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

contrary name of a transparent or serene rheum or gutta. But as
various other diseases and particularly of the joints were also
supposed to flow from a like cause, and were far more common, the
term gutta and rheuma were afterwards emphatically applied and at
length altogether limited to these last complaints: whence the terms
gout and rheumatism. 8
This etymological link is thus part of a theoretical link; the blindness Milton suffered
would have been diagnosed as having the same causal origin as the agonising gout that
was to end his life. There is considerable contemporary evidence to support this
connection; in 1649 Culpeper prescribes hot, dry remedies for gout, but these are often
given as remedies for eye complaints too. For “Gout and other cold afflictions of the
joints,” he prescribes “Herba Campborata,” noting that it “is of a drying faculty, and
therefore stops defluxions either in the eyes or upon the lungues, the gout, cramps,
palsies, aches, strengthens the nerves.” 9
It will be useful to pause and examine the other treatments that Milton’s
doctors would have taken from the orthodox, Galenic tradition of medicine. Because
gutta serena and gout were held to have the same cause, treatments of them are often
similar or identical. First published in the sixteenth century, but republished in 1616,
Walter Baley’s work demonstrates the links between the conditions. For amaurosis and
gutta serena he prescribes an electuary (a sweetened medicine) that is “commended to
comfort the stomach, and to preuent the ingendring of grosse phlegme in the braine.” 10
He admits that the eye condition is incurable, but proposes certain treatments:
Amaurosis is commonly an hindrance to the whole sight, without any
appearance at all in the eye, for the apple appeareth sound and
vnchanged, onely the Neruus opticus is stopped: this disease is
vncurable, because there are no remedies therefore... [nevertheless]
wherefore as yet the humor being not setled as Aetius doth testifie,
that he saw one that did recouer the sight, onely with the applying of
cupping glasses with scarification. Remedies are not to be neglected,
often purgation... the braine must be dryed with a cappe fit for the
same, cautiers must be applyed at the roote of the eare... When the eye
is exasperated, annoynt it with fresh butter, and instilling therein
womans milke, also the muscilage of philium, of quinces, of
8
Soresby, ‘Milton’s Blindness’, 340. His source is given as J. M. Good, The Study of Medicine (London,
1822), 3: 219.
9
Nicholas Culpeper, A physicall directory, or, A translation of the London dispensatory made by the
Colledge of Physicians in London (London, 1649), 136.
10
Walter Baley, Two treatises concerning the preseruation of eie-sight. The first written by Doctor Baily
sometimes of Oxford: the other collected out of those two famous phisicions Fernelius and Riolanus
(London 1616), 44.
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