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The ‘Political Knight Errant’ at Bath: Charles Lucas's Attack on the Spa Medical Establishment in An Essay on Waters (1756)
Author(s) -
MASON ADAM
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
journal for eighteenth‐century studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.129
H-Index - 11
eISSN - 1754-0208
pISSN - 1754-0194
DOI - 10.1111/j.1754-0208.2012.00476.x
Subject(s) - knight , politics , subject (documents) , fraternity , philosophy , oligarchy , law , classics , sociology , law and economics , art , political science , theology , democracy , physics , astronomy , library science , computer science
This article examines Charles Lucas's Essay on Waters (1756) as a polemic that illuminates the Bath waters as a subject enmeshed as much in politics as in medicine. It shows how Lucas styled himself a ‘political knight errant’ in his treatise to portray the local medical fraternity at the spa as a corrupt oligarchy intent on monopolising and stifling research into the famous mineral springs out of commercial self‐interest and greed. It further considers the critical response to the treatise by Tobias Smollett and Samuel Johnson, who were both forced to address the author's libertarian concerns.