Astrological Medicine Research Articles

When Jupiter Meets Saturn: Aby Warburg, Karl Sudhoff, and Astrological Medicine in the Age of Disenchantment.

As disenchantment began to be recognized as a recurring, never-ending process in recent scholarship, "When Jupiter Meets Saturn" argues that Aby Warburg and Karl Sudhoff's debate on Reformation astrological medicine provided a new theory of the emergence of modern science and rationality. Drawing on their encounter and divergence in interwar Germany, especially their curatorial collaboration for the 1911 Internationale Hygiene-Ausstellung, the article shows that Warburg and Sudhoff generated completely opposite historical evaluations of astrological medicine using the very same materials. Approaching history as healers, they developed different ways of seeing from medical epistemologies and brought out entangled temporalities from images.

Did the Astrological Content of Culpeper’s English Physitian Undermine its Usefulness?

Nicholas Culpeper’s The English Physitian (1652) was constructed from what the author considered the best learned study of English herbal medicines and was sold for a few pence to a nation whose medical practitioners were unaffordable by the majority and who hid from them useful knowledge on herbal cures they could instead obtain cheaply. Why, then, did Culpeper obscure that knowledge with an overlay of a system of astrological diagnosis and prescription which only a very few had the skill to utilise? Did this not work against the purpose of the herbal, or was there a simpler way to do it? I argue that Culpeper expected that most readers would use a simple almanac to help them select the appropriate herbal medicines and I explain the method laid out in the herbal as ‘instruction for the right use of the book’ and provide a worked example. Use of an almanac facilitated most readers to practice a form of astrological medicine and appreciate both the God-given signs in the heavens and the herbal medicines freely available for the sicknesses which troubled the descendants of Adam and Eve who had been cast out of the Garden of Eden.

Jeffrey Kotyk. “Indo-Iranian and Islamicate Sources of Astrological Medicine in Medieval China”

Jeffrey Kotyk. “Indo-Iranian and Islamicate Sources of Astrological Medicine in Medieval China”

Nahmanides’ Astrological and Religious Thinking and the Views of the Contemporaneous Catalan Christian Sages

Abstract This paper examines the astrological and religious thinking of Moshe ben Nahman (also known as Ramban or Nahmanides) and the intellectual connections in this field with two of the most outstanding Christian thinkers of his time, Ramon Llull and Arnau de Vilanova. Nahmanides, like many medieval scholars, admitted an astral influence, but he did not accept astrology as a divinatory science. He incorporated astrological doctrines in his exegetical works, assuming that Israel is not determined by any star because it only responds to God. Yet the study of medieval medicine and its application cannot be separated from astrology practice because it was considered that the stars had a direct influence not only on the development of the human body, from birth to death, but also in the disease processes which affect it. Ramban and his disciple Solomon ben Adret accepted and practiced astrological medicine. Llull and de Vilanova also devoted themselves to this discipline. All of them agree on the influence of the stars on humankind but condemned astral magic. Like Ramban, Llull rejects other astrological methods considered non-scientific in his time, such as prediction through horoscope. Thus, these thinkers tried to develop an astrology that was not in contradiction with divine omnipotence or free will.

Indo-Iranian and Islamicate Sources of Astrological Medicine in Medieval China

Abstract This study documents the introduction and implementation of foreign astrological medicine—specifically, prognosis on the basis of horoscopy—between the eighth and sixteenth centuries in China. It is argued that materials derived from Hellenistic, Indian, Iranian, and Islamicate sources were utilized by Chinese astrologers during the medieval period to predict illness. This study furthermore argues that remedies for negative astral influence were religious in nature and therefore constituted a type of faith healing that was practiced among Buddhists and Daoists.

