Table Of ContentMedicine and Magic in
Elizabethan London
Simon Forman: Astrologer,
Alchemist, and Physician
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Simon Forman had a habit of writing, Richard Napier preserved his papers,
Elias Ashmole hoarded them for posterity, and William Black masterfully
catalogued them. My first debt is to Forman, my second to those who saved
and sorted his papers.
I have incurred countless other debts. Margaret Pelling has met many drafts
with generous comments, fostering my understanding of early modern medi-
cine and holding me to her scrupulous standards. Tony Grafton, Simon
Schaffer, and Charles Webster have periodically read recensions of this book
and shared their visions of Forman’s world, confident that my archival
prospecting would pay off. Jim Secord read a complete draft and made sugges-
tions, such as the chronology, in the interests of the reader. Earlier Stuart Clark
and Paul Slack suggested how to make the study broader and more coherent,
and Paul has read subsequent drafts and shepherded the book through the
press, trusting me to do what needed to be done. Versions of individual chap-
ters have benefited from the comments of David Colclough, Marina Frasca
Spada, Nick Jardine, Helen King, Bill Newman, Sophie Page, and anonymous
readers. Often my mining and foraging turned to scrounging, and I am enor-
mously grateful to the following for sharing their manuscript references and/or
arcane expertise: Penny Bayer, Helen Brocklebank, Peter Forshaw, Peter
Grund, Deborah Harkness, Susan Hitch, Martin Ingram, Mark Jenner, Peter
Jones, David Katz, Giles Mandelbrote, Scott Mandelbrote, Sara Pennell, Max
Satchell, and Bill Sherman. I have presented work on Forman to audiences in
Oxford, Cambridge, Geneva, London, Manchester, and Princeton and I am
grateful for their questions. I apologize to anyone I have forgotten. Many
people have contributed to this book, and responsibility for its shortcomings
and faults are wholly my own.
This project also has had enormous institutional support, direct and tacit.
I began work on it in the ‘old’ Wellcome Unit, Oxford, a community that
inspired rigour and independence. Two years of research and a trip to Jerusalem
were funded by the Wellcome Trust. The Department of History, University
of Aberdeen, briefly housed me. Pembroke College, Cambridge, supported me
for two years as the R. A. Butler Research Fellow, and has provided a grant
towards the illustrations. With fondness I remember the welcome I received in
Pembroke and Cambridge from the late Mark Kaplanoff. The Department of
Acknowledgements vii
History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, home to some of
the people listed above and many friends, has collectively willed me to com-
pletion. The Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, has given me more time
than I knew I needed. The Society for the Social History of Medicine awarded
a much abbreviated and now revised version of Part III its Essay Prize,
‘How to Read Simon Forman’s Casebooks: Medicine, Astrology and Gender
in Elizabethan London’, Social History of Medicine,(),–, and I owe
them gratitude for this award and Oxford University Press for permission to
revisit that material in this book. Bill Newman and Tony Grafton nursed the
germs of Part IV into print, ‘“The Food of Angels”: Simon Forman’s
Alchemical Medicine’, in Anthony Grafton and William Newman (eds.),
Secrets of Nature: Astrology and Alchemy in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge,
Mass., ),–, and MIT Press has allowed me to include this material
here. I am also indebted to the Bodleian Library, Oxford, the British Library,
the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington DC, the Provost and Fellows of
King’s College, Cambridge, the National Portrait Gallery, and the Master and
Fellows of Pembroke College, Cambridge, for permission to reproduce images
from their collections. I am grateful to the Royal Society for a grant towards the
costs of the illustrations. Librarians and library staff throughout Britain and
the United States have been more than accommodating. My dependence on
the Bodleian Library, Oxford, is self-evident, and I am especially indebted
to the staff in Duke Humphrey’s Library, Alan Carter, Russell Edwards,
Jean-Pierre Mialon, and William Hodges. Ashmole’s volumes are big and
heavy and only now am I learning not to want to look again at the ones I have
just returned to the stacks.
Finally, in all of these places I have had many friends who bore with my talk
of Forman and talked about other things. This book was begun when I stayed
in England to be with Joad, and with him and for him it was written.
L.K.
June
CONTENTS
List of Illustrations x
List ofTables xii
Abbreviations and Conventions xiii
List of Astrological Symbols xv
Chronology xvi
Introduction
I. THE MAKING OF AN ASTROLOGER-PHYSICIAN
. Early Life and Learning
. Astronomy, Magic, and the Mathematical Practitioners of London
. How to Write like a Magus
II. PLAGUE AND THE COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS
OF LONDON
. The College of Physicians and Irregular Medicine in London,
c.–
. Plague and Paracelsianism
III. THE CASEBOOKS
. How to Read the Casebooks
. Gender, Authority, and Astrology
IV. ALCHEMY, MAGIC, AND MEDICINE
. ‘Of Cako’, or the Medical Uses of Antimony
. The Food of Angels
. Magic and Medicine
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index of Manuscripts
General Index
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Frontispiece: Portrait of Simon Forman by John Bulfinch (fl. –),
engraved by Richard Godfrey ii
.. ‘The bocke of the life of and generation of Simon’, Ashm. , fo.
.. Simon Forman’s nativity, Ashm. , fo.
..–. Simon Forman’s ‘Diary’ for , Ashm. , fos. v–
.. Simon Forman’s copy of George Ripley’s ‘The compound of
alchemy’, Ashm. , fo.
