Newton first took up residence in a house in Jermyn Street (now number 88) towards the socially superior western end, in which he lived four years, then from 1700 to 1709 in the next-door house (87). Sir Robert Gayer was a near neighbour (letter 710). Leases for these properties had been granted by the trustees of the Earl of St Albans in 1665, and the buildings were put up about ten years later. Number 87 is at present undergoing total reconstruction and number 88 is a shop (‘James Bodenham’) with the original brick structure preserved.

After his brief sojourn in Chelsea (where he lived at the east end of Paradise Row) Newton moved to 35 St Martin's Street, a few yards south of Leicester Fields (now Square), an area just newly developed by Lord Leicester. There he lived in a house built c.1695 from 1711 to 1725. It had three storeys with basement and was built of brick with a tiled roof; there was a bracketed hood over the front door. On the main floors were rooms front and back with a projecting ‘closet’ wing at the rear. The ground-floor front room was panelled. According to a footnote in the Survey of London Newton had a small observatory built at the top of the house.

In Kensington he lived (in lodgings?) in Orbell's Buildings, a little north of Kensington High Street and west of Church Street, a site now occupied by Bullingham Mansions. He already owned property south of the High Street.

Newton was painted at least seventeen times by seven or more artists: Sir Godfrey Kneller depicted him four times, Sir James Thornhill and John Vanderbank twice. In addition one may examine a death mask, ivory medallions made by David Le Marchand at various dates and an excellent medal in profile (1726) by Newton's Mint artist, John Croker. All these images of Newton, except the 1689 Kneller (of which at least two versions exist) were made after Newton's move to London, hence after the age of sixty (Kneller, 1702). Many of the portraits were engraved and widely circulated.

Three of especial interest are the 1689 Kneller painting of Newton with a youthful, alert, intellectual appearance, of which the original has always been in the family; the 1720 Kneller painted for Pierre Varignon; and the 1725 Vanderbank, commissioned by the Royal Society and still hanging in its rooms.

Of the second, showing Newton at the age of seventy-eight, Varignon remarked that he appeared no more than fifty years old, yet Brook Taylor had assured him of its excellence as a likeness. Stukeley, present at the ‘sittings’ for this portrait, wrote that ‘it was no little entertainment to hear the discourse that passed between these two first men in their way. tho it was Sir Isaac's temper to say little, yet it was one of Sir Godfrey's arts to keep up a perpetual discourse, to preserve the lines and spirit of a face’ (Memoirs, 1936, pp. 12–13). This portrait was later acquired in Paris by Lord Egremont and now hangs at Petworth.

The diaphanous nature of consciousness (as experienced by its owner) is more than matched by its opaqueness to analysis and description. And yet a descriptive psychopathology which did not include this concept would be difficult to imagine. Thus, during the nineteenth century, many ‘mental symptoms’ were defined in terms of introspective data from consciousness (e.g. hallucinations, depersonalization, dejd vu, etc.). The subjectivity of the madman became a private theatre where phantasms played dramas to which the psychiatrist had no direct access. All he could do was get the privileged seer to describe the experiences and then believe that the patient was telling the truth. It goes without saying that such belief is based on the assumptions that consciousness exists and that the patient's descriptive capacity has been spared by the disease.

But in clinical practice things are more complicated than that. Sensations, images, feelings and impulses, often odd or never experienced before, must be recognized and put into words by a person who is simultaneously bemused, confused, upset, terrified or who may actually be participating in the inner drama. Therefore, what the psychiatrist may get is a prosaic, analogical, or bizarre paraphrase. Based on training and imagination, the interviewer will try to name and classify those descriptions that sound familiar. But what about the many which do not? In current practice, and due to the control of ready-made glossaries, it is likely that such descriptions will be quietly ignored. This is a pity for these unnamed experiences are also markers of disease. In the past, when alienists felt freer to describe madness, patients were listened to: that was the manner in which current symptoms were born.

