Living with the Chair: Private Excreta,Collective Health and Medical Authority in the Eighteenth Century

Morland J. , A rational account of the causes of chronic diseases…. To which are annexed new strictures on the theory of fevers, and on the Sanctorian doctrine of perspiration. With an appendix on diet and exercise, 2nd edn (London, 1774), 28.

On Sanctorius, see Grmek M. D. , “Santorio Santorio”, Dictionary of scientific biography, xii, 101–4.

Schaffer S. , “Self-evidence”, Critical inquiry, xviii (1992), 327–62.

Shapin S. Schaffer S. , Leviathan and the air-pump: Hobbes, Boyle and the experimental life (Princeton, 1985).

It is worth noting that while case-histories have often provided privileged sources for retrieving the voices of patients, the personal narratives of those who re-tried the static experiments mainly reported the experiences of physicians. On the role of case-histories in eighteenth-century medicine, see for instance Duden B. , The woman beneath the skin: A doctor's patients in eighteenth-century Germany, transl. by Dunlap T. (Cambridge, MA, 1991), Fissell M. E. , “The disappearance of the patient's narrative and the invention of hospital medicine”, in French R. Wear A. (eds), British medicine in an age of reform (London and New York, 1991), 92–109, and Rusnock A. A. , “The weight of evidence and the burden of authority: Case histories, medical statistics and smallpox inoculation”, in Porter R. (ed.), Medicine in the Enlightenment (Amsterdam and Atlanta, 1995), 289–315.

For a different account of the contexts and the times of the spreading of numerical arguments in Western modernity, cf. Wise M. Norton (ed.), The values of precision (Princeton, 1995). Cf. also Frängsmyr T. Heilbron J. L. Rider R. E. (eds), The quantifying spirit in the eighteenth century (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1990).

For an overview of the history of weighing, see Kisch B. , Scales and weight: A historical outline (New Haven and London, 1965). In this essay, I use terms such as ‘weight-watching’ and ‘weight-watchers’ in a literal sense and with special reference to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century practices of bodily weighing.

On the ritual of the weighing of souls in Christian culture, see Perris M. Phillips , “On the psychostasis in Christian art”, in The Burlington magazine for connoisseurs [London], xxii (1912–13), 94–105 and 208–18.

For an account of the controversy, see Cunningham A. , “Sydenham versus Newton: The Edinburgh fever dispute of the 1690s between Andrew Brown and Archibald Pitcairne”, Medical history, Supplement no. 1 (1981), 71–98. See also Guerrini A. , Obesity and depression in the Enlightenment: The life and times of George Cheyne (Norman, 2000), 29–31.

Brown A. , A vindicatory schedule; concerning the new cure of fevers (Edinburgh, 1691).

Pitcairne A. , A dissertation concerning the cure of fevers by evacuation , in Pitcairne A. , The whole works of Dr. Archibald Pitcairne, published by himself. Wherein are discovered the true foundation and principles of the art of physic. With cases and observations upon most distempers and medicines [1715], transl. by Sewell G. Desaguliers J. T. , 2nd edn (London, 1727), 192ff.

On this group of Newtonian physicians, see Guerrini A. , “James Keill, George Cheyne, and Newtonian physiology, 1690–1740”, Journal of the history of biology, xviii (1985), 247–66; idem, “Archibald Pitcairne and Newtonian medicine”, Medical history, xxxi (1987), 70–83; and Brown T. M. , “Medicine in the shadow of the Principia”, Journal of the history of ideas, xlviii (1987), 629–48.

Recent research on this group of physicians has shown that at the turn of the eighteenth century, Newton and Newtonianism were subjected to different political appropriations. For instance, it has provided alternative readings to the widely accepted view that in this period Newtonians and Newtonianism were associated with Whig and latitudinarian theology. See Guerrini A. , “The Tory Newtonians: Gregory, Pitcairne and their circle”, Journal of British studies, xxv (1986), 288–311, and idem, “Isaac Newton, George Cheyne and the ‘Principia Medicinae’”, in French R. Wear A. (eds), The medical revolution of the seventeenth century (Cambridge, 1989), 222–45. See also Martin R. J. J. , “Explaining John Freind's History of physick”, Studies in history and philosophy of science, xix (1988), 399–418.

