Fear of Seeming Death in Eighteenth-Century Europe

Abstract

Twof actors-the transformation of the spiritual experience of death and the gradual professionalization of the medicalfield and its practitioners-influenced the human perception of death and dying in Europe from the second half of the eighteenthc entury on.¹ While historians have traditionallydevoted much attention to religious beliefs about death and its spiritual aspects,² contemporary anthropologists emphasizethat the biological dimension of human death throughout history has been rather neglected.³ Historians of medicine can naturally relatet ot his topic quite easily. They can follow closelyt he course of at erminal illness, the role of the doctor at the bedside of the dying,the mannerofcommunicating with the patient,a nd the effectiveness of contemporary medicalc are.