"[Vickers'] scrupulous study, will make a nuanced difference to future readings of Coleridge's poetry."-- Times Literary Supplement "[The] refusal to simplify Colerdige's belief systems to package them prettily for students of literary criticism (for example) is one of the many strengths of this splendid book. I doubt that anyone could have compressed more matter into such a short book."--George Rousseau, Nuncius "One need not be a devotee of Coleridge to appreciate the excellent integration Vickers has accomplished in synthesizing the particularities of a celebrated medical case with its guiding theories. By carefully summarizing the various disputes and contextualizing them within the larger philosophical milieu, he offers a multilayered analysis of Romantic notions of psychology and physiology and their relationship to medical practice (and psychiatric history, more specifically). Coleridge and the Doctors will appeal to a wide variety of readers, but for me it cogently illustrates philosophy in action and, more particularly, how an imaginative genius was tethered to his belief system. Here, critical history joins skeptical philosophy, and in that synthesis Vickers has offered us a small jewel."--Alfred I.

Taubner, Journal of the History of Medicine "Innovative. Vickers's scrupulous reading of the medical theory [of John Brown].illuminates the professional imperatives behind the increasingly scientific and philosophical tendencies of medicine and also establishes the role of Brunonian medicine in directing Coleridge's attention to German Idealism. Vickers's analysis successfully balances recent accounts of Coleridge as a 'secret materialist' with an emphasis on the 'mentalist' influence of Beddoes beginning in 1803."-- Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 "Coleridge's understanding of medical diagnosis, and of his own pattern of illness, was, according to Neil Vickers's impressive book, both complex and, in terms of Coleridge's characteristic modes of thought, typical. Not only is a wealth of medical and contemporary interpretive detail gathered here into a coherent account, but the potential of the material is fully evident and capable of rich expansion."-- Bulletin of the History of Medicine.