Greatrakes's touch works by driving the disease itself ('the morbific matter') through the patient's body and out through an extreme part -- the fingers, toes, nose, or tongue -- which the passing matter renders temporarily cold and numb before the whole distemper vanishes.
The explanation of Greatrakes’s method recorded by the Dictionary of National Biography from the contemporary account of Henry More and George Rust: that the disease itself was a displaceable substance he could physically push through the body until it was expelled at an extremity. Greatrakes treated the power as a divinely bestowed gift rather than a natural process, while his ally Henry Stubbe’s companion pamphlet, titled to promise a “physicall discourse” on the cures, is recorded by the same Dictionary of National Biography entry as “attributing his success to miraculous agency.” No physiological substance answering to “morbific matter,” and no mechanism by which touch could displace or expel disease, is documented as demonstrated in the sources reviewed for this case. The mechanism claim, as presented by Greatrakes and his contemporaries, was never resolved into a consistent, demonstrated account.
Appears in
Sources
- Greatrakes, Valentine — W. A. G. Greatrakes, Valentine. In Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 23 (Gray-Haighton), edited by Leslie Stephen and Sidney Lee, 33-34. London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1890.
- A Brief Account of Mr. Valentine Greatrak's, and Divers of the Strange Cures by Him Lately Performed — Greatrakes, Valentine. A Brief Account of Mr. Valentine Greatrak's, and Divers of the Strange Cures by Him Lately Performed. Written by Himself in a Letter Addressed to the Honourable Robert Boyle Esq.; Whereunto Are Annexed the Testimonials of Several Eminent and Worthy Persons of the Chief Matters of Fact Therein Related. London: Printed for J. Starkey, 1666.
- The Miraculous Conformist, or, An Account of Severall Marvailous Cures Performed by the Stroaking of the Hands of Valentine Greatarick — Stubbe, Henry. The Miraculous Conformist, or, An Account of Severall Marvailous Cures Performed by the Stroaking of the Hands of Valentine Greatarick: With a Physicall Discourse Thereupon, in a Letter to Robert Boyle. With a Letter Relating Some Other of His Miraculous Cures, Attested by E. Foxcroft. Oxford: Printed by H. Hall, printer to the University, for Ric. Davis, 1666.
- Greatrakes the Stroker: The Interpretations of His Contemporaries — Kaplan, Barbara Beigun. Greatrakes the Stroker: The Interpretations of His Contemporaries. Isis 73, no. 2 (June 1982): 178-185. doi:10.1086/352968.