Medical Science and the Anatomia Animata in Milton's Paradise Lost
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“Your bodies may at last turn all to spirit”: Medical Science and the Anatomia Animata in Milton's Paradise Lost Submitted by Charlotte Mai Nicholls to the University of Exeter as a thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English in June 2010 This thesis is available for Library use on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. I certify that all material in this thesis which is not my own work has been identified and that no material has previously been submitted and approved for the award of a degree by this or any other University. Signature: ………………………………………………………….. Abstract “Your bodies may at last turn all to spirit”: Medical Science and the Anatomia Animata in Milton's Paradise Lost This thesis takes issue with the standard critical attribution to Milton of a backward Aristotelian scientific paradigm for his work, demonstrating that body and soul represented in Paradise Lost are inscribed in terms of radical contemporary medical theories of vitalism. Milton’s close friendship with his doctor, Nathan Paget, links him to Paget’s colleague, Francis Glisson, Regius Professor of Physic at Cambridge University, an academic and practising physician who was closely involved in cutting-edge contemporary medical research. Not only can Glisson’s heretical notion of the energetic, living nature of substance be seen to match the dynamic scale of nature represented in Paradise Lost, but in fact Milton’s animist materialism corresponds precisely to the chemical innovations made by Glisson in the anatomy of blood and bodily fluids and spirits. Exploring Milton’s representation of body and soul, spirit and matter, in the light of these contemporary medical innovations, this thesis focuses upon the way that his theodicy is supported by this most heretical natural philosophy. Milton’s vital anatomia animata is shown to be central to the harmonious integration of science and theology in Paradise Lost; it complements the literalism of the poem and provides a non-satanic logic of self-determination. Beginning with the basic evidence of Milton’s materialism of the soul in the Christian Doctrine, the first chapter correlates the theological assertions made with the language of natural philosophy that Milton uses to make them. The next chapter addresses the problem of the antinomy between the material soul proposed by Milton and the Aristotelian terminology with which he describes it, arguing that the latter is more heterogeneous than literary critics have acknowledged. The third chapter examines several versions of vitalism in order to delineate a working, medical model of the active matter presupposed by Milton’s body-soul composites and the wider natural philosophy of Paradise Lost. This model of active matter and spirit is then used in chapter four to illuminate the representation of Creation, demonstrating the acute accuracy with which Milton’s Creation draws upon contemporary medical research into conception. Chapter five extends the analysis to compare early notions of chemical digestion with the metabolic transformations of paradise. The final chapter demonstrates that the physiological and psychological corruptions of the Fall correspond to the effects of the putrid or poisonous ferment, while Milton’s representation of regeneration calls upon the vital, generative anatomia animata. This work is dedicated to my parents in loving recognition of their long years of caring. Acknowledgements First of all, I would like to thank Karen Edwards for her acute and illuminating insights and her unshakable and sustaining belief in this research project. I would also like to thank the AHRC for the grant that made it possible and I must also thank the Fund for Women Graduates, who made me a grant that made all the difference in the later stages of writing. Caroline Green has been a lifeline and has regularly reminded me that the sky still seems to be at the top. Finally, I offer thanks to Shamser for his endless patience and most of all thanks to Elsa, for whom the sun rises in the morning. Contents Introduction: Milton and the new physic p. 1 Chapter one: Theological imperatives and natural philosophy p. 25 i. The material soul of the Christian Doctrine ii. The contemporary medical body: some terminology iii. Material and immaterial spirits Chapter two: Aristotelian Soul and some problems of monism p. 44 i. Hylomorphism ii. The other tradition iii. Milton’s Aristotle: the problem of form and matter iv. Form, matter and the animated human v. Form, matter and causality Chapter three: Medical vitalism p. 77 i. Models of vitalism ii. Similary attraction iii. Chymical blood iv. ‘kindly heat of various influence’: vital heat in Paradise Lost Chapter four: Creation and conception p. 105 i. Body out of spirit ii. The