Medicine, Religion, and Magic in Early Stuart England: Richard Napier's Medical Practice by Ofer Hadass

Reviewed by: Medicine, Religion, and Magic in Early Stuart England: Richard Napier's Medical Practice by Ofer Hadass Olivia Weisser Ofer Hadass. Medicine, Religion, and Magic in Early Stuart England: Richard Napier's Medical Practice. The Magic in History Series. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2018. xvi + 213 pp. Ill. $89.95 (978-0-271-08018-5). Seventeenth-century healer Richard Napier was many things: physician, clergyman, astrologer, spiritual medium. He was an experimenter and careful observer of natural signs, and he mapped the stars and talked to angels to decipher his patients' health. Ofer Hadass's new book examines the mental world of this enigmatic man. The book reveals the inseparability of Napier's religious beliefs, magical practices, and medical work. Together, Hadass argues, they created a coherent worldview. This portrait of Richard Napier redresses an imbalanced view of the period that pits superstitious magic against rational medicine. Rather, Napier shows that astral magic and conversations with angels could be practical parts of a physician's toolkit. They gave Napier reliable ways of assessing ambiguous symptoms and determining treatments. Although the book argues for the entwined nature of Napier's magic, medicine, and religion, it walks through each strand separately. The opening chapter on astrological medicine outlines Napier's theory of the body and conception of illness, both of which aligned with nonastrological medicine of the time. Obstruction and flow, as well as balance, were key to health. Excretions provided insights into the inner workings of the body, as well as guides to the body's proper function. Measuring output, for example, allowed Napier to gauge the efficacy of his treatments. The chapter on astral magic likewise begins with an overview of magical traditions and their underlying theoretical frameworks. The focus here is on Napier's use of magical remedies. Healing objects harnessed occult powers and could include rings that patients wore or pieces of metal or wax that patients applied to their ailing bodies. A separate chapter is devoted to Napier's use of magic to acquire information about his patients, namely his unique communications with angels. Hadass covers the practicalities of how Napier accessed and used the wisdom of spirits, as well as contemporaries' accounts of the practice. The book ends with a shorter discussion of Napier's stance on doctrinal matters, to provide the theological underpinnings of his astrological practice. This chapter centers on two debates: citing pagan authors in church sermons and dating Christ's birth. Medicine, Religion, and Magic in Early Stuart England offers a thoughtful and comprehensive intellectual biography of Richard Napier. The book will be of great use to scholars and students for its clear introductions to complex topics, [End Page 460] such as early modern astrology and the occult. The book also illuminates the fascinating mental world of Napier, which offers rich insights into beliefs and practices of the age. Napier was by no means representative, however. To what extent can we extrapolate from this extraordinary man to the period more generally? Perhaps the most admirable aspect of this study is the technical skill needed to make sense of Napier's cases. The extant archive is immense and, as indicated by the handful of images included in the book, rather illegible. The work of transcription had to be painstaking and time-consuming. Moreover, the book's clear prose and structure mask the labor of untangling Napier's abbreviations, charts, and idiosyncratic views. Given the care and time that went into analyzing Napier's writing, I was surprised to find no mention of the Casebooks Project. The Casebooks Project is a team of researchers at the University of Cambridge who, under the supervision of Lauren Kassell, have devoted the last ten years to creating a digitized edition of the cases of Richard Napier, as well as those of his teacher, Simon Forman: https://casebooks.lib.cam.ac.uk/. The project includes scans of the manuscripts, guides to deciphering the astrology, and critical introductions to the cases. The website also invites users to search the cases in a variety of ways—by date or disease, for example—and to analyze cases in relation to one another using categories such as names, topics...

Astrology in Hebrew Texts Before and After Islam

This article examines the constitution of astrology in four Hebrew works, two written before and two after the emergence of Islam. It argues that there is a significant difference in both form and substance in pre and post-Islamic works. In all cases the works strive to nativize a cosmopolitan tradition, and to integrate partially theorized or decontextualized concepts. The pre-Islamic works use a cosmopolitan model of astrological medicine that they particularize by means of remythologizing and an appeal to experience. The post-Islamic works differ from each other and from the pre-Islamic works in their use of Islamic discourse to authorize their views, and in terms of their relation to earlier texts.

