Department of History and Philosophy of Science

Teaching Officers

Lauren Kassell

Lauren Kassell

Senior Lecturer
Fellow of Pembroke College
[On leave 2011–12]

Lauren Kassell holds a BA in Sociology and Social Anthropology from Haverford College; an MSc in Economic and Social History, University of Oxford; and a DPhil in History from the University of Oxford. From 1998–2000 she was the first R.A. Butler Fellow at Pembroke College, Cambridge. She joined the Department of History and Philosophy of Science in 2000, and spent 2003–4 as a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. She is Director of The Casebooks Project and one of the co-applicants of the Wellcome Trust Strategic Award on Generation to Reproduction, headed by Nick Hopwood.

Research interests

My research focuses on early modern medicine, astrology, alchemy and magic. I know more about Simon Forman, the Elizabethan astrologer-physician, than anyone should. I am currently working on two major projects. The first is a book on magical ideas and practices in early modern England, provisionally titled 'The Sons of Minerva' and contracted with Yale University Press. The second is The Casebooks Project, which, in partnership with the Bodleian Library, is producing a digital edition of the 50,000 consultations, primarily medical, which the astrologers Simon Forman and and Richard Napier recorded from 1596 to 1634. These records form a centerpiece for studying how the medical subject has been created and represented.

Selected publications

Books

Lauren Kassell, Medicine and Magic in Elizabethan London
  • Medicine and Magic in Elizabethan London: Simon Forman, Astrologer, Alchemist, and Physician (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005; paperback 2007).
    Short-listed for the Royal Historical Society Whitfield Prize. Honorable mention (2nd place) for the Revista Azogue Book of the Year.
    Reviews: William Bynum, The Lancet, 366 (23 July 2005), 284; John North, Times Literary Supplement, 2 Sept. 2005, 2–3; Mordechai Feingold, Huntington Library Quarterly, 68 (2005), 545–59 [132 KB PDF file]; Nicholas Clulee, Renaissance Quarterly, 59 (2006), 606–8; Bruce Moran, Times Higher Education Supplement, 4 Aug. 2006, 25; Michael Hunter, History, 91 (2006), 457; Paul Seaver, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 37 (2006), 275–7; Jole Shackelford, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 62 (2007), 96–8; Lisa Wynn Smith, H-Albion, 15 Oct. 2006; John Henry, English Historical Review, 121 (2006), 1457–9; Barbara Traister, British Journal for the History of Science, 40 (2007), 132–133; Harold Cook, American Historical Review, 112 (2007); Darin Hayton, Isis, 98 (2007), 826–7; Peter Forshaw, Essay Review: 'Two Occult Philosophers in the Elizabethan Age', History Workshop Journal, 64 (2007), 401–10

Editorial projects

Edited books and special issues

Articles and essays

  • 'Secrets Revealed: Alchemical Books in Early-Modern England', History of Science, xlviii (March 2011), 1–27 and A1–38.
  • 'Almanacs and Prognostications', in Joad Raymond (ed.), The Oxford History of Popular Print Culture, Volume One: Cheap Print in Britain and Ireland to 1660 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 431–42. [9 MB PDF file]
  • 'Stars, Spirits, Signs: Towards a History of Astrology 1100–1800', Introduction to Rob Ralley and Lauren Kassell (eds.), Stars, Spirits, Signs: Astrology 1100–1800, a special issue of Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 41 (2010).
  • 'Ask Pickleherring', an essay review of Deborah E. Harkness, The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution (New Haven: Yale, 2007), Times Literary Supplement, 6 March 2009, pp. 3–5. [4.6 MB PDF file]
  • 'Death Becomes Her', an essay review of Helen MacDonald, Human Remains: Dissection and Its Histories (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006) & Katharine Park, Secrets of Women: Gender, Generation, and the Origins of Human Dissection (New York: Zone Books, 2006), History Workshop Journal, 67 (2009), 270–76.
  • 'Magic, Alchemy and the Medical Economy in Early Modern England: The Case of Robert Fludd's Magnetical Medicine', in Mark S.R. Jenner and Patrick Wallis (eds.), Medicine and the Market in England and its Colonies, c. 1450–c. 1850 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp. 88–107.
  • '"All Was This Land Full Fill'd of Faerie", or Magic and the Past in Early Modern England', Journal of the History of Ideas, 67 (2006), 107–22. [769 KB PDF file]
  • 'The Economy of Magic in Early Modern England', in Margaret Pelling and Scott Mandelbrote (eds.), The Practice of Reform in Health, Medicine, and Science, 1500–2000: Essays for Charles Webster (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), pp. 43–57. [118 KB PDF file]
  • 'An Alchemist and His Notebooks', an essay review of William Newman and Lawrence Principe, Alchemy Tried in the Fire: Starkey, Boyle, and the Fate of Helmontian Chymistry (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2003), in Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A, 35 (2004), 845–9.
  • '"The Food of Angels": Simon Forman's Alchemical Medicine', in William R. Newman and Anthony Grafton (eds.), Secrets of Nature: Astrology and Alchemy in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2001; paperback 2006), pp. 345–84.
  • 'Reading for the Philosophers' Stone', in Marina Frasca-Spada and Nicholas Jardine (eds.), Books and the Sciences in History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 132–50.
  • 'How to Read Simon Forman's Casebooks: Medicine, Astrology and Gender in Elizabethan London', Social History of Medicine, 12 (1999), 3–18. Winner of the 1997 Society for the Social History of Medicine Essay Prize. [1 MB PDF file]

Public engagement

Conferences organised