title: [The medical system and social ideology. Construction of a moral logic and body of thought in the 18th century].
abstract: This article proposes an historical case study of the relationships between a body of medical knowledge and the social and political concerns of the period in which it developed. The analysis of the writings of J.C. Lettsom (1744-1815), a Quaker physician, and famous practitioner of London, demonstrates that very narrow links exist between his medical conceptions on the human body and his conceptions on the organisation and the functioning of the "social body". Such notions as freedom, equilibrium, circulation, interdependence, sensitivity and mutual sympathy are shown to structurate Lettsom's discourse on the human body and the social body. It is suggested that such relationships can be deciphered in other contexts as recent works in social history of medicine and in ethno-medicine tend to make it evident.
mesh_terms: D004739:England; D005007:Ethnology / Q000266:history; D049671:History, 18th Century; D006801:Humans; D008131:London; D010686:Philosophy, Medical; D012936:Social Medicine / Q000266:history*
vernacular_title: Système médical et idéologie sociale. La construction d'une logique et d'une pensée morale au XVIIIème siecle.