Medicine and Magic in Elizabethan London: Simon Forman: Astrologer, Alchemist, & Physician (review)

Elizabethan London housed its share of eccentric natural philosophers and controversial medical practitioners, but few have acquired the level of mystique that continues to surround the notorious Simon Forman. The astrologer-physician of Lambeth, as Forman referred to himself, dabbled in alchemy, magic, medicine, geomancy, necromancy, and astrology, which he viewed as inseparable elements of his divinely inspired art as a magus. Although Forman was condemned by the College of Physicians as a dangerous quack and ignorant opportunist, he managed to secure a significant body of patients and influential advocates.

Despite Forman’s lack of formal medical training and his contentious relationship with the physicians, his extant papers were meticulously preserved and organized after his death by Elias Ashmole. In recent years, these records have generated a great deal of interest among historians of science and medicine, notably including Barbara Traister, Michael McVaugh, and A. L. Rowse. In an effort to rehabilitate Forman’s image and explore the complexities of his cosmology, most scholarship to date has focused on his astrology or his eccentricities. While such approaches have shed much light on Forman’s natural philosophy and his interactions with hermetic and Paracel-sian traditions, they have focused less on his role as a medical practitioner. According to Lauren Kassell, Forman’s medical activities offer significant clues about the diverse alchemical and astrological traditions in sixteenth-century London, and cannot be divorced from his other scientific pursuits. In Medicine and Magic in Elizabethan London, Kassell places Forman within the social and cultural context of early modern London’s medical landscape, and demonstrates that his ideas represented the fluid convergence of many intellectual traditions, including elements of Jewish, Christian, Arabic, and pagan wisdom.

Rather than adopting a one-dimensional biographical approach, Kassell sorts through the many layers of Forman’s identity and provides a cogent cultural analysis of his interactions with patients, physicians, and Paracelsian cosmology. Although the bulk of Forman’s writings are autobiographical in nature, Kassell asserts that he recorded the events of his life as an astrological experiment. For that reason, his papers offer significant insight into his natural philosophy, medical practice, and the intellectual traditions on which he based his understanding of the cosmos.

Kassell’s study offers an anthropologically infused analysis of Forman’s writings, social networks, and intellectual foundations that deftly addresses his motivations and the tension between his self-image and the perceptions of other medical practitioners. While Forman believed his work was the product of divine inspiration, and that he alone possessed exceptional expertise in astrology, his contemporaries described him as offensive, arrogant, and dangerously incompetent. Since Forman lacked a university education and a license to practice medicine, he was marginalized by the College of Physicians and other natural philosophers. Due to this animosity, Forman penned numerous treatises to defend his work and convey the inadequacy of Lon-don’s physicians, and he eventually found himself scrutinized by the College’s censors for his insubordination.

Forman’s conflicts with his contemporaries over matters of authority and intellectual legitimacy form the foundation of Kassell’s work and offer a vital glimpse at the ways in which London’s medical landscape was transformed by print culture, the plague, and Paracelsianism at the end of the sixteenth century. By placing Forman’s activities within the context of irregular medical practice, Kassell convincingly demonstrates the ways in which the boundaries between popular and elite scientific pursuits were often difficult to discern, particularly in the case of Forman’s astrological work. Although Forman believed he was the rightful heir to highly revered ancient traditions, his methods quickly came under the scrutiny of contemporary physicians.

Building on the recent work of Margaret Pelling, one of the greatest strengths of Kassell’s book lies in its assessment of Forman’s role in fueling the rivalry and competition among medical practitioners in the wake of the 1592 outbreak of the plague. By addressing Forman’s success as an irregular practitioner, Kassell reveals...