The Casebooks of Simon Forman and Richard Napier
A record in The Hawthorn Archive, preserving folklore with its place, type and source context attached.
The surviving casebooks of astrologer-physicians Simon Forman and Richard Napier record roughly 80,000 consultations from the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries and name more than 60,000 people, from servants to nobles.
Most consultations concerned health, but clients also asked about marriage, careers, missing people, stolen property, journeys, lawsuits and witchcraft. The records show a medical marketplace in which categories now divided among doctors, police, counsellors, lawyers and spiritual advisers could meet in one consultation.
Source trail: University of Cambridge, A Critical Introduction to the Casebooks of Simon Forman and Richard Napier, 1596–1634.
Related Journal record: Wise Women and Cunning Men.