A Culture of Reform Reform Permeated London's Societal

5 A Culture of Reform Reform permeated London’s societal infrastructure during the late seventeenth century. John Wilkins, William Petty, and others promoted various ‘projects’ to reform and improve London society and its inhabitants for the ‘National good’. 1 Political dissidents, chiefly radical Whig nonconformists, allegedly plotted their own reform against Charles II’s restoration. 2 Relatedly, prevailing Anglican High Church Tory structures were destabilized as Low Church latitudinarians (i.e., free-thinking, theologically liberal Anglicans) increasingly gained authoritative positions within governmental and intellectual arenas. 3 The ministry used the calamities of the 1665 plague and 1666 fire to prompt people to rethink their morals. Thomas Vincent, for example, decreed these disasters represented ‘God’s Terrible Voice’ against Londoners for their sins. 4 The need for moral reform was also evident in Thomas Brookes’ preachings that God had matter enough against the seventy thousand that died in the Plague, and certainly there is no man that hath been a sufferer by this late dreadful fire, but upon an easy search into his own heart and life, he may find matter enough to … satisfy himself that, though God has turned him out of his habitation, and burnt up all his comfort around him, yet he had done him no wrong. 5 Antecedents of the eighteenth-century Societies for the Reformation of Manners were, according to some historical accounts, evident among the Religious Societies of the 1670s and 1680s. 6 This urge for reforming morals and manners was, for many Londoners, as much a part of restructuring the capital’s living environment as were the newly built brick houses and improved water and sewage transport systems. There was ‘never known such a trade’, so Defoe claimed, as the rebuilding of the capital during the ‘seven years’ following the plague and fire. It has been estimated that the fire destroyed 90% of London’s settlements within the walls. Thus, during his boyhood, Daniel Turner had the opportunity to witness the contributions various tradesmen made towards the piecemeal rebuilding and reforming of the capital. He experienced a London in which reform 85 A Culture of Reform was a daily visible activity, and, for the devout, a daily personal activity as well. This chapter explores several reform measures to which Daniel Turner devoted considerable thought throughout his life. ‘The Greatest Lies can be Invented’: Mechanists as Enemies Theoretical writings predominated in the medical literature of early Enlightenment London. Many of these medical theories were formulated in light of mechanistic philosophy. For instance, readers approaching John Clarke’s bookshop at ‘The Bible’ under the Royal Exchange in 1732 would have found approximately three-fourths of the available medical works representing some mathematical or mechanical-based medical theory. 7 British medical writers including Archibald Pitcairne, Richard Mead, George Cheyne, James Keill, James Jurin, William Cockburn, Henry Pemberton, and Nicholas Robinson used mechanically based deductive arguments in their explanations of animal oeconomy(i.e., physiology) and physic. For instance, they explained consumption, jaundice, and fevers in terms of forces, powers, and causes adopted from natural philosophical writings. 8 Newton was their model, and the exchange of theories between the College of Physicians and the Royal Society was fostered by men like Hans Sloane and James Jurin who served as leading figures of both groups. 9 Furthermore, members of these groups shared antiquarian and literary connections, political and religious allegiances and, for some, royal privileges as well. An analysis of the arguments and constituencies of physicians who opposed these theoretical medical writings is wanting. This section only begins to explore this under-researched area by focusing upon the anti-theoretical medical writings of one contemporary, Daniel Turner. The authors whom Turner regarded as his opponents are identified, and the basis of the type of medical practice he preferred – a patient-oriented approach – is discussed. Additionally, Turner’s use of similar rhetoric when discussing mechanical medical physicians and quacks is explained. Although anti-theoretical sentiments pervade all of Turner’s writings as a physician, they are most pronounced in his works on syphilis (1717 & 1739), fevers (1727), and the power of a pregnant woman’s imagination to deform or mark her foetus (1714, 1727-30). Therefore, this account of Turner is primarily based upon these works. According to Turner, his writings provoked ‘Resentment’ from many medical colleagues who deemed him an ‘Enemy to learning’. 10 86.

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