Social History of Medicine Advance Access originally published online on October 10, 2005
Social History of Medicine 2005 18(3):337-356; doi:10.1093/shm/hki049
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© The Society for the Social History of Medicine 2005, all rights reserved
Bilderdijk's Head Meta-medical Reflections of an Afflicted Poet
The controversial Dutch poet and thinker, Willem Bilderdijk (1756–1831), filled his letters with observations on his own health and well-being. These frequent appraisals of his physical and mental condition served as ‘meta-medical’ reflections by which he enhanced his self-understanding and ‘constructed’ his own self. In more than 1,500 published letters that Bilderdijk wrote to different correspondents in the course of five decades, he makes it clear that he regarded his head as the main locus and source of his many afflictions. His head-related complaints enabled him to draw together medical, cultural, biographical, psychological, religious, philosophical and aesthetic strands in his life and thought. His life's motto semper idem, his indebtedness to Leibniz, his practice of spontaneously ‘ejaculating’ verse and his ability to contact the metaphysical world, centred on his head as both the focal point of adversity and the seat of the soul. While evidently inspired by well-known medical-cultural traditions—melancholy or hypochondria and the scholars' illness (the morbus eruditorum, on which he wrote a lengthy didactic poem)—Bilderdijk's meta-medical reflections on sickness, identity, and poetry at the same time illustrate the complexities involved in the often highly individual, early modern understandings of illness.
Keywords: identity; the self; melancholy; hypochondria; letter-writing; Leibniz; childhood; aesthetics; religion; illness
* VU University, Amsterdam, Faculty of Arts, De Boelelaan 1105, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands. E-mail: j.van.eijnatten@let.vu.nl
1 For an English-language overview of his thought, see J. van Eijnatten, ‘Vestige of the Third Force. Willem Bilderdijk, Poet, Anti-Skeptic, Millenarian’, The Journal of the History of Ideas, 62 (2001), 313–33.
2 On historical and symbolic constructions of the self, see R. F. Baumeister, Identity. Cultural Change and the Struggle for Self (New York, 1986); R. Porter (ed.), Rewriting the Self. Histories from the Renaissance to the Present (London, New York, 1997); Y. Kashima, M. Foddy, and M. Platow (eds), Self and Identity. Personal, Social, and Symbolic (Mahwah NJ, London, 2002). Overviews of recent literature on illness and identity include L. J. Kirmayer, ‘The Body's Insistence on Meaning. Metaphor as Presentation and Representation in Illness Experience’, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 6 (1992), 323–46; J. Pierret, ‘The Illness Experience: State of Knowledge and Perspectives for Research’, Sociology of Health and Illness, 25 (2003), 4–22.
3 H.-J. Schings, Melancholie und Aufklärung. Melancholiker und ihre Kritiker in Erfahrungs-Seelenkunde und Literatur des 18. Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart, 1977); S. W. Jackson, Melancholia and Depression. From Hippocratic Times to Modern Times (New Haven, 1985); U. Mohr, Melancholie und Melancholiekritik im England des 18. Jahrhunderts (Frankfurt am Main, 1990); J. Radden (ed.), The Nature of Melancholy. From Aristotle to Kristeva (Oxford, 2000). Recent overviews of the literature, in particular cultural-historical approaches to melancholy, may be found in E. Gidal, ‘Civic Melancholy: English Gloom and French Enlightenment’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 37 (2003), 23–45. See also the various articles in the special issue of Journal of European Studies, 33 (2003).
4 K. Coburn, M. Christensen, and A. J. Harding (eds), The Notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge 5 vols, vol. I 1794–1804 (New York, 1957–2002), entry 1609.
5 All letters consulted were written by Bilderdijk. I have used Brieven van mr. Willem Bilderdijk, 5 vols (Amsterdam, 1836–7), (hereafter Brieven); Mr. W. Bilderdijk's briefwisseling. Aanvullende uitgave. Eerste deel: 1772–1794, ed. J. Bosch (Wageningen, 1955), (hereafter Briefwisseling 1772–1794); Mr. W. Bilderdijk's briefwisseling 1795–1797, ed. J. Bosch, H. W. Groenevelt, and M. van Hattum (Utrecht, 1988), (hereafter Briefwisseling 1795–1797); Briefwisseling van Mr. W. Bilderdijk met de hoogleeraren en mrs. M. en H.W. Tydeman gedurende de jaren 1807 tot 1831, ed. H. W. T. Tydeman, 2 vols (Sneek, 1866–7), (hereafter Briefwisseling Tydeman). All quotations have been translated from the original Dutch, unless stated otherwise.
6 Brieven II, 284 (JdV, 21-4-1829).
7 Brieven II, 103–4 (JdV, 3-9-1806).
8 Bilderdijk admits to having read, as a child, Neuropathia, sive de morbis hypochondriacis, et hysteriis (York, 1740), a didactic poem by Malcolm Flemyng.