.. Simon Forman, The groundes of the longitude (), title-page
.. ‘A table of the motion of the heaven that I found in an old
parchment bocke’, Ashm. , fo. v
.. Simon Forman, ‘The grounds of arte’, c.–, Ashm. , fo.
.. Simon Forman, ‘The astrologicalle judgmentes of phisick and other
questions’, –, with later revisions, Ashm. , fo. []
.. Simon Forman, ‘Liber juditiorum morborum’, , Ashm. , fo.
.. Richard Napier, ‘A treatise touching the defenc of astrologie’,
c.–, Ashm. , fo.
.. Simon Forman’s list of conflicts with the physicians on the end pages
of a casebook, Ashm. , fo.
.. Simon Forman’s note of the purchase of a book in Oxford on
Feb. , King’s MS , fo. v
.. Simon Forman’s typology of plague
.. John Melton, Astrologaster(), title-page
.. ‘The natures of the howses for judgment of diseases and the cause
therof’, Ashm. , fo. []
.. A table ‘To knowe in what place of the body every plannet doth cause
distempratur or disease and what part they rule’, Ashm. , p.
.. Entries in Simon Forman’s casebooks for October , Ashm. ,
fo.
.. The first page of Simon Forman’s recipe for his ‘Water imperialle’,
Sloane , fo.
.. A page from the fair copy of Forman’s casebook, Ashm. ,
fo.
.. Simon Forman, ‘Matrix and paine therof’, , Ashm. , fo.
List of Illustrations xi
.. Simon Forman’s copy of ‘Of cako’, an anonymized and altered
version of Alexander von Suchten’s ‘Second treatise on antimony’,
Ashm., fo.
.. ‘Cako’ in ‘Principles of philosofie’, Ashm. , p.
.. ‘Antimony’ in ‘Of appoticarie druges’, Ashm. , p.
.. A page of the ‘Life of Adam and Eve’, transcribed and annotated by
Simon Forman, Ashm. , ii, fo.
.. A page from one of Simon Forman’s copies of the ‘Ars notoria’,
Jones , fo.
.. Calculations for and drawings of the sigil made for Martha Shackleton,
April , Ashm. , fo. v
LIST OF TABLES
.. Sex and type of all consultations, March –February
.. Frequency of consultations, March –February
.. Numbers of treatments and prescriptions, March–May inclusive
.. Types of treatments and prescriptions, March–May inclusive
ABBREVIATIONS AND CONVENTIONS
Annals London, Royal College of Physicians, Annals
Bk. ,–, tr. J. Emberry and S.
Heathcote (–)
Ashm. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ashmole MS
‘Astrologicalle judgmentes’ Simon Forman, ‘The astrologicalle judgmentes
of phisick and other questions’, Ashm. ,,
BL London, British Library
Bodleian Oxford, Bodleian Library
‘Defenc’ Richard Napier, ‘A treatise touching the defenc
of astrologie’, Ashm. , fos. –, continued
, fos. –
DNB Dictionary of National Biography, ed. L. Stephen
and S. Lee, vols. (–), with
supplements
Folger Washington, DC, Folger Shakespeare Library
‘Grounds of arte’ Simon Forman, ‘The grounds of arte gathered
out of diverse authors’, Ashm.
‘Heavens’ Simon Forman, ‘The motion of the superiour
heavens’, Ashm. , fos. –
King’s Cambridge, King’s College
‘Life’ ‘Life of Adam and Eve’, in H. F. D. Sparks (ed.),
The Apocryphal Old Testament(Oxford, ),
–; Ashm. , ii
Longitude Simon Forman, The groundes of the longitude
()
‘Matrix’ Simon Forman, ‘Matrix and paine therof’,
Ashm., fos. –; ed. Barbara Traister,
‘“Matrix and the pain thereof”: A Sixteenth-
Century Gynaecological Essay’, Medical
History,(),–
OED Oxford English Dictionary
<http://dictionary.oed.com/>
Sloane London, British Library, Sloane MS
xiv Abbreviations and Conventions
STC A. W. Pollard and G. R. Redgrave, A Short-Title
Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland,
and Ireland,nd edn. ()
Trinity Cambridge, Trinity College
The place of publication is London unless otherwise noted.
All quotations are in the original spelling with i/j and u/v modernized and
contractions expanded. Duplicate words and other minor copying errors have
been silently corrected. Most first names have been standardized.
Forman wrote in a distinctive, often archaic fashion. Where necessary for
clarity, punctuation has been added. Existing punctuation has been modern-
ized, usually converting full stops into commas and slashes into full stops. The
erratic use of capital letters has been retained when conveying emphasis. Red
ink and different scripts are recorded in footnotes where relevant. The word
‘wordle’ for ‘world’ is a hallmark of his writings, and the letters have not been
un-transposed. Forman’s malapropisms remain.
Usually the most recent set of foliation or pagination in a manuscript is
cited. Item numbers are omitted where citations are to a single set of numera-
tion running throughout a volume. All folio and signature references are to
the recto unless otherwise noted. Brackets indicate numbers that have been
inferred.
Dates are given in Old Style, except the year is taken to begin on January.
References to the Annals include the page and date of the record. References to
the casebooks include volume numbers and the name and date heading a
consultation, omitting folio references unless the dated records are out of
sequence.
