ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

A Spectacle of Science: Medical Electricity, Performance and Gender

• In Event: The Science, Sensation, and Schism of Medical Electricity

English Abstract

In late 1770’s and early 1780s Paris, one Nicolas Philippe Ledru was an avid and popular practitioner of medical electricity. But Ledru, better known by his stage name “Comus”, was not a physician, but a renowned stage magician. Medical electricity, a contested method in and of itself, was Ledru’s ticket to garner respect in the eyes of the medical community. There was a lot of excitement around electricity as a therapy in the late 18th century Paris, but because of its technical nature, it was practiced mainly by whoever happened to have access to the machinery needed to use it.

Ledru was one of those practitioners who had gained access to an electrical machine. Ledru performed and catalogued his electrical treatments in front of many respected Parisian physicians and was allowed to treat patients from the hospitals of Salpêtrière and Bicêtre. His choice of patient is a focal point of this research: Ledru treated mainly what at the time were called epileptics and most of his patients were women. Some of these women were also diagnosed with catalepsy, a rare and strange predicament, where the patients would freeze in place.

This paper will examine Ledru’s medical practice through an analysis of the importance of performance and spectacle in using medical electricity. It will examine this performativity with a focal point in examining why Ledru chose mainly women as his patients and what this can tell us about the gendered uses of medical electricity and 18th century healing practices at large.

Author

• Edna Huotari, University of Helsinki