“Where beats the human heart”: Jean-Nicolas Corvisart's Treatise on Diseases of the Heart and John Keats's Hyperion Poems

Abstract

In 1806, the renowned French medical expert Jean-Nicolas Corvisart published a treatise that represented over twenty years of work on percussion and auscultation, specialized diagnostic methods that allowed him to interact directly with patients’ bodies to diagnose illnesses of the thorax. Translated into English in 1813 as A Treatise on the Diseases and Organic Lesions of the Heart and Great Vessels, Corvisart's book quickly found its way onto the shelves of the medical library at London's Guy's Hospital, where John Keats famously spent eighteen months studying during the years 1815 through 1817. In this essay, I argue that Keats not only likely knew of Corvisart's treatise but also integrated a conception of Corvisartian diagnostic methodology into the fabric of his poetry and thought and especially in his later writings, including Hyperion: A Fragment (1820) and The Fall of Hyperion: A Dream (comp. 1819). As I show, Corvisartian techniques and methodologies as well as Keats's detailed training in anatomy and physiology help us to understand better not only the fall of the Titan Hyperion and his replacement by Apollo, the Olympian poet-healer in Hyperion, but also Keats's abandonment of both characters for the dreamer poet-physician of The Fall of Hyperion.