Abstract
Abstract Historians have often represented prayer as an instrumental response to illness. We argue instead that prayer, together with physic, was part of larger regimes to preserve health and prevent disease. We focus on early modern England, through the philosophical writings of the physician, Robert Fludd, and the medical records of the clergyman, Richard Napier. Fludd depicted health as a fortress and illness as an invasion by demons; the physician counsels the patient in maintaining and restoring moral and bodily order. Napier documented actual uses of prayer. As in Fludd’s trope, through prayer, Napier and his patients enacted their aspiration for health and their commitment to a Christian order in which medicine only worked if God so willed it. Prayer, like physic, was a key part of a regime that the wise practitioner aimed to provide for his patients, and that they expected to receive from him.
Highlights
Robert Fludd (1574–1637), the English physician whose elaborate images regularly adorn histories of science, depicted health as a fortress
We focus on early modern England, through the philosophical writings of the physician, Robert Fludd, and the medical records of the clergyman, Richard Napier
Robert Fludd studied in Oxford in the 1590s, travelled throughout Europe for five or six years, in 1605, at the age of 29, he settled in London and petitioned the College of Physicians for a license to practise physic
Summary
Robert Fludd (1574–1637), the English physician whose elaborate images regularly adorn histories of science, depicted health as a fortress (see Fig. 1). Robert Fludd studied in Oxford in the 1590s, travelled throughout Europe for five or six years, in 1605, at the age of 29, he settled in London and petitioned the College of Physicians for a license to practise physic They examined him “in both galenical and spagyrical [alchemical] medicines” but found him “not satisfactory enough in either.”[17] In Galenic medicine, illness was defined as an imbalance of the four humours (blood, choler/bile, melancholy, phlegm) and focused on regimen to prevent illness and treatments to evacuate the body, through bloodlettings, emetics or purges. Robert Fludd, Integrum morborum mysterium, sive, Medicinae catholicae tomi primi tractatus secundus (Frankfurt, 1631), Detail of title page Public domain, downloaded from , 27 July 2021. Balance between angels and demons, redirected vital powers from dead bodies into living ones, and managed the production and disposal of bodily waste.”[30] This expansive medical economy endowed a physician with powers over the cosmic forces that governed health and disease These ideas informed the spiritual healing of later centuries.[31]. For evidence of how prayer featured in the everyday devotional and medical practices of a physician and his patients, we will turn to Richard Napier’s casebooks
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