Healing Gods, Heroes and Rituals in the Graeco-Roman World

This editorial introduces the articles published within the OLH Special Collection, ‘Healing Gods, Heroes and Rituals in the Graeco-Roman World’. The first two articles in this collection interrogate the figures of specific healing gods. Olympia Panagiotidou’s article ‘Asclepius’ Myths and Healing Narratives: Counter-Intuitive Concepts and Cultural Expectations’ focuses on the curative features that defined the image of Asclepius, the most famous of the healing gods. The next article in the collection, ‘The Fate of a Healing Goddess: Ocular Pathologies, the Antonine Plague, and the Ancient Roman Cult of Bona Dea’ by Leonardo Ambasciano, interrogates the religious figure of another healing agent: the Italian goddess Bona Dea who was particularly venerated in Rome and in the region of Latium and whose cult reveals the way in which ancient Roman androcentric control over women was institutionalised through religious figures. The third article in the collection, Audrey Ferlut’s ‘Goddesses as Consorts of the Healing Gods in Gallia Belgica and the Germaniae: Forms of Cult and Ritual Practices’ considers the impact that cults dedicated to gods and goddesses had on populations in the wider area of the Roman Empire, focusing on the Northern provinces of the Western Roman Empire (Gallia Belgica and the Germaniae). The collection’s final article, ‘From Textual Reception to Textual Codification: Thessalos and the Quest for Authenticity’ by Spyros Piperakis, moves the discussion from the question of cult practices to ‘alternative’ healing therapies in antiquity. Piperakis deals with astrological medicine, one of many alternative therapeutic methods that became popular during the Hellenistic and Roman period. Taken together, the articles in ‘Healing Gods, Heroes and Rituals in the Graeco-Roman World’ demonstrate that we need to approach the study of ancient myths and cults within their socio-cultural context. These articles thus challenge traditionalist approaches to the history of religion and reveal the richness of interdisciplinary approaches in the twenty-first century: offering new paths of inquiry that could help us to extract new data and shape a new interdisciplinarity in the current and future research of the religions and cults of Antiquity.

A Late Babylonian Compendium of Calendrical and Stellar Astrology

AbstractBM 36303+36326, BM 36628+36786+36817+37178+37197, and BM 36988 are three fragments of what was once a large, almost square tablet containing a compendium of astrological texts. The compendium, which dates to sometime after the invention of the zodiac in the late fifth century BCE, contains sections that concern astrological geography, business and the height of the river Euphrates, astrological medicine, the Dodecatemoria and Kalendertext schemes, and the first occurrence in Babylonian sources of the so-called astrological doctrine of the Terms, which is well known from later Greek and Latin sources. Most of the material in the compendium is presented in the form of associations between astronomical and/or calendrical data and terrestrial counterparts rather than as omens. Some parts of the compendium duplicate material known from other texts, suggesting that the text was compiled by a scribe as a handy resource for his own use.

The Duke and the Stars: Astrology and Politics in Renaissance Milan by Monica Azzolini (review)

