Lauren Kassel, Medicine & Magic in the Elisabethan London; Simon Forman: Astrologer, Alchemist, & Physician
Clarendon Press Oxford | ISBN 0199215273 | 2006 | PDF | 6.26 MB | 300 pages
Forman was an untutored, irregular medical practitioner, more concerned with the complexities of medical practices than the intricacies of doctrinal positions. Occasionally he opposed Galenic medicine and promoted a Paracelsian cosmology.
He never articulated a clear philosophy of medicine, though in his final decade he came close, prompted by his conflicts with the College of Physicians. Mostly he expounded the virtues of the astrologerphysician and protested his divinely imparted gifts to read the stars and heal disease.
He called himself a physician and a gentleman, and, without affixing a label to his activities, he presented himself as a philosopher, adept, prophet, and magus, heir to the wisdom of Adam, Moses, Hermes Trismegistus, and Solomon.Forman’s medical ideas and practices cannot be separated from his pursuit of astrology, alchemy, and magic. This study is as much about the occult, or hermetic sciences as it is about the history of medicine.
He never articulated a clear philosophy of medicine, though in his final decade he came close, prompted by his conflicts with the College of Physicians. Mostly he expounded the virtues of the astrologerphysician and protested his divinely imparted gifts to read the stars and heal disease.
He called himself a physician and a gentleman, and, without affixing a label to his activities, he presented himself as a philosopher, adept, prophet, and magus, heir to the wisdom of Adam, Moses, Hermes Trismegistus, and Solomon.Forman’s medical ideas and practices cannot be separated from his pursuit of astrology, alchemy, and magic. This study is as much about the occult, or hermetic sciences as it is about the history of medicine.
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