In the second half of the seventeenth century, Jean Racine established himself as one of the two most accomplished composers of tragedy in the French language. Sharing this distinction with the earlier Piere Corneille, he drew his subjects mainly from mythology and Roman history, describing historical events and relating classical stories.  He was raised after his parents died by the Jansenist community at Port-Royal and learned in his youth that man is frail and destined to suffer, that disease is everywhere and treatment largely ineffective. In his plays he skillfully exposed and dramatized the emotional vulnerabilities and destructive passions that can affect body and mind in a most dramatic and tragic manner. The accounts of his own life indicate that he himself experienced several depressive episodes. He died in 1699 from liver disease or cancer.

The characters in his plays suffer from overwhelming passions that affect them as if they were medical illnesses. In Phèdre (1677), the queen’s forbidden love for her stepson leads to fever and delirium. Her body burns, “her veins are on fire”, and her passion has turned into a physical sickness that erases her free will. The modern interpretation of her all-consuming desire would identify this as a psychosomatic illness or psychiatric disorder that damages both physical and mental health.

The characters in Andromaque (1667) also express their intense romantic feelings and jealous emotions through descriptions of burning fevers and unending restlessness. Pyrrhus, Hermione, and Orestes behave as if afflicted by contagion, transmitting their destructive passion to one another like an epidemic. The characters’ actions lead to violent outcomes that mirror the natural course of untreated mental illness. In Bérénice (1670), the toxic nature of love also appears as a destructive force that penetrates through reason to cause complete domination. In Racine’s time, people described their suffering as though they were poisoned or had an incurable illness because they believed physical and mental diseases stemmed from unbalanced humors.

Through his tragic works, Racine shows how human bodies break down when subjected to excessive stress. Stage directions of fainting, trembling, tears, and pallor appear frequently to create dramatic effects that show how intense emotions affect the human body. The members of the audience who watched these characters may have experienced therapeutic relief through emotional rebalancing, which served as a form of medical-psychological treatment.

The Jansenist beliefs of the time emphasized that humans cannot overcome their inherent weaknesses through their own efforts and that divine grace remains the only path to salvation. The characters in Athalie (1691) demonstrate that human intervention fails against divine will, just as the medical efforts of that time focused on treating symptoms rather than curing diseases. Jean Racine’s dramatic works illustrate how passion can lead to mental and physical diseases, and how the human body remains vulnerable to physical as well as emotional and threats. Through his tragic masterpieces, he demonstrates how literature and medicine share as profound a connection as between human emotions and physical health.