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Medicine and Magic in Elizabethan London: Simon Forman, Astrologer, Alchemist, and Physician

2006; Oxford University Press; Volume: CXXI; Issue: 494 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/ehr/cel298

1477-4534

John Henry,

History of Medicine Studies

THIS is the second, and best, book on Simon Forman to appear recently, as belated follow-ups to the somewhat sensationalist study by A.L. Rowse (Simon Forman: Sex and Society in Shakespeare's Age, London, 1974). The main reason for this attention is the fact that Forman was a compulsive writer and left many reams of easily readable handwritten notes on his life and all aspects of his work, in astrology, alchemy and other aspects of natural magic, obstetrics and medicine. Lauren Kassell's book is the first one to fully exploit these papers and its great strength is that it takes us through all the different aspects of Forman's work, providing many fascinating insights into the work of a highly successful irregular medical practitioner, the place of unorthodox sciences like alchemy and natural magic in the daily life of Elizabethan England, and the mind of an uneducated but remarkable thinker. Unfortunately, if the book has a failing, it is also due to the fact that it is so heavily dependent upon Forman's own work. Part of the problem here is that Kassell never discusses the purpose of Forman's obsessive writings. In spite of appearances, they do not seem to have been written for publication. But they do not seem to be entirely private either. If they were, we might expect them to be fairly honest—at least up to the point where self-deception takes over, as it always does. These papers are much too often concerned with Forman's public image to look like papers intended for his eyes only. As Kassell herself points out, Forman is often protesting his importance. But what is the point of making such protests in papers that were not intended for publication? It seems clear that he did have an audience of some sort in mind. There can be only one explanation. Just as Forman himself copied the manuscripts of other alchemists, astrologers, and other natural magicians, so he saw himself as contributing to this secretive tradition of writing only for other adepts. Accordingly, he left his papers to Richard Napier, a like-minded irregular medical practitioner, and eventually they were acquired by Elias Ashmole, an alchemist and antiquarian collector with an unquenchable appetite for the occult. If Forman was writing his papers for a clandestine posterity among fellow magicians, then it shows that he was not an out and out fraud, concerned only with his ability to attract paying customers. Perhaps he genuinely did believe that he was making a real contribution to the advancement of the occult arts. The problem is, however, that there is very little evidence that Forman, in spite of his own self-confidence, had either the necessary educational background, or the intellectual wherewithal to do this.