No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
John Keats as a Medical StudentJohn Keats kao student medicine: A Photographic ItineraryFotografski putopis
Abstract
John Keats (1795-1821), besides being the famous English poet, was a student of medicine at the United Hospitals in London. On the occasion of the bicentenary of his death, we would like to pay tribute to this versatile figure with a photographic itinerary of his medical life. This article, in connection with the project “Himetop – The History of Medicine Topographical Database”, retraces objects and places where the poet lived, studied, worked, and prematurely died, showing the importance of material culture. The photographic journey starts in London with the birthplace of the poet and continues through the places of his infancy and youth, the school in Enfield, the lodgings at 8 St. Thomas Street, the United Hospitals, etc. After giving up medicine to devote to poetry, the itinerary proceeds in the Hampstead and, as the ultimate destination, in Rome, where John Keats spent his last months of life due to tuberculosis. To conclude the path at the Protestant Cemetery in Rome, where he was buried, surrounded by grass and flowers. The material memories left by John Keats, as well as preserving his memory, take on a significant educational and inspirational role for everybody and, in particular, literary people and medical students.
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any citations for this publication.
The bicentenary of John Keats' death is approaching (February 2021) and it deserves a celebration both in the literary and in the medical world. Keats spent in Rome his last months looking for relief from the disease that was killing him: tuberculosis. The physician who took him in charge was the then young Sir James Clark (1788-1870) who, during a stay in Paris in 1819, had become an early and strong supporter of Laennec’s stethoscope. He surely brought some version of it to Rome and most probably used it to auscultate Keats’ lungs. That was not sufficient to prevent the young poet’s death. Nonetheless, Keats became an unaware and unfortunate instrument to that first diagnostic step forward in the titanic medical struggle against “consumption”. As Clark stated in 1820, defending the stethoscope from critics: “To know the nature and extent of a disease is surely the first step in our progress to the adoption of rational means of cure”.
Leopold Auenbrugger (1722-1809), the inventor of percussion, joins René Laennec as the father of modern physical examination. On the occasion of the bicentennial of the invention of the stethoscope (1816), I went in search of the material footprints left by Auenbrugger in his homeland, Austria. This attempt led me to construct a rather fragmented picture, with some disillusionment (e.g. about his tomb) and some pleasant surprise (e.g. a new interpretation of the extant iconography). Apparently, posterity has not been sufficiently mindful of or grateful towards this great innovator of medical science. All the more reason for knowing and protecting what is left of him: buildings, monuments, portraits… Anyway, Leopold Auenbrugger is honored and implicitly remembered today, as he was in the past, every time a doctor practices the percussion on the chest of a patient (i.e. billions of times each year).
Editorial. To the intangible through the tangible: world cultural heritage and the history of medicine and health Editoriale. Dal tangibile all'intangibile: il patrimonio culturale mondiale e la storia della medicina e della sanità (Editorial to the special issue of MEDIC about "MATERIA MEDICA. WHY AND HOW DO WE HAVE TO PRESERVE
OUR HEALTH-RELATED MATERIAL HERITAGE"
This contribution gives a full account of the history, current state and possible future evolution of the Himetop Project. Hime-top is a web 2.0 free access database (himetop.net), started in December 2007, aiming to collect worldwide photographic and bib-liographic documentation about places and material memories related to the history of medicine and healthcare in general. After a preliminary discussion about the cultural importance of the tangible cultural heritage for the history of medicine, the Author presents the rst achievements of Himetop Project, as well as the problems that still need solutions. Up to now, about 300 people have collaborated on the project with at least one new record. Most of them are students and graduates of the Campus Bio-Medico University in Rome, where the project has been based since its beginnings. Quite a large number of scholars from many different countries (such as United Kingdom, France, Russia, Rumania, United States, Portugal) have also collaborated. The number of database visitors and users has grown signicantly, from about 7,000 in 2008 to about 80,000 in 2016, with an average of 488 records visited per day during the last year. Among the main goals for the next few years we have: to obtain dedicated funding from some European or international research scheme; to update the IT infrastructure, design and graphics; to further enhance synergies with similar or complementary high-quality projects.
