Infectious wit: Metaphor, atheism, and the plague in eighteenth-century London

Literature and Medicine

Volumn 22, Issue 1, 2003, Pages 45-64

  Lund, Roger D ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; EPIDEMIC; HISTORY; HUMAN; HUMOR; LITERATURE; PLAGUE; RELIGION; UNITED KINGDOM;

DISEASE OUTBREAKS; HISTORY, 18TH CENTURY; HUMANS; LITERATURE, MODERN; LONDON; MEDICINE IN LITERATURE; PLAGUE; RELIGION AND MEDICINE; WIT AND HUMOR;

EID: 0038209494     PISSN: 02789671     EISSN: 10806571     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/lm.2003.0007     Document Type: Review

References (50)

1. Claudine Herzlich and Janine Pierret, Illness and Self in Society, trans. Elborg Forster (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), xi
2. Barbara W. Tuchman, A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978)
3. Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors (New York: Doubleday, 1989), 58
4. See Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London: Routledge, 1970)
5. In the early modern period, atheism is a polyvalent term implying various forms of heterodoxy from libertinism, deism, rationalism, anticlericalism, and antitrinitarianism to republicanism. For a wider discussion of the difficulties in defining atheism see Roger D. Lund, The Margins of Orthodoxy: Heterodox Writing and Cultural Response, 1660-1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 1-29
6. A Representation of the Present State of Religion, With Regard to the Late Excessive Growth of Infidelity, Heresy, and Profaneness ... (London, 1711), 9
7. [William Darrell], The Gentleman Instructed in the Conduct of a Virtuous and Happy Life. In Three Parts, 5th ed. (1713), Second Part, Preface to the Reader, 102
8. Francis Atterbury, The Axe Laid to the Root of Christianity (London, 1706), 8
9. Jeremy Collier, preface to "The Office of a Chaplain Enquir'd Into, and Vindicated," Miscellanies in Five Essays (1694)
10. The Gentleman Instructed, Second Part, Preface to the Reader, 102
11. John Tillotson, "The Folly of Scoffing at Religion," in The Works of John Tillotson, ed. Thomas Birch (London, 1752), 404
12. The Gentleman Instructed, First Part, 83
13. See Owsei Temkin, "An Historical Analysis of the Concept of Infection," in The Double Face of Janus and Other Essays in the History of Medicine (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977), 456-71
14. Temkin, "An Historical Analysis of the Concept of Infection," 461
15. Sontag, Illness as Metaphor, 71
16. Temkin, "An Historical Analysis of the Concept of Infection," 469
17. The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), I:1427
18. Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year (1721), ed. Paula Backscheider (New York: Norton, 1992)
19. Thomas Vincent, God's Terrible Voice in the City (London, 1667)
20. Philip Rose, A Theorico-Practical, Miscallaneous and Succinct Treatise of the Plague (London, 1721), 9
21. Quoted in Defoe, Journal, 225. Quotations from this edition are cited by page number in the text
22. This is the reason Florence Nightingale was determined to improve ventilation in hospital wards. "Even smallpox, she believed, might emerge anew in an appropriately untoward environment. The stagnant air, for example, of a room long shut up could cause such sickness. 'It is quite ripe,' she warned, 'to breed smallpox, scarlet fever, diptheria, or anything else you please.'" Charles E. Rosenberg, "Florence Nightingale on contagion: The hospital as moral universe," in Explaining Epidemics and Other Studies in the History of Medicine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 94
23. Girolamo Fracastor, a fifteenth-century proponent of this theory, quoted in Herzlich and Pierret, 13
24. Defoe, 154. On Defoe's attitude toward contagion and miasma, see Louis Landa, "Introduction," The Journal of the Plague Year (London: Oxford University Press, 1969)
25. The Gentleman Instructed, Second Part, 97-98
26. Collier, "The Office of a Chaplain ...," Miscellanies
27. Richard Blackmore, An Essay Upon Wit (London, 1716), 205
28. Richard Blackmore, Preface to Prince Arthur, in Critical Essays of the Seventeenth Century, ed. J. E. Spingarn, 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1909), III:233-34
29. Thomas Sprat, History of the Royal Society (1667), ed. Jackson I. Cope and Harold Whitmore Jones (St. Louis: Washington University Studies, 1958), 419
30. Joseph Glanvill, A Blow at Modern Sadducism in Some Philosophical Considerations about Witchcraft ... (1668), 144, 152
31. Richard Blackmore, The Creation, A Philosophical Poem in Seven Books (1713), in The Works of the English Poets, with Prefaces Biographical and Critical by Samuel Johnson (London: J. Davies, 1790), 35:18-19
32. Blackmore, Preface to Prince Arthur, 234
33. John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Peter H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), II, xi, 13
34. Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, II, xxxiii, 4
35. [Patrick Guthrie?], Candour: or an Occasional Essay on the Abuse of Wit and Eloquence (London, 1739), 12
36. The Gentleman Instructed, Epistle Dedicatory, Second Part, 98-99
37. Joseph Addison, The Spectator, ed. Donald F. Bond, 5 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), no. 9, March 10, 1711, I:28
38. The Conversation of Gentlemen Consider'd, 2nd ed. (London, 1749), 12
39. Henry Sacheverell, An Assize Sermon Preach'd before the University of Oxford (Oxford, 1704), 25-26
40. A True and Exact List of all the Blasphemous Names and Persons that are us'd by the Chairmen, Presidents and Masters of Those Impious and Wicked Clubs Call'd by the Several names of the Hell-fir'd Club, the Sulpur Society, Demi-red Dragons &c. (London, 1720)
41. Henry Sacheverell, The Communication of Sin (London, 1709), 31
42. Blackmore, The Creation, 19
43. The Gentleman Instructed, Supplement to the First Part, clii
44. See Richard Blackmore, A Satire Against Wit (London, 1699), line 53
45. William Warburton, The Divine Legation of Moses (London, 1738), "Introduction, to the Deists," Works of the Right Reverend William Warburton, 7 vols (London: John Nichols, 1788), I:xxv
46. Moral Essays and Discourses Upon Several Subjects Chiefly Relating to the Present Times (1690), 141
47. Joseph Glanvill, "Against Scoffing at Religion," in Some Discourses, Sermons and Remains (1681), 222
48. The Gentleman Instructed, First Part, 70, 66
49. The texts of all these laws can be found in English Historical Documents 1660-1714, ed. Andrew Browning (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1953)
50. John Roberts, Ridicule the Most Successful Adversary to the Truth (Ipswich: George Jermyn, 1798), 21