Reassesses and sets in its historical context Jorden's famous pamphlet. In his introduction, Michael MacDonald provides an analysis of the politics of credulity and scepticism in early modern England and Jorden's part in them.
Obsession with witchcraft was at its height in Elizabethan London. Edward Jorden, who has been hailed as one of the earliest champions of rational scepticism, was a heroic figure who perceived that the symptoms his credulous contemporaries attributed to witchcraft were actually the effects of hysteria. His "Briefe Discourse of a Disease Called the Suffocation of the Mother" (1603) is said to have reclaimed the demoniacally possessed for medicine and to have introduced the concept of hysteria into English psychiatry. In his introduction, Michael MacDonald provides a fresh and realistic analysis of the politics of credulity and scepticism in early modern England and Jorden's part in them.
