Topics of consultations

In order to help users to read the casebooks, each entry has been classified as either:

medical non-medical (or both).

Within these classifications, the entry is labelled with at least one question category. The following lists provide definitions of these terms. They can also be read as an overview of the kinds of material documented in the casebooks.

The non-medical questions have been further subdivided under a range of headings (‘Health and wellbeing’, ‘Occult’, ‘Personal affairs’, ‘Sex, romance and marriage’ and ‘Worldly affairs’) that will hopefully make it easier for readers to navigate the records. It should be stressed that these categories are not mutually exclusive. The topic ‘pregnancy’, for instance, features under both ‘Personal affairs’ and ‘Health and wellbeing’.

Although the vast majority of issues raised by Forman’s and Napier’s clients related to medical problems, many other questions were brought to the consulting room too. Moreover, it was not unusual for a given consultation to cover two or more completely distinct topics. It is not always possible to state for certain precisely what a querent was asking about, but so far as possible the entries have been designated as belonging to one or more of the following categories. The aim has been to delineate categories as they were understood by patients and practitioners at the time rather than to translate them into modern parlance.

See also the guide to reading the texts for the various types of astrological enquiry deployed by the practitioners, each of which could be applied to a range of topics.

In some entries, no question is recorded at all, merely the patient’s name and the date and time of the consultation (sometimes even less than that). In such cases, we have, where possible, inferred the nature of the question from the astrologer’s judgment or proposed treatment. In general, however, we have restricted ourselves to evidence found in the question section itself. Forman in particular frequently noted in his judgments whether or not a female patient was pregnant, for instance, or diagnosed witchcraft as the cause of a problem, without there being any evidence that pregnancy or witchcraft is what the patient had asked about, so such cases are not recorded as pregnancy or witchcraft questions.

Medical categories

Category	Explanation
alteration	Formulaic term for enquiries about an ‘alteration’ in the patient’s condition.
cause of the problem	Cases where the querent has explicitly asked what has caused a disease, as opposed to what to do about it.
curable	Whether or not the patient’s condition can be cured.
cured	Whether or not the patient has fully recovered from or been cured of a given ailment.
disease	Entries in which the practitioner explicitly records the issue as ‘disease’ (normally abbreviated by Forman as ‘diz’). The term covers a much wider range of ailments than ‘disease’ in the modern sense, including (for instance) toothache or a bad back. The vast majority of Forman’s medical entries fall into this category, suggesting that medical questions not so designated belonged to a different category in his mind. Napier uses this category much less frequently and tends to be more specific about the nature of medical problems.
life or death (medical)	Whether or not the person being asked about is at death’s door.
‘mend or pair’	Forman’s formulaic term for questions about whether the person suffering the ailment will recover or grow worse.
non-‘diz’ disease	Ailments specified as such but not categorised as ‘disease’.
recovery (‘mend or no’)	Whether or not someone will recover from their ailment, not necessarily as a result of medical intervention. This is a distinct (though not always very clearly distinct) category from ‘life or death’ in that it is possible to carry an illness to the grave but to die of something else.
‘stat(e)’ or ‘stat(us)’	Forman’s formulaic term for questions about the progress of a given (but not necessarily medical) problem or its cure.
‘state of [his/her] body’	Another of Forman’s formulaic terms. Definition not entirely clear, but seems to refer to someone’s general physical wellbeing.
‘state of [his/her] disease’	Questions about the progress of an explicitly medical problem or its cure.
treatment	Questions posed (usually by the practitioner) about how and/or when a patient should be treated.
unspecified medical	Entries that clearly relate to a medical issue, although none is specified in the question section.

Non-medical categories

Health and wellbeing

Category	Explanation
alive or dead	Whether someone is alive or dead at the time of asking. This is normally a subcategory of ‘absent person’ but sometimes refers to people whose whereabouts are known but whose condition is not.
childbirth	Questions about the outcome of a pregnancy, the sex of an unborn child, or the possibility of a given person having children (or any more children).
life or death	Normally associated with a medical question, but sometimes relating to someone whose imminent death through non-medical causes (e.g. shipwreck or murder) is considered a possibility.
menstruation	Questions about stopped, irregular or painful menstrual periods.
non-lactation	Questions about lactation having stopped.
pregnancy	Whether or not the person in question is pregnant. This does not include the question of whether the person in question ever can or will become pregnant, which is classed under ‘childbirth’.

Occult

Category	Explanation
alchemy	These questions are all put by Forman himself and concern his progress in the art of transmutation or propitious times for alchemical undertakings.
dreams	Questions explicitly noted as having been inspired by a (prophetic) dream. In Forman’s case, such dreams are usually his own, but he sometimes took clients’ dreams into account when assessing their cases.
sigils	As with the ‘alchemy’ category, these questions are all put by Forman himself. They concern his progress or prospective progress in the creation of ‘lamina’ or ‘sigils’: rings, bracelets and the like marked with magical signs and produced under highly specified conditions. These objects were used to conjure or repel spirits, influence future events, or draw astral properties into the body.
witchcraft	Supposedly preternatural attack or manipulation by a known or unknown person or agency. Unexplained conditions such as epilepsy, and unexplained events such as sleepwalking or the sudden death of animals, were frequently believed or at least suspected to be the effects of witchcraft or demonic possession.

