Entre les choses et l’âme : la « médecine de l’esprit » au xVIIIe siècle

The history of eighteenth century medicine usually does not take into account the so-called médecine de l’esprit (medicine of the mind). The analysis of this branch of the medical thought – developed in Paris in the mid-century – shows not only the interaction between medicine and philosophy, but also the revival of Hippocratic medicine, and, especially, of Hippocratic hygiene. Parisian physician-philosophers, as Antoine Le Camus and Charles Augustin Vandermonde, developed in fact an original psychophysiology able to explain the role that sensibility plays in the constitution of human nature. They start from two fundamental assumptions: the mutual malleability between mind and body, and the will to identify a correct physiological disposition, achievable thanks to an external manipulation, able to promote psychological and moral health.