Reviewed by: The Duke and the Stars: Astrology and Politics in Renaissance Milan by Monica Azzolini Michael A. Ryan Monica Azzolini. The Duke and the Stars: Astrology and Politics in Renaissance Milan. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2013. xiii + 370 pp. Ill. $49.95 (978-0-674-06663-2). The intersection of astrology with the construction of political power is the focus of Monica Azzolini’s The Duke and the Stars: Astrology and Politics in Renaissance Milan. In her excellent book, Azzolini demonstrates that astrology in late medieval Italian courts, far from being some mere pastime or plaything, was central toward the fashioning of authority among members of the Italian political elite. This was especially so during a time of significant crisis, as the Italian peninsula found itself on the brink of external invasion at the waning of the fifteenth century. In particular, Azzolini studies how astrology was crucial within the world of the Sforza dukes of Milan. These Renaissance princes held astrologers in high esteem and patronized them to such an extent that every political and medical decision they enacted was done solely after extensive consultation with their resident court astrologer. A historian of science, Azzolini breaks new ground in fifteenth-century political history with her meticulous archival research. Over the course of five chapters, Azzolini traces this deep connection between astrology and Renaissance political praxis. She primarily analyzes the private letters exchanged between the dukes and their astrologers, plus the graduation papers of those students from the University of Pavia, which provided the Sforza dukes with their astrologers, although she also investigates imagery from late medieval and early modern manuscripts and incunabula. Her first chapter goes into extensive detail about both the scientific curriculum of study for astrologers trained at the University of Pavia and the techniques and principles that astrologers learned to cast horoscopes and genitures, as well as to diagnose and treat maladies. Her second chapter delves deeply into the sensitive role that astrological prognostications played in the political world of the Renaissance. This information was a double-edged sword, used to counsel a Renaissance prince and to provide valuable secret information for his enemies. Chapter 3, an in-depth study of the sickly, intemperate, and cruel Galeazzo Maria Sforza, demonstrates the role of astrological medicine in attempts to restore his health, along with the duke’s attempt to control the production and circulation of astrological prognostications about him on the eve of his 1476 assassination. Readers of this journal will find the fourth chapter of Azzolini’s book particularly germane, as Azzolini demonstrates the centrality of physician–astrologers within the Sforza court, those individuals who operated within the two disciplines, dispensing in equal amounts astrological medicine or astrological political advice when the heavens were most auspicious. Physician–astrologers such as Ambrogio Varesi da Rosate, specifically, were invaluable advisers for the Sforza dukes and occupied positions of prestige and power within their court. These physician– astrologers’ fortunes, however, waxed and waned with those of their noble patrons. For instance, the rise and fall of the astrologer Varesi was tied directly to the shifting fortunes of Ludovico Sforza, the focus of the fifth chapter of Azzolini’s study and, for all intents and purposes, the last of the Sforza dukes. Ludovico’s increasing [End Page 380] reliance upon Varesi to chart his every move, which sometimes bordered on the irrational, reflected his growing insecurity about the future. This culminated in the 1494 descent of the French in Italian affairs and the foreign occupation of Milan in 1499. Disgraced, Ludovico eventually fled Milan to later be incarcerated, ushering in a dour period when the arts and sciences suffered in Milan and studies at the University of Pavia languished. As his patron’s fortunes collapsed, so did Varesi’s, as he fell into ignominy, losing his possessions and his property. Scholars of premodern astrology, broadly, and those who work on the juncture of astrology, medicine, and political authority, specifically, will find a treasure trove of materials in Azzolini’s splendid book. In addition to being very familiar with the extant scholarly, especially Italian, secondary literature, Azzolini distills a great quantity of detailed information via her lucid and accessible prose...

The Arabic theory of astral influences in early modern medicine

Medicine and the occult in the Renaissance were conceptually related. They were both considered as etiological pursuits that investigate the manifest and hidden causes of human conditions. Astrological medicine specifically depends on the notion that the stars are higher causes of human ailments. This notion permeated the medical thought of the Renaissance. But how can astrology be reconciled with medicine? During the Golden Age of Islam, some Arabic astrologers justified the belief in astral influences by composing a theory that explains ‘scientifically’ why the stars above had such a strong influence on the sublunary world and how their influence could be utilized and harnessed for the benefit of man generally and his health specifically. These Arabic astrologers considered medicine and astrology as complementing one another; the former investigates terrestrial causes and the latter the celestial ones which themselves determine the conditions surrounding human beings. During the Western Renaissance, many of the physicians and occultists were acquainted with the works of such Arabic astrologers and appropriated their theory of astral influences to defend their occult thought and practices. In this article, I discuss the impact of the Arabic theory of astral influences on the medicine of Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499) and Jean Fernel (1497–1558).

Theodoricus Gravius (fl. 1600–1661): Some Biographical Notes on a German Chymist and Scribe Working in Seventeenth-Century England

This article establishes the career of Theodoricus Gravius (fl. 1600–1661), a German refugee who worked in Great Linford as a laboratory assistant and scribe to the cleric and practitioner of astrological medicine, Richard Napier (1559–1634). Gravius was the first transmitter to England of the texts of the mystic Jacob Böhme, and although he settled in England, he undertook subsequent foreign visits to attempt the recovery of his property and to learn more about chymical matters. He also visited the Oxonian George Hakewill (1578–1649), and is responsible for scribing one of the manuscripts of the revisions to Hakewill's celebrated Apologie or Declaration Concerning the Power and Providence of God (1635).

Editorial

Editorial

Astrological Medicine and the Popular Press in Early Modern England

For many centuries the study of the stars was considered to be a science in western Europe. In the middle ages both astrology and astronomy, thought be the practical and theoretical parts of the scientific study of the celestial heavens, were taught as part of the university curriculum. The advent of printing in the late fifteenth century resulted in a huge variety of publications that provided the general public with access to this knowledge. This essay will examine the major role that almanacs, which were cheap, mass-produced astrological publications, played in disseminating information about astrological medical beliefs and practices to a national audience.

