ABSTRACT
Throughout his life Coleridge attacked John Brown's theory as the 'Doctrine of Death' because of its materialism. In 1812 Coleridge makes a brief reference to Brown's egotism, which suggests he relied on Beddoes for his view of the theorist's character. A manuscript fragment of 1823 contains a short comment, 'On the Theory of Brunonian Medicine', that illustrates the general nature, and the broader context, of Coleridge's opposition to materialism and to Brown's doctrine. With that important achievement, Coleridge can turn to one of Brown's most radical notions and again recast it so that it carries no taint of Brunonianism. Coleridge re-enacts the Brunonian process of external excitement affecting the person in a transfer through media. In the Brunonian sense, excitement moves from an object or event into the nervous system through the excitable substance. In the Coleridgean sense, the poet's excitement is communicated to the reader through the language of the poem.
