Taylor, Edward | Catherine Rainwater (essay date 1991)
Catherine Rainwater (essay date 1991)
SOURCE: Rainwater, Catherine. “‘This Brazen Serpent Is a Doctors Shop’: Edward Taylor's Medical Vision.” In American Literature and Science, edited by Robert J. Scholnick, pp. 18-38. Lexington, Ky.: University Press of Kentucky, 1992.
[In the following excerpt, originally published in 1991, Rainwater explores Taylor's dual role as religious poet and physician, tracing his attempts to reconcile emerging scientific developments with Puritan theology.]
“A physitian cureth not only the body but the mind in some manner,” writes Nicholas Culpeper in 1654; his statement reflects the neo-Platonic and alchemical assumptions underlying Renaissance medical theory.1 Such holistic views of medicine prevailed in Edward Taylor's era (c. 1641-1729), despite the fact that the late seventeenth century was rapidly shifting away from an animistic cosmology, which stressed vital connections between...
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