Bernard Mandeville: A Treatise of the Hypochondriack and Hysterick Diseases (1730)

242 Pages·2017·1.55 MB·English

by  Sylvie Kleiman-Lafon

International Archives of the History of Ideas 223
Archives internationales d'histoire des idées
Sylvie Kleiman-Lafon E ditor
Bernard Mandeville:
A Treatise of the
Hypochondriack and
Hysterick Diseases
(1730)
Bernard Mandeville: A Treatise
of the Hypochondriack and Hysterick
Diseases (1730)
INTERNATIONAL ARCHIVES OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS
ARCHIVES INTERNATIONALES D’HISTOIRE DES IDÉES
223
BERNARD MANDEVILLE: A TREATISE
OF THE HYPOCHONDRIACK
AND HYSTERICK DISEASES (1730)
Sylvie Kleiman-Lafon
Board of Directors:
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Paul Dibon† and Richard H. Popkin†
Director:
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Editorial Board: K. Vermeir, Paris; J.R. Maia Neto, Belo Horizonte;
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G. Paganini, Vercelli; J. Popkin, Lexington; J. Robertson, Cambridge; G.A.J. Rogers, Keele;
J.F. Sebastian, Bilbao; A. Thomson, Paris; Th. Verbeek, Utrecht
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/5640
Sylvie Kleiman-Lafon
Editor
Bernard Mandeville:
A Treatise of the
Hypochondriack and
Hysterick Diseases (1730)
Editor
Sylvie Kleiman-Lafon
University of Paris VIII
Saint-Denis, France
ISSN 0066-6610 ISSN 2215-0307 (electronic)
International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d'histoire des idées
ISBN 978-3-319-57779-1 ISBN 978-3-319-57781-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-57781-4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017943341
© Springer International Publishing AG 2017
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Contents
Note on the Text ............................................................................................... vii
Acknowledgements ......................................................................................... ix
Introduction ..................................................................................................... 1
A Fragmentary Biography ............................................................................... 1
The Form and Contents of the Treatise ............................................................ 2
The Treatise and The Fable of the Bees ........................................................... 7
Select Bibliography .......................................................................................... 11
Title page of the Original 1711 Edition ......................................................... 15
Title Page of the Original 1730 Edition ......................................................... 17
Preface to the First Edition (1711)................................................................. 19
Preface to the Second, Enlarged Edition (1730) ........................................... 25
Contents ........................................................................................................... 31
The First Dialogue Between Philopirio a Physician,
and Misomedon His Patient ............................................................................ 39
The Second Dialogue Between Philopirio a Physician,
and Misomedon His Patient ............................................................................ 73
The Third Dialogue Between Philopirio a Physician,
Misomedon and Polytheca His Patients ......................................................... 127
Notes ................................................................................................................. 187
Notes to the Note on the Text and Introduction ............................................... 187
Note to the Title Page of the 1730 Edition ....................................................... 191
Notes to Mandeville’s Prefaces ........................................................................ 191
Notes to the First Dialogue .............................................................................. 194
Notes to the Second Dialogue .......................................................................... 200
Notes to the Third Dialogue ............................................................................. 214
Short Biographies of Authors or Scientists Cited in the Treatise ............... 225
Index ................................................................................................................. 235
v
Note on the Text
Bernard Mandeville’s only medical work was first published in 1711 as A Treatise
on the Hypochondriack and Hysterick Passions. It was printed twice that year: the
first issue was printed “for and to be had of the Author, at his House in Manchester-
Court, in Channel-Row, Westminster,” and also printed for Dryden Leach and
William Taylor, while the second issue was printed by Dryden Leach and sold by
himself and William Taylor with no mention of the author and his address.i
Mandeville may have been overwhelmed by the flow of visitors, but he probably
removed any mention of his private residence to avoid being accused of wanting to
increase his practice by this overt publicity. The first edition was reissued in 1715,
printed by Dryden Leach for Charles Rivington, with no alterations.
Fifteen years later, in 1730, Mandeville published a second edition of his book
“corrected and enlarged by the author,” with a slightly different title: A Treatise on
the Hypochondriack and Hysterick Diseases. Althought Mandeville does not explain
why he found the word “disease” more appropriate than “passion”, he may have
wanted to convince his potential readers that they were about to read a medical
treatise and not the work of a moralist. He may also have wished to avoid a too obvi-
ous connection between the Treatise and the highly polemical Fables of the Bees.
This edition was printed for Jacob Tonson, the publisher of Dryden, Samuel Butler
and Joseph Addison, and reprinted later during that same year with only marginal
alteration to the text itself.ii This last 1730 reprint, also called the “third edition”, is
the edition of reference for the present edition. The original spelling and punctua-
tion have been retained and only obvious misprints have been corrected. The origi-
