Observations placeholder
Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy - How doctors make you ill
Identifier
026026
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
Burton quotes from Dr. Cotta's "Discovery of Ignorant Practitioners of Physick" two examples of what
" Phansie is able to do ; the one of a parson's wife in Northamptonshire, Anno, 1607, that coming to a physician, and told by him that she was troubled with the sciatica, as he conjectured (a disease she was free from), the same night after her return, upon his words, fell into a grievous fit of a sciatica; and such another example he hath of another good wife, that was so troubled with the cramp ; after the same manner she came by it, because her physician did but name it"
(Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. 1651. Edit. 1836., p. 169).