Jump to content

Health of Samuel Johnson: Difference between revisions

Edit links
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Next edit →
Content deleted Content added
VisualWikitext
a small start, will be adding more later
(No difference)

Revision as of 01:49, 28 August 2008

Samuel Johnson's health has been a focus of biographical and critical analysis of his life. His medical history during his life was something well documented by Johnson and his friends, and these writings have allowed for later critics and doctors to apply diagnoses that would have been unknown in Johnson's day.

Medical History

Scrofula

Fear of madness

Gout

Later diagnosis

Depression

There are many accounts of Johnson suffering from possible bouts of depression or what he himself thought might be "madness". As Walter Jackson Bate puts it, "one of the ironies of literary history is that its most compelling and authoritative symbol of common sense—of the strong, imaginative grasp of concrete reality—should have begun his adult life, at the age of twenty, in a state of such intense anxiety and bewildered despair that, at least from his own point of view, it seemed the onset of actual insanity".[1] After leaving Pembroke College, Johnson began to experience "feelings of intense anxiety" along with "feelings of utter hopelessness" and lassitude.[2]

He told John Paradise, a friend, that he "could stare at the town clock without being able to tell the hour".[2] In order to overcome these feelings, Johnson tried to constantly involve himself with various activities, but this did not seem to help. Taylor, in reflecting on Johnson's states, said that Johnson "at one time strongly entertained thoughts of Suicide".[3][4] Because of these feelings, Johnson feared becoming insane.[3] Boswell claimed that Johnson "felt himself overwhelmed with an horrible melancholia, with perpetual irritation, fretfulness, and impatience; and with a dejection, gloom, and despair, which made existence misery".[5] However, Boswell blamed the common understanding of what was "sane" for Johnson's worries over being insane.[5]

Johnson was constantly afraid of losing his sanity, but he kept that anxiety to himself throughout his life. There were, however, occasional outbursts that worried his friends.[6] In June 1766, Johnson was on his knees before John Delap, a clergyman, "beseeching God to continue to him the use of his understanding" in a "wild" manner that provoked Johnson's friend, Henry Thrale to "involuntarily [lift] up one hand to shut his mouth".[7] The Thrales were afraid for his mental health, and took Johnson into their home in Streatham for a few months, in the hope that might aid his recovery.[7] Thrale's experience is similar to many other accounts; James Anderson reported Adam Smith as telling him:

I have seen that creature bolt up in the midst of a mixed company; and, without any previous notice, fall upon his knees behind a chair, repeat the Lord's Prayer and then resume his seat at table. He has played this freak over and over, perhaps five or six times in the course of an evening. It is not hypocrisy, but madness.[8]

</ref>}} Although this claim is similar to what the Thrales reported, Boswell wrote: "There is, I am convinced, great exaggeration in this, not probably on Smith's part, who was one of the most truthful of men, but on his reporter's."[9]

Early on, when Johnson was unable to pay off his debts, he began to work with professional writers and identified his own situation with theirs.[10] During this time, Johnson witnessed Christopher Smart's decline into "penury and the madhouse", and feared that he might share the same fate.[10] In joking about Christopher Smart's madness, his writing for the Universal Visiter, and his own contributions, Johnson claimed: "for poor Smart, while he was mad, not then knowing the terms on which he was engaged to write ... I hoped his wits would return to him. Mine returned to me, and I wrote in 'the Universal Visitor' no longer".[11] The truth was that Johnson wrote for the Universal Visiter as an "act of charity" to the ailing Smart.[12]

Hester Thrale Piozzi, in her British Synonymy Book 2, did not joke about Johnson's possible madness, and claimed, in a discussion on Smart's mental state, that Johnson was her "friend who feared an apple should intoxicate him".[13] She made it clear who she was referring to when she wrote in Thraliana that "I don't believe the King has ever been much worse than poor Dr Johnson was, when he fancied that eating an Apple would make him drunk."[13] To Hester Thrale, what separated Johnson from others who were placed in asylums for madness—like Christopher Smart—was his ability to keep his concerns and emotions to himself.[13] However, Johnson was receiving a treatment of sorts, and it is possible that it involved a set of fetters and padlock.[14] John Wiltshire later determined that these instruments were not symbolic, but actually used in private treatment.[15]

