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

The seventeenth century, long recognized as critical in the development of modern science, medicine, and culture, is currently receiving renewed attention and the benefit of innovative studies on aspects previously neglected in historical narratives. The present volume explores the interplay between medicine and religion in seventeenth-century England; its twelve essays span a wide variety of topics and approaches.

Andrew Cunningham opens with a lengthy examination of Sir Thomas Browne, noting how Browne’s emphasis on reason undergirds and unites his Anglicanism and his views on man’s study of nature. Michael MacDonald presents a provocative view of medical astrology; contrary to the later revulsion at such practices, early modern physicians routinely employed horoscopy as a tool, and he suggests that the expulsion of such techniques that “acknowledge the metaphysical and social dimensions of illness” (p. 81) led to an alienation of patients that remains problematic. Hal Cook examines religious affiliations of the Royal College of Physicians, highlighting its medical and religious conservatism, which was the effect—both individual and institutional—of the religious upheavals of Interregnum and Restoration. Guido Giglioni outlines the Cambridge anatomist Francis Glisson’s notions of “living matter,” which were shaped in response to the “godlessness” of Cartesian physiology, yet were themselves perceived as atheistic, contrary to their author’s intentions.

Adrian Johns gives a rather unfocused account of “enthusiasm” in the visions caused by the reading of Scripture, and the medical/theological response to such experiences. Simon Schaffer recalls Martha Taylor, the young girl who reportedly lived for many years without eating, and around whom the religious of various persuasions clustered in order to assess the sanctity of her phenomenon. Ole Peter Grell revisits the battle between Helmontians and Galenists during the plague of 1665. He provides a new perspective on this strife that corrects previous, somewhat simplistic equations of medical affiliation with political and denominational status, and studies the strongly religious views on plague and physic among Helmontians, exemplified by the Royalist George Thompson. The close physician-patient relationship, both medical and spiritual, between Anne Conway and Franciscus Mercurius van Helmont is next studied in a splendid essay by Sarah Hutton. While the younger van Helmont was not successful in curing Conway’s chronic migraine, his theological influence does appear in both her writings and her conversion to Quakerism.

Michael Hunter, in a finely documented study, emphasizes Robert Boyle’s medical preoccupations and his internal conflict between the call of Christ to heal the sick and the fear that the publication of “receipts” might both damage his reputation as a natural philosopher and trespass onto the territory of physicians. David Harley provides a useful study of the views of two Presbyterian families on God’s Providence in regard to illness and healing; such pious beliefs must have powerfully affected the practice and reception of medical treatment. The many faces of Newtonianism are reviewed by Anita Guerrini, who clearly indicates the importance of the “three-body problem” of Newtonianism, religion, and medicine and the consequent issues of mechanism, arguments from design, and deism that troubled early-eighteenth-century physiologists and physicians. Finally, Mark Jenner gives an entertaining and informative account of the links made between quackery and enthusiasm in the early eighteenth century by examining the “water cure” advocated by the Low Church cleric John Hancocke.

In sum, this volume powerfully asserts the importance of understanding the religious context of medicine in the seventeenth century, and provides some provocative questions not only for historians but even for the contemporary practitioner. Which historical views on the practice and development of medicine will have to be amended once the centrality of religion for historical characters is recognized? What does the crucial role of religion and piety in the seventeenth century say about the needs of patients and practitioners, and how might contemporary practice respond? The editors promise subsequent volumes addressing religion and medicine in later centuries, and such additions, if they maintain the generally...