Stolberg Michael
Med Ges Gesch Beih. 2007;29:23-33, 267.
Consulting by letter was fairly common practice among the educated, upper classes of early modern Europe. Surviving letters of consultation written by patients, relatives or friends count among the most valuable source for the analysis of pre-modern experiences of disease and the body. This essay gives a brief overview of the various types of consultation letters and related documents which resulted from this practice before tracing the historical development of epistolary consultations from the late Middle Ages through the heyday medical correspondence in the 18th c. before its decline in the 19th c. It presents "experience", "self-fashioning" and "discourse" as three particularly fruitful levels of analysis on which patients' letters can be used within the wider framework of a cultural history of medicine. These three levels of analysis, or three distinct approaches, enable historians to access a greater awareness of the ways in which the experience of illness and the body is culturally framed with an analysis of the performative effects of patients' narratives and the influence of medical discourse among the wider society.
在近代早期欧洲的受过教育的上层阶级中，通过信件咨询是相当普遍的做法。患者、亲属或朋友撰写的现存咨询信件是分析前现代疾病和身体体验最有价值的资料来源之一。本文简要概述了各种类型的咨询信件及相关文件，这些都是这种做法的产物，然后追溯了书信咨询从中世纪晚期到18世纪医学通信的鼎盛时期，再到19世纪衰落的历史发展。它将“体验”“自我塑造”和“话语”作为三个特别富有成效的分析层面，在更广泛的医学文化史框架内，患者信件可在这些层面上加以运用。这三个分析层面，或三种不同的方法，使历史学家能够更深入地了解疾病和身体体验在文化上是如何构建的，通过分析患者叙述的表现效果以及医学话语在更广泛社会中的影响。
