Tales of the Medical Abyss - Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) was a master of the macabre, a pioneer of detective fiction, and a key figure in Romanticism.

His writing is a chilling cocktail of meticulous logic and psychological chaos, often delving into the darkest corners of the medical abyss. As medicine evolved away from supernatural explanations, Poe translated the world's morbid anxiety into the new language of psychiatry (catalepsy, hyperesthesia, monomania, etc.) and exploited fears around vitalism, pain, disability, contagion, and distrust of doctors. From premature burials and preternatural resurrections, to scientific systems and anarchic hallucinations, his stories transgressed the boundaries between life and death, reason and madness.

For this meetup, we will read the following short stories from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe:

• [Volume 2]:
• Mesmeric Revelation
• The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar
• The Fall of the House of Usher
• The Premature Burial
• [Volume 3]: A Tale of the Ragged Mountains
• [Volume 4]: The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether

The Works of Edgar Allan Poe:

• Kindle: Volume 2, Volume 3, Volume 4
• Gutenberg (all volumes)
• Librivox: Volume 2, Volume 3, Volume 4 4h 09m

Supplemental:

• Tales of Terror (1962) includes adaptation of "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar"
• Two Evil Eyes (1990) movie adaptation of "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar"
• The Fall of the House of Usher (1960) movie adaptation
• The Fall of the House of Usher (2023) Netflix adaptation
• Crimson Peak (2015) loose movie adaption of "The Fall of the House of Usher"
• Stoneheart Asylum (2014) movie adaptation of "The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether"

Extracts:

• "With the measured step and calm collected air of an asylum-physician approaching in the public hall some patient beginning to show indications of a coming paroxysm, Claggart deliberately advanced within short range of Billy, and mesmerically looking him in the eye, briefly recapitulated the accusation." (Billy Budd, 17)
• "The first mesmeristic glance was one of serpent fascination; the last was as the paralyzing lurch of the torpedo fish." (Billy Budd, 19)
• "But, as sometimes men are coffined in a trance, being thereby mistaken for dead; so it is possible to bury a tranced grief in the soul, erroneously supposing that it hath no more vitality of suffering." (Pierre, 21.2)
• "In a side wall... they had an internal vacancy... exactly of the shape and average size of a coffin. In this place... inmates... were confined.... [I]f from the gloomy recesses of the wall was heard the agonized groan... [it] was regarded in the light of a penitent wail from the dead, because... the live body was sepulchred. Sometimes several weeks elapsed ere the disentombment, the penitent being then usually found numb and congealed in all his extremities, like one newly stricken with paralysis." (Israel Potter, 12)
• "I soon fell asleep; but waking suddenly, cramped in every joint from my constrained posture, I thought, for an instant, that I must have been prematurely screwed down in my coffin." (Omoo, 56)
• "Strange! that so many of those who would fain minister to our own health should look so much like invalids themselves." (White-Jacket, 77)

This meetup is part of the series Circuses and Snake Oil.