The historical analysis of the memory disorders must borrow from areas as wide apart as the history of neuropsychiatry, philosophy and psychology. Indeed, the decision of whether clinical phenomena such as dèjd vu, fugues, confabulations or ‘delusions of memory’ are mnestic disturbances cannot be determined by empirical research alone and requires preparatory conceptual analysis. Historical research may also inform us whether models of memory analogous to current ones have already been proposed in the past, and to what extent they have also been inspired on the mnestic vicissitudes of few famous patients. This chapter will only scan what remains an uncharted territory.

Pre-nineteenth century issues

From earlier times, man's ability to retain, retrieve, or lose information whether about himself or the world has been motive of wonder, fear and much speculation. Since the Classical period two memory ‘stages’ or ‘capacities’ have been identified: conservation and retrieval. The analysis of conservation was governed by ‘spatial’ metaphors (pertaining to storage spaces and containers) and these were easily retranslated into the current ‘somatic’ or ‘organic’ accounts. Retrieval mechanisms, on the other hand, were analysed in the temporal dimension or as Aristotle put it, they are ‘always accompanied by time’; the guiding metaphors in this case were ‘searching’ and ‘finding’ and the ensuing models alluded to functions such as cataloguing, dating, and recognizing information. Since the time of Aristotle, interest on memory has oscillated between these two perspectives. References to ‘memory’ can be found in early documents including the Old Testament, the Talmud, and Plato's work, but there is agreement that Aristotle set the framework in relation to which the philosophy of memory has been discussed ever since.

That psychopathological understanding and creativity are enhanced by knowledge of history was well understood by nineteenth century alienists. Calmeil, Morel, Trélat, Semelaigne, Kirshoff, Winslow, Ireland, Mercier, Bucknill and Tuke wrote full-blown historical pieces; Pinel, Haslam, Heinroth, Guislain, Esquirol, Feuchsterleben, Prichard, Connolly, Griesinger, Lucas, Falret and Dagonet included historical chapters in their clinical textbooks.

Some, like Haslam, even emphasized historical semantics: ‘Mad is therefore not a complex idea, as has been supposed, but a complex term for all the forms and varieties of this disease. Our language has been enriched with other terms expressive of this affection … ’ / Inspired by eighteenth century German ‘historicism’, others saw their role as that of rescuing lost insights from an obscure (and mythical) psychiatric past. Heinroth, for example, subscribed to a cyclical, Vico-inspired, conception according to which history consisted of the recurrence of few great themes: ‘the development of mental forces in humanity is accompanied by an ever advancing, ever more degraded degeneration of these forces’. For him, psychiatry followed a ‘developmental’ path: ‘a study of the kind and degree of recognition and treatment of mental disturbances observed in early antiquity shows that these bear a striking imprint of the childhood of the human spirit’.

Pinel made use of a more ‘presentistic’ approach (history was a preparation for what was happening now). Influenced by the optimistic historiography of the French revolution, he regarded the past of psychiatry as a museum of failed endeavours.

When his work ceased, the story of Newton's life ended. William Stukeley and John Conduitt – the latter in a memoir sent to Fontenelle, then writing his éloge of Newton as a membre étranger of the Académie Royale des Sciences – agree that his decay began with ‘a relaxation of the sphincter of the bladder; so that he was oblig'd to make water frequently’. Newton curtailed his social life and dined simply: ‘chiefly upon broth, vegetables, and fruit, of which he ate very heartily’. This was about 1722. In August 1724 he passed a bladder-stone, without much pain, and in the following winter suffered bronchitis (or worse). Temporarily, he was much improved in general health by moving out to the village of Kensington, in country air, though he suffered an attack of gout. Through two good years he worked on the third Principia with Pemberton. It was on 7 March 1725 that he had a ‘curious conversation’ with Conduitt about his notion of a secular revolution in the cosmos, whereby matter from the Sun was condensed into bodies, becoming planets, then comets which ultimately fall into the Sun, and so falling may destroy the Earth by fuelling the Sun to excessive heat. Man's duration on Earth Newton took to be brief: for all arts and sciences had been discovered ‘within the memory of history, which could not have happened, if the world had been eternal; and … there were visible marks of ruin upon it which could not be effected by a flood alone.’

