Satire as Medicine in the Restoration and Early Eighteenth Century: The History of a Metaphor

This essay explores the changing cultural meanings of the comparison between satire and medicine in literature of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century (1660–1800). Drawing on examples from a wide range of texts, I argue that medical rhetoric not only remained important in the theorization and classification of satire as a genre, but also played a prominent role within satiric literature, as writers began to complicate and challenge the conventional critical associations between satirists and physicians. Ultimately, I suggest that the satire-as-medicine metaphor came to stand in for a number of important cultural debates, including those between the arts and sciences, between “high” and “low” art, and between the ancients and moderns.