Hermione de Almeida discusses the connections between poetry and medicine in the life and work of English romantic poet John Keats (1795-1821). A physician by training, Keats found ideas and analogies in nineteenth-century science and medical philosophy that stimulated several key questions in his poetry. These include the disparities between vitalism and mechanism, the material and the animistic, disease and health, and the distinctions between poison and potion.
At the time of this interview, de Almeida, a Fellow at the National Humanities Center (1982-83), was professor of English at the University of Miami.
This edition of Soundings was conducted by Wayne J. Pond.
