James John Garth Wilkinson

James John Garth Wilkinson (3 June 1812 – 18 October 1899), was an English homeopathic physician, social reformer, translator and editor of Swedenborg's works, and a writer on Swedenborgian topics.

Life

The son of James John Wilkinson (died 1845), a writer on mercantile law and judge of the County Palatine of Durham, he was born in London.<ref name="Lines 2001">Lines, Richard. (2001). "James John Garth Wilkinson Author, Physician, Translator". Swedenborgstudy.com. Retrieved 30 August 2021.</ref> Wilkinson studied medicine and worked at Newcastle Infirmary and Guy's Hospital. He was a Member of the Royal College of Surgeons and a Licentiate of the Society of Apothecaries in 1834.<ref name="Lines 2001"/> He became an independent medical practitioner at Store Street, Bedford Square in 1835. However, he became disillusioned with orthodox medicine and later took up homeopathy.<ref name="Lines 2001"/>

Attracted by the works of William Blake, he studied the Songs of Experience. He was also inspired by Emanuel Swedenborg, to the elucidation of whose writings he devoted much of his life.Template:Sfn

He died at Finchley Road, South Hampstead, where he had lived for nearly fifty years. He was commemorated by a bust and portrait in the rooms of the Swedenborgian Society in Bloomsbury Street, London.Template:Sfn

Works

Between 1840 and 1850 he edited Swedenborg's treatises on The Doctrine of Charity, The Animal Kingdom, Outlines of a Philosophic Argument on the Infinite, and Hieroglyphic Key to Natural and Spiritual Mysteries.Template:Sfn

Wilkinson's preliminary discourses to these translations and his criticisms of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's comments on Swedenborg displayed an aptitude not only for mystical research, but also for original philosophic debate. The vigour of his thought won admiration from Henry James, Sr. (father of the novelist) and from Ralph Waldo Emerson, through whom he met Thomas Carlyle and James Anthony Froude; and his speculation further attracted Alfred Tennyson, the Oliphants and Edward Maitland.Template:Sfn

He wrote a sketch of Swedenborg for the Penny Cyclopaedia, and a standard biography, Emanuel Swedenborg (1849);<ref>Template:Citation</ref> but these were not his only interests. He was a traveller, a linguist, well versed in Scandinavian literature and philology, the author of mystical poems entitled Improvisations from the Spirit (1857), a social and medical reformer, a convinced opponent of vaccination and vivisection.Template:Sfn Wilkinson was a vegetarian.<ref>"Meet the vegetarian anti-vaxxers who led the smallpox inoculation backlash in Victorian Britain". The Conversation. Retrieved 30 August 2021.</ref>

Wilkinson criticized vivisection as unethical and unnecessary cruelty inflicted on animals in his book On Human Science: Good and Evil, and on Divine Revelation, published in 1876. He was an advocate of nature conservation and women's rights.<ref name="Lines 2001"/>

Anti-vaccination

Wilkinson was an anti-vaccinationist. He contributed to The Vaccination Inquirer and completed a series of Vaccination Tracts in 1879.<ref name="Porter 1988">Template:Cite journal</ref>

Legacy

Henry James, Sr. became a Swedenborgian,<ref>F. W. Dupee (1951), Henry James, New York: Sloane.</ref> and named a son after Wilkinson: Garth Wilkinson James, also known as Wilkie James, an officer of the 54th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry under Robert Gould Shaw.

Selected publications

• Emanuel Swedenborg: A Biography (1849)
• The Human Body and its Connexion With Man (1851)
• The Homoeopathic Principle Applied to Insanity (1857)
• On Human Science: Good and Evil, and on Divine Revelation (1876)
• Vaccination Tracts (1879)
• Epidemic Man and His Visitations (1893)
• The New Jerusalem and the Old Jerusalem (1894)

References

• {{#if: |

   |{{#ifeq: Wilkinson, James John Garth |
                |{{#ifeq: |
                             |
                             |
                           }}
                |
               }}
  }}{{#ifeq:  |
   |{{#ifeq:  |
                                    |This article
                                    |One or more of the preceding sentences
                                   }} incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: 
  }}{{#invoke:template wrapper|{{#if:|list|wrap}}|_template=cite EB1911
   |_exclude=footnote, inline, noicon, no-icon, noprescript, no-prescript, _debug

   | noicon=1
  }}{{#ifeq:  ||}} 

• Template:Cite DNB
• Template:Cite ODNB

Sources

• Lines, Richard. "James John Garth Wilkinson 1812–1899: Author, Physician, Swedenborgian". Journal of the New Church Historical Society. Chester, 2002. (Available on-line.)
• Wilkinson, Clement John. James John Garth Wilkinson. London, 1911. (Available on-line.)