Piss Profits: Thomas Willis, His Diatribae Duae and the Formation of His Professional Identity

Abstract

(ProQuest: ... denotes Greek characters omitted (or Cyrillic characters omitted.))(ProQuest: ... denotes strike-through in original text omitted.)The English physician Thomas Willis (1621-75) occupies a curious place in histories of seventeenth-century English science and medicine. As Sedleian Professor of Natural Philosophy and pre-eminent physician of Restoration period, was a prominent figure of intellectual and social landscape. He wrote more than a dozen medical works and his patients included Archbishop of Canterbury, Duke of York's family, and Lady Anne Conway. He associated with such renowned philosophers as William Petty, John Wilkins, John Wallis, Robert Boyle, Robert Hooke and Christopher Wren, and was a close friend to notable Caroline and Restoration churchmen, including Henry Hammond (a chaplain to Charles I), Samuel Fell (another chaplain to Charles I as well as Dean of Christ Church and Vice-Chancellor of University of Oxford), John Dolben (the Bishop of Rochester and a future Archbishop of York), John Fell (Dean of Christ Church and Bishop of Oxford), and Richard Allestree (Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford and a chaplain to Charles II). By all contemporary accounts, Willis was one of most influential and respected physicians and philosophers of his time. Anthony a Wood noted that he became so noted, and so infinitely resorted to, for his practice, that never any physician before went beyond him, or got more money yearly than he.1 Robert Plot, Professor of Chemistry at Oxford, claimed that his theories were the most universally known, and therefore most likely (in this inquisitive Age) to be truest?Modern authors have been almost as adulatory in their assessment of Willis's significance. Yet despite being proclaimed Harvey of Nervous System almost half a century ago, Willis remains an understudied figure and typically appears in passing in most histories of early modern science and medicine.3 However, a Willisian cottage industry has produced some more detailed studies over years. This body of literature shares two defining characteristics. Firstly, it has focused primarily on his neurological writings. Although some of his other works, such as those on fever and fermentation, have occasionally been studied, others, like his tract on urine, his defence of his convulsive pathology of hysterical passions and hypochondriacal affections, and his massive Pharmaceutice rationalis (1674-5) have not been subject to lengthy or detailed scrutiny. Secondly, it has tended to downplay or ignore completely significance of his non-medical/scientific beliefs and activities. Willis and his works have typically been presented as being somehow detached from such worldly concerns. When historians have included these details within their accounts, they seem intended to do little more than provide some 'colour' to Willis's character. They have rarely considered possibility that religious or political interests informed his natural philosophical theories.4A number of publications stand out as exceptions to these trends. Kenneth Dewhurst's editions of Willis's unpublished works have contributed greatly to our understanding of his life and early career. He provided detailed accounts of Willis's activities as natural philosopher and physician in Commonwealth England, and as Sedleian Professor following Restoration.5 Similarly, Bill Bynum, Robert Martensen, Robert Frank Jr and I have all argued that Willis's religious beliefs fundamentally informed his research on brain and nerves. Bynum's groundbreaking work showed how his anatomical observations were shaped by a set of religious presumptions about hierarchy of perfection in God's creatures.6 Frank Jr described how Willis's attribution of mental and behavioural illnesses to a defect in corporeal animal soul was prompted by his desire to preserve dignity and perfection of immortal rational soul. …

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