9 Willem Bilderdijk, De ziekte der geleerden (2nd edn, Rotterdam, 1829), p. 143.
10 ‘Geneeskunst steunt Natuur, maar zy herbaart haar niet’. The classic work is M. Neuburger, Die Lehre von der Heilkraft der Natur im Wandel der Zeiten (Stuttgart, 1926).
11 Briefwisseling 1772–1794, 17 (LvS, 14-7-1777) and 76 (JCdL, 9-3-1780); Brieven I, 126 (PJU, 24-7-1784).
12 Brieven V, 133 (AC, 31-7-1826).
13 Brieven II, 4, 29 (JdV, 10-3-1805 and ?-6-1805).
14 Brieven V, 133 (AC, 31-7-1826); Brieven III, 180 (SIW, 29-12-1828).
15 Brieven I, 189 (PJU, 23-5-1792); Brieven II, 146 and 158 (JdV, 4-5-1807 and 26-1-1808); Brieven I, 266 (GO, 12-8-1808).
16 Briefwisseling 1795–1797, 76 (CRW, 4-6-1795).
17 Brieven II, 3, 146 (JdV, 10-3-1805 and 4-5-1807).
18 Brieven III, 8 (JdB, 24-9-1807); Brieven IV, 272–273 (IdC, 12-12-1826).
19 Brieven I, 277 (GO, 7-5-1817); Brieven IV, 48 (IdC, 4-12-1822); Brieven V, 160 (AC, 26-12-1826).
20 Brieven V, 217 (AHHvF, 20-1-1822).
21 Brieven IV, 322 (IdC, 8-2-1829).
22 Brieven IV, 182 (IdC, 14-11-1824). Also Briefwisseling Tydeman I, 147 (HWT, 16-10-1809); Brieven V, 160 (AC, 26-12-1826); Brieven IV, 4 (IdC, 1-2-1817).
23 Briefwisseling 1795–1797, 76, 110 (CRW, 9-6-1795; SE, 26-9-1795); Brieven V, 131 (AC, 11-7-1826); Brieven II, 246 (JdV, 5-9-1826).
24 Brieven IV, 41 (IdC, 9-11-1822).
25 Brieven V, 160 (AC, 26-12-1826).
26 Brieven IV, 175 (IdC, 26-7-1824); Brieven V, 184–5 (AC, 8-6-1829).
27 Brieven II, 315–16 (AdV, 4-12-1823).
28 Brieven I, 265 (GO, 12-8-1808); Briefwisseling Tydeman II, 35 (HWT, 5-2-1815).
29 Briefwisseling Tydeman I, 93 (HW Tydeman, ?-10-1808); another 14 days, with headaches and rheumatism: Briefwisseling Tydeman II, 32 (HWT, 9-10-1814); three weeks: Brieven IV, 9-10 (IdC, 24-8-1817).
30 Brieven V, 258 (Bastiaan Heykens, 19-5-1824); Brieven V, 100 (AC, 30-6-1824).
31 Brieven IV, 157, 216 (IdC, 27-2-1824; 25-4-1825). Similar calculations led him to believe that every seventh lunar and solar cycle signalled a particular development of the body: Brieven IV, 229–30 (IdC, 24-9-1825).
32 Briefwisseling 1795–1797, 83 (CRW, 3-7-1795).
33 Briefwisseling 1795–1797, 304 (KWS, 15-2-1797).
34 Brieven II, 3 (JdV, 10-3-1805).
35 Brieven V, 294 (CCC, 23-12-1827).
36 Briefwisseling Tydeman II, 26 (HW Tydeman, 8-7-1814); Brieven III, 117 (SIW, 7-1-1819).
37 Briefwisseling 1795–1797, 312 (MPEW, 8/9-3-1797).
38 Brieven I, 280 (GO, ?-7-1818).
39 Brieven IV, 99, 155–7, 194 (IdC, 1-5-1823, 27-2-1824, 12-2-1825).
40 Briefwisseling 1795–1797, 113 (CRW, 1/2-10-1795).
41 Brieven I, 192–4 (PJU, ?-5-1794); also Brieven IV, 71 (IdC, 24-1-1823).
42 Brieven I, 99–100 (JV, 30-6-1782).
43 Briefwisseling 1795–1797, 50, 64, 88 (CRW, 25-4-1795, 15/19-5-1795 and 17-7-1795); Briefwisseling 1795–1797, 110, 358 (SE, 26-9-1795 and 6-5-1797); Brieven II, 158 (JdV, 26-1-1808); Brieven V, 25, 96 (AC, 20-3-1819 and 28-4-1824).
