Gut Brain and Environment in Nineteenth-Century French Literature and Medicine

<p><i>Gut Brain and Environment in Nineteenth-Century French Literature and Medicine</i> offers a new way of conceptualizing food in literature: not as social or cultural symbol but as an agent within a network of relationships between body and mind and between humans and environment. By analysing gastrointestinal health in medical literary and philosophical texts this volume rethinks the intersections between literature and health in the nineteenth century and triggers new debates about France’s relationship with food. Of relevance to scholars of literature and to historians and sociologists of science food and medicine it will provide ideal reading for students of French Literature and Culture History Cultural Studies and History of Science and Medicine Literature and Science Food Studies and the Medical Humanities. Readers will be introduced to new ways of approaching digestion in this period and will gain appreciation of the powerful resources offered by nineteenth-century French writing in understanding the nature of connections between gut mind and environment and the impact of these connections on our status as human beings.</p>