Queen Mary and Westfield College London University PhD Thesis ...

assessment that 'very little of real use can be said concerning [madness]', was readily anticipated
by Battie's enlightened objective; 'to separate what we actually and usefully know from what we
are, and perhaps shall always be without any great damage, entirely ignorant of'; and appears
lame and pessimistic by comparison 308 . While Battie cited the more modern investigations of
Locke, Sydenham, Willis, Stahl and Mead, Monro harped back repeatedly to the antique wisdom
of classical authors to prove his points. Nevertheless both authors looked to their own empirical
experience, while Monro appealed, also, to the authority of Mead and Bryan Robinson. Monro's
(ironic) claim that '1 will never subscribe to the errors of antiquity', however, bespeaks more of
the shortsightedness, than the objectivity, of his regard for his classical textbooks 309 . Suggesting
at one point that he might present Battie's 'metaphysical enquiries' 'as prize questions...to the
academicians of Beihlem', Monro's joke at the expense of his patients casts a poor light on his own
regard for them 310. Moreover, Battie was a great deal more dubious about the benefits derivable
from the stock array of 'heroic' medicaments, than was Monro; much more concerned about the
damage generalised, 'plentiful' or 'rough', dosages might do to patients; much more prepared to
adapt his prescriptions to the individual case; and much more emphatic in counselling 'caution',
which emerges as almost a watch-word for his approach 3". Monro, contrariwise, espoused
'evacuation' as 'the most adequate and constant cure' of madness312 . While Battie stressed
the dangers of 'rougher cathartics, emetics' etc, impeached 'vomits' in particular as 'shocking'
and often harmful, advised a period of respite in between each course of medicines, that only
in 'chronical' cases should violent evacuants be employed, Monro, on the contrary, sided with
men like Robinson, who had confidently asserted that cures were often protracted or defeated
by physicians' timidity in applying the necessary, strong dosages 313. The numerous causes of
the 'state of the Patient', Case' and 'of the Methods (if any) used to obtain a Cure'. See book in St. Luke's,
Woodside, archive,, entitled, 'Considerations upon the usefulness', 14. For Monro's scepticism on these matter,,
see Remark,, 15, 21-3, 33-4.
308 Remark,, opening 'Advertisement', 21-3; T,ieati,e, 21. Vide also Battie's candid admissions or ignorance
and 'conjecture' during the piece; e.g. 80-81.
Treatise, 28, 32, 75; Remark,, 1, 4, 5, 8, 31, 47, 45.
310 Remark,, 16.
311 Treal,,e, asp. 63-4, 75-7, 81, 98-99.
312 Remark,, 50-51.
313 Treatise, 75-7, 97-9; Remark,, 50-51; Bryan Robinson, Observation, on the Virtse. and O7evalion, of
Medicine, (London, 1752), 145. Monro might also have cited the work of the Bethiem Governor, Nidiolas
313