1: Introduction
2: The Making of an Early Modern Miracle Healer: Valentine
Greatrakes, 1629-1660
3: Greatrakes, Ireland, and the Restoration, 1660-1665
4: 'An Exemplar of Candid and Sincere Christianity': Greatrakes'
Mission to England in 1666
5: Healing, Witchcraft, and the Body Politic in Restoration
Britain
6: Epilogue and conclusion
Appendix 1: The family tree of Valentine Greatrakes
Appendix 2: A biographical index of those either cured by
Greatrakes, or who testified, witnessed, or commented upon his
cures
Appendix 3: Letters addressed to Valentine Greatrakes,
1666-1672
Bibliography
Index
Following a seventeen-year career at the Open University as a
lecturer in the History department, Dr Peter Elmer is now employed
as a Senior Research Fellow on a five-year Wellcome funded project
at the University of Exeter which aims to create a comprehensive
and interactive database of medical practitioners in early modern
England, Wales and Ireland. His research is focused on early modern
medicine, and its relationship to broader religious and political
issues,
with a particular emphasis on the role of magic and witchcraft in
early modern British society.
Elmer's account is always careful and well balanced, and offers an
analysis which is nuanced and entirely persuasive. ... Elmer
convincingly shows how Greatrakes's seeming success as a faith
healer not only could be used to combat the widelt perceived threat
of atheism, but also could be used, by some at least, to promote
religious reconciliation and political unity.
*John Henry, BJHS*
Elmer's forte is micro-biography, and, through meticulous attention
to an extraordinary range of manuscript and printed sources, he has
built up a profile of those to whom Gratrakes appealed...
fascinating
*Michael Hunter, History Today*
... a well-researched and very readable demonstration of the highly
politicised nature of medicine.
*Steve Ridge, Social History of Medicine*
Elmer succeeds in his stated aim of showing that Greatrakes was at
the centre, not the periphery, of the intellectual and political
debates of his time. The study adds valuably to understanding of
the Hartlib group, the early Royal Society, and the continuing
conflicts in England and Ireland over authority in Church and
State.
*T.C. Barnard, Journal of Ecclesiastical History*
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