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Abstract

To test the parameters of the extent to which bodily health, bodily pain and the development of a uniquely scientific understanding of nature were experienced and expressed, this essay will analyse three cases where early modern English physicians and natural philosophers made a diagnosis. But in these cases of John Wilkins (1614-72), Martin Lister (1639-1712), and John Ray (1627-1705), their descriptions and diagnoses were of their own illnesses, their descriptions were not in a published treatise, but in private correspondence. As their own bodies were a dataset, examining their letters elucidates where datasets and mindsets meet in the seventeenth century. On the one hand, Wilkins Lister, and Ray displayed clinical detachment and a high level of empirical detail about their own suffering. They were their own experimental subjects. On the other hand, they expressed emotional despair too along with data presentation, and their own pain was pre-Cartesian, a broken state of nature. One might argue that the private nature of their correspondence makes these sources problematic for analyses of public scientific practice, but in the case of Lister, his medical case was published anonymously in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, and reprinted in his Letters and Mixt Discourses. This incidence in itself assists us in elucidating norms for formulation and publication of early modern medical and scientific case studies.

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• Treating yourself: self-diagnosis amongst natural philosophers and physicians and the early modern medical case study. (deposited 10 Jan 2016 16:30)
  • Treating yourself: self-diagnosis amongst natural philosophers and physicians and the early modern medical case study. (deposited 05 Jun 2020 09:09) [Currently Displayed]
  • Treating yourself: self-diagnosis amongst natural philosophers and physicians and the early modern medical case study. (deposited 28 May 2020 10:37)