Trained in Montpellier, friend of the Philosophes, Tissot (1728-1797) published almost two dozen medical books which were widely read and translated during his lifetime. The best known are Onanisme and Avis au peuple . He also left numerous manuscripts on different subjects of medicine. This biography presents a comprehensive study of the life and works (unpublished as well as published) of Tissot against the backdrop of the Era of the Encyclopédie and within the context of Tissot's Calvinist, French speaking Swiss milieu.
"Tissot was one of the most innovative medical men of the Enlightenment: a Rousseauvian critic of the ills of civilization, a popularizer of 'medicine for the people', a pioneer of sexual maladies. Till now, he has never found a scholarly biographer and interpreter. This original, comprehensive and fluent biography of Tissot meets that need. Historians of medicine will be deeply indebted to Dr. Antoinette Emch-Dériaz's admirable study." (R.S. Porter, Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine)
"In this thoughtful and insightful book, Antoinette Emch-Dériaz provides a fascinating picture of the career of one of the leading eighteenth-century physicians and illuminates the development and logic of eighteenth-century medicine as a whole. Especially admirable are the ways in which she charts Tissot's turn toward a 'social' taxonomy of health that linked specific medical problems to the groups of people affected by them. Anchoring the general debates in the illuminating specifics of medical training and practice from the treatment of individual patients to the organization of hospitals, she lays bare the texture and dynamics of intellectual and cultural change." (Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Emory University)
"Emch-Dériaz' biography of Tissot finally gives us a full-length and well-rounded portrait of the Swiss doctor who embodied all the qualities and interests that make the Enlightenment such an attractive epoch for the modern reader. This is a work of thorough scholarship that blends the history of science and medicine with the social and political context. This biography will be essential reading for scholars, students and the interested lay public." (Dora B. Weiner, University of California, Los Angeles) "Heretofore, Tissot has been without a reputable biography; Emch-Dériaz has filled that gap with her well-researched, thoughfully argued study of a neglected 18th-century intellectual." (R.O. Lindsay, Choice)
"It is amazing that a figure of such importance has had to wait nearly two hundred years for a full-length study of his thought and work. Historians of medicine and society are much indebted to Antoinette Emch-Dériaz for repairing this lacuna. She has written a balanced, judicious analysis, composed with felicitous clarity, of Tissot's career and of his writings, published and manuscript....a superb work of scholarly rehabilitation." (Louis S. Greenbaum, Bull. Hist. Med.)
"Référence indispensable pour les dix-huitiémistes et tous ceux que captive le 'tournant des mentalités' des années 1760, la biographie que nous offre A. Emch-Dériaz ouvre en fait sur la vaste thématique 'médecine et société' inaugurée sous la conduite des Philosophes, with a 'special touch of Calvinism and democracy'." (Guy Saudan, Gesnerus)
"In this thoughtful and insightful book, Antoinette Emch-Dériaz provides a fascinating picture of the career of one of the leading eighteenth-century physicians and illuminates the development and logic of eighteenth-century medicine as a whole. Especially admirable are the ways in which she charts Tissot's turn toward a 'social' taxonomy of health that linked specific medical problems to the groups of people affected by them. Anchoring the general debates in the illuminating specifics of medical training and practice from the treatment of individual patients to the organization of hospitals, she lays bare the texture and dynamics of intellectual and cultural change." (Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Emory University)
"Emch-Dériaz' biography of Tissot finally gives us a full-length and well-rounded portrait of the Swiss doctor who embodied all the qualities and interests that make the Enlightenment such an attractive epoch for the modern reader. This is a work of thorough scholarship that blends the history of science and medicine with the social and political context. This biography will be essential reading for scholars, students and the interested lay public." (Dora B. Weiner, University of California, Los Angeles) "Heretofore, Tissot has been without a reputable biography; Emch-Dériaz has filled that gap with her well-researched, thoughfully argued study of a neglected 18th-century intellectual." (R.O. Lindsay, Choice)
"It is amazing that a figure of such importance has had to wait nearly two hundred years for a full-length study of his thought and work. Historians of medicine and society are much indebted to Antoinette Emch-Dériaz for repairing this lacuna. She has written a balanced, judicious analysis, composed with felicitous clarity, of Tissot's career and of his writings, published and manuscript....a superb work of scholarly rehabilitation." (Louis S. Greenbaum, Bull. Hist. Med.)
"Référence indispensable pour les dix-huitiémistes et tous ceux que captive le 'tournant des mentalités' des années 1760, la biographie que nous offre A. Emch-Dériaz ouvre en fait sur la vaste thématique 'médecine et société' inaugurée sous la conduite des Philosophes, with a 'special touch of Calvinism and democracy'." (Guy Saudan, Gesnerus)