Chapter 2 - Spiritual Convalescence

Summary

Convalescence was a fraught topic for nineteenth-century religious writers. As one tract announced, “The time of sickness is a season when every afflicted person should resolve, with the assistance of God’s grace that if his health be restored, he will ever afterwards live a truly religious life.” The problem, however, was that sick-room religious visitors often reported that the slow time of convalescence tended to negate patients’ previous religious declarations. As John Fry lamented in his 1823 manual A Present for the Convalescent, “The friends of religion, whose warning and consoling voices are heard at the bed of sickness, are often compelled to witness the dispersion of their fairest prospects of good, at the period of returning health.” As British culture more generally focused attention on the unique benefits of post-acute recuperation during the nineteenth century, religious writers also increasingly produced devotional manuals that focused on convalescence rather than illness. As Robert Milman remarked in his 1865 text, Convalescence: Thoughts for Those who are Recovering from Illness, “There are many excellent books for the sick while they are ill. I have, myself, felt a want of a distinct and separate book for those who are recovering.” Yet, in shifting their exhortations from the crisis of acute illness to the long duration of convalescence, writers of nineteenth-century convalescent devotionals envisioned an alternative temporality for the process of spiritual transformation. Instead of promoting momentous resolutions, these writers borrowed from discourses of physical recuperation to envision a prolonged and unstable rehabilitation of the soul.