George Sebastian Rousseau

The Jew of Crane Court : Emanuel Mendes da Costa (1717-91), natural history and natural excess

Elements biographiques sur Emanuel Mendes Da Costa, naturaliste du 18e siecle ayant fortement contribue aux recherches de la Royal Society de Londres.

Framing Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Gut: Genius, Digestion, Hypochondria

I am better, than I was. My Spirits are low: and I suffer too often sinkings & misgivings, alienations from the Spirit of Hope, strange withdrawings out of the Life that manifest itself by existence — morbid yearnings condemn’d by me, almost despis’d, and yet perhaps at times almost cherish’d, to concenter my Being into Stoniness, or to be diffused as among the winds, and lose all individual existence. But all this I well know is a symptom of bodily disease, and no part of sentiment or intellect / closely connected with the excessively irritable State of my Stomach and the Viscera, & beyond doubt greatly exasperated by the abruptness & suddenness of my late Transitions from one state to another.