METHUSELAH ARCHIVE PRACTITIONERS / VALENTINE GREATRAKES
17th-century line engraving of Valentine Greatrakes, a long-haired man in a gown, laying his hand on the face and head of a seated boy, with a background vignette of figures including a man on crutches.
PUBLIC DOMAIN source

Valentine Greatrakes

individual · Affane, County Waterford, Ireland
lived:1629–1683
active:1662–1683
type:individual
role:promoter
location:Affane, County Waterford, Ireland
eventual status:quietly_faded
FINANCIAL CONFLICTS
The Dictionary of National Biography (1890) records that Greatrakes's treatment 'was gratuitous, except in the case of Lady Conway'. That one fully documented, named exception cuts against the free-cure image: for his highest-profile case, Anne, Viscountess Conway, he 'demanded and received' 155 pounds -- described at the time as covering the journey's expenses and the hazards of the sea crossing.
INTERVENTIONS PROMOTED
NOTABLE PATIENTS
EXTERNAL REFERENCES
NOTES

Valentine Greatrakes was born at Affane, County Waterford, on 14 February 1628/9, the son of an Irish Protestant landowning family. Sent to England for his education during the 1641 Irish rebellion, he returned to Ireland in the late 1640s, served in the parliamentary forces in the regiment of Colonel Robert Phaire, and from 1656 held local office as county magistrate, registrar for transportations, and clerk of the peace for County Cork.

Around 1662, “the idea seized him” that God had given him the power to cure the king’s evil (scrofula) by touch. He began stroking the sick at Affane, and went on from the king’s evil to undertake the treatment of ague and other diseases. The reports of his cures brought him a vast number of patients, and the dean and bishop of Lismore remonstrated with him, without effect, over practicing medicine without a license. In early 1666 he crossed to England at the request of Anne, Viscountess Conway’s household, went on to treat a great number of patients in Worcester and London, and failed at Whitehall before Charles II and his courtiers in a formal demonstration. He returned to Ireland by the end of May 1666, resumed the life of a country gentleman at Affane, and only occasionally practiced his cure until his death there on 28 November 1683.