Why was the English Malady 'English'?

Abstract

In 1734, George Cheyne (1671–1743) published ‘The English Malady or, a Treatise of Nervous Diseases of all Kinds; as Spleen, Vapours, Lowness of Spirits, Hypochondriacal, and Hysterical Distempers, Etc.’ (Cheyne, 1734). In the preface, Cheyne wrote: The Title I have chosen for this Treatise, is a Reproach universally thrown on this Island by Foreigners, and all our Neighbours on the Continent, by whom Nervous Distempers, Spleen, Vapours, and Lowness of Spirits, are, in Derision, call’d the ENGLISH MALADY. And I wish there were not so good grounds for this Reflection. The Moisture of our Air, the Variableness of our Weather, (from our Situation amidst the Ocean) the Rankness and Fertility of our Soil, the Richness and Heaviness of our Food, the Wealth and Abundance of the Inhabitants (from their universal Trade), the Inactivity and sedentary Occupations of the better Sort (among whom this Evil mostly rages) and the Humour of living in great, populous, and consequently unhealthy Towns, have brought forth a Class and Set of Distempers, with atrocious and frightful Symptoms, scarce known to our Ancestors, and never rising to such fatal Heights, nor afflicting such Numbers in any other known Nation. These nervous Disorders being computed to make almost one third of the Complaints of the People of Condition in England. One hundred and fifty years later, William Gowers (1845–1915) wrote in his Diseases of the nervous system (Gowers, 1886–88): Hysteria … seems to be a product of the cerebral development that accompanies the process of civilization … Among races that have attained, apparently, an equal degree of civilization, hysteria reaches a higher degree in some than in others, in the French, for example, than in the English.The medical perspective had changed considerably from 1734 to 1888. Cheyne’s broad definition of ‘the English malady’ is not identical with Gowers’ much …