Richard Blackmore and his Treatise on the English Spleen

Abstract

In 1725, poet and physician Sir Richard Blackmore published A Treatise of the Spleen and Vapours. That workwas dedicated to what he called the “English Spleen”, a mental and bodily disorder, historically linked with melancholy, which according to him had a universal and tyrannical dominion over the men and women of England. This article provides a critical edition of the preface of Blackmore’s treatise. The introduction offers a biographical sketch of the physician and contextualizes the document by placing it within two debates of the early 18th century in which Sir Richard was involved: the Quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns and a lesser-known controversy on the physiological function of the spleen.