Medical Marvels and Professional Medicine: Establishing Scientific Authority in Enlightenment France

Abstract

Summary This article examines the investigation of medical marvels—principally reported cases of human bodies that could spontaneously produce rocks, needles, animals or other objects—in Enlightenment France. It argues that published accounts of these investigations served both a pedagogical and propagandistic purpose as they highlighted the benevolence, extensive knowledge, and sceptical approach of the ideal medical practitioner. At a time when medical knowledge was often challenged and the medical community remained insecure about its ability to cure diseases, these accounts provided crucial evidence that medicine was a useful and reliable science. This article examines a critical moment in the professionalisation of medicine when elite physicians in Paris were able to exploit a growing antipathy for the marvellous in order to prove the utility and reliability of medical knowledge, while inextricably linking medical practice with rationalism, scientific reasoning and the Enlightenment campaign against superstition.