Popular Print and Popular Medicine: Almanacs and Health Advice in Early America

Chapter 1. Heavenly Guidance

17 1 HEAVENLY GUIDANCE The introduction to the Methodist Almanac for 1846, in a brief history of almanacs up to that time, lauds almanacs for disseminating much “useful matter.” But the essay also condemns them for conveying “superstitions and injurious trash in the shape of astrological rules.”1 The writer’s scornful opinion of astrology was shared by many in the almanac trade, as it had been by many almanac makers of previous generations . Yet astrology, despite the negative views of it held by many almanac makers, had been a staple of American almanacs since the last decade of the seventeenth century. It would continue to be so at least until the Civil War. Astrology is based on an assumption that the planets and stars influence the human body in particular and human affairs in general and dates to antiquity. Some of astrology’s practices were widely accepted in the scientific circles of sixteenth-century England and Europe. Learned men of science and medicine, however, made a clear distinction between the tenets they accepted and those they rejected. While they acknowledged the legitimacy of and even practiced “natural” astrology (used to forecast weather and to treat disease), men of science and medicine vigorously denounced “judicial” astrology, the branch of astrology that involves divination and prognostications of social and political events.2 Grounded in the belief that each individual is a microcosm under the sway of the universe in which he or she lives, and that each of the universe ’s heavenly bodies plays a critical role in determining an individual’s health or illness, astrology had been closely linked to medicine. Many trained physicians and learned practitioners consulted the heavens to 18 HEAVENLY GUIDANCE determine the appropriate times to let blood, perform surgery, and administer medicines. The signs of the zodiac and the location of the moon, for example, played important roles in determining what measures were used to treat illness. The identification of a body part or organ with each sign of the zodiac was based on the concept of shared characteristics or virtues. Thus Leo presided over the heart because the strength the lion was located in its heart, and Scorpio presided over the genitals because a scorpion’s strength was located in its tail.3 In England, astrology’s popularity, which reached its peak during the second half of the sixteenth century, was not confined to physicians and scientists, for a belief in its influence pervaded all levels of English society. During the seventeenth century astrology gradually—the word gradually must be stressed here—lost its standing within scientific and medical circles, as its doctrines were eroded by scientific advances, questioned by growing numbers of critics, and condemned by religious leaders . Yet while astrology slipped in respectability among the learned, it remained popular among ordinary men and women who continued to seek its guidance concerning life’s everyday concerns, including health and sickness.4 Astrology’s popularity flourished with the appearance of various forms of print, particularly at the low end of the market, where almanacs and other cheap publications disseminated astrological advice and other forms of health information to a wider population of readers.5 For example, one section of Erra Pater, a work popular with common readers, deals with the “various and wonderful Operations of the Signs and Planets, and other celestial Constellations, on the Bodies of Men, Women and Children, and the mighty Influences they have upon those that are born under them.” Readers of the 1799 Suffield edition were offered a primitive woodcut of the “Zodiac Man” or the “Anatomy” accompanied by a poem explaining the image.6 Almanacs were enormously popular with common as well as learned readers. Just how popular they were during this period is apparent in the distribution figures which show that during the mid seventeenth century almanac sales averaged about four hundred thousand annually, which, according to Bernard Capp, “suggests that roughly one family in three bought an almanac.”7 Because astrological medicine was based on the belief that different signs of the zodiac rule over specific parts of the body, readers of almanacs were quite familiar with the image—usually a crude woodcut—of HEAVENLY GUIDANCE 19 the “Zodiac Man,” the “Man of Signs,” or the “Anatomy.” The Anatomy depicted the human body—usually a male or an androgynous body, rarely a female body—surrounded...