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Philalgia in Warwickshire: F. M. Van Helmont's Anatomy of Pain Applied to Lady Anne Conway

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2019

Grace B. Sherrer
Grace B. Sherrer*
Affiliation:
University of Rhode Island
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Extract

Among the anomalies of the mind of Francis Mercury Van Helmont none is more striking than the deviation from contemporary medical theory which led him to formulate his ‘anatomy of pain’. Van Helmont's theory of the nature of pain is outlined in the British Museum MS. Sloane 530, variously referred to as ‘Observations’ and ‘Autobiographical Memoires'. A fuller statement and application of his theory appears in a Latin poem found among the papers of John Locke, a poem of special interest to students of the Cambridge Platonists because of its dedication to Lady Anne, Viscountess Conway, friend and correspondent of Henry More. The manuscript, now in the Bodleian Library, hsted as MS. Locke c. 32, fol. 47, contains 135 lines which are clearly legible, seven lines being illegible because of abrasion of the paper.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in the Renaissance , Volume 5 , 1958 , pp. 196 - 206
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1958

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References

1 The Philosophical Poems of Henry More, ed. Geoffrey Bullough, p. 169.

2 This letter is Bodleian Library MS. Locke c. 11. MS. Sloane 530 is in a copyist's hand or the hand of Dr. D. Foote, who translated it from the Dutch.

3 Conway Letters, ed. Marjorie Hope Nicolson (1930), p. 51.

4 Ibid., p. 231.

5 There is no evidence that the operation was performed. A pass was granted for travel to the continent. There are several references to the journey to France, but no reference to the actual surgery.

6 Sir John Finch, writing to his sister 9 April 1653, remarked that the ‘experiment of water falling upon your head, since you found no good in it it was well desisted from’ (Letters, p. 79). (

7 The Remaining Medical Works of that Famous and Renowned Physician Dr. Thomas Willis (1683), P. 134.

8 Letters, pp. 84 ff.

9 Ibid., p. 323.

10 Ibid.

11 Ibid., p. 324. F. Howpert, one of Lord Conway's secretaries, responds in this manner to a letter from Conway, apparently written at Ragley. Howpert's name is listed as one of three servants on the pass issued on 30 November 1653 ‘for Edward Conway and Anne his wife to go beyond seas’ Cat. S.P.Dom. 1653-54, p. 445. It is assumed that the pass was part of the plan for a journey to France for the operation recommended by Dr. Harvey.

12 Letters, p. 326.

13 The Spirit of Diseases (London, 1694), pp. 192-193.

14 Works (London, 1812), III, 263.

15 The text of the poem from MS. Locke c. 32, fol. 47, followed by an English translation. The manuscript is part of the Locke papers acquired by the Bodleian in 1947.