A Small Moment of Great Illumination: Searching for Valentine Greatrakes, The Master Healer [Hardcover]

Leonard Pitt (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 5, 2006

Renowned for his healing powers, Greatrakes stood at the center of one of the great controversies of his age involving scientists, theologians, physicians, and philosophers. Many proclaimed his cures a miracle. Others denounced him as a quack.
Recent court battles over intelligent design affirm that the conflict between science and religion still rages, but what was the debate like in its earliest flowering? A Small Moment of Great Illumination visits England at the height of the Scientific Revolution to find the answer embodied in Greatrakes. Claiming he could heal others simply by touching them, Greatrakes became the target for a rising contest between the clergy and laymen who would champion the emerging scientific theories of the day. This biography traces his ascendance in the high societies of England and Ireland and his relationships with poet Andrew Marvell, philosopher Henry More, and scientist Robert Boyle.
Pitt interlaces the biography with his own adventures, Pitt's pursuit of the Irish healer turned up many magical discoveries. Including eye-witness accounts of Greatrakes's healing and correspondence from Greatrakes on how he discovered his powers, this book pieces together the life and times of an enigmatic forgotten figure.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Pitt (Walks Through Lost Paris) delves into the life and times of the now obscure but once famous Irish "healer," Valentine Greatrakes, a wealthy member of the gentry who amazed 17th-century contemporaries with his seemingly God-given ability to lay his hands on the afflicted, and cure them of every ailment, from dropsy to cancer. Patients said they felt the pain "move" through their body and leave via their fingertips, nose, toes, eyes, mouth or ears, never to return. Pitt, intrigued by a footnote in a history of medicine he happened to read in 1989, describes his years-long journey to discover as much as he could about this enigmatic man: was he a charlatan, a well-meaning quack or an authentic healer? Greatrakes's well-placed friends, such as the great scientist Robert Boyle, were inclined to believe the latter (as does Pitt, one infers), but he was subjected to bitter attacks by his many enemies. In the Middle Ages, Greatrakes might have had an easier ride, but living as he did on the cusp of the Enlightenment and the rise of the scientific method, Greatrakes's claims were intensely scrutinized. Likewise, modern readers may applaud Pitt's sleuthing but err on the side of skepticism. (Nov.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Theater-school director Pitt found Valentine Greatrakes footnoted in a history-of-medicine article, and his life hasn't been the same since. Greatrakes was a healer who believed himself an instrument of God. Of the gentry, he never demanded payment or barter for his "treatments" said to cure everything from blindness and deafness to leprosy and paralysis. He kept good company, such as Robert Boyle, one of the founders of modern science; impressed other fine minds of his generation, including Andrew Marvell; but had enemies, too. The Catholic Church questioned his authority (doctors at the time operated under licenses granted by the church), as did the English monarchy, threatened by Greatrakes' encroaching on its practice of healing with the "royal touch." Besides a biography, Pitt's book is a travel memoir of his and colleague Iain Boal's traipsings around the British and Irish countrysides looking for clues about Greatrakes and an original copy of his rare self-defense, A Brief Account(1666). It's all endlessly fascinating and great fun, full of literary intrigue and unexpected pleasures. June Sawyers
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

• Hardcover: 196 pages
• Publisher: Counterpoint (October 5, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1593761260
• ISBN-13: 978-1593761264
• Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 5.7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,196,549 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Mostly Illuminating...An Adventure in Historical Research, April 22, 2007

By 

Steve Ruskin (Colorado, United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Small Moment of Great Illumination: Searching for Valentine Greatrakes, The Master Healer (Hardcover)

Who was Valentine Greatrakes? And should we even care? A footnote in an historical article lead the author of `A Small Moment of Great Illumination' on a decade-long search to find out. Greatrakes was a 17th-century Irish nobleman who appeared to have the power to heal with his hands alone--but being neither a member of the clergy, nor a King, his use of this power (sometimes effective, sometimes not) made him a radical, dangerously near the boundaries of clergy and royalty that his station (high as it was) did not permit. His healing powers made him especially suspect in Restoration England and Ireland, when tensions ran high between royalists and regicides, Protestants and Catholics. Nevertheless, Greatrakes' apparent ability to heal so many made him popular as well as infamous. Many denounced him as a quack, while others of high authority (no less than Robert Boyle) attested to the efficacy of his abilities.

This was the Greatrakes uncovered by the author of `Small Moment,' and the story is made more interesting for being interwoven with narratives of the author's research trips to England, Ireland and even Scotland--following in Greatrakes' footsteps. The tale takes us back and forth between the 17th and 20th centuries, in and out of libraries, archives, castles and pubs. The length of the narrative is just right--the author knows when to stop one section and switch to another (in many cases, had he lingered a minute longer we'd be bored).

This is a history of a history, a diary of historical research and the story of the research subject itself. It is made more readable by the fact that the author is an amateur (he was supported in his research and travels by a friend who is a professional historian). But `Small Moment' does not suffer because of it--the writing is good and the historical recreation appears to be solid. And while most may no longer care just who Valentine Greatrakes was, the exercise of rediscovering him--and the author's obsession with finding an original copy of ones of Greatrakes' books--brings to the fore the excitement of historical research for its own sake.

6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Quest of our Times, January 3, 2007

By 

John Matlock "Gunny" (Winnemucca, NV) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Small Moment of Great Illumination: Searching for Valentine Greatrakes, The Master Healer (Hardcover)

Part travelogue, part detective story, part comedy -- it's a quest. This is the story of the author's quest to know more about a footnote. The footnote was in a history of medicine he was reading almost twenty years ago. The footnote talked about one Valentine Greatrakes, an Irish master healer of the mid 1600's. Herein is the search. Through libraries, antiquarian booksellers, across England and Ireland - I suspect in not just a few pubs along the way.

Oh yeah! They were looking for a copy of Greatrakes diary. They went to a dowser who told them it was in a trunk in Bathgate, Scotland. Off to Scotland. Can you imagine going up to a lady in her house saying, 'we have reason to believe that a rare book we're looking for is in a trunk in your attic.' ... Here come the people wearing the white clothes looking for you. They have this hotel where the walls have padding on them so you won't hurt yourself.

A Delightful read.