The myth of a Canadian Boswell: Dr. R.M. Bucke and Walt Whitman.

• Published in: Canadian Bulletin of Medical History
• Main Author: Shortt, S.E.D.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: University of Toronto Press Inc. (UTPress) 1984
• Subjects: General Medicine; Greenland
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/cbmh.1.2.55; https://utpjournals.press/doi/pdf/10.3138/cbmh.1.2.55

Biography has traditionally exerted a compelling attraction for both Canadian historians in general and medical historians in particular. The subject of this paper, Dr. Richard M. Bucke (1837–1902), is well-known in the history of Canadian psychiatry, most recently through the work of, among others, Wendy Mitchinson, Cheryl Krasnick and Cyril Greenland. One area of his career, however, remains poorly understood: his relationship with the poet, Walt Whitman (1819–1892). While this friendship is frequently referred to by literary scholars, their central concern is with Whitman rather than Bucke. In their work, as a result, the poet occupies the scholarly foreground, while Bucke is confined to an obscure and, this paper argues, badly distorted corner of the literary canvas. This neglect may well be an inherent methodological pitfall of biography in which a focus on the principal figure necessarily neglects or misrepresents secondary characters. As a corrective to the prevailing literary interpretation, the following pages describe the Bucke-Whitman relationship in terms of symbiosis rather than of master poet and sycophantic admirer.