[...]... the Pathology of the Brain As G S Rousseau has argued, Willis’s Pathology marked the beginning of a gradual shift from an understanding of the human body as a system of humours and hydraulics to the eighteenth-century s notion of the body ruled by the nervous system Willis argued that the human soul/ mind was located in the brain, and that the nerves, running from the brain to the rest of the body were... Boerhaave, became the most famous mechanist physician of the eighteenth century As the professor of medicine at the University of Leiden, the seat of medical learning in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, Pitcairne enjoyed an unparalleled reputation as a master of medicine on the continent and in Britain.37 Significantly, all four of the original faculty members at the University of Edinburgh’s... disease, debating the physical or mental nature of its symptoms and advertising miraculous cures capable of curing any nervous ailment, popular interest in the nerves sharply escalated Novels and the Nerves The rise of the sentimental novel in the 1740s further fuelled the popularization of nervous disease Interestingly, Cheyne’s influence was also strongly felt in the literary world As the physician... sensibility of the nerves’.4 Historians have long acknowledged the vague nature of the definition of nervous disease and its cultural implications 5 This chapter examines the reasons behind this ambiguity and explores the inevitable clash between cultural and pathological definitions of nervous disease in the eighteenth century.6 By –7– 8 Nervous Disease in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain addressing these... physicians passively acknowledged the limits of experimentation and human reason in discovering the structure and inner workings of the nerves For instance, in his New Essay on the Nerves and the Doctrine of the Animal Spirits (1737), the physician David Kinneir expressed content with even a vague under- Defining Nervous Disease in Eighteenth-Century Britain 17 standing of the role that animal spirits played... objectionable and aggressive treatments in hopes of curing their very real, and often very painful symptoms The final chapter of this study further addresses the disparities between the discourse and reality of nervous disease It demonstrates how popular portrayals of nervous patients as selfish malingerers in the late eighteenth century reflected serious national anxiety over Britain’s ability to cope in a. .. Philopirio in Mandeville’s Treatise of the Hypochondriack sarcastically noted, A Man of Wit and good Parts, that has a little smatt’ring of the Newtonian Philosophy, is seldom at a Loss now, to solve almost any Phoenomena’.67 Cheyne was quick to lay claim to his Newtonian roots, repeatedly noting his indebtedness to the late sagacious and learned Sir Isaac Newton’ in The English Malady.68 As a student of the. .. hysterics and melancholics By emphasizing the physical origin of nervous disease, Cheyne sought to rescue it from its reputation among the general population as a purely mental malady Explaining the ill repute of nervous disorders in the non-medical world he wrote, Nervous Distempers especially, are under some Kind of Disgrace and Imputation, in the Opinion of the Vulgar and Unlearned; they pass among the. .. so many Cheyne’s ‘English Malady’ was, as Porter has explained, a fashionable disease of civilization’.7 Because nervous disease was adorned with such flattering implications, critics of the medical profession expressed concern that patronage-dependent Introduction: Explaining a Fashionable Disorder 3 physicians would indiscriminately bestow the complimentary diagnosis upon anyone willing to pay Even... clarifies the reasons behind scepticism about nervous ailments on the part of many medical practitioners and members of the public.7 This chapter begins with an overview of the medical faculty’s variety of opinions regarding the causes of nervous disease from the seventeenth to the early eighteenth century It then explores the ways in which these professional debates prompted an increasingly medically . Richness and Heaviness of our Food, the We a lth and Abundance of the Inhabitants (  om their universal Trade) the Inactivity and Sedentary Occupations of the. class="bi x0 y0 w1 h0" alt="" NERVOUS DISEASE IN LATE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY BRITAIN: THE REALITY OF A FASHIONABLE DISORDER Studies for the Society for the