Letters

Abstract

This chapter studies illness as accounted for in seventeenth-century personal letters and in particular the ways in which the writer–recipient relationship is co-opted at times of ill-health. Its first part examines letters exchanged between the Twysden family, and those written by Robert Boyle, Anne Conway and John Donne. The second part of the chapter turns to letters written by the sick to physicians, seeking medical advice by return. This examines letters by Edward Lhwyd, Benjamin Furly and John Milton. The first section claims that in illness, many letter writers fall back on their familiar epistolary networks; the second part shows writers of letters requesting medical advice striving for clarity and clinical precision, but nonetheless lapsing into the habits of other types of epistolary relationship.