44 Brieven II, 3, 38–9, 41 (JdV, 10-3-1805, ?-7-1805, 27-7-1805).
45 Briefwisseling 1795–1797, 326 (KWS, 19-3-1797).
46 Brieven II, 96 (JdV, 18-8-1806).
47 Brieven II, 70–1 (JdV, 15-10-1805). In Brieven IV, 293 (IdC, 10-4-1827): ‘Aut mania, aut apoplexia, says the Ars medica’.
48 Brieven V, 173 (AC, 22-2-1827); Brieven IV, 32–3, 208–9, 217, 250 (IdC, 18-1-1822, 4-3-1825, 25-4-1825, 2-8-1826); Brieven II, 238, 286 (JdV, 1-1-1826, 21-4-1829).
49 Brieven II, 42 (JdV, 15-10-1805).
50 Briefwisseling Tydeman II, 105 (HWT, 18-9-1815).
51 Brieven II, 49 (JdV, 15-10-1805).
52 Brieven V, 158 (AC, 18-12-1826).
53 Briefwisseling Tydeman I, 79 (HWT, 11-9-1808).
54 Brieven I, 271 (GO, 12-3-1810).
55 Brieven II, 124 (JdV, 4-12-1806); Brieven I, 271 (GO, 12-3-1810); Brieven IV, 152 (IdC, 19-1-1824). The relations between melancholy and fear are discussed in A. van Luyendijk-Elshout, ‘Of Masks and Mills: The Enlightened Doctor and his Frightened Patient’, in G. S. Rousseau (ed.), The Languages of Psyche. Mind and Body in Enlightenment Thought (Berkeley CA, 1991), 186–230.
56 Brieven V, 13–14 (AC, 3-12-1819).
57 Brieven I, 295 (GO, 30-3-1823); Brieven IV, 178, 250 (IdC, 11-9-1824; 2-8-1826); Brieven V, 123–5, 131–2 (AC, 14-1-1826; 11-7-1826).
58 Briefwisseling 1795–1797, 50 (CRW, 25-4-1795) and 302 (KWS, 13-2-1797).
59 Brieven II, 41 (JdV, 15-10-1805). The usual amount of blood was apparently ‘several ounces’: Brieven II, 305 (AdV, 7-4-1819), or even ten ounces: Brieven IV, 272 (IdC, 12-12-1826).
60 Brieven IV, 27 (IdC, 25-1-1821); Brieven II, 218 (JdV, 29-1-1821). Gout in the knee also required blood-letting: Briefwisseling Tydeman II, 225 (HWT, 20-10-1823).
61 Briefwisseling Tydeman I, 359 (HWT, 31-7-1812); Briefwisseling Tydeman II, 192 (HWT, 17-10-1816); Brieven IV, 268 (IdC, 7-12-1826).
62 Briefwisseling 1795–1797, 267, 292, 309, 310–11 (KWS, 30/31-12-1796, 26-1-1797, 4-3-1797, 7-3-1797); original English.
63 Brieven IV, 245 (IdC, 1-6-1826).
64 Briefwisseling 1795–1797, 83 (CRW, 3-7-1795).
65 Briefwisseling Tydeman II, 192 (HWT, 17-10-1816).
66 Brieven II, 49 (JdV, 15-10-1805).
67 Briefwisseling 1795–1797, 417 (MPEW, 31-10-1797).
68 Brieven II, 13–14, 28–9 (JdV, 4-4-1805, ?-6-1805).
69 Brieven II, 30, 49 (JdV, ?-6-1805, 15-10-1805).
70 Brieven IV, 212 (IdC, 19-3-1825).
71 Brieven IV, 277 (IdC, 23-12-1826); Brieven V, 174 (AC, 22-2-1827): two grains.
72 Briefwisseling 1795–1797, 136–7 (MPEW, 7-11-1795); with thanks to Frank Huisman of the University of Maastricht for his comments on the drawing.
73 Briefwisseling 1795–1797, 79 (MPEW, 9-6-1795).
74 Briefwisseling 1795–1797, 239–40 (KWS, 28-11-1796); original English.
75 Briefwisseling 1795–1797, 266–7 (KWS, 30/31-12-1796); original English.
76 Briefwisseling 1795–1797, 277 (KWS, 16-1-1797); original English.
a The translation is based on the transcription and commentary in Briefwisseling 1795–1797, 136–7 and 565. The illustration itself is published by courtesy of the Letterkundig Museum, The Hague (shelf mark B 00583 B 1).
77 Briefwisseling 1795–1797, 284, 289 (KWS, 19-1-1797, 21-1-1797); original English.
78 Briefwisseling 1795–1797, 291, 312–17 (KWS, 25-1-1797; MPEW, 8/9-3-1797).
79 Brieven II, 41 (JdV, 15-10-1805).
80 Brieven IV, 287 (IdC, 14-1-1827).
b A reference to funeral liturgy.
c I live between fear and hope.
d Poor Doctor, he is dead; I certainly believe that, and this is all in vain.
e It is in vain, apparently he is dead, and will not revive again.
f The good gentleman has died from loss of blood.
g He is used to being let, I would do another blood-letting on him.
h It is as if the man had to come back here to die.
i Yes, I thought he would be too weak to endure all that fatigue.
