The Language of Disease: Writing Syphilis in Nineteenth-Century France by Steven Wilson

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Language of Disease: Writing Syphilis in Nineteenth-Century France by Steven Wilson Beatrice Fagan The Language of Disease: Writing Syphilis in Nineteenth-Century France. By Steven Wilson. (Research Monographs in French Studies 62) Cambridge: Legenda. 2020. x+145 pp. £75. ISBN 978–1–781885–60–4. This timely reappraisal of syphilis in nineteenth-century French medical and literary texts examines the importance of language in shaping our understanding of the diseased body, and asks how this body generates, alters, and disrupts this language. Steven Wilson’s focus on ideological, disciplinary, and physical borders builds on previous research on digestive health and disciplinary knowledge (Gut Feeling and Digestive Health in Nineteenth-Century Literature, History and Culture, ed. by Manon Mathias and Alison M. Moore (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) and Larry Duffy, Flaubert, Zola and the Incorporation of Disciplinary Knowledge (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015)). However, diverging from previous examinations of syphilis in nineteenth-century France, Wilson argues for the importance of literature in representing disease. Throughout this analysis, Wilson deftly draws comparisons between different forms of borders, describing how social, cultural, and disciplinary borders influenced descriptors of cells, the skin and blood, and patient-authors’ experience of pain, consequently shaping the language of disease and understandings of the syphilitic body. Beginning with a focus on language of contagion and invasion, and linking these motifs to the porous border of the skin and, in turn, textual porosity, Wilson then interrogates the centrality of blood and contamination within representations of [End Page 127] syphilis, arguing that the language used to describe blood is mirrored in a concurrent ‘diffusion’ of public health warnings and prophylaxis (p. 67). Although this analysis covers the well-trodden ground of Zola’s Nana (1880) and Maupassant’s ‘Le Lit 29’ (1884), the convincing close reading is reinforced by accounts of a number of less well-studied novels, reflecting the cultural value of middle-brow and popular novels and acknowledging their role in shaping understandings of the body. The first two chapters concentrate on identifying disease within sites of borders, transmission, mobility, and fluidity, illustrating how the language of blood facilitates these disciplinary and pathological ‘entanglements’ (p. 86). In contrast, Chapter 3 changes the focus to the lived experience of the patient-writer, arguing that in these instances, the language of disease is limited and restricted, ruptured by experiences of pain, resulting in an emphasis on visual imagery of crucifixion (pp. 110–20). Wilson’s study contributes significantly to an emerging area of research acknowledging the centrality of syphilis to broader social, medical, and hygienic anxieties, while employing methodologies from the critical medical humanities to focus specifically on the diseased body and its relationship to the language of disease. The importance of gender in representations of syphilis, particularly those relating to prostitutes, is pertinently reflected in developed readings of literary and medical texts, underscoring the contemporary perception of female ‘porosity’ (p. 48). However, despite this acknowledgement, Chapter 3’s focus on the patient-author is comprised exclusively of male accounts of the disease. Although no doubt this is due to a scarcity of material, it somewhat limits the conclusions drawn about how the language of disease was understood and shaped by experiences of syphilis. In addition to further clarification about how the analysis of representations of diseased bodies meshes with discussion of experiences of syphilis, Wilson’s use of ‘public health’ literature (pp. 65–68), which hints at the disciplinary fluidity of the terms ‘literary’ and ‘medical’, could have been supported by other popular sources such as pamphlets, satire, and caricature. Such sources also demonstrate the importance of language in understanding and representing the diseased body. As touched upon in Wilson’s Conclusion, the relevance of the research extends beyond syphilis in nineteenth-century France, providing a framework to interrogate the language of disease in global health today, an approach which is particularly reinforced by the COVID-19 pandemic. As we are constantly reminded of the importance of quarantine, contagion, and transmission, Wilson’s approach to the body and language raises questions for future study on how the diseased or sick body shapes and generates language, and how this language shapes our understanding of the...