Samuel Johnson in the Medical World

ISBN-13: 9780521383264 / Angielski / Twarda / 1991 / 304 str.

John Wiltshire

Opis

Samuel Johnson has become known to posterity in two capacities: through his own works as the great literary essayist of the eighteenth century, and through Boswell's Life, as a man--notoriously a medical patient with a string of physical and psychological ailments. John Wiltshire brings the two together in this original study of Johnson the writer as "doctor" and patient. The subject of modern medical historians' case studies, Johnson also cultivated the acquaintance of doctors in his own day, and was himself a "dabbler in physic." Dr. Wiltshire illuminates Johnson's life and work by setting them in their medical context and also examines the importance of medical themes in Johnson's own writings. He discusses the many parts of Johnson's work touching on doctors, medicine, hospitals and medical experimentation, and analyzes the central theme, running throughout, of human suffering--in body and mind--and its alleviation.

Recenzje

"...the balance of Wiltshire's bok is sound and sensible, a distinguished contribution not only to Johnsoniana but to the wider field of eighteenth-century studies." Willam B. Ober, M.D.; The Eighteenth Century

Spis treści

Preface; A note on references; Introduction; 1. Johnson's medical history: facts and mysteries; 2. The practice of physic; 3. Transactions of the medical world; 4. Medicine as metaphor; 5. The history of a man of learning; 6. Dr Robert Levet; 7. Therapeutic friendship; Notes; Bibliography; Index.