The art of intoxication.
The art of intoxication.
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陶醉的艺术。
DOI：
10.1016/s0140-6736(14)61020-5
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发表时间：
2014
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Withington P
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Withington P
威廉·哈维被誉为英国医生，他通过解剖学实验和观察首次展示了血液是如何在身体周围循环的，并挑战了文艺复兴时期的医疗机构和它所依据的伽利安原则。正如他的朋友托马斯·霍布斯后来评论的那样，“他可能是唯一一个有生之年看到自己的学说在他有生之年得以确立的人”。如果有人可以说是17世纪医学革命的化身，那么这个人或许就是哈维。然而，他并不仅仅是在他的“教义”上有所创新。17世纪的传记作家约翰·奥布里指出：“我记得[哈维]习惯于喝咖啡；在咖啡馆在伦敦流行之前，他和他的兄弟埃利阿布就是这样做的。”那时，咖啡与其说是启蒙运动话语中的民间饮料，不如说是一种异国情调的、新的、令人陶醉的酿造。奥布里还暗示，哈维养成了一个更危险的习惯，他在简短的生活中宣布：“现在是合适的，但也是公正的，我应该努力澄清这件丑闻中的世界，我发现这件事与他有很大的关联，我在一些有学问的年轻人中遇到了这件事。”这是“他为自己创造了一种通过鸦片摆脱痛苦的方法”。奥布里写道，尽管哈维很可能炮制了一剂鸦片，但我不知道是什么，他把鸦片放在书房里，如果情况允许的话，他可以服用。但实际上，他死于中风--麻风病。尽管如此，奥布里还是承认“我不否认这不符合他在某些场合向…提出的原则。”。也就是说，哈维似乎享受着奥布里(字面上)说不出的鸦片习惯。从表面上看，哈维作为一名医生的才华与他早熟地接受咖啡和鸦片之间没有什么有意义的联系--这两种令人陶醉的东西直到1657年哈维去世后的几十年才成为英国饮食和药物的固定组成部分。当然，我不会主张将“天才”和“毒品”联系在一起，也不会推测哈维躁动的智力不知何故被咖啡因和鸦片类药物吸引了，或者是必需的。相反，我想提出的是，至少对于英美文化而言，哈维的偏好暗示了一些更普遍的方式，即“医学的艺术”在历史上影响了我们可能会称之为“陶醉的艺术”。在哈维准备鸦片的时代，“艺术”保留了它从古人那里继承下来的原始含义，即学习的行为和技能，超越了一个人的天赋。这些技能可能确实存在于绘画、诗歌或哲学中；但在讲笑话或在特定社交场合表现得体方面也可能同样如此。塞缪尔·约翰逊在他的词典中将这种更具社会性的艺术感描述为“对某些规则和格言的习惯性知识，一个人在他的行为中受到这些规则和格言的支配和指导”。从这些方面来看，医学是一门艺术；但醉酒也是一门艺术。在哈维的一生中，“醉”的主要含义被扩展为“毒化”和“中毒”，包括“醉酒”和“醉酒”。事实上，这种意义的扩展部分归功于哈维的实验。直到1618年，内科医生约翰·布洛卡还将“醉酒”定义为“迷惑、惊叹、极度迟钝”。但是，到了1646年，哈维的朋友和流行主义者托马斯·布朗内科医生可以解释说：“普遍存在的醉酒是由散布在静脉和动脉中的饮酒精神引起的，从那里它们通过普通的传输途径进入大脑，暗示进入脑室，并产生眩晕，伴随着…的变态
William Harvey is celebrated as the English physician who first showed, through anatomical experiment and observation, how blood circulated round the body and challenged the Renaissance medical establishment and the Galenic principles upon which it operated. As his friend Thomas Hobbes later observed,“he is the only man, perhaps, that ever lived to see his own doctrine established in his lifetime”. If any single figure can be said to personify the medical revolution of the 17th century then it is perhaps Harvey. He was not, however, innovative merely in his “doctrines”. The 17th-century biographer John Aubrey noted that “I remember [Harvey] was wont to drink coffee; which he and his brother Eliab did, before coffee-houses were in fashion in London”. This was when coffee was less the civil beverage of Enlightenment discourse, more an exotic, new, and intoxicating brew. Aubrey also hinted that Harvey partook in a more dangerous habit, announcing in Brief Lives that “It is now fit, and but just, that I should endeavour to undeceive the world in a scandal that I find strongly runs of him, which I have met amongst some learned young men”. This was “that he made himself a way to put himself out of his pain by opium”. Aubrey wrote that although Harvey may well have concocted a “preparation of opium and I know not what, which he kept in his study to take, if occasion should serve”, it was in fact the “palsy”—a stroke—that killed him. Aubrey nevertheless conceded that “I do not deny that it was not according to his principles upon certain occasions to…”. That is, Harvey seems to have enjoyed an opium habit that Aubrey (quite literally) could not name. On the face of it there is no meaningful correlation between Harvey’s brilliance as a physician and his precocious embrace of coffee and opium—two intoxicants that only became fixtures in English diet and medicine in the decades after Harvey’s death in 1657. Certainly, I would not argue for a connection between “genius” and “drugs”, or to speculate that Harvey’s restless intelligence was somehow drawn to, or required, caffeine and opiates. What I want to suggest, rather, is that for Anglo-American culture at least, Harvey’s predilections are suggestive of some of the more general ways in which the “art of medicine” has historically influenced what we might call the “art of intoxication”. In the era when Harvey made his opium preparations,“art” retained its original meaning, inherited from the ancients, of learned behaviour and skills that transcended the natural talents of a person. Such skills might indeed be in painting, poetry, or philosophy; but they might equally be in telling jokes or simply behaving appropriately in particular social settings. It was this more social sense of art that Samuel Johnson described in his Dictionary, as “an habitual knowledge of certain rules and maxims by which a man is governed and directed in his actions”. Viewed on these terms medicine was an art; but so, too, was intoxication. During Harvey’s lifetime the primary sense of “intoxicate” as “envenoming” and “poisoning” was expanded to include “drunkenness” and “making drunk”. Indeed, it was partly due to Harvey’s experiments that this expansion in meaning occurred. As late as 1618, the physician John Bullokar conventionally defined “intoxicate” as “To betwitch, to amaze, to extremely dull one’s spirit”. But, by 1646, Harvey’s friend and populariser, the physician Thomas Brown, could explain that “the prevalent intoxication is from the spirits of drink dispersed in the veins and arteries, from whence by common conveyances they creep into the brain, insinuate into its ventricles, and beget those vertigoes, accompanying that perversion …