81 Brieven V, 70 (AC, 31-10-1823). He was willing to try out Capadose's powders after having used ipecahuana on his own prescription as a remedy against coughing; Brieven V, 127 (AC, 7-5-1826). On the other hand, he believed that Capadose's suggestion to use ‘Dover's powder’ (containing ipecac and opium) would not do him any good; Brieven V, 172 (AC, 22-2-1827).
82 Brieven I, 99–100 (JV, 30-6-1782).
83 Briefwisseling 1795–1797, 19 (PJU, 11-2-1795).
84 Briefwisseling 1795–1797, 75–6 (CRW, Hamburg, 4-6-1795). At other moments, he discussed the ‘iron constitution’ that had enabled him simply to survive for so long; Briefwisseling Tydeman I, 38 (HWT, 27-1-1808).
85 Briefwisseling 1795–1797, 275 (KWS, 11-1-1797); original English. On his ‘melancholy affliction’ and ‘mortal melancholy’, see also Briefwisseling 1795–1797, 310, 325, 358 (KWS, 6-3-1797, 17-3-1797; SE, 6-5-1797).
86 Briefwisseling 1795–1797, 303 (KWS, 13-2-1797).
87 Brieven II, 6–8 (JdV, 10-3-1805); also Briefwisseling Tydeman I, 38 (HWT, 27-1-1808).
88 Brieven II, 3 (JdV, 10-3-1805).
89 Brieven II, 87, 93 (JdV, 20-7-1806, 18-8-1806).
90 Briefwisseling 1795–1797, 289 (KWS, 21-1-1797); original English.
91 Brieven IV, 18–19 (IdC, 11-8-1820).
92 Briefwisseling Tydeman I, 150–1, 175–6 (HWT, 16-10-1809, 5-1-1810).
93 Brieven V, 158 (AC, 18-12-1826).
94 On Bilderdijk's thought in general, see J. van Eijnatten, Hogere sferen. De ideeënwereld van Willem Bilderdijk (1756–1831) (Hilversum, 1998).
95 Brieven V, 51 (AC, 8-8-1823). The reference is to the German professor in medicine, Georg Ernst Stahl (1660–1734), who was renowned for his views on the relations between body and soul, and thus paved the way for a ‘psychosomatic’ approach. See J. Geyer-Kordesch, ‘Georg Ernst Stahl's Radical Pietist Medicine and its Influence on the German Enlightenment’, in A. Cunningham and R. French (eds), The Medical Enlightenment of the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, 1990), 67–87.
96 Brieven IV, 45–6 (IdC, 28-11-1822); Brieven V, 128 (AC, 7-5-1826).
97 Briefwisseling Tydeman II, 93–5 (HWT, 8-9-1815).
98 Van Eijnatten, Hogere sferen, pp. 292–4.
99 Brieven IV, 147 (IdC, 16-10-1823).
100 Brieven V, 59 (AC, 27-9-1823).
101 Brieven III, 103 (SIW, 26-3-1818); Brieven V, 129–30 (AC, 31-1-1826).
102 Brieven I, 100, 108 (JV, 30-6-1782).
103 Briefwisseling 1772–1794, 142 (RF, 9-9-1782); Brieven I, 138, 141 (PJU, 27-4-1786, 2-6-1786).
104 Brieven I, 226 (AL, 12-1-1790).
105 Brieven I, 188 (PJU, 23-5-1792).
106 Brieven II, 32 (JdV, ?-7-1805).
107 Brieven IV, 250 (IdC, 2-8-1826).
108 Brieven V, 161 (AC, 26-12-1826).
109 Brieven IV, 317 (IdC, 10-12-1828).
110 Also known as Sydenham's disease.
111 Brieven II, 70 (JdV, 15-10-1805).
112 Briefwisseling Tydeman II, 165 (HWT, 6-6-1816). Another ‘paroxysm’ lasted 14 days: Brieven IV, 152 (IdC, 19-1-1824). A month later he underwent one again: Brieven II, 226 (JdV, 20-2-1824).
113 Brieven II, 104 (JdV, 3-9-1806); Brieven V, 172 (AC, 22-2-1827).
114 Brieven II, 71 (JdV, 15-10-1805).
115 Brieven IV, 245 (IdC, 1-6-1826).
116 Briefwisseling Tydeman II, 94–5 (HWT, 8-9-1815).
117 Brieven II, 78 (JdV, 17-11-1805).
118 Briefwisseling Tydeman I, 363 (HWT, 4-9-1812).