Cunningham , “Sydenham versus Newton” (ref. 9), 89–91.

See Keill J. , Essays on several parts of the animal oeconomy. To which is added, a dissertation concerning the force of the heart, by James Jurin, M.D. F.R.S. with Dr. Keill's answer, and Dr. Jurin's reply. Also, Medicina statica Britannica, or statical observations, made in England, by James Keill, M.D. explained and compared with the aphorisms of Sanctorius, by John Quincy, M.D. (London, 1738), pp. x–xiii.

Ibid., p. xix.

See Robinson B. , A dissertation on the food and discharges of human bodies (Dublin, 1747), 1.

Pitcairne , A dissertation concerning the cure of fevers by evacuation (ref. 11), 200ff.

Freind J. , Emmenologia: In qua fluxus muliebris menstrui phaenomena, periodi, vitia cum medendi methodo, ad rationes mechanicas exiguntur (London, 1703).

On the taking over of Newtonian medicine at the lead of the College of Physicians, see Martin , “Explaining John Freind's History of physick” (ref. 13).

Santorio Santorio , Ars Sanctorii Sanctorii de statica medicina, sectionibus aphorismorum septem comprehensa (Venice, 1614).

On the history of the notion of insensible perspiration, see Renbourn E. T. , “The natural history of insensible perspiration: A forgotten doctrine of health and disease”, Medical history, iv (1960), 135–52. On Sanctorius's own re-elaboration of the notion of perspiratio insensibilis, see Bylebyl J. J. , “Nutrition, quantification and circulation”, Bulletin of the history of medicine, li (1977), 369–85, pp. 377–8. Throughout the eighteenth century, insensible perspiration was regarded as an essential ingredient of the pursuit of health in texts on the regulation of the ‘non-naturals’ such as Wainewright J. , A mechanical account of the non-naturals (London, 1707) and Sutherland A. , Attempts to revive antient medical doctrines (London, 1763).

On Sanctorius's static bed, see Cogrossi C. F. , Saggi della medicina italiana, divisi in due dissertazioni epistolari nelle quali le invenzioni del Sanctorio con nuove riflessioni ed osservazioni si illustrano (Padua, 1727), 77–82. See also Castiglioni A. , La vita e l'opera di Santorio Santorio capodistriano, MDLXI–MDCXXXVI (Bologna, 1920), 51–52.

Quincy J. , Medicina statica. Being the aphorisms of Sanctorius, translated into English with large explanations. Wherein is given a mechanical account of the animal oeconomy, and the efficacy of the non-naturals, either in bringing about or removing its disorders (London, 1712), 1–2.

Because of their environmental character, the non-naturals were distinguished from the naturals or innate constitutional causes of disease and from the contra-naturals or pathological causes. On the non-naturals, see Niebyl P. H. , “The non-naturals”, Bulletin of the history of medicine, xlv (1971), 486–92; Rather L. J. , “The ‘six things non-natural’: A note on the origins and fate of a doctrine and a phrase”, Clio medica, iii (1968), 337–47; and Emch-Dériaz A. , “The non-naturals made easy”, in Porter R. (ed.), The popularisation of medicine, 1650–1850 (London, 1992), 134–59.

Quincy , Medicina statica (ref. 24), 133.

Santorio Santorio , “Ad lectorem”, in Santorio Santorio , La medicina statica di Santorio de Santorj da Capo d'Istria, pubblico professore nell'Università di Padova. Divisa in sette sezioni: Co' Commentarj di Martin Lister, medico inglese, e i Canoni della medicina de' solidi di Giorgio Baglivi, professore di medicina nello Studio di Roma, transl. by de' Chiari Abate (Venice, 1743), pp. xii–xiii.

For an eighteenth-century evaluation of Sanctorius's work, see MacKenzie J. , The history of health and the art of preserving it: Or an account of all that has been recommended by physicians and philosophers, towards the preservation of health, from the most remote antiquity to this time [1758] (Edinburgh, 1760), 259ff.

