The influence of medical poets on English poetry / ... by Sir Arthur Salusbury MacNalty.

  • Arthur MacNalty
Date:
1946
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: The influence of medical poets on English poetry / ... by Sir Arthur Salusbury MacNalty. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    The Influence of Medical Poets on English Poetry (Presidential address to the Section of the History of Medicine, Royal Society of Medicine, 3rd October, 1945, by Sir Arthur Salusbury MacNalty, K.G.B., M.A., M.D., F.R.G.P.) “It is well known that Apollo was the God of Medicine, but also the President of Parnassus. “And so it is no wonder that in later ages many of the children of medicine, ajfiated with the divine fire, tried to express the mysteries of their art in verse and to contribute to the world their salutary songs:” Preface to Myologia Herioco Carmine Expressa, by Dr. Charles Spon, physician to King Louis XIV, printed in Manget’s Bibliotheca anatomica. These words remind me of the contribution that members of the medical profession have made to poetry. The number of medical poets is very numerous. G. L. Dana(’) in his bibliographical work Poetry and the Doctors, gives a list of 156 names, and this list is not altogether complete. As Dana wrote: “I presume that a reason for the doctor’s frequent digression into the high fields of song is because genuinely successful physicians must have some feeling and imagination; such men see and recognize and are responsive to the emotional and human side of life. They sympathize with trouble and are touched by the conflicts of those with whom they have to deal”. And so these children of Apollo lay aside the rod of Aesculapius and take up the lyre. This association of the Muses with Medicine began in the distant past. The philosophy of Empedocles (B.G. 500) was written in heroic verse and Empedocles contributed two or three epigrams to the Greek Anthology. Those who love the poetry of Theocritus, who flourished at Syracuse circa 282 B.C., will remember his friend Nicias, the physician-poet. When Nicias was disappointed in love, Theocritus bade him turn to poetry as a consolation. (2) “Methinks all nature hath no cure for Love, Plaster or unguent, Nicias, saving one: And this is light and pleasant to a man, Yet hard withal to compass—minstrelsy. As well thou wottest, being thyself a leech, And a prime favourite of those Sisters nine.” Nicias was consoled and married “Theugenis of the dainty feet”. She was a good housewife and hence we have from Theocritus that delightful idyll of “The Distaff”. (2) In sending her an ivory distaff, the poet wrote: “To the home I now transfer thee of a man who knows full well Every craft whereby men’s bodies dire diseases may repel; There to live in sweet Miletus. Lady of the Distaff she Shall be named and oft reminded of her poet-friend by thee.” It would take many meetings of this Section to trace the lives and writings of medical poets down the centuries. Neither can we linger to speak of technical medical poets like Fracastorius who wrote the famous
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