Personal affairs

Category	Explanation
absent person	Questions about the whereabouts and/or wellbeing of people absent from the querent for whatever reason.
choice of employee	Which of two or more applicants to employ, or whether or not to employ a given applicant.
controversies	Disputes of any sort that do not clearly fall within the rubric of ‘legal matters’.
conversation	Questions about whether and/or when it would be propitious to discuss a topic with someone.
fortune	Questions of the ‘what will happen?’ variety where it is not clear what sort of thing is expected to happen.
friendship	Questions about whether it is advisable to remain someone’s friend, or whether someone will remain a friend. There is an obvious overlap here with ‘love and marriage’ and ‘romantic relations’ questions, but where such relationships are not explicitly described as marital, romantic and/or sexual, they have been subsumed into this category.
how long someone will live	Distinct from ‘life or death’ questions in that the person in question is not expected to die imminently.
journeys	Whether and/or when it would be advisable to embark on a journey.
letters	Whether and/or when it would be advisable to write or send a letter, on whatever subject.
paternity	Issues of uncertain or disputed fatherhood.
personal history	Past events in the personal life of the individual being asked about.
pregnancy	Whether or not the person in question is pregnant. This does not include the question of whether the person in question ever can or will become pregnant, which is classed under ‘childbirth’.
rumours	Questions about whether or not a given rumour (usually involving the querent’s partner or associate) is true.
secret enemies	Questions about whether the querent has secret enemies lying in wait for him or her. In some cases the enemies in question are not in fact very ‘secret’, being explicitly named in the consultation, but the term has been adopted since it is one that Forman uses himself in his astrological guides.
send	Whether or not the querent should issue or respond to a summons (of either a legal or personal nature).
trust	Whether or not a given person is to be trusted, either in general or some particular matter.
‘turba’	Forman’s idiosyncratic Latin term for impending trouble of a non-medical nature.
visits	Whether the querent would be well advised to pay a visit or is likely to receive one.
wardship or upbringing of children	The advisability of particular courses of action connected with the bringing up of children (e.g. fostering, nursing, becoming godparent).
whether to help	Questions posed by the practitioner about whether or not to help someone, medically or otherwise.
whether to practise	A very few entries appear to constitute queries by the practitioner about the advisability of preparing or dispensing medicine at all at a given time. Such questions have not been categorised as ‘medical’ since no specific patient or medical issue is involved.
who will die first	Which of two or more people will die first. A question most often posed by disgruntled spouses or people with an eye to an inheritance.

Sex, romance and marriage

Category	Explanation
fidelity	Questions about the sexual fidelity (past, present or future) of spouses or other partners.
marital prospects	Whether someone should or will marry a given person; whether he/she should or will marry at all, or which of two or more potential spouses to choose.
marital relations	Questions about the prospects for an impending marriage, the reuniting of separated spouses, the behaviour of one spouse towards another, and so forth.
romantic relations	Anything (other than prospective marriage) concerning actual or prospective amatory and/or sexual relations between unmarried couples.
stalking	Questions about the whereabouts and current doings of a given person, almost invariably one in whom the querent has a romantic or sexual interest.

Worldly affairs

Category	Explanation
absent ship	A few consultations (usually by ship owners) concern the welfare or whereabouts of a ship as such, rather than any of the people on board it.
condition	Questions about someone's present or future prosperity and/or social standing
current affairs	Questions put (normally by the practitioner himself) about contemporary events, e.g. whether Spain is likely to invade England this year.
death and/or disease of animals	These are usually questions about the cause of the problem (withcraft or foul play?) rather than requests for the animal to be treated.
finance and property	Financial matters generally, including debts, wills, or the buying and selling of houses.
legal matters	Questions concerning lawsuits or mentioning the actual or prospective intervention of legal authorities.
loss and theft	Questions about the location of missing possessions and the likelihood of their recovery, or the identity and whereabouts of thieves.
occupation	Should the client remain in or change his or her current employment?
preferment	Gaining an advantage of some sort from an authority figure. This covers promotion, job offers, intervention in legal cases, and favours of any kind.
prison	Questions about the likelihood of someone’s being sent to, or released from, prison.
residence	Whether or not someone should, or will have to, move house.
treasure	Questions about the existence and/or whereabouts of hidden treasure.

Unknown

There are three reasons for the topic of a consultation to be classified as ‘unknown’. The relevant information may be lost through deletion or manuscript damage; there may have been no relevant information in the first place, or it may be stated in such cryptic terms that no one (yet) has managed to interpret it.

Document last modified: 14 December 2012

Cite this as: "Topics of consultations", Casebooks Project (http://www.magicandmedicine.hps.cam.ac.uk/our-edition/topics-of-consultations/)

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