According to a study by Dr. Kenneth Heaton published in Medical Humanities, many doctors would benefit from studying Shakespeare to better understand the mind-body connection, given that Shakespeare was a master at portraying profound emotional upset in the physical symptoms of his characters.

For his study, Kenneth Heaton, a medical doctor and extensively published author on William Shakespeare’s oeuvre, decided to look for evidence of psychosomatic symptoms by systematically analyzing 42 of Shakespeare’s major works and 46 of those of his contemporaries.

He concentrated his analysis on sensory symptoms, excluding those relating to sight, taste, the heart, and the gut, and found that Shakespeare’s description of symptoms in characters showing strong emotions, such as dizziness or faintness, and blunted or heightened sensitivity to touch and pain was substantially more common compared with works of other authors at the time.

For example, five male characters in Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew, Henry VI part 1, Romeo and Juliet, Cymbeline and Troilus and Cressida expressed vertigo, giddiness and dizziness. The closest comparison in contemporaries’ works was one case in John Marston’s ‘The Malcontent’.

At least 11 of Shakespeare’s expressions of breathlessness are linked with extreme emotion in The Rape of Lucrece, Venus and Adonis, Two Gentlemen of Verona and Troilus and Cressida in comparison with only two incidences in other writer’s works.

Shakespeare’s description of fatigue and weariness due to grief or distress is common in his characters and is most notable in Hamlet, As You Like It, Richard II, The Merchant of Venice and Henry IV part 2. According to Dr. Heaton Shakespeare uses these terms twice as often as other contemporary writers.

Shakespeare uses the term ‘disturbed’ at a time of high emotion in Richard II, King Lear and King John, whilst ‘blunted or exaggerated’ senses are described in Venus and Adonis, Much Ado about Nothing, King Lear, Coriolanus and Love’s Labour’s Lost.

Dr. Heaton writes:

“Shakespeare’s perception that numbness and enhanced sensation can have a psychological origin seems not to have been shared by his contemporaries, none of whom included such phenomena in the works examined.”

Shakespeare also used ‘coldness’ in Romeo and Juliet, as well as ‘faintness’ to describe shock in Julius Caesar, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Titus Andronicus and Richard III substantially more frequently compared to other authors of his period.

According to Dr Heaton his analysis demonstrates that Shakespeare “was an exceptionally body-conscious writer.” He suggests that Shakespeare’s used this style of writing to allow his characters to appear more human and stimulate the reader to feel more empathetic or to dramatize his plays and poems.

Dr. Heaton suggests that his findings should act as a reminder, encouraging doctors not to forget that physical symptoms can have psychological causes.

He writes:

“Many doctors are reluctant to attribute physical symptoms to emotional disturbance, and this results in delayed diagnosis, over-investigation, and inappropriate treatment. They could learn to be better doctors by studying Shakespeare. This is important because the so-called functional symptoms are the leading cause of general practitioner visits and of referrals to specialists.”

Written by Petra Rattue