Benjamin Disraeli (1766–1848), the famous prime minister of England, described his father Isaac as a great disappointment to his parents. He was a “difficult and rather morose child … pale and pensive, with large dark brown eyes, and flowing hair…timid, susceptible, lost in reverie, fond of solitude, and seeking no better company than a book.” Not interested in his father’s business, Isaac once ran away from home and was found lying on a tombstone in the Hackney churchyard. His kind father, also called Benjamin, was greatly relieved by finding him, hugged him, and gave him a pony, much to the annoyance of the mother, who believed that to spare the rod was to spoil the child. The disappointed parents decided to send the boy to work in their businesses in Amsterdam and Bordeaux, but this did not work out either.

The elder Benjamin arrived in England in 1748. About two centuries earlier, his ancestors had been expelled from Spain by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella (1492), sought refuge in Venice, and had become successful merchants. Benjamin (the elder) also established a successful business in England, but, to his and his wife’s disappointment, their son Isaac showed no interest in business whatsoever. At one time, he ran away, as mentioned above.

At age twenty-nine, young Isaac was diagnosed as having consumption by an eminent physician who prescribed immediate relocation to a warmer climate. Another doctor, demonstrating superior diagnostic acumen, recognized that the problem was not pulmonary but anxiety or depression, and recommended port wine, horse exercise, rowing, and agreeable society. The treatment worked, and Isaac recovered. After his father died and he became independent, he married and became a full-time man of letters. For the rest of his active literary life, he spent his days in the British Library, looking up references, making notes, bringing home packages of books he acquired on the way home, “loving books like other men love women,” and retiring to his reading library after dinner. His reputation growing, he was admired by many famous literati such as Lord Byron, and as an author of many publications, he had a successful literary career.

Disraeli’s most famous work, Curiosities of Literature,¹ was first published anonymously in 1791. It was an immediate success and later expanded into several publications, forming a dizzying array of 273 chapters—a comprehensive exploration of ancient and modern events, authors, remarkable cures, bizarre diseases, and famous or eccentric doctors. It was also condensed in 1849 into a more compact three-volume edition.² There are medical stories of “marvelous recoveries from the most desperate wounds,” of patients surviving trepanning or sword wounds through the skull, of one soldier pierced through the chest by a sword but living long enough for the weapon to be carefully withdrawn. Another story is that of a mason who survived a heavy weight falling on his skull, leaving the surgeons marveling at the body’s resilience. There are other cases, such as “cure by fright,” where a physician cured a hypochondriac patient by terrifying him into believing he was near death. In other cases, fear or joy also triggered recovery. The habit of saluting after sneezing is attributed to a time when, during epidemics, the disease reached an ominous point of crisis marked by sneezing followed by death.

There are also stories of how listening to music cured melancholy or depression, relieved the pains of sciatica by causing vibrations of the nerves that would remove the “obstructions” causing the underlying disease, as well as quicken the circulation of the blood, dissipate vapors, and “open the vessels, so that the action of perspiration is freer.” We read how a person of distinction, when suddenly seized by violent illness, instead of consulting physicians, called a band of musicians who played the violins so well that he recovered in a few hours. We also learn how Farinelli, the famous singer, was sent for to Madrid to try the effect of his magical voice on the king of Spain, who suffered from the profoundest depression, sitting in a darkened chamber, entirely given up to the most distressing kind of madness; but when the physicians ordered Farinelli to sing, the king, awakening from his stupor, seemed to listen, then tears were seen starting in his eyes; and after a few days “the medicinal voice of Farinelli effected what no other medicine could.”

Among famous medical men, Disraeli mentions Ambroise Paré, the great French surgeon, who abandoned the “cruel practice” of pouring boiling oil into wounds and instead applied gentle dressings, with far better outcomes, eventually developing the technique of ligating the injured blood vessels. In Medical Fallacies, Disraeli observed how, for a thousand years, the medical world accepted Galen’s theories as infallible facts even when they contradicted observation. In Curiosities of Medicine, he commented on Paracelsus’s rejection of tradition. Still, he also marveled at his excesses, including his claim to have discovered the Elixir of Life and his belief in the curative powers of alchemy. He also writes about an eccentric physician who prescribed a diet of nothing but roasted apples for gout, and about another who never cut his beard, claiming it preserved his health.

Disraeli also recounts how plagues decimated cities, in which some physicians refused to flee and died alongside their patients, while others devised elaborate protective garb. He includes curious accounts of “sleeping sickness,” where individuals would fall into profound slumbers, lasting days, and of “monstrous births,” which were interpreted as both natural phenomena and moral warnings. Writing about madness, he tells the story of a man who, believing himself made of glass, avoided all contact for fear of shattering. In another story, he describes a scholar who became convinced he had been transformed into a rooster.

Also of interest is his discussion of the “royal touch.” For centuries, English and French monarchs were believed to cure scrofula (tuberculous lymphadenitis) by laying hands on the afflicted. Disraeli records both the reverence with which this ritual was practiced and the skepticism it later drew. He also subscribed to the concept of books and reading functioning as medicine, dating back to the ancient Egyptians and echoing Burton’s later prescription in The Anatomy of Melancholy for reading as a remedy for depression.

In sections on the history of literature, Disraeli describes how libraries were founded by the Egyptian Ptolemies, the Greeks, and particularly the Romans, and how their emperors appropriated the writings of the nations they conquered. He mentions that the first public library in Italy was founded by Nicholas Niccoli, the son of a merchant, later expanded by the Medici, and that libraries were established at the Vatican, in Venice, Oxford, Copenhagen, Germany, and France. He discusses bibliomania, the collecting of an enormous heap of books, “without intelligent curiosity could infect weak minds.” Of interest are chapters on the origins of newspapers and literary reviews. We are reminded that, sadly, many classical works by famous ancient authors were lost. Others had a very narrow escape from destruction.

Toward the end of 1839, while “still in the full vigor of his health and intellect,” Disraeli suffered “a paralysis of the optic nerve,” probably a stroke or vascular occlusion, condemning him to perpetual darkness. He bore his fate with magnanimity, even with cheerfulness. His daughter assisted him in preparing or revising the final editions through dictation. Curiosities of Literature contains 137 essays in the first book, 83 in the second, and 53 in the third. Other essays are published separately or in other editions. His massive collection of anecdotes, miraculous survivals, eccentric physicians, and curious diseases makes fascinating reading. It transports the reader to an era very different from the one we live in now.

Further reading

1. Isaac Disraeli: Curiosities of Literature, volumes 1-3. 1791 and subsequent additions and revisions.
2. The Victorian Web: Isaac D’Israeli’s Literary Works. It lists the totality of Disraeli’s contributions, too many to all list here but including notable essays on literary men, men of genius, literary solitude, famous authors, and many aspects of literary and political history, including Chaucer, Milton, Shakespeare, Dialects, The First Jesuits in England, The War Against Books, Rhyming Dictionaries, and many others. https://www.victorianweb.org/previctorian/disraeli/literature.html