Dr. Joanne Edge specialises in late-medieval and early modern European social and cultural history, with an emphasis on medicine and the ‘occult’ sciences: divination, magic and astrology. She did her undergraduate and postgraduate degrees at the University of London, and held a four-year postdoctoral position as Assistant Editor on the Casebooks Project at the University of Cambridge. She is currently Latin Manuscripts Cataloguer at the John Rylands Library, University of Manchester.
After finishing my PhD on late medieval magic and medicine at Royal Holloway, I worked as Assistant Editor on the Casebooks Project, during its final phase between 2014-18. Based at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge, my job was to spend day in, day out with Richard Napier (1559-1634), Rector of Great Linford, Buckinghamshire (now part of Milton Keynes). Casebooks was the brainchild of Prof. Lauren Kassell, the Principal Investigator of the project, and was funded by the Wellcome Trust.
In the 1590s, Napier began corresponding with the astrologer-physician Simon Forman, a London physician who had developed a method for recording his astrological consultations with all manner of people who solicited his services. Napier learnt how to do astrology from Forman by means of letters they sent one another, and copied Forman’s way of recording his cases on the page. This short video is a delightful introduction to Forman’s practice:
Casebooks is a fully digitised, partially transcribed edition of all 80,000 or so cases recorded by both Forman and Napier which survive in a complete run of 64 volumes from 1596-1634. Forman left his surviving manuscripts to Napier in his will, Napier bequeathed his library to his nephew Sir Richard Napier, and they were all acquired by the collector Elias Ashmole later in the seventeenth century. They are now housed in the Ashmole collection in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.
Here is a case. There are typically four cases to a page, and they are in chronological order – they provide a living record of the astrologer’s day-to-day practice. The astrological charts are usually horary – that is, set for the time the question is asked – partly because most people didn’t know their dates and times of birth, although some of the entries are “nativities” (based on the date/time of birth) or “decumbitures” (based on the time the person first fell sick).
It probably looks indecipherable! I had to learn how to read Napier’s handwriting, though it’s not just about deciphering his writing: it’s also about making educated guesses based on knowing his turn of phrase. This is something it takes time to learn. So, how do we make sense of this?
There are four parts (A, B, C, D) to a typical case, though some cases don’t have all these parts. A is the question section: this is usually quite formulaic. Name, age, residence of the querent/patient and the day/time the question is being posed. In this case:
‘Elisabeth Hartwell of Astwood onc Mrs Uvedales servant. 25 y. unmaried. hath clumpers of bloode in her mouthe 15 of Sept die Saturni h. 1. 15 p m. 1599’.
To translate for the modern reader:
‘Elizabeth Hartwell of Astwood, once Mrs. Uvedale’s servant. 25 years old, unmarried. Has clumps of blood in her mouth. Saturday 15 September 1599, at 1pm’.
Next is part B: the chart. This is drawn up based on the time the question was asked (15 September 1599, 1pm). Using the information that he’s surmised from the position of the stars, Napier is then able to draw up section C – the judgment. This part is not transcribed in our edition so I will tell you what it says (normalised to modern English):
‘Has kept her bed ever since Saturday last. Some fear it to be a pleurisy, others an impostume. Very hot and sweats much…they thought she would have died. Her water of a good colour, so thick, hath motes, grounds and dust. Costive. Her water was too high coloured and had black humours.’
So, she’s been in bed for a week. Her relations/family have feared it to be one of two things: pleurisy, or an impostume (a pus-filled swelling). They also feared it was so bad she might die. Her urine (called ‘water’ here) is a good colour and is of a thick texture and contains different kinds of sediments. He also adds that she is constipated (costive). An extra note on her urine at the end tells is that it was too ‘high’ coloured and contained ‘black humours’.
Section D contains Napier’s prescribed treatments and a note that the consultation was provided ‘gratis’ – free.
This is an extraordinary amount of information about a very ordinary person living at the end of the sixteenth century about whom we most likely have no other surviving record of outside of Napier’s records. We know her name, age, residence and previous employment. We know her medical complaint. We know she has people around her who are concerned. And we know how Napier treated her ailments.
But there is a lot we don’t know. We don’t know if she was there in person or whether a messenger was sent with her urine in a bottle and the information Napier needed. And, while this Elizabeth Hartwell is recorded as having seen Napier three times, we don’t know anything about her recovery from this particular episode, since her next visit was in 1601.
© 2020 Joanne Edge
