Medical Fictions and Healing Words: The Narratives of Eighteenth-Century Medical Men

本论文以18世纪医学专业人士的叙事作品为研究对象，探讨医学叙事的目的。韦恩·怀尔德（Wayne Wild）等学者将他们的工作集中在医生与文学之间的关系上，将注意力转向探索18世纪作家如何在小说作品中利用当时的医学话语和实践者。这往往导致了对围绕医疗贸易的怀疑的大量批评焦点，怀尔德州贯穿了整个世纪的几十年，并在“无情的”文学讽刺中找到了表达（怀尔德：2006年，第19页）。然而，小说如何反过来影响医学语篇的产生还需要进一步的研究。为了弥补医学写作研究中的差距，本文将探讨这样一个概念，即虚构的手段可以在医学话语和实践中找到，克拉克·劳勒（Clark Lawlor）指出，这揭示了一个“文化反馈过程”（Lawlor：2007，第16页）。这将有助于强调医生如何寻求超越怀疑和讽刺，利用18世纪文学的影响来帮助巩固医学专业。

This thesis focuses on the narratives that formed around eighteenth-century medical professionals, and in turn those they created, to explore the purposes of medical story telling. Scholars such as Wayne Wild have centered their work on the relationship between doctors and literature, directing much attention towards exploring how eighteenth-century writers make use of the medical discourses and practitioners of the moment in their works of fiction. This has often resulted in a large critical focus on the suspicion that surrounded the medical trade, which Wild states permeated all decades of the eighteenth century and found expression in 'merciless' literary satire (Wild: 2006, p.19). However, the way in which fiction in turn influences the production of medical discourse demands further research. In seeking to remedy the gap in scholarship on medical writing, this thesis will explore the concept that the devices of fiction can be found within medical discourse and practice, in a way that Clark Lawlor states reveals a 'process of cultural feedback' (Lawlor: 2007, p.16). This will serve to highlight how doctors looked to move past the suspicion and satire, using the influence of eighteenth-century literature to aid the consolidation of the medical profession.