Medical Science and the Anatomia Animata in Milton's Paradise Lost

eforming, chemically minded doctor”; he concludes that “His library, and his
friendship with Quakers, suggest he was interested in exactly the area of radical thought
to which Milton belongs.” 19 Hanford extends his investigation of the relationship to
show further evidence of Milton’s relationships with figures such as Henry Oldenburg,
Samuel Hartlib and Robert Boyle: his conclusion is that Milton had a sustained social
interest in medical experimentation and research, including the work of the early Royal
Society. 20
I propose that we think again about the connections Milton had with radical
elements of the medical profession, in particular his links with Nathan Paget. John
Rogers points to Paget as a direct link between Glisson and Milton; in 1651 there is a
brief note to the Examinations Committee of the Council of State in which there is a
recommendation for the reprinting of one of Milton’s tracts (probably the Defence of the
English People). Included in the same note is a complaint that one Peter Cole has been
printing an unauthorised English translation of Glisson’s first medical treatise, De
Rachitude, the patent of which was actually owned by William Dugard, Milton’s
printer. 21 Critics speculate reasonably that Milton was protecting the interests of his
friend Paget as well as those of his printer, for Paget was one of a group of eight men
from the College of Physicians who contributed to De Rachitude. 22 Fifteen years later,
during the plague of 1665, he and Glisson were named as some of the few brave enough
to remain in London to treat the ill and dying. 23
Paget also had a copy of Glisson’s
Anatomia hepatis (1654) in his library, as well as a revised version of 1657 which
19
Christopher Hill, Milton and the English Revolution (London: Faber and Faber, 1977), 493-495.
20
James H. Hanford, ‘Dr. Paget’s Library’, Bulletin of the Medical Library Association 33.1 (1945), 90–
99, 98.
21
John Rogers, The Matter of Revolution: Science, Poetry and Politics in the Age of Milton (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1996), 105. This connection has also been noted by Hill, Milton and the English
Revolution, 492; also by William Riley Parker, John Milton: A Biography, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon,
1968), 2: 979.
22
Francis Glisson, A Treatise of the Rickets, trans. Philip Armin (London, 1651). Those named in the
preface are Francis Glisson, George Bate, Nathan Paget, Assuerus Regimorter, Thomas Sheaf, Edmund
Trench, Robert Wright and Jonathan Goddard.
23
Guido Giglioni, ‘The Genesis of Francis Glisson’s Philosophy of Life’, Ph.D. thesis, John Hopkins
University, 2002, 18. This study of Francis Glisson’s philosophy and practice is rare in its translations
and detailed analyses of Glisson’s actual texts; I use it extensively. Glisson had a career that spanned
decades, so when using Giglioni’s translations I note the source materials from which he is working in
order to retain a sense of the time at which Glisson’s work was produced. For this information Giglioni
cites Nathanial Hodges, LOIMOLOGIA sive Pestis Nuperae apud Populum Londinensem Grassantis
Narratio Historica (London, 1672). “Neque vero deerant insuper Insignissimi et Clarissimi viri, qui
privatam in Peste compescenda (periculi tanti Consortes) operam navarunt, e quorum numero (non sine
honoris praefatione nominandi) erant Viri eruditi et sagacissimi Franciscus Glisson, Prof. Reg. Cantab.
Nathan Pagetius, Thomas Whartonus, Petrus Earwickius, Humphredus Brookes, et alii haud vulgaris
famae etiamnum hodie in vivis” (18-19).
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