This study is a cultural history of Montpellier vitalism, regarded by many historians as the leading school of medicine in the French Enlightenment. Offering a holistic understanding of physical-moral relation in place of Descartes' mind-body dualism, Montpellier vitalism supplied essential discursive foundations of the medical enlightenment. Acknowledgments ix A Note on Translation x Abbreviations xi Introduction 1(15) A Medical Town: Montpellier in the Eighteenth Century 16(34) At the ``elbow'' of the south 18(1) University and town 19(6) The gardens 25(1) Promoting and disseminating knowledge 26(5) In the hospitals of Montpellier 31(4) Practice and practitioners 35(2) The waters 37(13) A University in the Enlightenment: The University of Medicine of Montpellier 50(30) Institutional hierarchy 52(4) Professors and students 56(7) Student life 63(4) The teachers of Bordeu 67(13) Boissier de Sauvages and the Emergence of Vitalism in Montpellier 80(32) Against Descartes: Sauvages's early career 81(5) Predictable and unpredictable remedies 86(4) Sauvages's nosology 90(3) Pathology and physiology 93(2) Forces, faculties, and the action of the soul 95(6) Classifying disease 101(11) The Ascent to Paris: Montpellier Physicians in the Capital of Enlightenment 112(35) ``This vile country'' 113(2) ``Hommes du Midi'' in Paris 115(1) The lure of surgery 116(2) Students again 118(2) The Montpellier Encyclopedists 120(4) Montpellierains and Paris medical journalism 124(5) Vitalism in the salon 129(3) Montpellier and the court 132(15) Vitalism and the Encyclopedist Movement 147(38) Celebrating Bearn 148(3) A family collaboration in Paris 151(3) Vital force in the body 154(6) Vitalism in the Encyclopedie 160(3) Medicine and chemistry 163(5) Barthez as Encyclopedist 168(4) Vitalists and materialists 172(13) Time of Troubles: The University--Court Connection in the late Ancien Regime 185(30) Untenable practices 186(3) At war with the town doctors 189(5) The clinic thwarted 194(3) Internecine struggle 197(7) A world away: Bordeu at court 204(11) Semiotics, Smallpox, Sex: From the Practical to the Philosophical in Vitalist Medicine 215(40) Semiotics and the search for certainty 217(3) ``A frightful and treacherous malady'' 220(5) ``Practical medicine'' in the Encyclopedie 225(5) Vital variability: the case of women 230(25) Barthez and the ``Science of Man'' 255(32) Infinity of ills, infinity of cures 257(3) The vital principle 260(5) Forces of the animal economy 265(6) ``Modifications'' of the vital principle: temperament and age 271(4) Barthez and the ``vitalist sect'' 275(12) Vitalism in the Late Enlightenment 287(34) The reception of Barthez's synthesis 290(3) Montpellier and the Societe royale de medecine 293(12) Vitalism and Mesmerism 305(16) Conclusion: The End of the Enlightenment and the Eclipse of Montpellier 321(14) Select Bibliography 335(19) Index 354