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

Milton and the New Physic
Introduction
Milton suffered two debilitating illnesses in the last twenty years of his life,
and my dissertation is going to argue that this fact is relevant to the natural philosophy
of the animate human body of Paradise Lost. That he finally went completely blind in
1652 is well documented, and the lament for his lost sight at the beginning of Book 3 of
Paradise Lost, with its paean to the visual beauty of the natural world and the wisdom
that is available from studying it, makes the depth of the loss painfully apparent:
Thus with the year
Seasons return, but not to me returns
Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn,
Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer’s rose,
Or flocks or herds, or human face divine;
But cloud instead, and ever-during dark
Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men
Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair
Presented with a universal blank
Of nature’s works to me expunged and razed,
And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out. 1
The beauty of nature, human conviviality and the wisdom available in the ‘book of
knowledge’ of the world are the central losses in this passage. There are well known
descriptions of both his earlier and final attempts to slow or arrest the deterioration of
his sight. One of the most famous is that of his nephew, Edward Phillips, who notes that
during Milton’s exchange with Salmasius,
his Sight, what with his continual Study, his being subject to the
Head-ake, and his perpetual tampering with Physick to preserve it, had
been decaying for above a dozen years before, and the sight of one for
a long time clearly lost. 2
1 Paradise Lost, ed. Alastair Fowler, 2 nd edn. (Longman: Harlow, 1997), 3. 40-50. All references to
Paradise Lost are to this edition, and will hereafter be given parenthetically in the text.
2 The Early Lives of Milton, ed. Helen Darbishire (London: Constable & Co, 1932). 72.
1