Hooke and Newton, 1679–80

Recently D. T. Whiteside has published an authoritative article on the evolution of the Principia from 1664 to 1686, following hard upon a large volume of facsimiles of the relevant documents. My account here, therefore, may be confined to bare essentials, especially as so little is known of Newton's personal life in the period of most intense effort devoted to his great work, that is, from the summer of 1684 to the late spring of 1686, when his surviving correspondence with Edmond Halley opens. Of the dozen extant letters from this period of some twenty-six months, no fewer than nine concern Flamsteed's putative provision of astronomical data for use in the Principia.

We must go back to chapter 6, where we left Robert Hooke enticing Newton (against his desire) into a philosophical correspondence. In a rejoinder of 9 December Hooke returned to Newton's carelessly considered spiral of descent, ending at the centre of the globe, as sketched in his letter to Hooke of 28 November 1679 (see figure 6.1). Regretting Newton's renunciation of philosophy as ‘a little Unkind’ and disclosing that he had read Newton's reply to his first approach at a meeting of the Royal Society, Hooke agreed, as had other Fellows then present, that a weight would fall to the east of its point of departure, not the west.

“The same year I found the method of Tangents …”

The origins of Newton's principal innovations in mathematics and science are to be found in the records of his reading as an undergraduate; immediately after these studies came “the prime of my age for invention” which Newton placed in 1665 and 1666. In mathematics and optics the transition from reading to original investigation can be perceived (though not exactly dated). In mechanics, on the other hand, we find Newton's earliest discovery on the first page of his “Waste Book” (Cambridge University Library MS Add. 4004), where the tenth page is dated “Jan 20th 1664” (that is, 1665 in our reckoning). No known annotation from Galileo or any other likely source antedates the “Waste Book”. From this and other dates in the notebooks it is evident that Newton's great epoch of creative scientific work began some months before the start of the year 1665, while he continued to mine the rich veins that he had opened as late as (probably) 1668. The two years of Newton's reminiscences stretch more accurately to three or more, of which 1665 and 1666 were central and critical.

That a large portion of this creative epoch was passed in Lincolnshire – not by any means altogether at home in Woolsthorpe, but probably also at Grantham and certainly at Boothby Pagnell – was a matter of chance. Not for the first time, Cambridge University was closed by plague. Bubonic plague had been endemic in Britain since the great pandemic of the mid-fourteenth century; the last major outbreak had been in 1625.

The Queries in Opticks

The last quarter of Newton's life was distinguished from the first three-quarters by the profusion of his written work that was published by himself or by others for him. As always with Newton, none of this publication was fundamentally new: his intellectual effort was devoted to making more perfect what had been published before (as with the Principia and Opticks), to bringing to light from his files writings and correspondence of long ago (as with Commercium Epistolicum), or to polishing for the benefit of posterity the results of studies that he had pursued for decades (as with The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended and The Prophecies of Daniel and John). In making this point I do not mean quite to assert that, had Newton died in 1705, it would have been possible to reconstruct from his papers all that was subsequently published under his name. Only of the posthumous System of the World would this be exactly true. On most of the late books Newton was always at work, modifying, adding new material from experiments and reading, extending and revising.

Of the Queries appended to the successive editions of Opticks this is particularly true. The main text of this book was not greatly changed when it was republished in Latin in 1706, nor indeed in the subsequent English editions. The Queries, however, developed into the most important series of statements that Newton released to the public about the deepest questions of natural philosophy: the concepts of matter and force, the possible role of an aether and the relation of God to the universe.

