Small Moment of Great Illumination: Searching for Valentine Greatrakes, The Master Healer

by Leonard Pitt

Overview

Renowned for his healing powers, Greatrakes stood at the center of one of the great controversies of his age involving scientists, theologians, physicians, and philosophers. Many proclaimed his cures a miracle. Others denounced him as a quack.
Recent court battles over intelligent design affirm that the conflict between science and religion still rages, but what was the debate like in its earliest flowering? A Small Moment of Great Illumination visits England at the height of the Scientific Revolution to find the answer embodied in Greatrakes. Claiming he could heal others simply by touching them, Greatrakes became the target for a rising contest between the clergy and laymen who would champion the emerging scientific theories of the day. This biography traces his ascendance in the high societies of England and Ireland and his relationships with poet Andrew Marvell, philosopher Henry More, and scientist Robert Boyle.
Pitt interlaces the biography with his own adventures, Pitt's pursuit of the Irish healer turned up many magical discoveries. Including eye-witness accounts of Greatrakes's healing and correspondence from Greatrakes on how he discovered his powers, this book pieces together the life and times of an enigmatic forgotten figure.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781593761264
Publisher:	Counterpoint Press
Publication date:	10/28/2006
Pages:	214
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 7.30(h) x 1.00(d)

Editorial Reviews

Pitt (Walks Through Lost Paris) delves into the life and times of the now obscure but once famous Irish "healer," Valentine Greatrakes, a wealthy member of the gentry who amazed 17th-century contemporaries with his seemingly God-given ability to lay his hands on the afflicted, and cure them of every ailment, from dropsy to cancer. Patients said they felt the pain "move" through their body and leave via their fingertips, nose, toes, eyes, mouth or ears, never to return. Pitt, intrigued by a footnote in a history of medicine he happened to read in 1989, describes his years-long journey to discover as much as he could about this enigmatic man: was he a charlatan, a well-meaning quack or an authentic healer? Greatrakes's well-placed friends, such as the great scientist Robert Boyle, were inclined to believe the latter (as does Pitt, one infers), but he was subjected to bitter attacks by his many enemies. In the Middle Ages, Greatrakes might have had an easier ride, but living as he did on the cusp of the Enlightenment and the rise of the scientific method, Greatrakes's claims were intensely scrutinized. Likewise, modern readers may applaud Pitt's sleuthing but err on the side of skepticism. (Nov.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Professional monologist-amateur historian Pitt recounts his search for a 17th-century healer. Scion of Irish gentry, Valentine Greatrakes (1628-83) had an "impulse" one day. He felt, like many after him, that he could effect cures by the laying on of his hands. His good wife told him, plainly, that he was a fool. "He was not quite sure of this," noted Charles Mackay in Extraordinary Popular Delusions (1848), "notwithstanding the high authority from which it came . . ." But he persevered. In his day, the healer attained much fame as he treated, first, the King's Evil, then ague, next pain, gout, most obstructions and, finally, everything. The Church charged him with practicing without a license and, worse, exacting no fees. After service in Cromwell's army, through the Interregnum and even during the Restoration, he dispensed treatment similar to the supposedly exclusive, politically valuable King's Touch. He received humble sufferers at his chambers and made calls to noble houses, chasing pains and squeezing out aches with varying success. Celebrated as a natural healer, his efforts were endorsed by pioneer chemist Robert Boyle. When author Pitt read a six-word footnote about Greatrakes, the game was afoot, the author's endorphins activated by a search, eventually rewarded, for a text by the analgesic Irishman himself. He and friend Iain traveled from San Francisco to Ireland on the spoor of The Famous Irish Stroker. They conferred with picaresque rustics, frequented antiquarian bookshops and engaged an Arkansan dowser in their research. Pitt's text is as much about the fun of recreational historical pursuit as it is about the master healer. It's still unclear whether Greatrakes was anatural phenomenon or simply a charlatan, as asserted by debunker Mackay (whom the author seems to have overlooked). Like Boyle, Pitt leans toward faith-illumination, not illusion. The record of a man's pleasure in discovering, for himself, the life of a faith healer.

Kirkus Reviews