ABSTRACT
Autobiographical records offer fascinating insights into what early modern contemporaries did when faced with such intense situations. By and large, early modern contemporaries continued to follow the classical medical literature, most importantly the ideas of the physician Galen of Pergamon, himself a follower of Hippocrate. In the case of illness medical practitioners and their patients had to first trace the exact circumstances of how they fell sick. The micro–macrocosm idea allowed for the belief that God was able to influence man's individual and collective life, including health and disease, via his 'servants', the stars and planets. Sufferers could also turn to 'quacks' or 'empirics' who sold their wares and wonder cures on the streets and market squares; even the local executioner was an option, as well as bone setters or Hermann Weinsberg's 'root woman'. Patients had no hesitation in mixing and matching. The overall aim of all treatment was to bring the individual complexion back to its natural equilibrium.
