosophers, and mathematicians were most likely to succumb to the ills of a passion for study. Others added that scholars also had heightened sensibility, which magnified their perceptions, but also put them at increased risk of illness.

Many of the physicians writing about the problem realized they were also members of this group, so it is hardly surprising that they [End Page 232] leaned towards a heroic interpretation of this "suffering scholar" syndrome. It is ironic that the leading proponent of the idea, the prominent physician and writer Samuel-Auguste Tissot, suffered from the disorder because of his busy academic life, which took its toll on his eyes and stomach. Tissot popularized the idea of a scholar syndrome in his book De la santé des gens de lettres. This crisis of the mind leading to illness was defined as an unnatural state and classified as "les maladies des gens de lettres," a noble but dangerous condition. Excesses also involved sexuality in all its forms, though Tissot came to believe that excess in one area could be compensated by restriction in another, so excessive study, masturbation, or libertinism could be mitigated by limitations in other aspects of life, such as food and drink.

Physician Anne-Charles Lorry observed the intellectual at work, noting that "you will see him in sort of an ecstasy. He neither sees or hears, and he barely breathes. If you take his pulse, you'll find it even, well-developed, but slow. His evacuations are suspended, he doesn't perspire or urinate. … The state produced in the body by work and application can be compared only to the effects of chagrin and fever, in which the mind, likewise occupied by an object, can be distracted by no other." The ecstasy mentioned by Lorry was more akin to mania than to exaltation

Once the effects of mental strain had been acknowledged as a cause of illness, it was simply a matter of defining the various symptoms and disorders. In an age that was struggling with mind–body...

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