embryo earth iii. Holy light and vital spirit Chapter five: Body into spirit p. 132 i. Models of transformation in the animate body ii. Digestion and sublimation in the scala naturae iii. ‘A wilderness of sweets’: odour in paradise iv. Penetration of substances v. Active matter Chapter six: The corrupted monism of the fallen soul p. 174 i. Discordance in the vitae chorea ii. Vital heat and toxic fermentation iii. Effects of the fruit iv. Sulphur and nitre in Paradise Lost v. Curse and contagion vi. Fallen physiology and the atoms of chaos vii. Regeneration and mercy Conclusion p. 215 1 Introduction Milton and the New Physic Milton suffered two debilitating illnesses in the last twenty years of his life, and my dissertation is going to argue that this fact is relevant to the natural philosophy of the animate human body of Paradise Lost. That he finally went completely blind in 1652 is well documented, and the lament for his lost sight at the beginning of Book 3 of Paradise Lost, with its paean to the visual beauty of the natural world and the wisdom that is available from studying it, makes the depth of the loss painfully apparent: Thus with the year Seasons return, but not to me returns Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn, Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer’s rose, Or flocks or herds, or human face divine; But cloud instead, and ever-during dark Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair Presented with a universal blank Of nature’s works to me expunged and razed, And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.1 The beauty of nature, human conviviality and the wisdom available in the ‘book of knowledge’ of the world are the central losses in this passage. There are well known descriptions of both his earlier and final attempts to slow or arrest the deterioration of his sight. One of the most famous is that of his nephew, Edward Phillips, who notes that during Milton’s exchange with Salmasius, his Sight, what with his continual Study, his being subject to the Head-ake, and his perpetual tampering with Physick to preserve it, had been decaying for above a dozen years before, and the sight of one for 2 a long time clearly lost. 1 Paradise Lost, ed. Alastair Fowler, 2nd edn. (Longman: Harlow, 1997), 3. 40-50. All references to Paradise Lost are to this edition, and will hereafter be given parenthetically in the text. 2 The Early Lives of Milton, ed. Helen Darbishire (London: Constable & Co, 1932). 72. 2 Tentative diagnoses of amaurosis or gutta serena were made at the time and have been repeated in more current analyses. Milton himself intimates just such a diagnosis in the description of his blindness in the sequence of verse quoted above: “So thick a drop serene hath quenched their orbs, / Or dim suffusion veiled” (PL 3. 25-6). James Hanford’s study of Milton’s blindness and the medical evidence we have concerning it remains a most accurate survey of the issue.3 He describes the orthodox, Galenic analysis of the illness thus: “A redundant humour in the brain flowed down into the optic nerve and congregated there, preventing the ‘spirits of sight’ from finding access to the eyeball. This humour was itself the ‘gutta serena’ or clear drop – clear because it could not be seen outwardly.”4 Arnold Sorsby comments on Milton’s self-diagnosis in Paradise Lost, that “Drop serene and dim suffusion are not so much alternate diagnoses as different names for very much the same thing, for gutta serena was the name for blindness with a transparent (i.e., non-obscured) pupil and suffusio nigra stood for blindness in which the pupil was black (and not grey).”5 Less often commented on are Milton’s years of suffering from gout. As with his blindness, an accurate diagnosis is extremely difficult to make. F. Dudley Hart observes that “although Sydenham (1624-89) was able to distinguish between acute rheumatism and gout, the latter term continued to embrace a large and undefined collection of syndromes throughout most of the 18th century.”6 The fundamental feature of gout is that of intense and agonising periods of pain in the joints (particularly the feet) and Milton’s death in 1674 was probably caused by associated renal failure.7 Significantly, both disorders were thought to stem from the same problem of errant phlegmatic humours which, originating in bad digestion, excreted out of the brain and collected in the wrong areas of the body. Sorsby quotes a nineteenth century source to explore the link between the two conditions suffered by Milton: The Arabians, who had adopted generally the humoral pathology of Galen, conceived both these diseases to be the result of a morbid rheum or defluxion falling on a particular part of the visual orb, in one case producing blindness with obscurity, whence the name of an obscure rheum or gutta, and in the other without obscurity, whence the 3 James H.