THE DISEASE OF THE LEARNED
As a philosopher turned GP myself, David Hume has long been my favourite philosopher. He lived in 18th-century Scotland, with renowned Scottish physician William Cullen as his own doctor and friend. Hume attended university at age 12, early even in those days, pushing himself so far that he ended up developing the ‘Disease of the Learned’ — a malady that seems to have been a sort of depression or nervous breakdown. Philosophers can suffer from burnout too.
THE MOST ‘GP’ FIGURE OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT
In philosophical circles, Hume is considered to be ‘one of the most important philosophers to write in English’1 but his isn’t the name that springs to mind if the man on the street is asked to name a famous philosopher. In fact, there’s much to recommend Hume as the most ‘GP’ figure of the Enlightenment. In An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding he sets out to apply the …