ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the embodied presence of the Peripatetic Philosopher and the perfect harmony of the great vital organs of the body politic, Thelwall establishes his argument in favor of embodied political action. Of increasing interest for all have been Thelwall's relationships with contemporary medical circles, his contributions to medical theory, and, most importantly, his conscious theorizing of interpenetration between medicine, poetry, and politics. The Peripatetic, even more so than the political writings, manifests the double hybrid of the medical body in the poetic text and the interpenetration between poetry and medicine. In the texts protagonist Sylvanus Theophrastus the author's encounters the embodiment of the Peripatetic Philosopher, Thelwalls rendering of the body conscious Poet-Physician. The Peripatetic, to which it seems to have been the intended vehicle by which Thelwall's radical materialism were to have become pretty generally diffused. More specifically, Thelwall casts the figure of the Peripatetic Philosopher, his version of the Poet-Physician, as the most effective political physician.
