The introduction considers the multiple and complex ways in which the two dynamic fields of medicine and literature have been intertwined, how they have crossed over and developed alongside or in the shadow of one another. To this end, it develops the three main axes of the volume, namely its focus on historically, formally, and politically relevant conjunctions within the field. By spotlighting the long relationship between medicine and literature, the introduction scrutinizes the character, symmetries, and directionality of the medicine-literature connection; it explores how this volume pays testimony to the truly multifaceted reciprocal relationship at the heart of medicine and literature, which include multilingual, multicultural, global, and local perspectives as much as further consideration of how the interactions between medicine, health, and literature are shaped by intersectionality and planetary health.

Written during a crisis, this volume betrays an awareness that the field of ‘literature and medicine’ is at a crossroads. It anticipates the many directions that researchers can take, but also records the anxieties involved in not knowing what lies ahead. We take three steps in this Afterword, which may pave the way for future forays into this area. First, we sketch how the particular ‘medical’ event of the pandemic has transformed literature as medium, art form, and practice. By identifying the thematic and formal trends, we also signal the necessary methodological adjustments that we will have to take to assess these critically. Second, with a view to these changes and the necessary opening up of the field of medicine and literature that the pandemic has made visible, we draw attention to the thematic and formal trends that may be helpful in this endeavour. With a view to the volume chapters, we identify the possible directions that can be intensified in the future. Finally, under the heading ‘Medicine and Literature, quo vadis’, we indicate some of the ways in which, we strongly believe, scholars across Medical and Health Humanities, literature and medicine, and humanities in general, might be going.

This chapter focuses initially on the impact of late nineteenth-century medical theory (hysteria, hypnotism, etc.) on the novel and the burgeoning of medically-inflected fiction. Post-hypnotic suggestion led to stories of crime and sexual manipulation and introduced the figure of the unscrupulous doctor/hypnotist, usually bested by a good-hearted physician expert in hypnotism techniques. Ambient medical research on mind-control and dual identity influenced Maupassant’s fiction, most notably in his story ‘Le Horla’. Substantial tales (‘Boule de suif’, ‘La Maison Tellier’) foreshadow and feed the drama, irony and humour of Maupassant’s novels. Three of these are studied here: the raucous, ferociously ironic Bel-Ami, the family drama of illegitimacy and identity, Pierre et Jean, and a story of the despondency of ageing and lost love, Fort comme la mort. The chapter closes with a discussion of the novels of Rachilde (Marguerite Eymery), seen increasingly as an important figure of France’s decadent period. Her early novels Monsieur Vénus and La Marquise de Sade played daringly with the notion of gender reversals and sadism, exercised against men; such themes suggest today an underlying feminist persuasion, an affiliation she denied. Later novels, many-textured such as La Tour d’amour, or La Jongleuse, a male/female confrontation on seduction and love, reveal the broadening of the novelist’s talent.