The period in which Byron was writing was a time of great advances in science and medicine, and Byron followed them with interest. When diagnosing and treating their patients, the physician of this period had identified a new illness that overtook fevers as the most common disease of the age, replacing them with the broad category of ‘nervous disorder,’ that Thomas Trotter would claim in 1809 to have afflicted ‘two thirds of the whole’ of ‘civilised society.’ The nosology of the nervous disorder is interesting due to the inclusion and often focus upon symptoms less cerebral and more gastric; biliousness, indigestion and gout were all classified under the ‘nervous’ umbrella. This was something that interested Byron, and he specifically requested writing on the subject to be sent to him. Physicians warned against all aspects of life that may trigger a nervous complaint, particularly focusing on what a patient takes in: what they read, what they eat, and even the air they breathe. Beyond his awareness of, and curiosity about, the medical advances of the day, Byron’s personal interest in the issue of the nervous disorder is evident in his poetry. The talk will discuss my research so far on Byron and how he engaged with the medical landscape of his time.
Lucy Davies is a postgraduate researcher at the University of Lancaster.