New collection of Keats biographical essays

[Ravenwing]

Have any of you read this book?

John Keats and the Medical Imagination, edited by Nicolas Roe (December, 2017)

"This book presents ten new chapters on John Keats's medical imagination, beginning with his practical engagement with dissection and surgery, and the extraordinary poems he wrote during his 'busy time' at Guy's Hospital 1815-17. The Physical Society at Guy's and the demands of a medical career are explored, as are the lyrical spheres of botany, melancholia, and Keats's strange oxymoronic poetics of suspended animation. Here too are links between surveillance of patients at Bedlam and of inner city streets that were walked by the poet of 'To Autumn'. The book concludes with a survey of multiple romantic pathologies of that most Keatsian of diseases, pulmonary tuberculosis."

A few pages of its introduction can be read by clicking the "Look Inside!" link on the following websites:

https://www.amazon.com/Medical-Imaginat ... 3319638106

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Medical-Imagin ... 3319638106

I have not changed my opinion from when I read Nicolas Roe's "John Keats" biography (2012) a few years ago: That it was nothing less than a crime against humanity for Guy's Hospital to have had its students to dissect corpses that were stolen from their graves.

When was it that Keats first met Mary Shelley? If it was before she had published her "Frankenstein" novel, one has to wonder if his venting to her and Percy about those gruesome "medical" school assignments was one of its influences. Or perhaps it was Leigh Hunt who did relay those horrible stories of his to Percy, who then did relay them to Mary before she wrote her "Frankenstein" novel.

[Cybele]

I've read a couple of books on this theme, but not Roe's. I was quite honestly put off by his (in my opinion, anyway) mediocre and disappointing Keats biography.

I don't have a copy of his letters close at hand, but I believe Keats met the Shelleys through Leigh Hunt. I also have it in my head that he met them after Mary Shelley had written her masterpiece. (There's a happy, somewhat exhuberant letter to -- I think -- Hunt from Keats that charmingly asked something like, "Does Mrs. Shelley still slice bread so neatly?" I'm therefore jumping to the conclusion that the Shelleys and Keats had had tea together on at least one occassion.)

Percy Shelley was very interested in the sciences, he almost certainly knew of Luigi Galvani's experiments in Italy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luigi_Galvani Mary, hersellf, was unusually well-educated for an early 19th century woman, due, largely, to her father's efforts.
(Note to self: I've got to read Richard Holmes's Shelley biography, since I love every word that flows from his pen. Have you read it, by any chance?)

RE: Body snatching and "Resurrection Men" -- Yup. This was a disgusting practice, altho' it's a bit of an exageration to say it was a crime against humanity. It was certainly a crime against the deceased's family, at a time when many people believed in the physical resurrection of the body on the Day of Judgement. Then, as now, study of the human body is esssential to a medical education. Fortunately for us, it's not now uncommon for some generous people to donate their bodies to medical schools. We all owe these kind and benevolent donors our thanks.

[Ravenwing]

I've read a couple of books on this theme, but not Roe's. I was quite honestly put off by his (in my opinion, anyway) mediocre and disappointing Keats biography.

I wasn't inspired either, by Roe's biography of Keats. It is undeserving of having a detail of Severn's beautiful painting as its cover. The only others I have read thus far (and before having read Roe's) are his earliest, such as those that appeared as an introduction to Keats and which were published during the 19th and 20th centuries in the pages before his reprinted poems.

My library includes almost every English language biography of Rimbaud, Baudelaire, and Verlaine; I've read almost all of them, and some of them several times. Now that I've taught myself how to compose poems in accentual-syllabic verse, I hope to study in greater detail the life and poetry of Keats, Shelley, and Blake. Which biographies of Keats are some of your favourites?

(Note to self: I've got to read Richard Holmes's Shelley biography, since I love every word that flows from his pen. Have you read it, by any chance?)

I have barely begun to read about Shelley's life, though I hope to do so. Thus far, I have read "Lives of Famous Poets: Percy Bysshe Shelley", by William Michael Rossetti (1878); "The Best Letters of Percy Shelley Bysshe: Introduction", by Shirley Carter Hughson (1892); and "The Complete Works of Percy Shelley Bysshe: Biographical Sketch", by George Edward Woodberry (1901).

[Ravenwing]

RE: Body snatching and "Resurrection Men" -- Yup. This was a disgusting practice, altho' it's a bit of an exageration to say it was a crime against humanity. It was certainly a crime against the deceased's family, at a time when many people believed in the physical resurrection of the body on the Day of Judgement. Then, as now, study of the human body is esssential to a medical education. Fortunately for us, it's not now uncommon for some generous people to donate their bodies to medical schools. We all owe these kind and benevolent donors our thanks.

