Abstract
Thomas Wood, a miller of Billericay, in Essex, was born of intemperate parents on 30 November 1719. As a child, he suffered from various disorders, but after he recovered from smallpox at the age of thirteen, he remained healthy until about the age of forty-four. During this period, he voraciously ingested fatty meats three times a day, consumed large quantities of butter and cheese, and drank strong ale.When about forty years old,Wood began to grow very fat but continued to be healthy and “digested his food without difficulty.” In his forty-fourth year, however, “he began to be disturbed in his sleep,” complained “of the heart-burn,” and was afflicted by “frequent sickness at his stomach, pains in his bowels, headache, and vertigo.” He became sometimes costive, but at other times went to “the opposite extreme,” was almost constantly thirsty, had a “great lowness of spirits,” and suffered from “violent rheumatism, and frequent attacks of the gout.” His illnesses also caused him two epileptic fits, and he recurrently experienced a sense of suffocation, especially after his meals.2
For comments and suggestions at various stages during the development of this essay, I would like to thank Daniel Beauregard, Cristina Chimisso, Serafina Cuomo, Silvia de Renzi, Patricia Fara, Marina Frasca-Spada, Colin Jones, George Rousseau, Valerie Taylor, the editors of this volume, and especially Joseph Berkovitz, Simon Schaffer, and Emma Spary. Roy Porter provided insights into an early version of this paper. I have benefited from discussions in seminars and conferences at Cambridge University, Warwick University, and the University of Edinburgh. I would also like to thank Miriam Gutierrez-Perez for her help with the visual material and the Wellcome Trust for financial support.
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Notes
George Baker, “The Case of Mr. Thomas Wood, a Miller, of Billericay, in the Country of Essex […]. Read at the College on September 9, 1767,” Medical Transactions (London: Baker and Dodsley, 1772), 259–274, esp. 261–263.
Thomas Short, A Discourse Concerning the Causes and Effects of Corpulency together with the Method for his Prevention and Cure (London: Roberts, 1727), iii–iv. On consumerism in the eighteenth century, see the classic Neil McKendrick, John Brewer, John H. Plumb, eds., The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth-Century England (London: Europa Publications, 1982). See also Sara Pennell,“Consumption and Consumerism in Early Modern England,” The Historical Journal, 42:2 (1999), 549–564.
George Cheyne, An Essay of Health and Long Life (London: Strahan and Leake, 1724).
See Anita Guerrini, “Case History as Spiritual Autobiography: George Cheyne’s ‘Case of the Author,”’ Eighteenth Century Life, 19:2 (1995), 18–27; David E. Shuttleton, “Methodism and Dr. George Cheyne’s ‘More Enlightening Principles,’ ” in Medicine in the Enlightenment, Roy Porter, ed. (Amsterdam-Atlanta: Rodopi, 1995), 316–335; George S. Rousseau, “Mysticism and Milleniarism: ‘Immortal Dr. Cheyne,”’ in Millenarianism and Messianism in English Literature and Thought, 1650–1800 Clark Library Lectures 1981–1982, Richard H. Popkin, ed. (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1988), 81–126; and Brian J. Gibbons, “Mysticism and Mechanism: the Religious Context of George Cheyne’s Representation of the Body and its Ills,” British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 21:1 (1998), 1–23; Anita Guerrini, Obesity and Depression in the Enlightenment: The Life and Times of George Cheyne (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000); and Steven Shapin, “Trusting George Cheyne: Scientific Expertise, Common Sense, and Moral Authority in Early Eighteenth-Century Dietetic Medicine,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 77:2 (2003), 263–297.
See Edward T. Renbourn, “The Natural History of Insensible Perspiration: A Forgotten Doctrine of Health and Disease,” Medical History, 4 (1960), 135–152 and Jerome J. Bylebyl, “Nutrition, Quantification and Circulation,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 51:3 (1977), 369–385. Having undertaken a long course of self-experimentation based on weight-watching in order to inquire into the correlation between bodily evacuation and health, the physician Santorio Santorio (1561–1636) became the champion of the measurement and regulation of insensible perspiration. Santorio tenets linking health with insensible perspiration were still largely shared by those who wrote on corpulence in the eighteenth century. On eighteenth-century appropriations and elaborations of Santorio doctrine and practice, see Lucia Dacome “Living with the Chair: Private Excreta, Collective Health and Medical Authority in the Eighteenth-Century,” History of Science, 39:4 (2001), 467–500.
