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Social History of Medicine Advance Access originally published online on March 14, 2007
Social History of Medicine 2007 20(1):1-19; doi:10.1093/shm/hkl081
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© The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for the Social History of Medicine. All rights reserved

Richard Baxter and his Physicians

Tim Cooper*

* Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand. E-mail: tim.cooper{at}otago.ac.nz


  Abstract

Richard Baxter's prominence as a leading seventeenth-century Puritan pastor and author is well known. But his lifelong ill health has never been fully assessed for the impact it had on his life and career. This article explores that ill health and describes the principal ways in which it shaped all aspects of Baxter's experience, from his theology through to his literary style. It demonstrates how sickness altered the trajectory of his life at a crucial time and sets out his own extensive experience of physicians and the disillusionment that propelled him on a search for self-cure. The contribution explores the complex and comprehensive imagery of the physician that percolated through his writings and reflected his close personal experience of the physician's trade. In doing so, it reveals how the realm of medicine touched on all other aspects of Baxter's multi-faceted life and marked his engagement with the society around him.

Keywords: Richard Baxter; Puritanism; medicine; sickness; physicians; literary culture


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