Man Who Crucified Himself

Maria Böhmer, Ph.D. (2013), European University Institute Florence, Italy, is postdoctoral research fellow in the history of medicine at the Institute of Biomedical Ethics and History of Medicine (IBME) at the University of Zurich, Switzerland.

“Overall, Böhmer’s study contributes broadly to scholarship on epistemic genres and specifically to our understanding of the role of case histories in the history of psychiatry.”Alexandra Bamji (University of Leeds), Bull. Hist. Med., 2020, Vol. 94 (3), 527-528 pp.“Maria Böhmer’s The Man Who Crucified Himself is an important contribution to many convergent fields: the history of medicine, and especially surgery; nineteenth century Italian history; the history of medical communication; and, last but not least, the history of one crucial textual genre in medicine, the case, as defined by Gianna Pomata for the early modern period. […] The book is an exciting reading for specialists, but it can also be fruitfully used in the classroom, to illustrate the multiple layers and diverse adventures and uses of medical narratives in the long nineteenth century.”Maria Conforti (History of Medicine and Bioethics, Sapienza University, Rome, Italy), Journal of the History of Medicine, Vol. 75 (3), 2020, 346-347 pp.

• AcknowledgementsList of IllustrationsIntroduction 1 The Man Who Crucified Himself 2 The Storia della crocifissione as an Epistemic Genre 3 Making the Case Travel. Translation, Media, Reading 4 Professional Readings: Religion 5 Professional Readings: Madness 6 Professional Readings: Suicide 7 Popular Readings: Moral Education and Literary Entertainment Epilogue Bibliography