Our utmost congratulations to History of Medicine alumni Paul William Child whose expanded MA thesis entitled The Dean Disordered: Jonathan Swift and Humoral Medicine has been published by University of Virginia Press. Child, an English professor, earned his MA in our Online Program in the History of Medicine.

Dr. Child’s book is the first to bring a sophisticated history-of-medicine lens to the Irish satirist Jonathan Swift’s life, exploring how his many episodes of ill-health shaped his life and his writing. Child historicizes Swift’s experiences, re-situating him in the medicine of his own day. For example, he shows how Swift made sense of his body in humoral terms, employing a theory of bodily imbalance that was a legacy from classical antiquity, but still current in the eighteenth century. The Dean tried to manage his health using diet and exercise, cornerstones of early-modern regimen, as well as consulting a range of practitioners. Child explores how Swift navigated the “sick role” using evidence from his letters and his imaginative writing. When Swift made his character Lemuel Gulliver a surgeon, it was a sort of practitioner with whom he was familiar. As the University of Virginia press says, “The book opens a window into Swift’s experience of illness and prompts us to read both the man and his works anew.”

Congratulations Paul on this incredible accomplishment!