Inside the Sickchamber in Early Modern England: The Experience of Illness through Six Objects.

Hannah Newton

doi:10.1093/ehr/ceab165

Abstract

Abstract This article transports the reader imaginatively into the early modern sickchamber, a space that has rarely attracted much historiographical attention. Focusing on England c.1600–1720, it reconstructs the patient’s sensory and emotional experiences of this environment. To do so, a material culture approach is adopted, which involves the analysis of six objects from the sickroom: a physic vessel, bedcurtains, clock, mattress, sheets, and blankets. The central argument is that sickness radically altered the way people related to the things around them. When seriously unwell, the sights, sounds, tastes, smells, and tactile sensations of the items which, during health, gave rise to feelings of comfort, became sources of distress. Through this research, the article showcases the mutual benefits that an object-driven approach can bring to the twin fields of medical and material history. For the former, it sheds fresh light on the very meaning of disease in this period, showing that it was conceived as a form of dis-possession. A focus on objects also reveals a number of hitherto overlooked forms of suffering, such as ‘swallowing a lothsome potion’, tinnitus, and sleeplessness. For material studies, the article demonstrates the vital role of the senses in the ‘emotive agency’ of objects, as well as offering an opportunity to tackle the notorious challenge of the silence of many historical records on ‘everyday objects’. Confined to the sickchamber for a stretch of time, the attention of the sick rested on the things around them, eliciting comments which would have rarely been voiced in health.

Highlights

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The image made me wonder what sickrooms were like in England, a place that lacks a ‘genre tradition’.2. Where were these chambers located in English homes, and how did they look, sound, and smell? What sorts of objects might one expect to find in such a room, and how did these material things affect the patient’s experience of illness? Focusing on seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century England, this study transports us imaginatively into the sickchamber, a space which has attracted little historiographical attention, and attempts to reconstruct some of the patient’s sensory and emotional perceptions of this environment.[3]
In Aristotelian thinking, the dominant philosophical tradition in early modern England, the emotions were known as the ‘passions’ of the soul or mind; they were defined as ‘motions’ of the middle part of the triangular soul, the ‘animal’ or ‘sensitive soul’, which were instigated for the preservation of the human.[41]