The Notorious Astrological Physician of London: Works and Days of Simon Forman [Hardcover]

Barbara Howard Traister (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 2001 | ISBN-10: 0226811409 | ISBN-13: 978-0226811406 | Edition: 1

Quack, conjurer, sex fiend, murderer—Simon Forman has been called all these things, and worse, ever since he was implicated (two years after his death) in the Overbury poisoning scandal that rocked the court of King James. But as Barbara Traister shows in this fascinating book, Forman's own unpublished manuscripts—considered here in their entirety for the first time—paint a quite different picture of the works and days of this notorious astrological physician of London.

Although he received no formal medical education, Forman built a thriving practice. His success rankled the College of Physicians of London, who hounded Forman with fines and jail terms for nearly two decades. In addition to detailing case histories of his medical practice—the first such records known from London—as well as his run-ins with the College, Forman's manuscripts cover a wide variety of other matters, from astrology and alchemy to gardening and the theater. His autobiographical writings are among the earliest English examples of their genre and display an abiding passion for reworking his personal history in the best possible light, even though they show little evidence that Forman ever intended to publish them.

Fantastic as many of Forman's manuscripts are, it is their more mundane aspects that make them such a priceless record of what daily life was like for ordinary inhabitants of Shakespeare's London. Forman's descriptions of the stench of a privy, the paralyzed limbs of a child, a lost bitch dog with a velvet collar all offer tantalizing glimpses of a world that seems at once very far away and intimately familiar. Anyone who wants to reclaim that world will enjoy this book.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Simon Forman is known to English history largely as a footnote to a minor drama. He figures as a presumed accomplice in the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury, a courtier who fell victim to intrigue during the reign of King James and was poisoned by a potion that Forman may have concocted.

Forman would have been just the man for such a job, as Barbara Traister's biographical study amply shows. He was a renowned and sought-after physician, but he was also no Hippocrates. Instead, Forman dabbled in alchemy, astrology, black and white magic, and prophecy, and he was an accomplished herbalist. He also, it happens, learned much of what he knew about medicine by reading up on it while serving time in prison for witchcraft. Still, Forman was an apparently skillful--and apparently fearless--practitioner who remained in London during the great plague of 1592-93 while most other doctors abandoned the city, earning much respect for his steadfastness. Among his patients was Robert Burton, the author of The Anatomy of Melancholy; several members of the London nobility also consulted him, and over the years, he treated many thousands of patients, a practice that earned him a considerable fortune.

For all his forays into the occult, Forman was a diligent student of science, whose journals reveal much about the practice of medicine in early-modern Europe. Traister's book, drawing heavily on those documents, offers a glimpse into that time, and it makes a useful addition to the history of medicine. --Gregory McNamee

From Library Journal

Simon Forman was a self-taught physician, astrologer, and practitioner of black magic who was able to practice medicine in 16th-century England despite persecution by the Royal College of Physicians. Traister (English, Lehigh Univ.) uses Forman's manuscripts to paint a colorful image of his life and of society in Shakespeare's London. We hear of various maladies and their cures as well as Forman's use of spells and predictions of the future. We see Forman building his practice and struggling to raise himself in society, and we learn how he thought his patients and peers viewed him. Traister's view is more positive than A.L. Rowse's in Sex and Society in Shakespeare's Age: Simon Forman the Astrologer (1974. o.p.), the only other recent book on Forman. Recommended for large academic collections.DEric D. Albright, Duke Univ. Medical Ctr. Lib., Durham, NC
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 232 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; 1 edition (February 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226811409
• ISBN-13: 978-0226811406
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,724,279 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Practicing Medicine by the Stars, April 11, 2001

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R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Notorious Astrological Physician of London: Works and Days of Simon Forman (Hardcover)

How did physicians run their practices four hundred years ago? It's a peculiar idea that in a time when so little was scientifically understood about how the body and how medicines worked, physicians did try to make sense of what their patients were going through, and even tried to be objective and logical about treatments that were mostly magical. In _The Notorious Astrological Physician of London: Works and Days of Simon Forman_ (University of Chicago Press), Barbara Howard Traister tells of one particular physician working around 1600. The notoriety mentioned in the title of the book does not refer to his frequent sexual affairs, but to something that happened after Forman's death and for which he was completely unresponsible. Nonetheless, those who know Forman's name these days know it because of literary references to his dark posthumous connection with a case of poisoning.

But Forman was an earnest and serious physician. He wrote an autobiography, he wrote and copied textbooks for himself, and he kept a diary; Traister has gone to these core documents to give his picture. Forman was busy during the London plague of 1593 (unlike other physicians, he didn't flee the city), and he had an active career as physician and astrologer. He had many years of fighting the College of Physicians, which did not give him a medical license until 1603 (and persecuted him, in his view, even after that). Forman kept fine records, one of the reasons his life and practice can be reconstructed better than those of other physicians. Traister gives many quotations and samples to show how his practice worked. Forman was not so enthusiastic about bloodletting as were most of his contemporaries. He tended to give strong purgatives, and for this reason, he seldom treated children; the treatments of the time were too harsh. Parents seemed to understand this, and often only wanted him to give a prognosis. This was common at the time; ability to diagnose was severely limited and ability to cure was even worse, so patients were often satisfied just to know how bad they could expect things to be.

The pleasure in reading Traister's lively account is that Forman comes across as a active thinker who used his own resourcefulness and intellect to build a stock of clinically useful knowledge (and also spent as much energy womanizing as that other diarist, Pepys). He may have built his practice on superstition, aphrodisiacs, and fortune-telling, but he had a successful professional life despite many trials (literally and figuratively). Traister's book, an academic work full of quotations and footnotes, is nonetheless an engrossing picture of an interesting doctor and how he made his living.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Introduction to Forman, February 13, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Notorious Astrological Physician of London: Works and Days of Simon Forman (Hardcover)

Simon Forman was one of the most fascinating characters of the Elizabethan age. Previous books about him have, however, been abysmally bad, particularly A.L. Rowse's 1974 biography. Traister provides a much more reliable introduction to Forman and his milieu that is concise and accessible to general readers. She describes his life, his astrological-medical practice, his many unpublished writings, his magical pursuits and his involvement in the famous Essex scandal, as the posthumus patsy. This is all irresistible stuff.

Specialists will regret that Traister's grasp on the arcana of astrology and angelic magic is not stronger. And for a really thorough examination of his medicine and his patients we shall have to wait for Loren Kassell's forthcoming book. Still, a huge improvement on Rowse.

5.0 out of 5 stars Surprised and happy!, August 31, 2010

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Gary Files (Melbourne. Australia) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Notorious Astrological Physician of London: Works and Days of Simon Forman (Hardcover)

This book, "The Notorious Astrological Physician of London: Works and Days of Simon Foreman" - an integral part of the research I was making into that period - arrived very promptly, despite having to be sent Internationally, and in excellent shape. It was exactly as described (as new) and I am very satisfied.