nal capitalisation has also been reproduced throughout.
In the present edition, the substantial additions made to the original work in 1730
are indicated between square brackets. Whenever portions of the original text were
taken out, they are also shown between square brackets and a footnote indicates the
nature of the change.
In order to preserve the general legibility of the text, minor interventions such as
slight vocabulary changes, the inversion of two words or a change in the syntax of a
sentence have not been indicated. Whenever these small changes were more obvi-
ously made for reasons that were not purely stylistic, or when the change of words
vii
viii S. Kleiman-Lafon
alters the meaning of a sentence, the original words are given between inverted
commas, in the endnotes. In order to limit the number of notes, any information
regarding the authors or scientists explicitly cited by Mandeville is given in alpha-
betical order at the end of the book.
Among the changes made by Mandeville in 1730 is the addition of a rough trans-
lation for nearly all the Latin quotations used in the 1711 edition. These translations
were given as footnotes, and labelled with letters appearing between brackets before
the sentences—(a), (b) or (c)—, starting again on every new page. In the absence of
any specific attribution, the great majority of these translations (sometimes merely
explanations) must be attributed to Mandeville himself. In a few instances, however,
Thomas Creech (1659–1700), a famous translator of the classics, is credited as the
translator. The system of letters used by Mandeville has been kept throughout as
well as his original footnotes. Mandeville’s translations, commentaries or explana-
tions are here given in their original italics. Mandeville considered it superfluous to
provide his knowledgeable readers with any further information regarding the
sources of his quotations. The author’s name is occasionally mentioned, but the
work itself is never identified. All the textual references given in the footnotes,
below Mandeville’s own interventions, and in between square brackets, are there-
fore my own addition. The third dialogue contains numerous examples of prescrip-
tions in apothecary’s Latin abbreviations. They were used by Misomedon at various
stages of his diseases and are given as remaining traces of his past credulousness.
Mandeville did not provide his readers with an intelligible translation because they
also represent the abstruse jargon forced upon impressionable patients. A transla-
tion is however given in the endnotes.
More general notes on the text appear as endnotes and are numbered continu-
ously throughout the text. The original table of contents provided in the third edition
has also been reproduced in the present edition. It offers the reader a detailed the-
matic map of the Treatise. A short bibliography is given at the end of the introduc-
tion but additional bibliographical references on specific topics can also be found in
the endnotes.
Acknowledgements
I am particularly indebted to several people who have contributed to this edition by
their enlightening conversations, constant encouragements and friendship: Ann
Thomson, at the European University Institute, Florence; Quentin R. D. Skinner, at
Queen Mary, University of London; Susan James, at Birbeck, University of London;
Alexis Tadié and Claire Crignon, at the University of Paris-Sorbonne; Charles
Wolfe, at the University of Ghent; Will Slauter and Sophie Vasset, at the University
of Paris-Diderot; Paddy Bullard and Hugo Tucker, at the University of Reading;
Micheline Louis-Courvoisier, at Geneva University; Morgan Dickson, at the
University of Amiens; Valérie Capdeville, at the University of Paris XIII; Caroline
Petit, at the University of Warwick; Peter Adamson, at the Ludwig-Maximilians-
Universität in Munich; Joël Chandelier, Patrick Hersant, Anne Chassagnol and
Caroline Marie, at the University of Paris VIII.
I am particularly grateful to my late father, André Lafon, for having introduced
me to Mandeville’s work and having insisted upon the literary value of the Treatise.
He sadly passed away years before the publication of this book.
Sylvie Kleiman-Lafon
ix
Introduction
Sylvie Kleiman-Lafon
A Fragmentary Biography
Bernard Mandeville was born in Dordrecht, in the Netherlands, and baptised in
Rotterdam on 20 November 1670. He matriculated at the University of Leiden in
1685 with the intention of studying medicine, being himself from a family of emi-
nent physicians. As F.B. Kaye has pointed out, Mandeville registered as a student of
philosophy and, in 1689, presented a dissertation entitled Disputatio Philosophica
de Brutorum Operationibus (Leiden, Abraham Elzevier, 1689). He disappeared
from the University registries for the academic year 1690–1691, only to come back
in March 1691 to be made Doctor of Medicine after the presentation of his doctoral
thesis, entitled Disputatio Medica Inauguralis de Chylosi Vitiata. Soon after this,
Bernard Mandeville became involved in the Costerman riots, along with his father,
Michael.iii The latter was banished from Rotterdam and moved to Amsterdam,
where he practised medicine until his death; Bernard Mandeville left the country
and, after apparently travelling through continental Europe, finally settled in London
at an uncertain date. In the preface to the second part of The Fable of the Bees, pub-
lished in 1729, Mandeville gives the reader indirect clues about his early life through
the short biographical details he gives about Cleomenes, the character who acts as
his fictional double in the dialogues:
As he had formerly, for his amusement only, been dipping into anatomy, and several parts
of natural philosophy; so, since he has come home from his travels, he had study’d human
nature, and the knowledge himself, with great application.iv
S. Kleiman-Lafon (*)
University of Paris VIII, Saint-Denis, France
e-mail: [email protected]
© Springer International Publishing AG 2017 1
S. Kleiman-Lafon (ed.), Bernard Mandeville: A Treatise of the Hypochondriack
and Hysterick Diseases (1730), International Archives of the History of Ideas
Archives internationales d’histoire des idées 223,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-57781-4_1