Exhibition : Dr. Samuel Johnson and eighteenth century medicine , 5 January - 2 March 1984 / Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine.

  • Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine.
Date:
1984]
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: Exhibition : Dr. Samuel Johnson and eighteenth century medicine , 5 January - 2 March 1984 / Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    11/72 (page 3)
    3 dropsy. What was perhaps even more exhausting and preoccupying was his fight against the powers of darkness and the imagination, the feelings of guilt and depression, the paralysing inaction and lethargy and the fear of ultimate insanity, the seeds of which had been sown by Dr. Swinfen as early as 1731. Only the antidote of company, talk and convivial surroundings warded off the sombre clouds which gathered in the night-hours at Gough Square and Bolt Court. It is to the medical members of the company which surrounded Johnson that much of this exhibition is devoted. Each ministered in his own way to soothing his body or stimulating his mind, and most of them added friendship, esteem and love for the huge man who was finally conquered by death on /3th December, 1784, and whose bicentenary we celebrate this year. Brenda Sutton Acknowledgements I should like to thank William Schupbach for his help over many practical details and Christine English for drawing my attention to the document of agreement between John Newbery and Mary Packe. Contents of Exhibition Cases Case 1 fA poor diseased infant' 1. Johnson's birthplace [the house on the right] in Lichfield where he was born on September 18th, 1709. The family lived over the book-shop.