The Anglican patient: Robert Boyle and the "Medicalised Self" in early modern England

In Occasional Reflections upon the Accidents of an Ague (1665), Robert Boyle investigates the symptoms, signs, and causes of a vexing quartan fever. Boyle's sickness inspires an exploration of the promises and perils of medicine, in which he tests both regimen and remedy. As he writes through h...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Seventeenth century 2015-10, Vol.30 (4), p.455-483
Main Author: Pender, Stephen
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Boyle, Robert (1627-1691)
Fever
Illnesses
Medicine
Meditation
Physiology
Robert Boyle
self
Semiotics
sickness
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Summary:In Occasional Reflections upon the Accidents of an Ague (1665), Robert Boyle investigates the symptoms, signs, and causes of a vexing quartan fever. Boyle's sickness inspires an exploration of the promises and perils of medicine, in which he tests both regimen and remedy. As he writes through his suffering, Boyle recognises that the eclecticism, eloquence, and flexibility of medical thought provide ways of preserving and re-describing agency and interest, ways of shaping and organising the self. As an "Anglican patient," Boyle probes counsel, temperance, repentance, and fears of relapse, seeking a via media between enlisting medical assistance and enjoining spiritual rectitude, between curing and caring. His meditations interiorise the world in order to discover the social dimensions, and shared vocabularies, of suffering and the self, the latter embedded in conversations devoted to cure.
ISSN:0268-117X
2050-4616
DOI:10.1080/0268117X.2015.1077471