Astrology in medicine

The position of Astrology among the Sciences is quite unique. Its origin is so remote as to antecede all written records: it has formed an important part of the life of every nation that has advanced beyond barbarism: it has been studied with enthusiasm not only by every European nation, but also by the Egyptians, the natives of India, the Chinese, the Arabs, the Jews, and by the Babylonians and the Chaldeans. It was studied in one long unbroken effort for thousands of years, and engaged the most strenuous endeavours of some of the greatest intellects in every age. Albertus Magnus was a convinced astrologer, and even Roger Bacon, that very great man, projected a universal medicine founded upon Astrology. A knowledge of Astrology was a necessary part of the equipment of all educated men; and Astrological terms form to this day an integral part of every European language. We still consider; we still find persons and things in opposition; we still suffer disaster; we still find some things exorbitant; and others in the ascendent; some persons are still fortunate enough to be born under a lucky star; we still deal in merchandise; with merchants; we are all familiar with the martial cloak of Sir J. Moore; we still describe dispositions and persons as Saturnine, Jovial, Martial or Mercurial; we still retain the names of Saturday, Sunday and Monday; in Medicine we retain the terms Lunatic and Venereal disease, and in the latter we still prescribe Mercury; and we still begin our prescriptions with the sign of Jupiter.

Yet these are the only remaining remnants of a science and an art that were once of paramount importance; and even medical men are ignorant of the very terminology of a science and an art that have been declared, by authority after authority, to be so necessary to the proper practice of medicine, that without them medicine could not be efficiently practised, and no medical practitioner was fully equipped for his task. Astrology is now utterly extinct. It began to decay at the renaissance; it languished in the seventeenth century; the last man of high distinction who practised it in this country was John Dryden[1]; but though Peter Woulfe, a F.R.S., maintained the truth of Astrology at the beginning of the nineteenth century, it had really expired when it received its deathblow from the biting humour of Jonathan Swift. Yet when Walter Scott, less than a century afterwards, introduced into one of his novels the terms of the art, there was no one then living, nor has there been since any commentator of sufficient knowledge, to expose the blunders that he made.

[Footnote 1: In a letter to his sons John and Charles, dated Sept. 3, 1697, Dryden says ‘Towards the latter end of this month, September, Charles will begin to recover his perfect health according to his nativity, which, casting it myself, I am sure is true, and all things hitherto have happened according to the very time that I predicted them.’ See also the Preface to his Fables, and the lines

The utmost malice of the stars is past— Now frequent trines the happier lights among, And high raised Jove, from his dark prison freed, Those weights took off that on his planet hung, Will gloriously the new-laid works succeed.

]