Virginia Woolf’s psychiatrist, George Savage, subscribed to a common medical theory in the 1920s known as “focal infection theory” which was the belief that mental illness and other health problems were caused by infections in the teeth.
Savage suspected Virginia’s mental instability was the result of a nest of bacteria in the roots of her teeth and, in an attempt to cure her, pulled three of her teeth in June of 1922. Savage also hoped extracting the teeth would bring down a fever she had been running that summer, one that other doctors she previously consulted with had misdiagnosed as life-threatening cases of heart and lung disease.
Virginia was not happy about the medical treatment she received, which resulted in her having to wear false teeth, and wrote about it in her diary:
Virginia Woolf in 1927
“Sunday 11 June:
The depression of a return from Rodmell is always acute. Perhaps this continued temperature – I have lost three teeth in vain – may be some sort of cause for my ups & downs. Yet the days at Rodmell passed smoothly.”
She later blasted the doctors in a letter to a friend, in which she wrote:
“I’m so cross.Three teeth pulled out that might have lasted a lifetime, and temperature still up. Next they’ll cut out my tonsils, and then I suppose adenoids, and then appendix, and then — what comes next?”
According to one of Virginia’s biographers, Harold Bloom, these fumbling doctors later became the inspiration for Septimus Smith’s clueless doctor in her novel “Mrs. Dalloway”
Perhaps it was these bad experiences and her disillusionment with modern medicine that spurred Virginia to refuse medical treatment for her final mental breakdown that resulted in her suicide in 1941.
The day before her suicide, Virginia’s husband Leonard brought her to a local doctor in an attempt to prevent another breakdown but Virginia was uncooperative, defensive and practically refused treatment. Virginia eventually allowed the doctor to examine her and agreed to accept treatment if she thought it was reasonable but then returned home and drowned herself the very next morning without even giving the treatment a try.
Sources:
“The Letters of Virginia Woolf” Volume II; Virginia Woolf
“Virginia Woolf”; Harold Bloom; 2005
“Virginia Woolf”; Hermoine Lee; 1999
“The Diary of Virginia Woolf”; Volume Two; Virginia Woolf
Interesting, but isn’t it rather the psychiatrist in Mrs Dalloway who is modeled upon these fumbling doctors?
Sigrun recently posted..Woolf & the Ramsay’s
Yes, you are correct Sigrun. I got the character’s names confused. Nice catch!
hola, rebekah, i am bi-polar and since i moved into my little trailer in 1998, i have had a barrage of respiratory ailments with corresponding fevers. i live down the street from our small town hospital. it’s much better than it was. i don’t have to live on the goldenseal extract, which works better for me than the echinacea/goldenseal extract. it is a natural antibiotic first used by the cherokee indians of the americas. my maternal grandmother was a famous healer in agua prieta, sonora, mexico, my german next door neighbor told me that even the royalty of europe would come and dress as peons so that she would heal them. i wonder if virginia came from shamanic lines. i am shamanic in both of my lines. when i did art lessons back in 1996 with a tarahumara indian who sits on the native american council and i told him of some of my bi-polar experiences, he told me that there was nothing wrong with me, that i was shamanic and those things happened to shamans. it’s very hard to live in the modern world when you’re shamanic! just ask all of the juvenile delinquents who are no doubt shamanic lines, too. some of us have a higher natural radiation capacity from our potassium levels than other people. maybe when you’re taking down a nasty flu virus, or even the plague from the middle ages, you run a fever. i don’t go to the physical doctor, but i do take my psychiatric meds, an anti-psychotic. potassium that is beta-decaying becomes the argon in our atmosphere and there’s LOTS of argon in a supernova event. ‘the lion king’, simba’s father tells him to look to his elders, who are in the sky, so stars. macro, micro. from israel regardie’s ‘the tree of life’, about magic, ‘the universe exists only within the consciousness of man, is conterminous with that consciousness, and it’s laws are the laws of the mind’. when i started to paint and i did native american art, the backgrounds were VERY colorful, a friend wanted to know if i saw auras, maybe i feel them, i found out later that they were real, actual dusty nebulas, so supernova events. back to the natural radiation of our human potassium levels. the story of our humaness seems to be very large, we’re from OUT THERE, the duat of the egyptians. about 40 mi. south of mexico city, there are footprints that are more than 50,000 years old. they are the imprint of an astronaut’s boot. read about the viracocha of the lake in la paz, bolivia, they looked totally scottish on the stellas of the pyramids in mexico. have a good day, blessings, anna martina p.s. my bi-polar onset was very bad, i didn’t even have to apply for social security disability, they gave it to me when i applied to the state of arizona for SSI. i am part yaqui, apache and aztec and a european goulash, even german saxon line, egads.
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