Two days ago I posted on parasites and the body politic — well, on a family of expressions linking the two, of which parasites on/upon/in the body politic are central examples. My assumption was that these expressions were in fact instances of a formula, now quite common — and, indeed, common in certain contexts since (as it turns out) at least the late 19th century (see the comments on the earlier postings).
Attempting to track things back earlier than this (as Michael Palmer has been so valiantly doing) leads to a set of examples in which the idiom body politic is involved in medical metaphors. This is parallel to the situation with other formulaic expressions (clichés and snowclones, in particular), where research on their history takes us back to the circumstances that gave rise to the formulas — that is, to times before the expressions were fixed in form.
But first, notes on body politic itself.
