together, on a subject which experiment had scarcely yet placed upon a
rational basis, is collected. He styles himself on the Title page,
"Practitioner in Physic and Chirurgery." In 1677, he published his
great work. Its Title is "The Displaying of supposed Witchcraft.
Wherein is affirmed that there are many sorts of Deceivers and
Impostors. And Divers persons under a passive Delusion of Melancholy
and Fancy. But that there is a Corporeal League made betwixt the Devil
and the Witch, Or that he sucks on the Witches Body, has Carnal
Copulation, or that Witches are turned into Cats, Dogs, raise
Tempests, or the like, is utterly denied and disproved. Wherein also
is handled, the Existence of Angels and Spirits, the truth of
Apparitions, the Nature of Astral and Sydereal Spirits, the force of
Charms and Philters; with other abstruse matters. By John Webster,
Practitioner in Physic. Falsæ etenim opiniones Hominum præoccupantes,
non solum surdos, sed et cæcos faciunt, ita ut videre nequeant, quæ
aliis perspicua apparent. Galen, lib. 8. de Comp. Med. London, Printed
by J.M. and are to be sold by the Booksellers in London. 1677," (fol.)
In this memorable book he exhausts the subject, as far as it is
possible to do so, by powerful ridicule, cogent arguments, and the
most various and well applied learning, leaving to Hutchinson, and
others who have since followed in his track, little further necessary
than to reproduce his facts and reasonings in a more popular, it can
scarcely be said, in a more effective, form.[29] Those who love
literary parallels may compare Webster, as he appears in this his
last and most characteristic performance, with two famous medical
contemporaries, Sir Thomas Browne, and Thomas Bartholinus the Dane,
whom he strongly resembled in the character of his mind, in the
complexion and variety of his studies, in grave simplicity, in
exactness of observation, in general philosophical incredulity with
some startling reserves, in elaborate and massive ratiocination, and