Tag: Sir Walter Scott
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Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832): Medical aspects
Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832) is widely credited with inventing and popularizing the modern historical novel. Born in Edinburgh in 1771, he grew up during the intellectual ferment of the Scottish Enlightenment. At eighteen months, he developed a fever followed by permanent lameness in his right leg—consistent with paralytic poliomyelitis. In the hope that the country…
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The anatomy of bibliotherapy: How fiction heals, part I
Dustin Grinnell Boston, Massachusetts, United States Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.—Rudyard Kipling Literature is medicine for the soul In the 1980s, the mother of Northrop Frye, a Canadian literary scholar, was in the hospital, ill and delirious. Seeking to ease her suffering, her father gave her the twenty-five books of…