Presentation on stuff almost no one cares about.

1. Psychosomatic Illness in Early
Modern England
Katrina Boisvert
University of Alberta
July 2014

2. • Ψυχοσωματικός
• ψυχή
– psyche – of the mind/spirit
• Σωματικός
– somatic – of the body
• of or pertaining to a physical disorder that is
caused or notably influenced by emotional
factors.

3. 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?

4. • 1579 drawing of
the Great Chain of
Being from
Didacus Valades,
Rhetorica
Christiana.

5. Medical Understandings
• Diverse vocabulary
• Diverse symptoms and treatments
• Attempts to secularize treatment
• Sources of symptoms/illness
– Humoral
– Ecstatic
• Bethlem Hospital
– Treatment or “storage facility”

6. Frontispiece for
1638 edition; first
printed in 1621

8. "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 layd
open 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.”

10. 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)

12. 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)

13. • James 5:16
– Confesse your
faults one to
another, and
pray one for
another, that yee
may bee healed:
the effectuall
feruent prayer of
a righteous man
auaileth much.
(KJV, 1611)

14. Gendering? Regendering?
• Melancholie
– Μελαγχολία
– Black bile
• Hysteria Passio
– ὑστέρα
• Uterus
– Passio – Latin – to suffer/suffering

15. 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