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(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 120. M. Neve, ‘Orthodoxy and fringe: Medicine in late Georgian Bristol’, in Bynum and Porter (eds), Medical Fringe, pp. 40–55, suggests that attempts to undermine irregular providers were really a proxy attempt to close down the medical avenues explored by the poor. 101 NRO, 249p/164, letter. O. Davies, ‘Cunning-folk’, pp. 55–73, argues that the poorest were excluded from accessing the supernatural, but in other work such as ‘Female healers’, pp. 238 and 244–5, he refers extensively to examples of fortune-telling. 102
young generation were less concerned with the ethics surrounding faith, God and the afterlife, and more with issues that many religious figures had traditionally ignored, such as the environment, gender and racial equality, nuclear weapons, political activism and, crucially, science and medicine. Some Anglican figures, such as John Robinson, the Bishop of Woolwich, responded to the decline in religious faith by endorsing an ‘agnostic theology’ that rejected the idea of God as a supernatural being living ‘up there’, questioned the veracity of the virgin birth and the
study her more closely. He concluded that no physical cause for her wounds could be detected and deemed a supernatural intervention at least possible. 54 It is unnecessary to state that his conclusion earned him not much more than mockery from his anticlerical colleagues. Hubert Boëns, a physician from Charleroi, presented his evaluation of Louise’s case before the Royal Academy
a close at last appealed to the only supernatural being of Providence to save his soul from destruction. Many a man died praying that he might see his wife and family once more, which, alas, could not be. Such was the state of the Wynberg hospital after the battles of Magersfontein and Modder River. A place of butchery, terrible agony and extreme suffering. Nobody who has not seen a hospital in time of war has any idea what a terrible price has been paid for the so called honour and glory of Old England. Never shall I forget the early days of the campaign at
ninepins’. 90 Madmen were often represented as possessing supernatural strength. Dougan was finally subdued and tied with rope, but he subsequently could not be brought into court because he was so out of control. In the early stages of the Whitechapel murders of 1888, as more women were horribly murdered and no credible leads were forthcoming, many wondered if a lunatic were to blame. 91 In fact, one of the most popular theories of the murderer at the