The universal disease that is very difficult to cure and that you may suffer from

BarcelonaAs there were no large circulation newspapers in England at that time, Joseph Addison and Richard Steele founded a broadsheet in 1711 with the name The Spectator, which had a short life: during the first stage, between 1711 and 1712, everything was written by Steele; sometimes also by Addison and someone else, leaving aside a section of "letters to the editor" that maintained a permanent dialogue between the opinions of the founder and those of the readers, as it still happens. Later, in 1714, Addison took charge alone, and there was still a string of installments. Donald Bond made a complete, very useful edition in 1965: very recent. (Literature has a different tempo from the time of history.)

In issue 582, dated August 18, 1714, Addison commented on a phenomenon that is still common today: the great itch, which many people had, to write. The article says: "I will speak of an illness of which neither Galen nor Hippocrates made any mention ... Juvenal [Satires, VII, 51-52; in Catalan in the Bernat Doctor] calls him cacoethes from a Greek word known only to the wise, which means nothing more than the itch to write [an etymological invention; but the word is found in Plato, according to Bailly]. It is an evil almost as universal as smallpox, because there are very few people who have not been victims, sooner or later, at least once in their lives. There is, however, one difference between the two diseases, and that is that smallpox disappears after several days or weeks, and does not return; the other is almost never cured."

Steele goes on to say that no remedy has been found for this evil (writing with the itch), although a group has been invented and tested, such as defamatory libels, caustic comments - our letters are not dedicated to "literary asses"; an example would be the famous Hudibras, by Samuel Butler, above. In any case, says the editor, there is a remedy that has cured some sufferers of this evil, the same one that is used against the bite of the tarantula: the sound of a musical instrument and only one, the gralla (the English text provides an equivalent). He says more: the only real remedy that exists to cure those "sick of writing" is to prohibit them from using ink, pen and paper. (Today we would talk about another tool.)

And he ends the article saying: "The nation has been darkened for a long time by these antiluminescent, if I can put it that way. I have suffered greatly, but in the end I have decided to extradite them from the entire hemisphere." Always with the good humor so beloved in English literature.