This chapter focuses on the context of Herman Melville’s experience of madness and the sea prior to his writing of Moby-Dick. A close reading is offered of the “Loomings” chapter of the novel to understand the Hippocratic knowledge informing Ishttps://cheryl.straive.com/sprbwf/index.php#hamel’s decision to go to sea, and which presents the novel initially as a gestation sea narrative in pursuit of health. The late reception of Melville’s novel in the early twentieth century is also focused on, and emphasis is placed on its foundational role in encouraging representations of the sea as nonhuman in subsequent oceanic writing.