Robert Boyle and Locke's "morbus" entry: A reply to J.C. Walmsley

Early Science and Medicine

Volumn 7, Issue 4, 2002, Pages 358-377

  Anstey, Peter R ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY   (Australia)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; HISTORY; PHILOSOPHY;

HISTORIOGRAPHY; HISTORY, 17TH CENTURY; HISTORY, 20TH CENTURY; HISTORY, 21ST CENTURY; PHILOSOPHY;

EID: 0011770698     PISSN: 13837427     EISSN: 15733823     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1163/157338202X00234     Document Type: Review

References (74)

1. J. C. Walmsley, "Morbus - Locke's Early Essay on Disease," Early Science and Medicine 5 (2000), 367-93, 389 and 390. The entry appears in Add. MS 32554 on pages 232-3, 237, 246 and 248-50 according to Locke's original pagination. Walmsley refers to the entry using the revised foliation, i.e. folios 118v, 119r, 121r, 126r, 127r, 127v and 128r. I will use the original pagination throughout followed by the revised foliation in brackets.
2. Walmsley, "Locke's Early Essay on Disease," 389.
3. For a list of Boyle's writings which refer to seminal principles see my "Boyle on Seminal Principles," Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciencee 33 (2002), 597-630.
4. For references to the lost treatises see M. Hunter and L. M. Principe, "The Lost Papers of Robert Boyle," forthcoming in Annals of Science.
5. See for instance the discussion of matter and form in C. H. Luthy and W. R. Newman, "'Matter' and 'Form.' By way of a Preface,"
6. in id., The Fate of Hylemorphism. 'Matterr and 'Form' in Early Modern Science (= Early Science and Medicine 2/ 3) (Leiden, 1997), 215-226, 226.
7. A. Clericuzio, "A Redefinition of Boyle's Chemistry and Corpuscular Philosophy," Annals of Sciencc 47 (1990), 561-589.
8. See also id., "Gassendi, Charleton and Boyle on Matter and Motion," in Late Medieval and Early Modern Corpuscular Matter Theories, eds. C. H. Lüthy, J. E. Murdoch and W. R. Newman (Leiden, 2001), 467-82, 480-1.
9. P. Anstey, "Boyle against Thinking Matter," in Late Medieval and Early Modern Corpuscular Matter Theories, 483-514, 510-13.
10. Sceptical Chymist, The Works of Robert Boyle, 14 vols., eds. M. Hunter and E. B. Davis (London, 1999-2000), (hereafter Boyle Works), II: 351. Boyle's works will be referred to by short-titles.
11. Walmsley, "Locke's Early Essay on Disease," 378.
12. Add. MS 32554, 232 (118v), Walmsley, "Locke's Early Essay on Disease," 390.
13. Add. MS 32554, 232 (118v), Walmsley, "Locke's Early Essay on Disease," 391.
14. Add. MS 32554, 248-9 (127r-127v), Walmsley, "Locke's Early Essay on Disease," 392.
15. Walmsley, "Locke's Early Essay on Disease," 376-7.
16. Boyle Workss II: 351.
17. See also Forms and Qualities, ibid., V: 363, also quoted above.
18. High Veneration, in Boyle Workss X: 172.
19. Walmsley, "Locke's Early Essay on Disease," 377.
20. Boyll Workss III: 254.
21. Walmsley, "Locke's Early Essay on Disease," 378.
22. See for example K. Dewhurst, "Locke's Contribution to Boyle's Researches on the Air and on Human Blood," Notes and Records of the Royal Society 17 (1962), 198-206, "Mr Boyle's Scheme of Qualities" in the Shaftesbury Papers in Public Record Office PRO/30/24/47/,0, fol. 21v from 1668 and the first part of Bodleian Library MS Locke c. 42, pp. 266-7 for a list of heads related to Boyle's work on flame and fire. I would like to thank Michael Hunter for this latter reference.
23. The entry is on pages 101, 238-40 and 247. This essay is not mentioned by M. Hunter and E. B. Davis in their list of manuscript materials relating to Usefulness of Natural Philosophyy II, section I, in Boyle Workss III: xxiii-xxiv.
24. See Usefulness of Natural Philosophyy II, sectton I, in Boyle Workss III: 519-21.
25. Walmsley, Locke s Early Essay on Disease, 387.
26. See R. G. Frank Jr, Haroey and the Oxford Physiologists (Berkeley, 1980), 178-92.
27. See J. C. Walmsley and J. R. Milton, "Locke's Notebook 'Adversaria 4' and his Early Training in Chemistry," The Locke Newsletter 30 (1999), 85-101, 98 and Bodleian Library MS Locke d. 11, fols 3r and 83r.
28. M. Hunter, "Boyle versus the Galenists: A Suppressed Critique of Seventeenth-Century Medical Practice and its Significance," Medical History 41 (1997), 322-361, 326, (Pubitemid 127459620)
29. reprinted in id., Robert Boyll 1627-1691: Scrupulosity and Science (Woodbridge, 2000), 157-201, 161.
30. See especially Usefulness of Natural Philosophy, II, sectton I, in Boyll Workss III: 322.
31. Walmsley, "Locke's Early Essay on Disease," 382.
32. Others who find an allusion to Cartesian iatromechanism here are P. Romanell, John Locke and Medicine: A New Key to Locke (New York, 1984), 55-63
