Smallpox was a much feared disease until modern times, responsible for many deaths worldwide and reaching epidemic proportions amongst the British population in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This is the first substantial critical study of the literary representation of the disease and its victims between the Restoration and the development of inoculation against smallpox around 1800. David Shuttleton draws upon a wide range of canonical texts including works by Dryden, Johnson, Steele, Goldsmith and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, the latter having experimented with vaccination against smallpox. He reads these texts alongside medical treatises and the rare, but moving writings of smallpox survivors, showing how medical and imaginative writers developed a shared tradition of figurative tropes, myths and metaphors. This fascinating study uncovers the cultural impact of smallpox, and the different ways writers found to come to terms with the terror of disease and death.

Examines "the gruesome, morbid details of some of the worst plagues in human history, as well as stories of the heroic figures who fought to ease their suffering. With her signature mix of ... research and ... storytelling, and not a little dark humor, Jennifer Wright explores history's most gripping and deadly outbreaks"--

John Donne’s Language of Disease reveals the influence of medical knowledge – a rapidly changing field in early modern England – on the poetry and prose of John Donne (1572–1631). This knowledge played a crucial role in shaping how Donne understood his everyday experiences, and how he conveyed those experiences in his work. Examining a wide range of his texts through the lens of medical history, this study contends that Donne was both a product of his period and a remarkable exception to it. He used medical language in unexpected and striking ways that made his ideas resonate with his original audience and that still illuminate his ideas for readers today.

This collection of essays is the result of a major conference focusing specifically on the role of Scotland’s print culture in shaping the literature and politics of the long eighteenth century. In contrast to previous studies, this work treats Blackwood’s Magazine as the culmination of a long tradition rather than a starting point.

Study of malaria in literature and culture illuminates the legacies of nineteenth-century colonial medicine within narratives of illness.

Shows that a religious understanding of illness and health persisted well into post-Enlightenment early America The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the power of narrative during times of sickness and disease. As Americans strive to find meaning amid upheaval and loss, some consider the nature of God’s will. Early American Protestants experienced similar struggles as they attempted to interpret the diseases of their time. In this groundbreaking work, Philippa Koch explores the doctrine of providence—a belief in a divine plan for the world—and its manifestations in eighteenth-century America, from its origins as a consoling response to sickness to how it informed the practices of Protestant activity in the Atlantic world. Drawing on pastoral manuals, manuscript memoirs, journals, and letters, as well as medical treatises, epidemic narratives, and midwifery manuals, Koch shows how Protestant teachings around providence shaped the lives of believers even as the Enlightenment seemed to portend a more secular approach to the world and the human body. Their commitment to providence prompted, in fact, early Americans’ active engagement with the medical developments of their time, encouraging them to see modern science and medicine as divinely bestowed missionary tools for helping others. Indeed, the book shows that the ways in which the colonial world thought about questions of God’s will in sickness and health help to illuminate the continuing power of Protestant ideas and practices in American society today.