Hey Cybele, has your opinion changed now that Britain has basically legalized grave robbery/resurrection men?

Breitbart News - "All Adults Automatically Organ Donors Unless They Opt Out in New English Law": https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2019/03/16/all-adults-presumed-organ-donors-new-english-law/

What organ donation institutions do not tell the general public is that the parts of any cadaver that was "donated to science" can be sold for profit to universities and other organizations around the world by whatever institution it was donated to.

Organ donation is, in fact, a multi-billion dollar industry. The following LA Times article from 2007 reported that each cadaver is worth at least $100,000 in US dollars.

LA Times - "Big business in body parts": https://www.latimes.com/la-oe-howley6mar06-story.html

But the families of British citizens who do not opt out will not be paid a penny for their relative having "donated their body to science". It sure is "generous" for anybody to donate their body to science, when they are not informed that their cadaver is worth more than $100,000 in US dollars, and their family will not receive a penny of it.

Britain's debt is currently around £2 trillion to £4.8 trillion. That is around £ 34,658 to £78,000 per citizen. http://www.nationaldebtclock.co.uk/

Is selling the body parts of its deceased citizens how the British government plans to retire Britain's £2 trillion to £4.8 trillion debt?

Personally, I do not agree, at all, with organ donations being automatic unless the person did opt out before they passed away, as the vast majority of organ transplants are unnecessary, the same way that the vast majority of abortions are unnecessary—they are performed as a consequence of poor lifestyle choices, and not as a consequence of health, rape, or incest.

The pharmaceutical industry lifestyle: Eat only junk-food—the kind that are sold at all pharmacies. Use pills from those pharmacies when your health declines. When the harsh side-effects of those pills make things worse in the long-term, amputate the part of the body those pills were supposed to treat. Replace that part of the body with a "donated body part". Rinse, repeat, until there is nothing left to amputate and transplant from the harsh side-effect laden pills that are designed to prevent your body from rejecting any transplanted organ no longer are effective, and you are dead—and as ugly on the inside as Frankenstein's monster was on the outside.

I do not believe, for one second, that the barbaric junk-food lifestyle/pharmaceutical approach to medicine is the kind that John Keats would endorse, were he living in today's day and age; especially since he quit (and with no regrets) being a pharmaceutical medical student.

It is my opinion that Keats would probably subscribe to the naturopathic approach to medicine, which uses diet (including living probiotic food ingredients and organic prebiotic food ingredients), medicinal herbs (including medical cannabis that is not irradiated or anything of the sort), and supplements, were he living in today's day and age.

From Lannie.

[Saturn]

You lost me at Briebart news.

Please never, ever quote such a hateful and right wing propaganda rag on this site ever again.

And to say that this very necessary and needed opt out organ donation system is 'grave robbing' is hysterical nonsense.

What the practise is in the completely inhuman privatised US so called health system I do not know but the NHS will not be selling cadavers.

That is about the only decent and useful thing this disgraceful and hideous, shameful excuse of a present British government has ever done.

"Is selling the body parts of its deceased citizens how the British government plans to retire Britain's £2 trillion to £4.8 trillion debt?"

You can't seriously believe that.

Stop swallowing Fox News and Breitbart.

I will not have white-supemicist, hysterical conspiracy theorist publications mentioned, referenced or in any way promoted on this forum.

How you can read the beautiful poetry of Keats and believe and think such ways I do not at all understand.

Keats, were he alive today would despise and scorn and find hideous the hatred, misinformation and ugliness of the worldview such disgusting publications envince.

Now I see where your bizarre ideas come from.

I say that with all love and respect please stay away from such nonsense.

[Cybele]

Thank you, Saturn.
At the risk of being "a day late and a dollar short," (It is now May after all.) may I say that I find Breitbart and Fox the most reprehensible purveyors of BS. I hold them both, but particularly Fox News, at largely responsible for the election of the fool now occupying the White House.

I'm not sure the "opt out" organ donation plan is the best way to go, but there is the ever-present problem of short supply vs great need. Here in the US, it seems that the famous and/or wealthy always get the organ they need while all others go to the back of the line.

And by the way, I'm still angry with myself for having paid good money for that Roe Keats biography.

[CasaMagni]

....

[Cybele]

Wow! I've never before been called a "left-wing nutter."