Simon Forman was one of the most fascinating characters of the Elizabethan age. Previous books about him have, however, been abysmally bad, particularly A.L. Rowse's 1974 biography. Traister provides a much more reliable introduction to Forman and his milieu that is concise and accessible to general readers. She describes his life, his astrological-medical practice, his many unpublished writings, his magical pursuits and his involvement in the famous Essex scandal, as the posthumus patsy. This is all irresistible stuff.

Specialists will regret that Traister's grasp on the arcana of astrology and angelic magic is not stronger. And for a really thorough examination of his medicine and his patients we shall have to wait for Loren Kassell's forthcoming book. Still, a huge improvement on Rowse.

How did physicians run their practices four hundred years ago? It's a peculiar idea that in a time when so little was scientifically understood about how the body and how medicines worked, physicians did try to make sense of what their patients were going through, and even tried to be objective and logical about treatments that were mostly magical. In _The Notorious Astrological Physician of London: Works and Days of Simon Forman_ (University of Chicago Press), Barbara Howard Traister tells of one particular physician working around 1600. The notoriety mentioned in the title of the book does not refer to his frequent sexual affairs, but to something that happened after Forman's death and for which he was completely unresponsible. Nonetheless, those who know Forman's name these days know it because of literary references to his dark posthumous connection with a case of poisoning.

But Forman was an earnest and serious physician. He wrote an autobiography, he wrote and copied textbooks for himself, and he kept a diary; Traister has gone to these core documents to give his picture. Forman was busy during the London plague of 1593 (unlike other physicians, he didn't flee the city), and he had an active career as physician and astrologer. He had many years of fighting the College of Physicians, which did not give him a medical license until 1603 (and persecuted him, in his view, even after that). Forman kept fine records, one of the reasons his life and practice can be reconstructed better than those of other physicians. Traister gives many quotations and samples to show how his practice worked. Forman was not so enthusiastic about bloodletting as were most of his contemporaries. He tended to give strong purgatives, and for this reason, he seldom treated children; the treatments of the time were too harsh. Parents seemed to understand this, and often only wanted him to give a prognosis. This was common at the time; ability to diagnose was severely limited and ability to cure was even worse, so patients were often satisfied just to know how bad they could expect things to be.

The pleasure in reading Traister's lively account is that Forman comes across as a active thinker who used his own resourcefulness and intellect to build a stock of clinically useful knowledge (and also spent as much energy womanizing as that other diarist, Pepys). He may have built his practice on superstition, aphrodisiacs, and fortune-telling, but he had a successful professional life despite many trials (literally and figuratively). Traister's book, an academic work full of quotations and footnotes, is nonetheless an engrossing picture of an interesting doctor and how he made his living.