The Cellars of Marcelcave: A Yank Doctor in the Bef Book

Using medical histories recorded by an eighteenth century German doctor, Duden attempts to construct an image of the body held by women and their doctor. Because Storch recorded what his female patients we can practically hear their complaints. These women viewed their bodies very differently than we view our bodies. While Duden has a complex argument about the evolution of the body, what I found most engaging was the way she makes the doctor patient relationship vivid. Although it may be an artifact of Duden's efforts at 'construction' I was struck by how similarly these women viewed their bodies and their illnesses. I was disappointed that Duden did not seem interested in the history of these views, instead treating them as timeless. I was also interested in the way the doctor's view of the body and illness, while different from that of the women he treated, allowed him to synchronize his efforts with their complaints. I was struck by the way that his ideas seemed to bear more relationship to his patient's ideas than to the theories of his teachers. This is an important book for thinking about doctor patient relationships as well as the history of ideas about the body.