Tourette syndrome

Johnson displayed signs consistent with several diagnoses described in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. According to Boswell:

... while talking or even musing as he sat in his chair, he commonly held his head to one side towards his right shoulder, and shoot it in a tremulous manner, moving his body backwards and forwards, and rubbing his left knee in the same direction, with the palm of his hand. In the intervals of articulating he made various sounds with his mouth; sometimes giving a half whistle, sometimes making his tongue play backwards from the roof of his mouth, as if chucking like a hen, and sometimes protruding it against his upper gums in front, as if pronouncing quickly under his breathe, 'Too, too, too.' All this accompanied sometimes with a thoughtful look, but more frequently with a smile. Generally when he had concluded a period, in the course of a dispute, by which time he was a good deal exhausted by violence and vociferation, he used to blow out his breath like a whale.[16]

There are many similar accounts; in particular, Johnson was said to act in such a manner at the thresholds of doors, and Frances Reynolds claims that, "with poor Mrs Williams, a blind lady who lived with him, he would quit her hand, or else whirl her about on the steps as he whirled and twisted about to perform his gesticulations".[17] When asked by Christopher Smart's niece, a young child at the time, why he made such noises and acted in that way, Johnson responded: "From bad habit."[16]

Reynold's 1769 portrait depicting Johnson's "odd gesticulations"[18]

He had a number of tics and other involuntary movements; the signs described by Boswell and others suggest that Johnson had Tourette syndrome (TS).[19][20] In 1994, J. M. S. Pearce analysed—in a Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine report—the details provided by Boswell, Hester Thrale, and others, in an attempt to understand Johnson's physical and mental condition.[19] Based on their anecdotal evidence, Pearce compiled a list of movements and tics which Johnson was said to have demonstrated.[19] From that list, he determined it was possible that Johnson was affected by Tourette syndrome as described by Georges Gilles de la Tourette.[21] Pearce concluded that the "case of Dr Johnson accords well with current criteria for the Tourette syndrome; he also displayed many of the obsessional-compulsive traits and rituals which are associated with this syndrome".[21]

Pearce was not alone in diagnosing Johnson as having Tourette syndrome; in 1967 Lawrence C. McHenry Jr[22] was the first to diagnosis Johnson with the syndrome but in passing.[23] It was not until Arthur K. Shapiro's Gilles de la Tourette Syndrome that the diagnosis was made clear through a comprehensive study, with Shapiro declaring, "Samuel Johnson ... is the most notable example of a successful adaptation to life despite the liability of Tourette syndrome".[24] T. J. Murray had come to the same conclusion in a 1979 British Medical Journal paper.[20] Murray based his diagnosis on various accounts of Johnson displaying physical tics, "involuntary vocalisations" and "compulsive behaviour".[25]

In a 2007 analysis, Thomas Kammer discusses the "documented evidence" of Johnson's tics, saying that Johnson was "known to have suffered from TS".[26] According to neurologist Oliver Sacks, "the case for Samuel Johnson having the syndrome, though [...] circumstantial, is extremely strong and, to my mind, entirely convincing".[27] He continues by generally describing the "enormous spontaneity, antics, and lightning quick wit" that featured prominently in Johnson's life.[27] However, Pearce goes further into Johnson's biography and traces particular moments in Johnson's life which reinforced his diagnosis, concluding:

It is not without interest that periodic boundless mental energy, imaginative outbursts of inventiveness and creativity, are, characteristic of certain Tourette patients. It may be thought that without this illness Dr Johnson's remarkable literary achievements, the great dictionary, his philosophical deliberations and his conversations may never have happened; and Boswell, the author of the greatest of biographies would have been unknown.[21]