33. and J. R. Milton, "Locke, Medicine and the Mechanical Philosophy, British Journal for the History of Philosophy 9 (2001)) 221-43, 236.
34. We learn from the Oldenburg correspondenee that Boyle had difficulty procuring a copy of this work and had probably not seen the work by 6 March 1665/6. Nor had Oldenburg seen a copy. It is therefore extremely unlikely that Locke would have seen a copy by then. It would have had to have been the Latin edition of 1662 because he could not yet read French. See The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, eds. A. R. Hall and M. B. Hall, 13 vols. (Madison, Milwaukee and London, from 1965), III: 33 and 48.
35. See Oeuvres deDescartes, eds. C. Adam and P. Tannery, 11 vols. (Paris, 1996), VI: 570 for the Latin version.
36. Usefulness of Natural Philosophy, II, section I, in Boyle Workss III: 466-7. For straining in digestion see ibid., 319. Boyle still entertains the concept of straining in relation to disease in the 1680s.
37. See Specific Mediciness ibid. X: 373.
38. Boyle Workss X: 366
39. It is mentioned in the list of philosophical writings appended to Cold (1665), in Boyll Workss IV: 517.
40. Form. and Qualities, in Boyle Workss V: 388.
41. See Walmsley, "Locke's Early Essay on Disease, 386.
42. Add. MS 32554, 237 (121r), Walmsley, "Locke's Early Essay on Disease," 391.
43. Walmsley, "Locke's Early Essay on Disease," 381.
44. Boyle speaks of seminal principles as "Coalitions or Clusters" of the smallest parts of matter in A Requisite Digression, in Boyle Workss III: 245-6.
45. Thomas Willis believed in seminal principles and espoused a theory of disease that attributed all forms of fever to deleterious ferments in the bodily humours. It is well known that Locke was familiar with Willis' views, both through his notes on Willis' lectures and through his reading of Willis' works, however Walmsley omits to mention him. See T. Willis, Diatribae Duae Medico-Philosophicae (London, 1659),
46. K. Dewhurst, Thomas Willis' Oxford Lectures (Oxford, 1980)
47. and J. R. Milton, "John Locke's Medical Notebooks," The Locke Newsletter 28 (1997), 135-56, 145-6.
48. Add. MS 32554, 249 (127v), Walmsley, "Locke's Early Essay on Disease," 392.
49. See for example J. Glanvill, Scepsii Scientifjca (London, 1665), 32, "it was some skilful Archeus who delineated those comely properiies and hath exprest such exactly those Geometrical elegancies in its compositions."
50. Walmsley, Locke s Early Essay on Disease, 389.
51. Walmsley, "Locke's Early Essay on Disease," 389.
52. See the introductory section of Locke's "Respirationis Usus," in K. Dewhurst, "Locke's Essay on Respiration," Bulletin for the History of Medicine 24 (1960), 257-273, 263 and 270.J.R. Milton alerted me to this reference.
53. Hunter, "Boyle versus the Galenists," 332,
54. id., Scrupulosity and Sciencee 168.
55. Hunter, "Boyle versus the Galenists," 351,
56. id., Scrupulosity and Sciencee 188.
57. Usefulness of Natural Philosophy, II, section I contains references to Boyle's water culture experiments, ulcers, poisons and straining, all of which are mentioned in the "Morbus" entry.
58. See for example Essay II, in Boyle Workss III: 312-329.
59. P. Romanell, John Locke and Medicine: a New Key to Locke, 53ff.
60. Walmsley, Locke s Early Essay on Disease, 384.
61. Walmsley, "Locke's Early Essay on Disease," 389.
62. See especially the Papers on Petrifactton and Mineralogyy in Boyll Workss XIII: 365-76.
63. Add. MS 32554, 232 (118v) and 237 (121r), Walmsley, "Locke's Early Essay on Disease," 391.
64. Boyle Workss III: 321.
65. Boyle Workss II: 356
66. Royal Society MS 199, fols 115v-115, printed in M. Hunter "Boyle versus the Galenists," 361,
67. id., Scrupulosity and Sciencee 200.
68. Add. MS 32554, 249 (127v), Walmsley, "Locke's Early Essay on Disease," 392.
69. It should be pointed out however, that by the 1680s Boyle had come to doubt the involvement of seminal principles in the generation of minerals to the extent that when he considers the cause of the proliferation of those morbific particles which emanate from subterranean steams, he is inclined to the view that they result from ferments and not from seminal principles. See Salubrity of the Air (1685), in Boyle Workss X: 317.
70. See G. G. Meynell, Thomas Sydenham's "Ohservationes Medicae" and his "Medical Observations" (Folkestone, 1991), 91.
71. Walmsley, "Locke's Early Essay on Disease," 390.
72. Quoted from P. Romanell's translation, John Locke and Medicine: A New Key to Locke, 139.
73. Walmsley, "Locke's Early Essay on Disease," 390.
74. I therefore retract my earlier comment that "on balance the weight of evidence favours Boylean authorship," expressed in "Locke, Bacon and Natural History," Early Science and Medicine 7 (2002), 83.