ABSTRACT
Timorous literary critics and hesitant social historians continue to fear engagement with Daniel Defoe’s challenging, and sometimes chilling, work Conjugal Lewdness; it lies neglected. But the island story of Robinson Crusoe has become overloaded with comment and interpretation. Upon Crusoe Defoe imposed more than a frisson of fear; a mighty storm had to be braved before, shipwrecked, he scrambled on to his forlorn isle. Robinson Crusoe is the work of Defoe the physician; he is writing out a detailed prescription of the bitter potions to be taken as a cure for loneliness. But Defoe is no orthodox medical practitioner; he subscribes to the heretical medical tradition of homeopathy, a system of therapeutics based upon the “law of similars”, similiasimilibus curantur. For Defoe the homecoming was the triumphant vindication of his homeopathic treatment. Crusoe, without any outside agencies, dependent upon no one but himself, alone, had faced the loneliness, and conquered the disabling malady.
