« We were not to expect that the Physicians could stop God’s judgements » : La foi au secours de la médecine dans les écrits sur la peste de 1665 de Daniel Defoe
When A Journal of the Plague Year compares the violence of the 1665 epidemic to the effects of the great fire in London the following year, Defoe emphasizes the unstoppable nature of the plague and the failure of any form of preventive medicine or attempt to cure those affected. Observing in turn th...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Institut du Monde Anglophone
2025-03-01
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| Series: | Etudes Epistémè |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/episteme/20462 |
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| Summary: | When A Journal of the Plague Year compares the violence of the 1665 epidemic to the effects of the great fire in London the following year, Defoe emphasizes the unstoppable nature of the plague and the failure of any form of preventive medicine or attempt to cure those affected. Observing in turn the disagreements between different doctors, the quacks – whose only goal was to get rich by selling ineffective potions to prevent or cure the plague – or the deserter-doctors, his judgment is without appeal: the medical profession was not only ineffective in the fight against the epidemic but sometimes even pernicious. Faced with the elusive and incomprehensible nature of the plague and the difficulty, if not impossibility, of curing it, religion seemed to take over from medicine, with faith and morality emerging as effective remedies. This article will offer a literary analysis of how the medical and religious discourses complement each other in the face of a catastrophe such as the plague, as well as the proliferation of alternative discourses (those of cartomancers, magicians, astrologers, quacks and witches) in Defoe’s writings on the plague. It will question what this multiplication of discourses implies about the aspirations of individuals as well as about the ethical limits of medical practices, but also about the weight of myths and beliefs in times of crisis as well as about the impact of such an epidemic on the physical and mental or spiritual health of individuals and of society. |
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| ISSN: | 1634-0450 |