Astrological Medicine and the Medieval English Folded Almanac

An earlier study (see Social History of Medicine, 16.3 (2003), 481–509) has provided an analysis of twenty-nine surviving examples of the folded almanac, a group of small, late medieval manuscripts which have been of considerable interest to medical historians. It has been demonstrated that the folded almanac was an English innovation designed in part to cater to the needs of medical practitioners and other professionals with an interest in astrological medicine. This article extends the discussion by considering the date, provenance, and audience of the folded almanac and analyses what these manuscripts can reveal about the role of astrology, medicine, and the calendar in the worldviews of their owners and users. It is argued that astrological medicine, as reflected in the folded almanac, is likely to have been a key force in the wider dissemination of astrology in late medieval English society. The folded almanac can be seen as the progenitor of all later compact-format diaries, calendars, and electronic organizers.

The art and science of prognostication in early university medicine.

Prognosis occupied a more prominent place in the medieval curriculum than it does at the modern university. Scholastic discussions were rooted in the Hippocratic Aphorisms and shaped by Galen's treatises On Crisis and On Critical Days. Medical prediction, as an art dependent on personal skills such as memory and conjecture, was taught with the aid of the liberal arts of rhetoric and logic. Scientific predictability was sought in branches of mathematics, moving from periodicity and numerology to astronomy. The search for certitude contributed to the cultivation of astrology; even at its peak, however, astrological medicine did not dominate the teaching on prognostication. The ultimate concern, which awaits further discussion, was not even with forecasting as such, but with the physician and, indeed, the patient.

What is the Folded Almanac?: The Form and Function of a Key Manuscript Source for Astro-medical Practice in Later Medieval England

This article provides an account of an important source for late medieval English medicine and astrology, namely the folded almanac, also termed, less correctly, a physician's folded (or folding) calendar, vade mecum, or girdle book. On the basis of discussion of twenty-nine surviving examples of the folded almanac, a number of questions are raised about the way these manuscripts were used in astro-medical practice. This article reviews what this group of manuscripts should be called, what kind of manuscript they are, and assesses the way in which they were worn on the body. It establishes that the folded almanac was an English innovation and that many include a new, updated version of the calendar and lunar data of John Somer. A subsequent article will describe the working components of the folded almanac, and the way in which they were used in the practice of astrological medicine.

