The major works of John Cotta : : the short discovery (1612) and the trial of witchcraft (1616) / / edited by Todd H. J. Pettigrew, Stephanie M. Pettigrew, Jacques A. Bailly.

• VerfasserIn: Cotta, John, 1575?-1650?,
• TeilnehmendeR: Pettigrew, Stephanie M.,; Pettigrew, Todd Howard James, 1970-; Bailly, Jacques,
• Place / Publishing House: Leiden ;, Boston : : Brill,, [2019]; ©2019
• Year of Publication: 2019
• Language: English
• Series: The Renaissance Society of America 12.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (viii, 451 pages).

This volume presents, for the first time, a critical edition of the works of the early modern English physician John Cotta. No mere country doctor, Cotta spoke out eloquently and courageously against what he saw as abuses in medicine and injustices in the prosecution of witchcraft. Read by important thinkers such as Robert Burton in England, and by colonial administrators in New England, Cotta helped shape two of the most important debates of his time. Included are the full texts of Cotta’s Short Discovery and The Trial of Witchcraft , both books painstakingly edited and annotated. Also included is a detailed introduction dealing with Cotta’s medical and religious contexts, his extensive learning and much more.

Table of Contents

Front Matter -- Copyright Page -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations Used in Notes -- Introduction -- A Short Discovery of the Unobserved Dangers of Several Sorts of Ignorant and Unconsiderate Practicers of Physic in England -- To the right honorable, right worshipful, and worthy gentlemen, my desired friends and deserving patients of Northamptonshire, honor, health and happiness of life -- To the Reader -- The First Book -- The Introduction -- Of the Empiric -- Women, their custom and practice about the sick, common-visiting counselors, and commenders of medicines -- Fugitives, workers of juggling wonders, quacksalvers -- Surgeons -- Apothecaries -- Of Practicers by Spells -- The explication of the true discovery of witchcraft in the sick, together with many and wondered instances of that kind -- Wizards -- Servants of Physicians, Ministering Helpers -- The Second Book -- The Methodian Learned Deceiver or Heretic Physician -- Of Beneficed Practicers -- Of Astrologers, Ephemerides-masters -- Of Conjectors by Urine -- Of Travelers -- The Third Book -- The True Artist, His Right Description and Election -- Of the Physician’s Education -- Conclusion -- The Trial of Witchcraft, Showing the True and Right Method of the Discovery, with a Confutation of Erroneous Ways -- To the Right Honorable Sir Edward Coke, Knight, Lord Chief Justice of England and one of his Majesty’s most honorable Privy Council and to the rest of the honorable and worthy judges -- To the Reader -- Of natural knowledge and how it is solely acquired, either by sense or reason or by artificial and prudent conjection -- That no knowledge can come unto man in any art or science, but by sense or reason, or likely and artificial conjecture, is proved by the science and knowledge of physic instead of all other arts and sciences -- Whether witchcraft have any other ways or means of investigation than those before mentioned and what is the true investigation -- Of the works of witches and devils -- The works of the Devil by himself, solely wrought without the association of man -- Works done by the Devil, with respect unto covenant with man -- The works of the Devil or witches manifest to reason, or consequence of reason -- Of divers kinds and manners, wherein sorcerers and witches receive knowledge from spirits -- Of wizards and impostors, how they differ from witches -- How men may by reason and nature be satisfied, concerning such as are indeed and truly bewitched -- The production of the works of witches and sorcerers, unto the public seat and censure of justice -- That witches and witchcraft may be discovered by probable reason and presumption -- The confutation of divers erroneous ways unto the discovery of witches, vulgarly received and approved -- The casting of witches into the water, scratching, beating, pinching, and drawing of blood of witches -- The exploration of witches, by supernatural revelations in the bewitched, by signs and secret marks, declared by the bewitched to be in the body of the suspected witch, by the touch of the witch curing the touched bewitched -- Conclusion -- Textual Notes -- A Biographical Glossary of Figures Important in Cotta’s Major Works -- Back Matter -- Bibliography -- Index.