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  • Two Troubled Souls: An Eighteenth-Century Couple’s Spiritual Journey in the Atlantic World by Aaron Spencer Fogleman
  • Zach Hutchins (bio)
Aaron Spencer Fogleman. Two Troubled Souls: An Eighteenth-Century Couple’s Spiritual Journey in the Atlantic World. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013. 321pp. Clothbound, $39.95.

Aaron Fogleman’s dual biography of Jean-François Reynier and his wife, Maria Barbara Knoll, is far more entertaining than any reader could reasonably expect a volume so meticulous in its scholarship to be. Reynier and Knoll deserve some credit, of course; their sexual exploits inspired multiple eighteenth-century exposés, and Reynier’s medical prowess produced memorable moments of healing, such as “the miracle of the crocodile” (59). But Fogleman’s ability to place [End Page 483] the couple in a wide variety of vividly rendered geographical and cultural contexts—from the Ephrata enclave in Pennsylvania to John Wesley’s London and Moravian clusters in Germany, Suriname, and Georgia—makes for engrossing reading that illuminates the religious, social, and economic networks that constituted the Atlantic world.

Unfortunately for readers of this journal, the medical theory and practice of Reynier and Knoll are not recounted in the same rich detail as are their respective spiritual journeys and sexual exploits. Often these lacunae are inevitable, a function of fragmentary primary sources that demand a conjectural approach. In the case of the crocodile cure, for instance, Fogleman proposes that Reynier’s use of this and other natural remedies may have been influenced by African and Native American practices: “What, exactly, he did [with the crocodile] is lost to history, but the ‘miracle’ certainly was not based on anything Reynier had read in Drake’s Anatomy or any other medical text of the day. It is likely that he learned something from the Yuchis that assisted him in carrying out the feat” (59–60).

Both Reynier and Knoll acquired their medical expertise in situ and worked as healers without formal credentials. In some cases, Fogleman argues, this lack of medical training earned Reynier the trust of marginalized populations suspicious of European medicines and doctors. Because “many white doctors in the West Indies were reluctant to treat yaws or leprosy” and “medicines imported from Denmark were ineffective,” Reynier likely learned from the herbal cures administered by African healers in treating these diseases (161). By incorporating Native and African medical knowledge into his practice, Fogleman suggests, Reynier may have “increased his chances for success” in proselyting activities for the Moravian church “because he would be dealing with spiritual-medical people whose methods were in some ways similar to his” (107).

Reynier and Knoll made few converts over the years, but their failure as missionaries likely had more to do with Reynier’s temper and abrasive personality than with the efficacy of his prescriptions. Indeed, it seems a small miracle that, after two separations and several extra-marital sexual encounters, Knoll remained married to the man. The two, however, made an effective medical team, and Fogleman contends that Knoll’s patient nursing and gentle bedside manner made her Reynier’s professional equal.

Despite their lack of medical credentials, Reynier and Knoll were held in high esteem by European immigrants living in the Americas. As Fogleman reminds readers, eighteenth-century medical practitioners [End Page 484] regularly won cultural authority in arenas outside the university. One of his anecdotes illustrates this state of affairs: when Reynier arrived in Suriname, he met with resistance from a local official named Van Meel, who questioned the legitimacy of an agreement permitting Moravian missionaries to worship in the colony. As Fogleman recounts, “Van Meel silently read the document and then, trying to intimidate Reynier, declared that he was a legal counsel (Advocat), so he knew best how to interpret it, and it did not mean what Reynier thought. But the quick-thinking Reynier claimed that he himself was a doctor (Medicus) who had ‘studied a bit’ (ein wenig studiert), and so he understood these matters as well” (114). In other words, Reynier fibbed his way into the preservation of his community’s religious freedoms, relying on his reputation as a physician to win the privileges of a minister. Reynier...

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