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The technique of using pigeon slippers – "a cut of pork and applied to the sole of each foot" – is one of the many surprising "remedies" revealed by a team of Cambridge researchers, who spent a decade sift through thousands of nearly illegible medical records of two controversial Elizabethan charlatans.
Self-taught doctor and astrologer, Simon Forman turned to medicine after claiming to have cured the plague in 1592. Despised by the College of Physicians of London, he set up an astrological practice claiming to be able to use the stars for diagnose and cure everything from sickness to haunting. His protégé, Field Rector Richard Napier, continued his activity after Forman's death in 1611. Four years later, Forman was posthumously involved in the infamous Overbury murder scandal; would have provided the arsenic used to ship the poet Thomas Overbury.
Case No 14488
Elizabeth Townsend of Odell, 80 years old. Sunday, February 20, 1603, 17h.
Without consent. A parent for his aunt. Without consent.
Light head. Head and eyes Can not rest in bed. The tent somewhat. Said that it comes a little in bed. He woke up one night and went to a small spring and came back all wet, and no one knew it until it came.
She says that if she drowned, she saved her soul. For said that she was one of the Harolds who did and saved her. A woman from Franklin.
She will pray well.
She was long stunned because she loved a being who was cheating on her.
Case No. 55351
William Wyle of Clifton, 33 years old. Saturday, December 7, 1622, 14h.
Much troubled by the frightening dreams that something lies at night on his chest.
Very fearful & think that something at night rests on his chest.
Can not sleep by fear. Used now and then to light candles. Can not sleep at home can still abroad.
Despised by the medical establishment of the time, Forman wrote much of his life in autobiographies, which included eyewitness accounts of some of Shakespeare's plays. In collaboration with Napier, he has also written many case notes of the more than 80,000 patients he has seen, indicating the time, dates, names, locations and details of their clients' illnesses. Unfortunately for historians, the notes written in 66 volumes of vows kept in Oxford's Bodleian Library are virtually illegible.
Cambridge researchers have spent the last 10 years browsing, transcribing, editing and digitizing books. On Thursday, transcripts of their 500 favorite cases will be available online for lay readers.
These go from a John Wilkingson, whose hair was lost to "French sickness" and who presents himself for treatment after being "attacked with a rapier in his private parts", to a Joan Broadbrok who "Thinks his children are rats and mice" and Edward Cleaver, who would have had "sick" thoughts such as "kisse myne ass". This may, note the doctors, be due to the witchcraft of a neighbor – this Jane Parbery, who has been nursing her puppy "since twelve months since".
Some of the cases are truly sad, as in "very troubled mind," Eleanor Burge of Archester, 37, who "can not stand her child even though she likes him a lot" but is "afraid of Have a knife in her hand unless she should either kill herself or kill her child or a friend. " Or Alice Woodward, of Stoke Hammond, 38, "who was very saddened to have had 7 full-time children but was still born … everyone saving her first … can not help her because she does not have to worry about it. "Not the same fortune as other women," write the doctors.
Others are more disturbing. Joan Savage of Northlie is recorded in 1624 as "demon-minded": "Lots of ruckus, lashes and cruel acts made her insane and worse than before" say the notes. "Crazy since Pentecost and since then he is tied with chains and is ravenous in meat."
Professor Lauren Kassell, from the Cambridge Department of History and Philosophy of Science, explained: "Napier has produced most of the business, but his calligraphy was atrocious and his archives very messy. Forman's writing is strangely archaic, as if he read too many medieval manuscripts. These are notes only intended to be understood by their authors. "
Kassell said the transcripts are "the tip of the iceberg", with volumes containing "thousands of cryptic writing pages full of astral symbols, strange elixir recipes and details of the lives of lords and cooks with broken-hearted dog bites. "Complete case collections, containing the 80,000 cases in the original astrologers' handwriting, are also available online.
The most popular treatments recommended by the couple are purges, fortifying beers or bloodletting, said Kassell, while others are prescribed the touch of the hand of a death or pigeon slippers. Napier also liked to ask the angels for a second opinion, which he accurately recorded. "He will die in a short time," he told him conclusively, on one occasion, by a spirit of ministry. "I should not meddle with him," advises Archangel Michael to another.
The two men also sold their clients "counter-spells" against harmful or suicidal thoughts, which they believed to be the work of witchcraft or possession.
Kassell hopes the project "will open a wormhole in the dirty and enigmatic world of 17th century medicine, magic and occultism" for the general public.
"Until now, the specialists who have ventured into the collections have found the navigation difficult. Our vast digital project has changed all that and will tilt future generations into case books, "she said. "We encourage people to use transcripts as discoverers before diving into the grove of scribbles and symbols. The Forman and Napier cases could make you crack.
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