Phantom Pains and Prosthetic Narratives
From George Dedlow to Dante

Combines medieval studies and contemporary neuroscience to explore the fascinating and surprising concept of 'phantom limb pain'.

Alastair Minnis (Author)

9781108970556, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 18 February 2021

75 pages
22.9 x 15.1 x 0.5 cm, 0.13 kg

'Phantom limb pain' designates the sensations which seem to emanate from limbs that in reality are missing. The phrase was coined by the American Civil War surgeon, Weir Mitchell, in reference to his fictional amputee, George Dedlow. Contemporary neuroscience holds that the brain encloses a schema which covers the whole body, and asserts its unity even if certain parts are missing. Reading backwards from Dedlow's sufferings, Alastair Minnis traces the medieval precedents and parallels, focusing on Augustine and Dante, who subscribed to the notion of a 'body in the soul'. Dante's souls in purgatory self-prosthesize with aerial phantoms as they long for the full embodiment which only the resurrection can bring. Is a complete body necessary for personhood? And how can the gamut of human feelings be run if parts or the entirety of one's body does not exist? Combining medieval studies and contemporary neuroscience, this absorbing study explores the fascinating and surprising history of phantom pain.

1. Pain in the brain
2. In search of phantoms
3. False phantoms
4. The case of George Dedlow: phantom limbs and resistance to prosthetic narrative
5. Phantom pain and 'bodies in the brain'
6. Augustine's 'body in the soul' and the continuity of pain
7. Augustine's 'body in the soul' defended and derided
8. Reluctant prostheses: the aerial embodiments of angels
9. Eager prostheses: the aerial embodiments of separated souls
10. Solving the pain problem: it's all in the soul
11. Science and immortality.

Subject Areas: Neurology & clinical neurophysiology [MJN], History of ideas [JFCX]