On the non-naturals, see Lelland J. Rather, “The ‘Six Things Non-Natural’: A Note on the Origins and Fate of a Doctrine and a Phrase,” Clio Medica, 3 (1968), 337–347; Peter H. Niebyl, “The Non-Naturals,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 45:5 (1971), 486–492; Antoinette Emch-Deriaz, “The Non-Naturals Made Easy,” in The Popularization of Medicine, 1650–1850, Roy Porter, ed. (London: Routledge, 1992), 134–159; Heikki Mikkeli, Hygiene in the Early Modern Medical Tradition (Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Finnica, 1999).
John Fothergill,“Case of an Angina Pectoris, with Remarks,” Medical Observations and Inquiries (London: Cadell, 1776), vol. 5, 233–251, esp. 248–251.
Malcolm Flemyng, A Discourse on the Nature, Causes and Cure of Corpulency Illustrated by a Remarkable Case, Read before the Royal Society, November 1757 (London: Davis and Reymers, 1760).
Ibid., 4–7.
Ibid., 10–15.
Ibid., 2.
Ibid., 20–21.
Ibid., 24–25.
“Case of a Preternatural Fatness, by Dr. Wade, Physician at Lisbon. Read November 7, 1763,” in Medical Observations and Inquiries (London: Johnston, 1767), vol. 3, 69–84, esp. 83.
See George Cheyne, The English Malady: or, a Treatise of Nervous Diseases of all Kinds (London: Strahan, 1733), 325 ff On Cheyne’s crisis, see Rousseau, “Mysticism and Millenarianism,” 92–96 and Guerrini, Obesity and Depression, ch 1.
Antonio Cocchi, “Consulto primo: Eccessiva grassezza,” in Consulti medici, Opere di Antonio Cocchi (Milan: Societa tipografica dei Classici italiani, 1824), vol. 3, 1–4, esp. 3.
On the overlapping between medical and moral discourse in early modern England, see Keith Thomas, “Health and Morality in Early Modern England,” in Morality and Health, Allan M. Brandt and Paul Rozin, eds. (New York: Routledge, 1997), 15–34; and Steven Shapin, “How to Eat Like a Gentleman: Dietetics and Ethics in Early Modern England,” in Right Living: An Anglo-American Tradition of Self-Help Medicine and Hygiene, Charles E. Rosenberg ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), 21–58.
George Cheyne, The Letters of Doctor George Cheyne to Samuel Richardson (1733–1743) (Columbia: University of Missouri, 1943), 76–77.
Ibid., 77.
In his analysis of the nightmare of 1753, for instance, the physician John Bond presented several cases of intemperate and corpulent individuals who were troubled by terrible nightmares. See John Bond, An Essay on the Incubus, or Night—Mare (London:Wilson and Durham, 1753), 55 and 64–65.
On the nervous body and nervous disorder in eighteenth-century Britain, see George S. Rousseau, “Nerves, Spirits, and Fibres: Towards Defining the Origins of Sensibility,” in Studies in the Eighteenth Century, R. E Brissenden and J. C. Eade, eds. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1976), vol. 3: 137–157, and G. J. Barker-Benfield, The Culture of Sensibility: Sex and Society in Eighteenth Century Britain (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), ch 1.
See, e.g., Roy Porter, “The Rage of Party: A Glorious Revolution in English Psychiatry,” Medical History, 27:1 (1983), 35–50; and idem, “Introduction,” in George Cheyne: The English Malady (1733) (London: Routledge, 1991), ix–li.
On anxieties of over-consumption in eighteenth-century Britain, see Roy Porter, “Consumption: Disease of the Consumer Society?” in Consumption and the World of Goods, John Brewer and Roy Porter, eds. (London: Routledge, 1993), 58–81.
Joseph Addison et al., The Spectator [1711–1714] (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), vol. 2, 264.
Giovanni Andrea Gallini, A Treatise on the Art of Dancing (London: for the author, 1762), 154.
Ephraim Chambers, Cyclopaedia: Or, an Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences (London: James and John Knapton et al., 1728), 2 vols.
