Literatura y medicina: Teoría y praxis (1800–1930) ed. by Jorge Avilés Diz y José Manuel Goñi Pérez (review)

This engaging collection of ten interdisciplinary essays by specialists of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century thinkers, writers, and artists provides a wealth of information on the ways in which scientific breakthroughs in the medical world—particularly those related to infectious diseases, mental illness and hygiene—shape the cultural production of the period. The editors argue in their introduction that artistic creation—theatre, novel, short story, essay, travel fiction and painting—serves as a forum to express fundamental concerns, fears and uncertainties related to continuous, and often controversial, discoveries in medicine. Avilés Diz and Goñi Pérez argue that the arts, particularly literature, function as the ideal medium to debate matters such as the conflict between past and present, tradition versus evolution and the historically uneasy relationship between science and religion. While various essays deal with easily recognized figures—Clarín, Galdós, and Larra—others focus on the work of lesser-known journalists, writers and doctors—Rosario de Acuña, Manuel de Tolosa Latour and Sabino Arana, to name a few—thus underscoring the editors’ contention that developments in medicine throughout the nineteenth century have a widespread impact on the arts.

In the opening study, “‘¿Qué le duele?’ Representaciones de la medicina en la pintura del siglo XIX,” Esther Sánchez-Couto scrutinizes how medical developments—vaccinations, the creation of asylums, experimental laboratories and the introduction of autopsies—as well as the “professionalization” of the doctor, appear throughout the paintings of Goya, Sorolla, Borrás Abellá and Simonet Lombardo, among others. She shows how numerous scientific developments compel these artists to capture this new reality in original and concrete fashion. Monserrat Escartín Gual’s “La relación de Larra con la medicina y la enfermedad” adeptly explores the writer’s contact with the medical world as seen through terminology in his newspaper articles and his frequent bouts with depression. Most importantly, the fragmentation of Larra’s personality into Fígaro highlights attempts to alleviate his depression through the use of the word. As such, writing is not simply a profession but a therapeutic necessity for Larra. José Avilés Diz’s thoughtful essay, “¿Simila similibus curentur? Teatro y homeopatía en la España del siglo XIX,” explores the intense and often acrimonious nineteenth-century debate surrounding homeopathy and allopathy. He argues that theater serves as a forum for scientific discussion as well as an indicator of social opinion on the value of homeopathy as a medical system especially when compared to traditional medicine. Works discussed include Juan Peral y Richart’s Una cura por homeopatía, Calixto Boldún’s Simila similibus curantur, o un clavo saca a otro clavo and Luis Martínez’s Homeopáticamente, among others.

Solange Hibbs-Lissorgues focuses on hygiene in “‘La higiene es una religión humana . . . ’: regeneración, salud e higiene en España en el siglo XIX,” with emphasis on the work of Rosario de Acuña who tirelessly labored to eradicate irregularities in hygiene throughout the country, especially its rural areas. This activist and writer battled continuously against the religious fanaticism and superstition that impeded scientific development. From another perspective, José Manuel Goñi Pérez scrutinizes how doctors used travel fiction to convey medical ideas and to dissert on the state of medicine in Spain. In “Medicina, instrucción y regeneración: los relatos de viaje de Calatraveño y Valladares (1898) y Tolosa Latour (1908),” Goñi Pérez argues that the hybridism which characterizes the travel genre permits both writers to straddle the line between diversion and socio-scientific information. Margot Versteeg’s fine study, “No Place for Us: Stigmatization and Exclusion in ‘Duo de la tos’ by Leopoldo Alas (Clarín),” probes the author’s metaphorical critique of the nation-state’s inability to create an all...