![]() ![]() ![]() Another book review of Medicine and Magic argues that "Forman's fixation on power relationships and his attitude toward women. Kassell focuses on Forman's use of astrology to establish authority, particularly over women (60 percent of his patients). Using Forman's casebooks, Kassell assesses his medical practice in part 3. Physicians, in contrast, were morally corrupt for fleeing the city during outbreaks and ignorant for practicing medicine without knowing astrology. The only true cure, he argued, was repentance and adherence to God's will, which could be identified through astrology. Astrologers, he believed, were well placed to judge the past, present and future of the plague. Forman's encounters with the College occurred against the background of the plague. After 1600, he was able to avoid the College's pursuit through patronage. Through his unrepentant opposition to what he saw as the "corrupt methods of traditional physicians" rather than his combination of astrology and physic, Forman offended the College (p. This detailed study of one practitioner's confrontations with the College is invaluable, especially since this case has accounts available on both sides. In part 2, Kassell examines the College of Physicians' pursuit of Forman as an irregular medical practitioner. Kassell also intriguingly explores the ways in which Forman perceived himself: a magus-a truly great individual with the divine gift of being able to read the stars-who was persecuted by lesser practitioners (both of medicine and mathematics). Longtitude, for example, he claimed to have learned only "by the grace and helpe of God" (p. Much of his education was informal, coming from books that he read and divine revelation. Despite "a passion for learning," Forman left Oxford after a year and ended up in the Low Countries "to seke for arte and knowledge" (pp. ![]() The book is divided into four sections: "The Making of an Astrologer-Physician," "Plague and the College of Physicians of London," "The Casebooks," and "Alchemy, Magic, and Medicine." Part 1 considers the nature of Forman's knowledge, using his autobiographies and diary, his pamphlet on longitude (1591), his unpublished astrological and medical tracts, and his correspondence with Richard Napier. In this study, Lauren Kassell (Lecturer, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge) provides an examination of "the circulation of esoteric texts, the politics of medicine, the popularity of astrology, the vagaries of Paracelsianism, and the powers of magic" (p. His influence continued throughout the seventeenth century, with Robert Napier and Elias Ashmole each inheriting his papers in turn and William Lilly writing his biography in his own Life (2nd. ![]() Besides having a reputation for sexual lechery, four years after his death, he was implicated in the poisoning of Sir Thomas Overbury (1616). Simon Forman, an astrologer and physician in Elizabethan London (1552-1611), is a well-known figure amongst scholars of literature and medicine for this period. The Magical World of Elizabethan Londoners Reviewed by Lisa Smith (Department of History, University of Saskatchewan) Medicine and Magic in Elizabethan London. ![]()
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