Commentaries of Sanctorius's Ars de statica medicina include M. Lister's Sanctorii Sanctorii de statica medicina aphorismorum sectiones septem: Cum commentario Martini Lister (London, 1701), Baglivi's G. Canones de medicina solidorum (Rome, 1704), Rüdiger A. , Sanctorii Sanctorii aphorismi de medicina statica cum scholiis Andreae Ridigeri (Leipzig, 1762), and Lorry's A. C. Sanctorii Sanctorii de medicina statica aphorismi. Commentaria, notasque addidit A.C. Lorry (Paris, 1770).

Chambers E. , Cyclopaedia: Or, an universal dictionary of the arts and sciences (London, 1728), entry on “Weighing”.

Freind , Emmenologia (ref. 19), 17–21.

Lord A. , “‘The great arcana of the deity’: Menstruation and menstrual disorders in eighteenth-century British medical thought”, Bulletin of the history of medicine, lxxiii (1999), 38–63.

Baglivi G. , I canoni della medicina dei solidi , in Santorio , La medicina statica di Santorio de Santorj (ref. 27), 213.

Leupold J. , Theatrum staticum universale (Leipzig, 1726), 62–68.

Journal des sçavans de l'an MDCLXXXII (Amsterdam, 1683), xii, 107–13.

Diderot D. Le Rond d'Alembert J. (eds), Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers (Paris, 1751–80), entry on “Chaise de Sanctorius”.

Addison J. , The spectator (Oxford, 1965), i, 105.

Quincy , Medicina statica (ref. 24), pp. v–vii.

Emphasizing the centrality of Sanctorius's rules for the regulation of the non-naturals, Quincy remarked: “it is with regard to these things, by some called the non-naturals, that our Author has with an abundance of Labour and Judgment and upon unerring Guides, composed the following Rules”, Quincy , Medicina statica (ref. 24), Preface.

See Quincy J. , Dr. Carr's medicinal epistles upon several occasions: Done into English, as a supplement to the explanations of Sanctorius's aphorisms (London, 1714).

Addison , The spectator (ref. 37), i, 105.

Ibid., 105–8.

Ibid., 108.

It is worth noting that Addison's criticism of weight-watching did not amount to a critique of controlled consumption as such. In fact, a few months later, in The spectator of 13 October 1711, Addison embarked on a condemnation of gluttony as a symptom of present-day degeneration. He evoked a mythical state of alimentary innocence and invoked temperance as the “great Preservative of Health”, Addison , The spectator (ref. 37), ii, 263–5.

See Robinson , A dissertation (ref. 17), pp. iii–iv. For an account of the hazards of lying in bed after awakening, see also Cheyne G. , Essay on health and long life (London, 1724), 84.

Guerrini , Obesity and depression (ref. 9), 153–4. Cf. also Morgan T. , A letter to Dr. Cheyne, occasioned by Dr. Robinson's letter to him: In defence of his Treatise of the animal oeconomy, against Dr. Morgan's objections in his Mechanical practice (London, 1738), 5.

Ibid., 182.

Quincy , Medicina statica (ref. 24), Preface.

Floyer J. , A treatise of the asthma (London, 1698), 238.

Robinson , A dissertation (ref. 17), pp. iii–iv.

Lining J. , “Extract of two letters from Dr. John Lining, physician at Charles-Town in South Carolina, to James Jurin, M.D. F.R.S. giving an account of statical experiments made several times in a day upon himself, for one whole year, accompanied with meteorological observations; to which are subjoined six general tables; deduced from the whole year's course”, Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London, xlii (1742–43), 491–509, p. 492.

Secker T. , Disputatio medica inauguralis de medicina statica (Leyden, 1721). I wish to thank Jeremy Gregory and Robert G. Ingram for drawing my attention to Secker's work on static medicine.

Keill , Essays on several parts of the animal oeconomy (ref. 15).

Lining , “Extract of two letters from Dr. John Lining” (ref. 51), 491–501, and Lining J. , “A letter from Dr. John Lining, at Charles-Town in South Carolina, to James Jurin, M.D. Coll. Med. & Reg. Soc. Sodal. serving to accompany some additions to his statical experiments printed in N. 470 of these Transactions”, Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London, xliii (1744–45), 318–30.

See Robinson , A dissertation (ref. 17), esp. 34ff.

