author
Edward Jorden
1569–1632
A pioneering English physician, he argued that many supposed cases of witchcraft had natural medical causes. His best-known work, published in 1603, stands out as an early attempt to replace fear and superstition with observation and reason.
1 Audiobook
A Briefe Discovrse of a Disease called the Suffocation of the Mother
by Edward Jorden
About the author
Born in Kent in 1569, Edward Jorden was an English physician educated at Oxford and later at the University of Padua, one of Europe’s leading medical schools. He went on to practice in London and became a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians.
Jorden is remembered most for challenging supernatural explanations for illness. In A Briefe Discourse of a Disease Called the Suffocation of the Mother (1603), he argued that strange fits and behaviors often blamed on demonic possession or witchcraft could have physical causes instead. That made him an unusually skeptical and humane voice in an age when accusations of witchcraft could be deadly.
His work now interests readers not only for its place in medical history, but also for what it reveals about the tense border between science, religion, and popular belief in early modern England. Even when some of his medical ideas reflect the limits of his time, his insistence on looking for natural explanations helped mark an important shift in how illness was understood.