1. Skin and Medicine in the 18th Century
Prof. Severine Pilloud, Ph. D
Western University of Applied Sciences
HEdS La Source
Lausanne, Switzerland

2. An historical perspective on discourses and
practices related to skin, body, and diseases
Medical culture in the Age of
Enlightenment
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3. Presentation’s main points
• Introduction: letters to a physician of the 18th
century, historical archives allowing to decipher
the evolving visions of skin and to grasp
patients’ experience of sickness
• II. Social norms and representations
related to skin: contact with skin in medical
and chirurgical practices
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4. • III. Skin, Aetiology, diagnosis and treatments
in the medical culture of the 18th century
• IV. Diseases affecting skin:
social and cultural images, stigma, suspicion
of venereal pathologies,
therapeutics involving skin
• Conclusion: crucial importance of skin as
interface between individuality and society,
between the interior & exterior of the body
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5. A famous Swiss physician: Samuel Auguste Tissot (1728-1797)
Tissot’s major treatises
• L’onanisme (1760)
• Avis au peuple sur sa santé (1761)
• De la santé des gens de lettres (1768)
• Essai sur les maladies des gens du monde
(1770)
• Traité de l’épilepsie (1770)
• Traité des nerfs et de leurs maladies (1778-
1780)
Publications at the basis of the
constitution of Tissot’s epistolary
network throughout Europe within
literate social classes
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6. Letters from Europe
Between 2 et 5 letters
Between 6 et 10 letters
Between 11 et 15 letters
Saint-Pétersbourg
More than 15 letters
Édimbourg Lausanne
Paris
La Haye
Bruxelles Strasbourg, Nancy
Amsterdam
Londres Hanovre
Waldeck Düsseldorf
Grenoble
Besançon Turin
Bordeaux
Dijon
Florence
Lyon
Gênes Rome
Naples
Montpellier Milan
Lisbonne
Alger

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