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

Simon Forman became notorious after his death in 1611. He was tainted with involvement in the scandalous death of Sir Thomas Overbury in the Tower on 14 September 1613. Overbury had been imprisoned for refusing an ambassadorship to Russia. Had he accepted the post, it would have got him out of the way of James I's favourite Robert Carr (Viscount Rochester, soon to be Earl of Somerset) and Frances Howard, wife of the Earl of Essex. Carr and Howard were carrying on an affair at court and hoping to marry after getting Howard's marriage annulled, which they eventually managed. Overbury had advised Carr, and was strongly opposed to the relationship—so it was planned to remove him abroad. Unfortunately, Overbury refused to get out of the way, was imprisoned for saying no to the King, and died. In 1615, after Carr quarrelled with James' new favourite George Villiers, rumours circulated that Overbury had been poisoned for knowing too much, and Chief Justice Coke undertook an investigation. Howard eventually pleaded guilty to the poisoning and obtained a pardon, while Carr was found guilty in a prosecution and spent six years in the Tower himself until pardoned in 1622. During the investigation, Anne Turner, widow of a physician and friend of Howard's, was accused of having helped Howard to procure Carr's love by consulting Forman, who had used black arts to help them before himself dying suddenly. Turner and three others attached to the Countess were executed for their part in the affair, although Mrs Forman escaped. Ever after, Forman's name was associated with deep plots and demonic magic. In 1974, A L Rowse wrote a book (Simon Forman: Sex and Society in Shakespeare's Age) that continued to depict him as a representative of the lusty and superstitious Elizabethan age: to Rowse, Forman was a foolish magician, a sexual glutton, and a physician to the highest ranks of English society. Traister will have none of it, although she almost manages to avoid saying so. From examination of Forman's extant manuscripts (which survive in large parts but only for years before 1603, the rest presumably having been destroyed or confiscated at the time of the Overbury trials), Traister finds him to have been serious and diligent, engaged in medical practices typical of the period in both methods and clientele (poor and ordinary people figuring far more than the few high-placed ones); he was a virgin until the age of 30 and afterwards hardly a rake. Hers is, in fact, a fundamentally revisionist account. What a pity, therefore, that it is not more robustly presented. Forman's reputation is dealt with only at the end, although she remarks throughout on Rowse's opinions. Forman's life and character are available, but only if the reader makes an effort. For instance, she notes that, apart from the Rev. Napier to whom Forman taught astrological medicine, Forman seems to have been almost friendless, and thus vulnerable to attacks by the College of Physicians and others. (Napier's practice on patients with troubled minds was detailed thoroughly by Michael MacDonald in 1981.) How individuals managed in a corporatist society does not figure in her analysis, however; instead, she lightly touches on whether ‘self-fashioning’ is a fair word for his life, carefully waffling on the point. She quotes at length from his writings, and then summarizes what he wrote, which doubles the descriptions and risks irritating either those familiar with Elizabethan prose and spelling (for whom the summary is not necessary) or those for whom the quotations will be almost unintelligible. Above all, one comes away disappointed that Traister has not gone more deeply into Forman's system of thought, which is treated descriptively but not probed analytically. In short, Traister's study is by implication a fundamental revision of the accepted view of Forman. For the student of Elizabethan medicine and society, there is much of interest. But she has not been bold enough, or made her mind up clearly enough, about many issues to make it enjoyable for the uninitiated. The notorious Forman himself may have been equally ambiguous about himself in his journals, but hardly so in public. He deserves a more judgmental treatment.

Luminaries in medicine: Richard Mead, James Gibbs, and solar and lunar effects on the human body in early modern England.

In early modern England, the medical effects of the sun and the moon had been traditionally explained by a vast symbolic system of analogies, correspondences, and relations among apparently discrete elements in man and the universe, which had its conceptual origins in the works of Aristotle, Ptolemy, and Galen. The ultimate causes of planetary emanations had been considered occult, an Aristotelian and early modern term utilized when distinguishing qualities which were evident to the senses from those which were hidden. After the Restoration, many physicians attempted to rid the natural world of occult causes and to explain invisible forces like solar and lunar emanations via mechanical, chemical, and mathematical systems. To explain the medical effects of the luminaries, the English physicians Richard Mead (1673-1754) and James Gibbs (d. 1724) utilized iatromechanism, which regarded the body as a Cartesian machine, conforming in its functions to mechanical laws. Gibbs's and Mead's use of chemical and mechanical explanations illustrates the changed intellectual climate after the Restoration, which placed rationalistic, empirical, and scientific values above traditional academic medicine. However, the basis of Mead's and Gibb's theories were traditionally Galenic and based upon astrological medicine.

:Religio Medici: Medicine and Religion in Seventeenth-Century England

Medicine and religion in 17th-century England, Ole Peter Grell and Andrew Cunningham Sir Thomas Browne and his Religio Medici - reason, nature and religion, Andrew Cunningham the career of astrological medicine in England, Michael MacDonald institutional structures and personal belief in the London College of Physicians, Harold J. Cook anatomist atheist? the hylozoistic foundations of Francis Glisson's anatomical research, Guido Giglioni the physiology of reading and the anatomy of enthusiasm, Adrian Johns piety, physic and prodigious abstinence, Simon Schaffer plague, prayer and physic - Helmontian medicine in Restoration England, Ole Peter Grell of physic and philosophy - Anne Conway, F.M. van Helmont and 17th-century medicine, Sarah Hutton the reluctant philanthropist - Robert Boyle and the Communication of Secrets and Receits in Physick, Michael Hunter the theology of affiliation and the experience of sickness in the godly family, David Harley Newtonianism, medicine and religion, Anita Guerrini quackery and enthusiasm, or why drinking water cured the plague, Mark Jenner.