Ipocondria, scienza medica e poesia. Una congiuntura settecentesca

Abstract

This article opens with a survey of the works of those physicians who, in the eighteenth century, expanded on the Classical and Renaissance theorization of hypochondria. It then looks at the connections between hypochondria and literary creation, a theme which is explored by several Italian eighteenth-century authors, among them Bernardino Ramazzini, Antonio Fracassini, Antonio Pujati, and Giovanni Verardo Zeviani. The study of the literati's hypochondria was very much in fashion in eighteenth-century Italy, as — on the other hand — at the peak of the grand tour craze it was fashionable, in the land of Dante, to declare oneself affected by the "English malady." The essay then focuses on the links between medicine and poetry with an examination of the literary creations of Italian and English poet-physicians who provided an exposition in verse of this 'disease of the learned.' Ultimately, science seems to confirm that the effort to defy mortality through knowledge and artistic achievement is a vain but unavoidable attempt, and that man in the age of reason suffers, more that ever before, from the unruly disease of an altered imagination.