Psychosomatic Illness in Early Modern England

Katrina BoisvertUniversity of AlbertaJuly 2014

• Ψυχοσωματικός

• ψυχή

– psyche – of the mind/spirit

• Σωματικός

– somatic – of the body

• of or pertaining to a physical disorder that iscaused or notably influenced by emotionalfactors.

Research Focus

• The Great Chain of Being and how ideas of naturalness versus unnaturalness intersect with psychosomatic illness.

– Medical and spiritual understandings found in extant sources of the period

– Shakespearean dramas

– Gendering? – melancholia vs. hysteria?

• 1579 drawing of the Great Chain of Being from Didacus Valades, RhetoricaChristiana.

Medical Understandings

• Diverse vocabulary

• Diverse symptoms and treatments

• Attempts to secularize treatment

• Sources of symptoms/illness

– Humoral

– Ecstatic

• Bethlem Hospital

– Treatment or “storage facility”

Frontispiece for1638 edition; first printed in 1621

"The dayly experience of phrensies, madnesse, lunasies, and melancholy cured by .. . art in that kinde, hath caused some to judge more basely of the soule... I have laydopen howe the bodie, and corporall things affect the soule, & how the body is affected of it againe : what the difference is betwixt natural melancholie, and that heavy hande of God upon the afflicted conscience, tormented with remorse of sinne, & feare of his judgement.”

Bethlem Hospital: Treatment or “storage facility”

• “A Church of Our Lady that is named Bedlam. And in that place be found many men that be fallen out of their wit. And full honestly they be kept in that place; and some be restored onto their wit and health again. And some be abiding therein for ever, for they be fallen so much out of themselves that it is incurable unto man” - William Gregory, Lord Mayor of London (1450)

Biblical

• 1 Corinthians 12:12

– For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the membrs of that one body, being many, are one bodie: so also is Christ. (KJV, 1611)

• James 5:16– Confesse your

faults one to another, and pray one for another, that yeemay bee healed: the effectuallferuent prayer of a righteous man auaileth much. (KJV, 1611)

Gendering? Regendering?

• Melancholie

– Μελαγχολία

– Black bile

• Hysteria Passio

– ὑστέρα

• Uterus

– Passio – Latin – to suffer/suffering

Shakespearean Dramas

• Macbeth (1605-6; 1623)– Lady Macbeth– Macbeth

• Hamlet (1600-1; 1604)– Ophelia– Hamlet

• King Lear (1605-6; 1608)– King Lear– Edgar

• Titus Andronicus (1593-4; 1594)– Titus– Lavinia

• Julius Caesar (1599-1600; 1623)– Brutus