Prayer and Physic in Seventeenth-Century England

Abstract Historians have often represented prayer as an instrumental response to illness. We argue instead that prayer, together with physic, was part of larger regimes preserve health and prevent disease. focus on early modern England, through the philosophical writings physician, Robert Fludd, medical records clergyman, Richard Napier. Fludd depicted a fortress illness invasion by demons; physician counsels patient in maintaining restoring moral bodily order. Napier documented actual uses prayer. As Fludd’s trope, his patients enacted their aspiration for commitment Christian order which medicine only worked if God so willed it. Prayer, like key regime wise practitioner aimed provide patients, they expected receive from him.