Hygeia

Like his associates Erasmus Darwin and Humphry Davy, Thomas Beddoes was a key medical and scientific figure in the late 18th century. His short life (1760-1808) was filled with many accomplishments. He taught chemistry at Oxford, wrote on the philosophy of education and science and practised medicine in Bristol where he co-founded the Infirmary. Besides his more specialist writings, Beddoes wrote a series of 11 medical essays for a popular readership that were later collected and published under the title "Hygeia". Named after the Greek goddess of health, Beddoes's serial work was designed to help lay audiences monitor and control their dietary and exercise regimens, and is a forerunner of contemporary medical "self-help" books. "Hygeia" was a very important text for middle class readers in its day. It treats such topics as how to avoid habitual sickness and premature mortality. There are also sections dealing with personal imprudence, exercise, temperature, scrofula, consumption, nervous disorder, melancholia, hysteria and self-medication.
As the subtitle of "Hygeia" suggests, Beddoes understood political control as partly a function of the ways in which one controls patterns of consumption (of both food and commodities). "Hygeia" thus presents an interesting case study of the ways in which the discourses of medicine, luxury and politics intersect in the Romantic era. The original edition of 1803 was never reprinted and these much-used household books have now become extremely rare. This set of facsimile reprints, prefixed by Robert Mitchell's new introduction, should be of value for historians of medical science and social thought, and of interest to scholars in various other fields.