Weight-watchers who re-tried Sanctorius's experiments on the Continent included the Frenchman D. Dodart (1634–1707), who in 1668 started a thirty-five-year course of static experiments, and the Dutchman J. De Gorter (1698–1762), whose De perspiratione insensibili was brought out in 1725. On the re-trial of Sanctorius's experiments, see Weyrich V. , Die unmerkliche Wasserverdunstung der menschlichen Haut: Eine physiologische Untersuchung nach Selbstbeobachtungen (Leipzig, 1862), 11–18, and Del Gaizo M. , Ricerche storiche intorno a Santorio Sanctorio ed alla medicina statica (Naples, 1889), 26–27.

Lining , “A letter from Dr. John Lining” (ref. 54), 319–20.

Floyer , A treatise of the asthma (ref. 49).

Keill J. , Tentamina medico-physica ad quasdam quaestiones, quae oeconomiam animalem spectant, accomodata. Quibus accessit Medicina statica Britannica (London, 1718). In 1720, John Quincy translated Keill's Medicina statica Britannica into English, though he left out the tables with the record of Keill's operations of self-gauging. Keill's tables of self-gauging re-appeared then in English as late as 1738 when Keill's Medicina statica Britannica was published together with the Essays on several parts of the animal oeconomy (ref. 15).

See Valadez F. Valadez M. O'Malley C. D. , “James Keill of Northhampton, physician, anatomist and physiologist”, Medical history, xv (1971), 317–35.

Keill , Essays on several parts of the animal oeconomy (ref. 15), The Preface.

For a comparison with the body of self-experimentation in the late eighteenth century, see Strickland S. W. , “The ideology of self-knowledge and the practice of self-experimentation”, Eighteenth-century studies, xxxi (1998), 453–471.

Keill , Essays on several parts of the animal oeconomy (ref. 15), 237.

Ibid., 238.

According to Newtonian physicians, the moon affected blood pressure and, as a consequence, both blood circulation and perspiration. See Roos A. M. , “Luminaries in medicine: Richard Mead, James Gibbs, and solar and lunar effects on the human body in early modern England”, Bulletin of the history of medicine, lxxiv (2000), 433–57, p. 443.

Keill , Essays on several parts of the animal oeconomy (ref. 15), 229–30.

Rusnock , “The weight of evidence and the burden of authority” (ref. 5), 302.

Robinson , A dissertation (ref. 17), 34.

On the codification of “virtual witnessing” in experimental culture, see Shapin S. , “Pump and circumstance: Robert Boyle's literary technology”, Social studies of science, xiv (1984), 481–520, and Shapin Schaffer , Leviathan and the air-pump (ref. 4), ch. 2. On literary technology and the representation of the natural world, see Schaffer S. , “The Leviathan of Parsonstown: Literary technology and scientific representation”, in Lenoir T. (ed.), Inscribing science: Scientific texts and the materiality of communication (Stanford, 1998), 182–222. For an analysis of the rhetoric of experimental narratives, see Cantor G. , “The rhetoric of experiment”, in Gooding D. Pinch T. Schaffer S. (eds), The uses of experiment: Studies in the natural sciences (Cambridge, 1989), 159–80.

Keill , Essays on several parts of the animal oeconomy (ref. 15), The Preface.

Hales S. , Vegetable staticks (London, 1727), 4–14, esp. pp. 9–14.

See for instance Pringle J. , Observations on the diseases of the army, 4th edn (London, 1764), 192, and Morland , A rational account of the causes of chronic diseases (ref. 1), 42.

Schaffer “Self-evidence” (ref. 3) and Shapin S. , A social history of truth: Civility and science in seventeenth-century England (Chicago and London, 1994).

[ Rye G. ], Medicina statica Hibernica: Or, statical experiments to examine and discover the insensible perspiration of a human body in the South of Ireland, made for one year and some months, in Rogers J. , An essay on epidemic diseases…. To which it is added by way of appendix a course of statical experiments, and observations made by a curious person during a twelve-month (Dublin, 1734), 191–312, pp. 192 and 199.

Ibid., 191 and 196.

Lining , “Extract of two letters from Dr. John Lining” (ref. 51), 492.

Ibid.

Riley J. C. , The eighteenth-century campaign to avoid disease (New York, 1987), 64.

Lining , “Extract of two letters from Dr. John Lining” (ref. 51), 500.

Rusnock , “The weight of evidence and the burden of authority” (ref. 5), 289–315.

