The sick patients of Dr. Tissot (1728-1797)

Abstract

Samuel Auguste Tissot (1728-1797) was a Swiss physician from Lausanne, who enjoyed a great reputation in his lifetime, thanks to his publications and professional expertise. His personal records contain many pieces of correspondence and more than a thousand written consultations, which are documents describing the disease of a person, that were sent to a physician in order to solicit advice on diagnosis and treatments. This collection is very interesting in many aspects, notably for giving an insight into the patients' points of view. This perspective, which is often difficult to adopt because of the lack of archival materials, has been presented recently as an essential alternative to the traditional history of medicine. Written consultations allow an original reflection on the perception or expression of sickness and shed new light on the patient-practitioner relationship. They reveal a complex network of mediations, that is, actions undertaken by individuals at any step of the epistolary consultations. This article aims at defining the different kinds or levels of mediations that one can find in the documents in order to understand when and why there are sometimes mediators, and which role they play. Such a study should demonstrate that the experience of sickness is not only the business of a single person, but involves several people. The patient-doctor relationship is not exclusively a binary one, but often includes the active participation of third parties.