Medical astrology

Grafton and Siraisi, Cardano and Medical Astrology , esp. 85 Siraisi, Medieval and Renaissance Medicine, 68-9, iii, 123 Brian Copenhaver, Symphorien Champier andthe Reception of the Occultist Tradition in Renaissance France (The FFague, 1978), esp. ch. i. 

These methods were described in numerous printed astrological handbooks of the 17th cent., in particular Lilly s Christian astrology. For other accounts of medical astrology see Dunn, Status of Astrology , 112—21 MacDonald, Mystical Bedlam 26 Sawyer, Patients, Healers and Disease , 279—87. 

Cyran, Henry B. The Australian/N.Z. Book of Herbs, C H. Daath, Heinrich. Medical Astrology, Lyncroft Gardens. 

I have my doubts about medical astrology (though I have to say, I have seen cases in which it s weirdly, even disturbingly, accurate). However, I love this diagram because it reminds me that the spectrum of experience represented by the signs of the zodiac is universal and lives in everyone. 

The commonest early Hortus texts of this kind are the Blagoprokhladnyi vertograd, the translation ascribed to Nicolaus Billow mentioned above, and typically they include not only the basic herbal, lapidary and urinoscopy, but also sections on bloodletting, childbirth, medical astrology and a passage... 

In Mar. 1584 he told the Censors of the College of Physicians that he had practised medicine for sixteen years (i.e. since 1578) Annals, 8 Mar. 1593/4, pp. 84—5. In his 1607 plague tract he said that he had practised for thirty-four years (i.e. since 1573) Ashm. 1436, fo. 139. In his latest account of his life he said that he began studying medical arts when he was 20 Ashm. 208, fo. 225. Elsewhere he specified that he had practised since 1570 Ashm. 363, fo. 132. In a note c.1607—10 he specified that he had practised astrological medicine for thirty years Ashm. 1491, p. 1275. 

Belling identifies six practitioners described in the Annals as astrologer, magician, wizard, witch, and sorcerer, and in all sources she finds six irregular practitioners described as astrologers and another six as magician, sorcerer, and wizard Belling, Medical Conflicts, 156-7. 

The testimonies of Saterthayte and Pelham are the only extant accounts of Forman s medical practices by his contemporaries. In contrast, Forman s methods are vividly portrayed in his astrological and medical writings and meticulously recorded in his casebooks. The casebooks are not transparent, however, and the information they contain was inscribed within and refracted through the practical and intellectual processes through which it was recorded. The following chapters outline how to read Forman s casebooks and provide a picture of what exactly happened in his consulting room. 

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