This book sets out to recover the lively and unsettling voices of Keats's poetry, and seeks to trace the complex ways in which his poems responded to and addressed their contemporary world. It offers new research about Keats's early life opening valuable new perspectives on his poetry. Two chapters explore the dissenting culture of Enfield School, showing how the school exercised a strong influence on Keats's imaginative life and his political radicalism. Imagination and politics intertwine through succeeding chapters on Keats's friendship with Charles Cowden Clarke; his medical career; the 'Cockney' milieu in which Keats's poems were written; and on the immediate controversial impact of his three collections of poetry. The book reconstructs contexts and contemporary resonances for Keats's poems, retrieving the vigorous challenges of Keats's verbal art which outraged his early readers but which was lost to us as Keats entered the canon of English romantic poets.
The essay sets out to trace a history of the plaster death masks of Keats based upon research carried out over the last eleven years. The previous pieces on this subject, by Willard B. Pope and Robert Gittings, are extensively questioned and revised. The role of the castmakers, Gherardi and Charles Smith, as mentioned by the above writers, is examined, as is that of a hitherto overlooked Paris castmaker, Lorenzi. The overall intention is to provide a solid foundation onto which may be added any research conducted in the future. Gaps remain in the chronology and the identity of the person taking the original mask cannot be ascertained at present.
For six years of his brief like, Keats studied medicine, first as an apprentice in Edmonton and then as a medical student at Guyâs Hospital in London. His biographers have generally glossed over this period of his life, and critics have ignored it and denied the influence of medical training on his poetry and thought. In this challenging reappraisal, Goellnicht argues that Keatsâ writings reveal a distinct influence of science and medicine. Goellnicht researches Keatsâ course work and texts to reconstruct the milieu of the early nineteenth-century medical student. He then explores the scientific resonances in Keatsââ individual works, and convincingly shows the influence of his early medical training.
The protestant cemetery in Rome
- J Beck-Friis
Beck-Friis, J. (1956). The protestant cemetery in Rome. Malmö: Allhems Förlag.
Keats as Doctor and Patient
- W Hale-White
Hale-White, W. (1938). Keats as Doctor and Patient. London: Oxford University Press.
John Keats Statue Unveiled at Guy's Hospital, London Se1 Community Website
- London
London SE1 website team (2007). John Keats Statue Unveiled at Guy's Hospital,
London Se1 Community Website, https://www.london-se1.co.uk/news/view/2984
Keats: The Man, Medicine And Poetry
Lord Evans of Hungershall (1969). Keats: The Man, Medicine And Poetry. The British
Medical Journal, 3(5661), 7-11. Retrieved April 6, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/
stable/20376879
My Ward. The story of St Thomas', Guy's and the Evelina Children's Hospitals and their ward names
- W Mathews
Mathews, W. (2009). My Ward. The story of St Thomas', Guy's and the Evelina Children's
Hospitals and their ward names. London: Walpole.
St Thomas' Hospital. London: Special Trustees for St Thomas' Hospital
- E M Mcinnes
McInnes, E. M. (1990). St Thomas' Hospital. London: Special Trustees for St Thomas'
Hospital.
Keats and Italy A History of the Keats-Shelley House in Rome
- C Payling
Payling, C. (2005). The Museum Collection. In Brown, Sally (Ed.) Keats and Italy A
History of the Keats-Shelley House in Rome (pp. 83-107) Rome: Il Labirinto.
Oxford Essential Quotations
- S Ratcliffe
Ratcliffe, S. (2016). Oxford Essential Quotations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
John Keats: Medical Student
- E P Scarlett
Scarlett, E. P. (1962). John Keats: Medical Student. Archives of Internal Medicine,
110(4), 535-541. 10.1001/archinte.1962.03620220127021
John Keats: Poet, Patient
- H Smith
Smith, H. (1984). John Keats: Poet, Patient, Physician. Reviews of Infectious Diseases,
6(3), 390-404. 10.1093/clinids/6.3.390
The Keats-Shelley House
- G Stephens
- N Watkins
Stephens, G. & Watkins, N. (2006). The Keats-Shelley House. A Guide. Rome: Il
Labirinto.
Biographical History of Guy's Hospital
- S Wilks
- G T Bettany
Wilks, S. & Bettany, G. T. (1892). Biographical History of Guy's Hospital. London:
Ward, Lock, Bowden & Co.