Shakespeare - a pioneer of psychosomatic research?
Thursday November 24th, 2011
Shakespeare was a keen observer of medical symptoms - demonstrating repeatedly how emotional crises caused physical effects, a doctor says today.
Dr
Kenneth Heaton, from North Somerset, has now compared 42 Shakespeare plays
with 46 contemporary dramas.
He says Shakespeare was "significantly" more likely than other writers to describe detailed psychosomatic effects.
In King Lear and two other plays, high emotion leads to disturbed hearing, he finds.
And coldness and faintness arising from shock is depicted in Romeo and Juliet, Richard III and Love's Labours Lost, he reports in the journal Medical Humanities.
Dr Heaton suggests a close study of Shakespeare could help modern doctors understand connections between mind and body.
Astonishingly he could find just two reports of breathlessness arising from extreme emotion in the other writers - but 11 instances in Shakespeare, including in Two Gentlemen of Verona and Troilus and Cressida.
He writes: "Shakespeare's perception that numbness and enhanced sensation can have a psychological origin seems not to have been shared by his contemporaries, none of whom included such phenomena in the works examined.
"Many doctors are reluctant to attribute physical symptoms to emotional disturbance, and this results in delayed diagnosis, over-investigation, and inappropriate treatment.
"They could learn to be better doctors by studying Shakespeare. This is important because the so-called functional symptoms are the leading cause of general practitioner visits and of referrals to specialists."
The study may also intensify the debate about the origins of Shakespeare's genius - highlighted in a recent film exploring the theories that Shakespeare was not the main author of the plays attributed to him.
Body-conscious Shakespeare: sensory disturbances in troubled characters Med Humanit 2011;37:97-102. doi:10.1136/jmh.2010.006643
Tags: General Health | Mental Health | UK News
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