Valentine Greatrakes 'The Stroker'

Valentine Greatrakes (1629-1683) was a Protestant Irish gentleman who in 1662 became convinced he had a divine gift of healing. He first treated scrofula (the King's Evil), a condition traditionally cured by the royal touch, then expanded to other ailments. His method involved vigorous stroking of the affected limb or area, moving pain along the body and eventually out through the extremities. Word spread rapidly and by 1666 he was invited to England, where he treated hundreds at Raglan Castle, the home of Lord and Lady Conway, and then in London.

The Conway connection is significant: Lady Anne Conway was herself severely ill with intractable headaches, and Henry More (her philosopher friend) arranged Greatrakes's visit. Greatrakes failed to cure Lady Conway, but the circle of Cambridge Platonists and natural philosophers who witnessed his London demonstrations included Robert Boyle, John Wilkins (founder of the Royal Society), and the physician Thomas Sydenham. This group was the closest thing 17th-century England had to a scientific investigation team.

Boyle's response was cautious and scientifically useful. He observed that some of the cures seemed genuine, that he could not explain them by ordinary mechanism, but that he did not rule out natural causes: the effects of strong manual pressure, warmth, the mental state of patients, or unknown properties of the nervous system. His letters to Lady Conway preserve this careful equivocation. Sydenham was more skeptical, and documented failures during the London tour were noted by pamphlet-writers hostile to Greatrakes.

The political dimension matters: healing scrofula by touch was the exclusive prerogative of the monarch, and Greatrakes's success threatened the sacred mystique of Charles II's restoration regime. Henry Stubbe's pamphlet defense of Greatrakes argued his cures rivaled the apostles — a radical claim that provoked immediate backlash. The controversy reveals as much about Restoration politics and the boundary between natural philosophy and religion as it does about the healings themselves.