Lining , “Extract of two letters from Dr. John Lining” (ref. 51), 501.

See Lining J. , “A letter from J. Lining, M.D. of Charles-Town, South Carolina, to the Rev. Thomas Birch, D.D. Secr. R.S. concerning the quantity of rain fallen there from January 1738 to December 1752”, Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society, xlviii (1753–54), 284–5, and Lining J. , “Extract of a letter from John Lining, M.D. of Charles-Town, in South Carolina, to Charles Pinckney, Esq.; in London: With his answers to several queries sent to him concerning his experiment of electricity with a kite”, ibid., 757–64.

Short T. , New observations, natural, moral, civil, political, and medical, on city, town, and country bills of mortality. To which are added large and clear abstracts of the best authors who wrote on that subject (London, 1750), 437.

Short T. , A discourse concerning the causes and effects of corpulency: Together with the method for its prevention and cure (London, 1727), Preface and ch. 1.

Short T. , A comparative history of the increase and decrease of mankind in England, and several countries abroad (London, 1767), Preface, p. i.

Robinson , A dissertation (ref. 17).

Ibid., 38.

Ibid. , 60 and 88. Luigi (Alvise) Cornaro (c. 1482–1566) was a Venetian nobleman. His Trattato de la vita sobria advocating the benefits of restraint on the basis of his own personal experience of conversion from a life of excess to moderation remained a classic of the literature on regimen well into the eighteenth century.

Home F. , Medical facts and experiments (Edinburgh, 1759), 235–53.

Stark W. , The works of the late William Stark, M.D.: Consisting of clinical and anatomical observations, with experiments, dietetical and statical, revised and published from his original MSS by J. Carmichael Smyth, M.D. F.R.S. (London, 1788), 91.

Smyth J. Carmichael , “Preface by the Editor”, in Stark , The works of the late William Stark (ref. 90), p. x.

Stark , The works of the late William Stark (ref. 90), pp. xii and 170ff.

Ibid., 110.

Ibid., 113.

Ibib., 117.

Smyth Carmichael , “Preface by the Editor” (ref. 91), p. xi.

On Merlin's scales, see Wright M. , “The ingenious mechanick”, in French A. Wright M. Palmer F. (eds), John Joseph Merlin: The ingenious mechanick (London, 1985), 69–70. See also Rogers P. , “Fat is a fictional issue: The novel and the rise of weight-watching”, in Roberts M. Mulvey Porter R. (eds), Literature and medicine during the eighteenth century (London, 1993), 168–87, pp. 172–4. Merlin may have imported to England the idea of displaying public steelyards for weighing human bodies directly from Paris, where he lived from 1754 to 1760. However, Merlin invented a type of weighing machine of his own, and exhibited it in his Museum together with the other automata. Apparently, Merlin's project of a weighing machine was inspired by John Wyatt's weighbridges, which became popular after the Turnpike Act of 1741 authorized the trustees of roads to fix tolls according to the weight of vehicles.

The Weighing Books of the former Coffee Mill are still at 3, St. James's Street and are now in the possession of Berry Brothers & Rudd.

See Allen H. Warner , Number three, Saint James's Street (London, 1950), 88ff.

Clubbe J. , Physiognomy; being a sketch only of a larger work upon the same plan: Wherein the different tempers, passions, and manners of men, will be particularly considered (London, 1763). I wish to thank Patricia Fara for drawing my attention to Clubbe's text.

Ibid., 25–26.

Ibid., 27.

On eighteenth-century self-gauging with barometers and thermometers, see Castle T. , The female thermometer: Eighteenth-century culture and the invention of the uncanny (Oxford, 1995), 21–43, and Golinski J. , “Barometers of change: Meteorological instruments as machines of Enlightenment”, in Clark W. Golinski J. Schaffer S. (eds), The sciences in enlightened Europe (Chicago, 1999), 69–93.

On the nervous system and the culture of the nerve in the eighteenth century, see Rousseau G. S. , “Nerves, spirits, and fibres: Towards defining the origins of sensibility”, in Brissenden R. F. Eade J. C. (eds), Studies in the eighteenth century (Toronto, 1976), iii, 137–57; Rousseau G. S. , “Cultural history in a new key: Towards a semiotics of the nerve”, in Pittock J. H. Wear A. (eds), Interpretation and cultural history (Basingstoke and London, 1991), 25–81; and Barker-Benfield G. J. , The culture of sensibility: Sex and society in eighteenth-century Britain (Chicago and London, 1992), ch. 1.

