19th Century Brit John Keats Was A Physician And Poet
March 29, 2021 at 7:14 p.m.
By Max [email protected]
One is John Keats (1795-1821). I was first introduced to his work in freshman English class and just read a brief article about him in a recent medical journal. The occasion was the 200th anniversity of his death. Keats, together with Percy Shelley and Lord Byron were known as Romantic poets. They were the 19th century’s best poetic trio and their works marked one of the finest periods of British literature.
According to one author, the very heart of Romanticism lived in their intense, modern and compelling poetry that brought feelings of rebellion, melancholy, individuality, nature and beauty to another level. All suffered early deaths, Shelley died at 29, Byron at 36 and Keats at 25. Keats studied medicine from 1810 to 1817 but gradually came to see poetry as his true calling. His day-to-day life as an apprentice apothecary (surgeon), however, was instrumental in exploring how medicine and medical pathology informed his poetry and thought.
Many of Keats poems are classified as odes. Ode poems were originally performed publically to celebrate athletic victories. Later, this poetic form was favored among English romantic poets, who used odes to express emotions using rich, descriptive language. Today, the term “ode” is used to describe any outpouring of praise, and modern ode poems have evolved various styles and forms dealing with serious themes.
Keats’s medical training had two phases. As an apprentice to Thomas Hammond, the surgeon-apothecary at Edmonton, Keats learned the basics of practical medical care — mixing up the medicines, blood-letting and bone-setting, teeth extraction, minor operations and so on. He then transferred to Guy’s Hospital where he attended lectures by eminent surgeons such as Astley Cooper and Henry Cline Jr. and gained hands-on experience in the dissecting room and operating theatre.
So where does the story of John Keats’s medical imagination begin? Numerous family deaths during his childhood meant that he was all too familiar with disease and mortality. His little brother Edward died aged 1 in 1802, his father Thomas in 1804 after falling from his horse, and his maternal grandfather, John Jennings, in the following year — most likely of stress and old age. His admired uncle Midgley, John Jennings, who succumbed to tuberculosis in 1808 and, two years later, his mother Frances — having been nursed by Keats himself. (George Keats, John’s brother, recalled that their mother was ‘confined to her bed many years before her death by a rheumatism and at last died of a consumption.).
Keats reflected gloomily — acknowledging the bleak reality of life in early 19th-century London, where poor housing and sanitation, crowds, refuse and rats made the city a “beastly place in dirt, turnings and windings” that was plagued with infections and diseases.
According to the tribute to Keats published in the medical journal, his medical training made it possible to express the aching physical life of the human body. As an example, his poem “Hyperion,” uses phrases such as “palsied tongue,” “clenched teeth,” “limbs/lock’d up” and “sanguine feverous boiling gurge of pulse.”
“Ode to a Nightingale,” another famous poem begins with the lines:
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense as though of hemlock I have drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk.
In Isabella, Keats mentions that “in hands and fingers the blood’s colour in veins and capillaries undergoes a change from its florid condition.” Increasingly, Keats’s medical experience resounded along the lines of his poetry, informing his idea that a poet is “physician to all.”
Final Thoughts
I must admit that many of Keat’s poems remain beyond my comprehension and I have yet to memorize one. But for anyone with an interest in learning more about the subject I suggest reading “Understanding Poetry” written by Robert Penn Warren and Cleanth Brooks. The book classifies poems into categories and explains much of the imagery. From my perspective, reading and attempting to interpret poems are one of the best methods I know of to increase mental alertness and to delay further cognitive decline.
In addition to Keats, one of my favorite poets is Theodore Roethke (1908-1963). His poems are much easier to understand, here is an example entitled Academic:
The stethoscope tells what everyone fears:
You’re likely to go on living for years.
With a nurse-maid waddle and a shop- girl simper,
And the style of your prose growing limper and limper.
Max Sherman is a medical writer and pharmacist retired from the medical device industry. His new book “Science Snippets” is available from Amazon and other book sellers. It contains a number of previously published columns. He can be reached by email at [email protected].