Notes

  1. ^ Bate 1955, p. 7
  2. ^ a b Bate 1977, p. 115
  3. ^ a b Bate 1977, p. 116
  4. ^ Boswell 1969, p. 468
  5. ^ a b Bate 1977, p. 117
  6. ^ Bate 1977, p. 407
  7. ^ a b Hill 1897, p. 423 (Vol. 1)
  8. ^ Hill 1897, p. 423 (Vol. 2)
  9. ^ Hill 1897, p. 424 (Vol. 2)
  10. ^ a b Pittock 2004, p. 159
  11. ^ Keymer 1999, p. 188
  12. ^ Pittock 2004, p. 163
  13. ^ a b c Keymer 1999, p. 186
  14. ^ Piozzi 1951, p. 415 note 4
  15. ^ Wiltshire 1991, pp. 43–49
  16. ^ a b Hibbert 1971, p. 203
  17. ^ Hibbert 1971, p. 202
  18. ^ Lane 1975, p. 103
  19. ^ a b c Pearce 1994, p. 396
  20. ^ a b Murray 1979, p. 1610
  21. ^ a b c Pearce 1994, p. 398
  22. ^ McHenry 1967, pp. 152–168
  23. ^ Wiltshire 1991, p. 29
  24. ^ Shapiro 1991, p. 361
  25. ^ Murray 1979, p. 1611–1612
  26. ^ Kammer 2007, p. 9
  27. ^ a b Sacks 1992, p. 1515

References

  • Bate, Walter Jackson (1977), Samuel Johnson, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, ISBN 0151792607.
  • Bate, Walter Jackson (1955), The Achievement of Samuel Johnson, Oxford: Oxford University Press, OCLC 355413.
  • Boswell, James (1986), Hibbert, Christopher (ed.), The Life of Samuel Johnson, New York: Penguin Classics, ISBN 0140431160.
  • Hibbert, Christopher (1971), The Personal History of Samuel Johnson, New York: Harper & Row, ISBN 0060118792.
  • Hill, G. Birkbeck, editor (1897), Johnsonian Miscellanies, London: Oxford Clarendon Press, OCLC 61906024 {{citation}}: |first= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link).
  • Kammer, Thomas (2007), "Mozart in the Neurological Department: Who has the Tic?", in Bogousslavsky, Julien; Hennerici, M (eds.), Neurological Disorders in Famous Artists, Part 2, pp. 184–92, ISBN 978-3805582650, PMID 17495512 {{citation}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help).
  • Keymer, Thomas (1999), "Johnson, Madness, and Smart", in Hawes, Clement (ed.), Christopher Smart and the Enlightenment, New York, NY: St. Martin's Press, ISBN 0312213697.
  • Lane, Margaret (1975), Samuel Johnson & his World, New York: Harper & Row Publishers, ISBN 0060124962.
  • McHenry, LC Jr (April 1967), "Samuel Johnson's tics and gesticulations", Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 22 (2): 152–68, PMID 5341871{{citation}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
  • Murray, T. J. (16 June 1979), "Dr Samuel Johnson's Movement Disorder. (PDF)", British Medical Journal, vol. 1, no. 6178, pp. 1610–14, PMID 380753, retrieved 10 July 2008{{citation}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link).
  • Pearce, J.M.S. (July 1994), "Doctor Samuel Johnson: 'the Great Convulsionary' a Victim of Gilles de la Tourette's Syndrome. (PDF)", Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 87: 396–399, PMID 8046726, retrieved 24 July 2008{{citation}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link).
  • Piozzi, Hester (1951), Balderson, Katharine (ed.), Thraliana: The Diary of Mrs. Hester Lynch Thrale (Later Mrs. Piozzi) 1776-1809, Oxford: Clarendon, OCLC 359617.
  • Pittock, Murray (2004), "Johnson, Boswell, and their circle", in Keymer, Thomas; Mee, Jon (eds.), The Cambridge companion to English literature from 1740 to 1830, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 157–172, ISBN 0521007577.
  • Sacks, Oliver (19–26 December 1992), "Tourette's Syndrome and Creativity: Exploiting the Ticcy Witticisms and Witty Ticcicisms", British Medical Journal, 305 (6868): 1515–16, PMID 1286364, retrieved 24 July 2008{{citation}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link).
  • Wiltshire, John (1991), Samuel Johnson in the Medical World, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0521383269.


Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Health_of_Samuel_Johnson&oldid=234696749"