This introductory chapter outlines the two central aims of Coleridge and the Doctors. The first is to throw into relief the ideas and influences informing Coleridge's activities in ‘philosophical medicine’, the term widely used by historians of medicine to describe the numerous attempts made between roughly 1770 and 1820 to explain the progress of medicine in the light of philosophical ideas. Coleridge's exposure to philosophic medicine came through his exposure to what he would later term neuropathology (his own coinage), specifically through his exposure to the controversies that had racked ... More

This introductory chapter outlines the two central aims of Coleridge and the Doctors. The first is to throw into relief the ideas and influences informing Coleridge's activities in ‘philosophical medicine’, the term widely used by historians of medicine to describe the numerous attempts made between roughly 1770 and 1820 to explain the progress of medicine in the light of philosophical ideas. Coleridge's exposure to philosophic medicine came through his exposure to what he would later term neuropathology (his own coinage), specifically through his exposure to the controversies that had racked Edinburgh University Medical School from the 1750s to the 1790s. The second aim is to put forward an extended speculation about how Coleridge understood his descent into ill-health from late 1800 and how he used that understanding to develop his philosophic and aesthetic ideas. A chapter by chapter summary of the whole book is provided.