One is John Keats (1795-1821). I was first introduced to his work in freshman English class and just read a brief article about him in a recent medical journal. The occasion was the 200th anniversity of his death. Keats, together with Percy Shelley and Lord Byron were known as Romantic poets. They were the 19th century’s best poetic trio and their works marked one of the finest periods of British literature.
According to one author, the very heart of Romanticism lived in their intense, modern and compelling poetry that brought feelings of rebellion, melancholy, individuality, nature and beauty to another level. All suffered early deaths, Shelley died at 29, Byron at 36 and Keats at 25. Keats studied medicine from 1810 to 1817 but gradually came to see poetry as his true calling. His day-to-day life as an apprentice apothecary (surgeon), however, was instrumental in exploring how medicine and medical pathology informed his poetry and thought.
Many of Keats poems are classified as odes. Ode poems were originally performed publically to celebrate athletic victories. Later, this poetic form was favored among English romantic poets, who used odes to express emotions using rich, descriptive language. Today, the term “ode” is used to describe any outpouring of praise, and modern ode poems have evolved various styles and forms dealing with serious themes.
Keats’s medical training had two phases. As an apprentice to Thomas Hammond, the surgeon-apothecary at Edmonton, Keats learned the basics of practical medical care — mixing up the medicines, blood-letting and bone-setting, teeth extraction, minor operations and so on. He then transferred to Guy’s Hospital where he attended lectures by eminent surgeons such as Astley Cooper and Henry Cline Jr. and gained hands-on experience in the dissecting room and operating theatre.
So where does the story of John Keats’s medical imagination begin? Numerous family deaths during his childhood meant that he was all too familiar with disease and mortality. His little brother Edward died aged 1 in 1802, his father Thomas in 1804 after falling from his horse, and his maternal grandfather, John Jennings, in the following year — most likely of stress and old age. His admired uncle Midgley, John Jennings, who succumbed to tuberculosis in 1808 and, two years later, his mother Frances — having been nursed by Keats himself. (George Keats, John’s brother, recalled that their mother was ‘confined to her bed many years before her death by a rheumatism and at last died of a consumption.).
Keats reflected gloomily — acknowledging the bleak reality of life in early 19th-century London, where poor housing and sanitation, crowds, refuse and rats made the city a “beastly place in dirt, turnings and windings” that was plagued with infections and diseases.
According to the tribute to Keats published in the medical journal, his medical training made it possible to express the aching physical life of the human body. As an example, his poem “Hyperion,” uses phrases such as “palsied tongue,” “clenched teeth,” “limbs/lock’d up” and “sanguine feverous boiling gurge of pulse.”
“Ode to a Nightingale,” another famous poem begins with the lines:
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense as though of hemlock I have drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk.
In Isabella, Keats mentions that “in hands and fingers the blood’s colour in veins and capillaries undergoes a change from its florid condition.” Increasingly, Keats’s medical experience resounded along the lines of his poetry, informing his idea that a poet is “physician to all.”
Final Thoughts
I must admit that many of Keat’s poems remain beyond my comprehension and I have yet to memorize one. But for anyone with an interest in learning more about the subject I suggest reading “Understanding Poetry” written by Robert Penn Warren and Cleanth Brooks. The book classifies poems into categories and explains much of the imagery. From my perspective, reading and attempting to interpret poems are one of the best methods I know of to increase mental alertness and to delay further cognitive decline.
In addition to Keats, one of my favorite poets is Theodore Roethke (1908-1963). His poems are much easier to understand, here is an example entitled Academic:
The stethoscope tells what everyone fears:
You’re likely to go on living for years.
With a nurse-maid waddle and a shop- girl simper,
And the style of your prose growing limper and limper.
Max Sherman is a medical writer and pharmacist retired from the medical device industry. His new book “Science Snippets” is available from Amazon and other book sellers. It contains a number of previously published columns. He can be reached by email at [email protected].
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