Medical Laughter and Medical Polemics: The Woodward − Mead Quarrel and Medical Satire

Abstract

This article is based on a case study that is part of a larger approach of eighteenth-century medical controversies and literary genres. It reviews the comic genres at play within a pamphlet war, and shows how they partake of a larger culture of medical laughter. It examines the controversy between John Woodward – who recommended vomiting for the cure of the smallpox in his 1718 essay, The State of Physic – and a group of Doctors, including Richard Mead and John Freind, who responded to it in a series of pamphlets. This pamphlet war had little medical interest, being more personal than professional. Nonetheless, the authors displayed much literary creativity, resulting in the creation of a ballad Opera by Richard Mead, Harlequin Hydaspe, performed in Lincoln Inn’s Fields, and soon censored.