Keats's living hand

According to his friend Charles Cowden Clarke, [John Keats] (1795-1821) quickly had second thoughts about his decision to train as an apothecary at Guy's Hospital. "The other day, for instance", Clarke recalled Keats as saying, "during the lecture, there came a sunbeam into the r...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Lancet (British edition) 2002-12, Vol.360 (9350), p.2099-2099
Main Author: Douglas-Fairhurst, Robert
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Correspondence
Gittings, Robert
Keats, John (1795-1821)
Mee, Jon
Nonfiction
Poets
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:According to his friend Charles Cowden Clarke, [John Keats] (1795-1821) quickly had second thoughts about his decision to train as an apothecary at Guy's Hospital. "The other day, for instance", Clarke recalled Keats as saying, "during the lecture, there came a sunbeam into the room, and with it a whole troop of creatures floating in the ray; and I was off with them to Oberon and fairyland". The anecdote has often been repeated as evidence that Keats's sensibility was too finely tuned, or highly strung, to cope with the messy reality of surgery in the days before reliable anaesthetics. And yet, the Keats who emerges from his letters is a far tougher, shrewder, and funnier writer than the dreamy creature Clarke remembered.
ISSN:0140-6736
1474-547X
DOI:10.1016/S0140-6736(02)12016-2