Volume 1

Portraits and lives of remarkable and eccentric characters.

Date:
[1819?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Portraits and lives of remarkable and eccentric characters. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    sessed of a peculiar temperament, as his body was composed of some particular ferments, the effluvia whereof being introduced, sometimes by a light, and sometimes by a violent friction, he could re¬ store the temperament of the debilitated parts, rein¬ vigorate the blood, and dissipate all heterogeneous ferments out of the bodies of the deceased, by the eyes, nose, mouth, hands, and feet.” This publi¬ cation was addressed to the Hon. Robert Boyle, Esq. who, in a private letter to the author, ex¬ pressed his displeasure at the circumstance, parti¬ cularly as Mr. Stubbe endeavoured to shew that Mr. Greatrakes’ gift was miraculous. Mr. Glanville imputed his cures to a sanative quality inherent in his constitution; others (and perhaps with greater probability) to the force of imagination in his patients. Mr. Boyle, however, having seen Mr. Greatrakes’ performances in April, 1666, ac¬ knowledged his remarkable cures. This extra¬ ordinary man afforded much matter for the press, and various pamphlets were published pro and con; particularly one in'dto. ^supposed to have been written by Mr. David Eloyd,^ reader to the Charter-house, under the title of “Wonders no Miracles, or Mr. Valentine Greatrakes’ Gift of Healing examined, upon occasion of a sad