Golinski , “Barometers of change” (ref. 103).

On experimental philosophy and the public in early eighteenth-century Britain, see Stewart L. , The rise of public science: Rhetoric, technology, and natural philosophy in Newtonian Britain, 1660–1750 (Cambridge, 1992).

See Porter R. , “Consumption: Disease of the consumer society?”, in Brewer J. Porter R. (eds), Consumption and the world of goods (London and New York, 1993), 58–81.

See for instance The young gentleman and lady instructed in such principles of politeness, prudence, and virtue as will lay a sure foundation for gaining respect, esteem, and satisfaction in this life and eternal happiness in a future state (London, 1747), 170–1.

Cheyne G. , An essay on regimen. Together with five discourses, medical, moral, and philosophical: Serving to illustrate the principles and theory of philosophical medicine, and point out some of its moral consequences (London, 1740), p. liii.

[Rye], Medicina statica Hibernica (ref. 74), 287, 290 and 303.

On the commercialization of medicine in eighteenth-century England, see for example Porter R. , Health for sale: Quackery in England, 1660–1850 (Manchester, 1989). For an account of the relationship between patients and physicians in this setting, see Porter D. Porter R. , Patient's progress: Doctors and doctoring in eighteenth-century England (Cambridge, 1989). See also Cook H. J. , “Good advice and little medicine: The professional authority of early modern English physicians”, Journal of British studies, xxxiii (1994), 1–31.

Porter R. , “Barely touching: A social perspective on mind and body”, in Rousseau G. S. (ed.), The languages of psyche: Mind and body in Enlightenment thought (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1990), 45–80; idem, “Introduction”, in Porter R. (ed.), George Cheyne: The English malady (1733) (London, 1991), pp. ix–li; and Suzuki A. , “An anti-Lockean Enlightenment? Mind and body in early eighteenth-century English medicine”, in Porter R. (ed.), Medicine in the Enlightenment (Amsterdam and Atlanta, 1995), 336–59.

See Porter R. , “Spreading medical Enlightenment: The popularisation of medicine in Georgian England, and its paradoxes”, in Porter (ed.), The popularisation of medicine (ref. 25), 215–31, and Ramsey M. , “The popularisation of medicine in France, 1650–1900”, ibid., 97–133.

For an account of Mead's strategies of self-promotion through the publication of medical writings, see Roos , “Luminaries in medicine” (ref. 65), 438–9.

Valadez O'Malley , “James Keill of Northhampton” (ref. 60).

Clubbe , Physiognomy (ref. 100), 28.

Ibid., 15–23.

Ibid., 26.

Robinson , A dissertation (ref. 17), 91.

Cf. Rusnock , “The weight of evidence and the burden of authority” (ref. 5), 306.

On Cheyne's biography and its links with the genre of spiritual conversion, see Guerrini A. , “Case history as spiritual autobiography: George Cheyne's ‘Case of the author’”, Eighteenth-century life, xix (1995), 18–27. In recent years, the steps that brought Cheyne to make a name for himself as “Dr. Diet” have been the object of considerable research. For an account of Cheyne's religious background, his Newtonian upbringing and his medical and social framework, see Rousseau G. S. , “Mysticism and milleniarism: ‘Immortal Dr. Cheyne’”, in Popkin R. H. (ed.), Millenarianism and messianism in English literature and thought, 1650–1800 (Leiden and New York, 1988), 81–126; Guerrini , “Isaac Newton, George Cheyne and the ‘Principia Medicinae’” (ref. 13); Porter , “Introduction” (ref. 112); Shuttleton D. E. , “Methodism and Dr. George Cheyne's ‘more enlightening principles’”, in Porter (ed.), Medicine in the Enlightenment (ref. 112), 316–35; Gibbons B. J. , “Mysticism and mechanism: The religious context of George Cheyne's representation of the body and its ills”, British journal for eighteenth-century studies, xxi (1998), 1–23; and Guerrini , Obesity and depression (ref. 9).