On the first of March, 1704, David Gregory noted in his diary that Newton had been ‘provoked by Dr Cheyns book to publish his Quadratures, and with it, his Light & Colours, &c.’ And just one month later Newton indeed signed and dated his “Advertisement” to this volume. Some sixteen months had passed since he had promised ‘Mr [Francis] Robarts, Mr Fatio, Capt. Hally & me to publish his Quadratures, his Treatise of Light, and his treatise of the curves of the 2d Genre [sic]’. In the interval Robert Hooke had died, thus clearing the way for the publication of Opticks,a book which Newton had sworn to keep to himself so long as Hooke lived. Opticks, like the pair of mathematical treatises that was to appear with it, had been long anticipated by Newton's friends. In 1694 Gregory had examined its three Books – hence it was substantially complete then, though Newton was not yet ‘fully satisfied about a certain kind of colours and the way of producing it’ – and summarized it in his diary of his visit to Cambridge (5 to 7 May). Newton meant to publish it after leaving the university, in English as it was written, or translated into Latin if he remained at Cambridge. By April 1695 John Wallis at Oxford knew of it (through Flamsteed's protégé Caswell) as ‘a Treatise about Light, Refraction and Colours’ already completed. ‘Tis pitty it was not out long since. If it be in English (as I hear it is) let it, however, come out as it is; & let those who desire to read it, learn English.’ Thus spoke this fervid Englishman! Through successive letters Wallis continued to prod Newton, but he would not budge.

Reports of madmen talking nonsense or reaching weird conclusions are not difficult to find in the literature of the ages. These help if all that the historian wants is to show that the behavioural phenomenon existed before it was considered as a ‘symptom’. It is, however, of less interest if the intention is to write on the history of the concept of thought disorder and on its association with particular diseases. In this regard, the historian must also decide whether ‘thought disorder’ is a unitary construct encompassing analogous forms of talking ‘nonsense’ or just a collection of dissimilar clinical states. Lastly, if a ‘construct’, he must identify the particular theory of thinking on which it has been based.

‘Talking nonsense’ or being ‘thought disordered’ has been predicated of patients making nonsensical claims (delusions), or showing weird usage of words (linguistic mannerisms) or fallacious ways of reaching conclusions (illogicality) or impaired articulation (dysarthria) or paraphrasing or fractured syntax or semantics (aphasia), etc. The clinical separation of these states occurred during the nineteenth century and was as much based on theory as it was on observation; and the most important theoretical frame concerned the relationship between thought and language.

This chapter uses as its search object the current definition of ‘thought disorder’, and accepts the claim that its prototype is seen in schizophrenia. It also accepts the view that clinicians can only ‘observe’ disorganized speech (as per DSM IV); but it also notices that, for the strategy to work, a 1 to 1 correspondence between thought and speech must be assumed.

Although the idea that human beings have mental capacities to ‘read into’ (intus-legere) the nature of things is old, the concept of intelligence as a psychological function is new. In earlier days, intellectual powers were not clearly differentiated from other mental faculties such as perception, emotions and will, nor from other information gathering mechanisms such as intuition or conjecture. Understanding is considered by Plato as superior to belief and conjecture, and by Aristotle as depending upon the capture of the ‘form’ of the object in question: ‘Now, if thinking is akin to perceiving, it would be either being affected in some way by the object of thought or something else of this kind. It must then be unaffected but capable of receiving the form, and potentially such as it, although not identical with it; and as that which is capable of perceiving is to the objects of perception, so must be the intellect similar to its objects’. ‘And I speak of as intellect that by which the soul thinks and supposes.’ Galen suggested that the active intelligence operated by means of mechanisms such as distinction, combination, solution, demonstration, enumeration, and classification. For Aquinas, intellect is the function of ‘apprehending something’ and has two components: an intelligence for simple ideas and another for ‘complex understanding.’

This general conception of understanding or intelligence lasted well into the eighteenth century and can be found in Kant: ‘if the power of knowledge in general is to be called understanding (in the most general sense of the term), understanding must include: 1. the power of apprehending, 2. the power of abstracting, and 3. The power of reflecting.’

