When Francis Bacon – a key figure of the Scientific Revolution in Britain – travelled France as an adolescent, he was puzzled by a number of strange experiences. As mentioned in my video on Bacon’s views on “natural magic”, one such experience involved his dream which seemed to predict the unexpected death of his father back in England. Since my own primary focus has been on links between nineteenth and early-twentieth century psychical research and experimental psychology, it’s perhaps natural that I pay special attention to statements by early modern figures like Bacon regarding “fascination” and “imagination” – early modern umbrella terms for a range of alleged phenomena which, centuries later, were labelled “telepathy”, “telekinesis”, “precognition”, and so on.
However, while I’m keenly interested in continuities of beliefs in “psychic” phenomena in modern scientific and medical communities, I’m also aware that my focus on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries can easily contribute to an unhelpful “filtering” of the more remote past. After all, Bacon and many contemporaries which have been misleadingly portrayed as precursors of “scientific naturalism”, held other beliefs which were rejected as bizarre if not laughable by most Victorian and twentieth-century psychical researchers and orthodox scientists alike. In the video, I therefore quoted Bacon on the bleeding of corpses of murder victims in the presence of their killers, and his belief in the efficacy of the “weapon-salve”, a rather common form of treatment in which not the wound was anointed, but the weapon which had caused it.
Here’s another example that shows just how far-removed Bacon’s modes of thought actually were from that of popularizers of “scientific naturalism” following Carl Sagan (who, as mentioned in the video, rather misleadingly cast Bacon as a fellow critic of beliefs in “magic”). Hosted by Sir Amias Paulet, the English ambassador to Paris, Bacon reports how Lady Paulet (née Margaret Harvey) allegedly cured his warts through a magical intervention involving – lard.
Early modern medical applications of “sympathetic powders”. From Theatrum Sympatheticum Auctum (Nuremberg, 1662), p. 125.
Francis Bacon’s Account
The sympathy of individuals, that have been entire, or have touched, is of all others the most incredible: yet according to our faithful manner of examination of nature, we will make some little mention of it. The taking away of warts, by rubbing them with somewhat that afterwards is put to waste and consume, is a common experiment; and I do apprehend it the rather because of my own experience.
I had from my childhood a wart upon one of my fingers: afterwards, when I was about sixteen years old, being then at Paris, there grew upon both my hands a number of warts, at the least an hundred, in a month’s space. The English ambassador’s lady, who was a woman far from superstition, told me one day, she would help me away with my warts: whereupon she got a piece of lard with the skin on, and rubbed the warts all over with the fat side; and amongst the rest, that wart which I had had from my childhood: then she nailed the piece of lard, with the fat towards the sun, upon a post of her chamber window, which was to the south.
The success was, that within five weeks space all the warts went quite away: and that wart which I had so long endured, for company. But at the rest I did little marvel, because they came in a short time, and might go away in a short time again: but the going away of that which had stayed so long doth yet stick with me.
They say the like is done by the rubbing of warts with a green alder stick, and then burying the stick to rot in muck. It should be tried with corns and wens, and such other excrescences. I would have it also tried with some parts of living creatures, that are nearest the nature of excrescences; as the combs of cocks, the spurs of cocks, the horns of beasts, etc.
And I would have it tried both ways; both by rubbing those parts with lard, or alder, as before; and by cutting off some piece of those parts, and laying it to consume: to see whether it will work any effect towards the consumption of that part which was once joined with it.
Source: Francis Bacon, Sylva Sylvarium; Or A Natural History, in Ten Centuries. In The Works of Francis Bacon. London: H. Bryer, 1803, vol. 2, p. 75. (To improve readability, I broke up the text, which runs over the whole page in the original, into paragraphs).
Hi, as I read Bacon’s magical cure instantly reminded of the royal touch as described in the work of Marc Bloch. If I understand correctly by the 17th century it was still common practice for both kings of England and France. Do we have any written account of this practice by figures like Bacon who are associated with the scientific revolution? At first I imagined that Bacon would be predisposed to believing in magical cures as a rationalization of the royal touch phenomenon, said rationalization in the sense of disposing of the notion of a divine gift and instead assuming a preternatural explanation that would be available to non-royalty.
I don’t remember Bacon specifically mentioning the royal touch, but he must have been well aware of this tradition. However, Bacon’s scientific “heirs” in the seventeenth century, such as Robert Boyle, certainly saw themselves confronted with this practice by Charles II, in the context of their investigations of the famous faith-healer Valentine Greatrakes, as mentioned here: https://www.forbiddenhistories.com/royal_touch. The next video will have more on this and specifically address the somewhat delicate political dimensions of the supposed gift of healing in commoners like Greatrakes.
Wow, I follow this page using a RSS reader and managed to miss the linked article by accident. I apologize for not having read that before. I’m using some of your material (with due acknowledgments) in my high school physics and chemistry classes when I touch on historical figures. So thanks for the help
No apologies needed and I’m chuffed to hear you’re sharing my contents with your students!