Puritan perceptions of illness in seventeenth century England

Abstract

Introduction Not many historians so far have examined Puritan attitudes to physical illness. A lot of the contextual spadework, however, has already been done by social, cultural, political, religious and demographic historians. They provide the larger picture in which to place the subject and they also help to illuminate related issues (for instance, the spiritualisation of life, providence, the different shades of Puritanism, the material conditions of society, etc.). Moreover, thanatology has recently become popular. As death was often the expected consequence of illness in the seventeenth century, people's attitudes to it had a close relationship to their perceptions of illness. Attitudes to illness itself have been studied by Keith Thomas and Alan Macfarlane. Both bring out the importance of providence as a means by which Puritans made sense of illness. Thomas also provides an influential and important overview of cultural change in seventeenth century England that shows magic declining with a trend towards secularisation after the Restoration. It may be, as Jonathan Barry points out in this volume, that secularisation was not as rapid or as clear-cut as some historians, following Thomas, have imagined. Also, more specifically, the case for providentialism may have been overemphasised, and in this essay I shall spell out in detail the nature of the eclectic use of physical and religious explanations of illness. Psychological illness in the seventeenth century has received some recent attention.