Philip Dormer Stanhope, The Letters of Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Cherstedield B. Dobree, ed. (London: Eyre and Spottiwoode Publishers, 1932), vol. 2,494–495. Cf. Gibbons, “Mysticism and Mechanism,” 22.
See Akihito Suzuki, “Anti-Lockean Enlightenment? Mind and Body in Early Eighteenth-Century English Medicine,” in Medicine in the Enlightenment, Roy Porter, ed. (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1995), 336–359 esp. 349–351. See also James Raven, “Defending Conduct and Property:The London Press and the Luxury Debate,” in Early Modern Conceptions of Property, John Brewer and Susan Staves, eds. (London: Routledge, 1995), 301–319.
See John Mullan, Sentiment and Sociability: The Language of Feeling in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988) 216 ff. and Barker-Benfield, The Culture of Sensibility.
See Michele Cohen, Fashioning Masculinity: National Identity and Language in the Eighteenth Century (London: Routledge, 1996) and idem, “Manliness, Effeminacy and the French: Gender and the Construction of National Character in Eighteenth-Century England,” in English Masculinities, 1660–1800, Tim Hitchcock and Michele Cohen, eds. (London: Longman, 1999), 44–61.
See Stephen Mennell, All Manners of Food: Eating and Taste in England and France from the Middle Ages to the Present (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996), 92 and 96–98.
The Young Gentleman and Lady Instructed in such Principles of Politeness, Prudence, and Virtue (London: Wicksteed, 1747), vol. 2, 173–174.
The Tryal of the Lady Allurea Luxury (London: Noble, 1757), 6, 12–13 and 19.
Johann Georg Keysler, Travels through Germany, Bohemia, Hungary, Switzerland, Italy and Lorrain, translated from the second edition of the German (London: Linde and Field, 1756–1757), second edition, vol. 1, 189.
T. Coe, “A Letter from Dr. T. Coe, Physician at Chelmsford, in Essex to Dr. Cromwell Mortimer, Secr. R. S. concerning Mr. Bright, the Fat Man at Malden in Essex,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 47 (1751–1752), 188–193.
The London Magazine: Or Gentleman’s Monthly Intelligencer (London: Baldwin, 1751), 82.
A New and Complete Dictionary of Arts and Sciences (London: Owen, 1744–1755), vol. 1, 758, entry on “Corpulency.”
See Keysler, Travels, 89.
Thomas Knowlton, “Extracts of Two Letters from Mr. Tho. Knowlton to Mr. Mark Catesby, F. R. S., concerning the Situation of the Ancient Town Delgovicia; and of two Men of an Extraordinary Bulk and Weight,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 44 (1746–1747), 102.
“List of Deaths for the Year 1754,” The Gentleman’s Magazine (London: Henry & Cave, 1754), 24, 483.
William Wadd, Cursory Remarks on Corpulence; or Obesity Considered as a Disease (London: Callow, 1816), 101.
Joseph Addison and George Cheyne were among those who discussed Cornaro in their writings. See Addison, The Spectator, vol. 2, 266–267 and George Cheyne, The Natural Method of Cureing the Diseases of the Body, and the Disorders of the Mind depending on the Body (London: Strahan et al., 1742), 296–298.
Luigi Cornaro, Sure and Certain Methods of Attaining a Long and Healthful Life (London: Midwinter, 1727), fourth edition, 14–15.
George Baker, “A Sequel to the Case of Mr. Thomas Wood, of Billericay, in the County of Essex,” in Medical Transactions (London: Dodsley et a1.,1785), vol. 3, 313.
For a discussion of the role of portraiture in the eighteenth-century medical world, see Ludmilla Jordanova, “Portraits, People and Things: Richard Mead and Medical Identity,” History of Science, 41:3 (2003), 293–313.
See John Brewer, “The Most Polite Age and the Most Vicious: Attitudes towards Culture as a Commodity, 1660–1800,” in The Consumption of Culture: Image, Object, Text, Ann Bermingham and John Brewer, eds. (London: Routledge, 1995), 341–361.
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Dacome, L. (2005). Useless and Pernicious Matter. In: Forth, C.E., Carden-Coyne, A. (eds) Cultures of the Abdomen. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403981387_11
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