Psychiatry is the branch of medicine that deals with mental disease. Almost universally, a language (descriptive psychopathology) (DP) is now used to record the symptoms of mental disease, and it consists of a vocabulary, a syntax, assumptions about the nature of behaviour, and some application rules. This language was composed in Europe during the first half of the nineteenth century, and has proved to be surprisingly stable. It is likely that both neurobiological and psychological and social factors are responsible for this stability which, at least in theory, depends on: a) the durability of the cognitive or social aims of the ‘community of users’ or ‘thought collective’, b) the permanency of the object of inquiry itself, namely the neurobiological signal, and c) the dynamic matching between object and the language of description. Descriptive psychopathology is thus a conceptual network meshing observer, patient and symptoms together.

Mental symptoms are (mostly) intermittent and quantitative variations in speech and human action. The latter, in turn, are complex, theory-bound states. It follows that attempts at producing ‘atheoretical’ or ‘phenomenological’ descriptions of mental signs and symptoms are misconceived. Successful description in psychiatry consists in little more than the obtention of reliable morsels of behaviour which, hopefully, still contain enough of the biological signal which caused them in the first place and which provides the information for diagnosis, treatment, and research. Infelicitous descriptions, or descriptions ‘manqué’ are likely to be a common occurrence in the daily affairs of psychiatric practice.

The Master of Arts

After looking so far forward to the origins of the Principia, it comes almost as a shock to realize that young Isaac Newton was still barely twenty-four years old, not yet a Master of Arts, when he returned to Cambridge in 1667. It would be strange indeed if he were not now far more conscious of his own potentiality in the world of learning than he had been before the plague. Five years into the future he would be arguing for his own discoveries on equal terms with the acknowledged leaders of the scientific movement in Europe. As yet, however, he stood on the lowest rung of the ladder of academic promise and his name was unknown. Newton had a chance of a minor fellowship at Trinity College at the next election, in the coming October, and no doubt hoped for something from the support of his family connection, Humphrey Babington. Candidates for the fellowship had to submit, at least in theory, to four days of oral examination by the Seniors in the college chapel. By whatever means, and whoever was convinced of his merits, Newton was indeed among the chosen. He was assigned the ‘Spiritual Chamber’ to reside in, but probably remained where he was with his friend (and amanuensis) John Wickins, renting out the room allotted to him. Trinity College now paid him ‘wages’ of £2 per annum, gave him allowances for livery and commons (that is, clothing and food) and allowed him his share (‘dividend’) of the college revenues. Trinity also assigned him his first pupil, a Fellow-commoner named St Leger Scroope, who made no mark in history.

This book deals with the history of the main mental symptoms, i.e. of what is called descriptive psychopathology. Based on research carried out during the last 25 years, it covers about two centuries of French, German, Italian, Spanish, and British primary sources. Due to my ignorance of eastern European languages, the corresponding fields of inquiry have been left unexplored. The seriousness of this omission will depend on how important these psychiatric cultures have been to the development of western descriptive psychopathology.

The reader will notice that the book mainly examines the nineteenth century and after. The reason for having chosen this time span is ideological. During the 1960s, I was influenced by Gaston Bachelard and his notions of epistemological rupture and refonte. Preliminary research then suggested that something like a rupture and a ‘recasting’ had affected the discourse of insanity during the first half of the nineteenth century. Further work has provided reasonable evidence that such a change gave rise to the new language of mental symptoms.

Trying to identify the reasons that led nineteenth century alienists to select certain words and concepts to describe (and explain) the signs and symptoms of insanity is an awesome task. In addition to the pitfalls posed by interpreting subjective choice, there is the problem of documentary (both published and archival) unevenness caused no doubt by the bellic vicissitudes of Europe. Hence, the attentive reader will soon find out that more is known about some symptoms than others. I hope to correct this imbalance in the future.