945J: Connor, Bernardus . Connor, Bernardus, 1666 ?-1698.
Evangelium Medici: Seu Medicina Mystica, De Suspensis Naturae Legibus, Sive de Miraculis, Reliquisque ἐν τοῖς βιβλίοις Memoratis, quae Medicae indagini subjici possunt : Ubi perpensis prius Corporis Natura, sano & morboso Corporis Humani Statu, nec non Motus Legibus, Rerum Status super naturam, praecipuè qui Corpus Humanum & Animam spectant, juxta Medicinae Principia explicantur / Ubi perpensis prius Corporis Natura, sano & morboso Corporis Humani Statu, nec non Motus Legibus, Rerum Status super naturam, praecipuè qui Corpus Humanum & Animam spectant, juxta Medicinae Principia explicantur.
Amstelædami : apud. Joannem Wolters,1699 Price $1,800
Octavo 17.5 x 10 Signaures: * 8,A-R6. Three other sections with titles: Tentamen suum epistolare de secretione animali “: pages 157-176; ” Novum suum oeconomiae animalis exemplar exhibet”: p. 181-184; “Nova tabula oeconomia animalis “: p. 185-193.are bound in. Title page in red and black. Second edition (Amsterdam, (two editions in the same year), reprinted at London 1699.) Bound in contemporary full calf, gilt spine. Title with handwritten ownership note, only slightly browned and partly slightly stained. From the library of the French neurologist Maurice Villaret(7 September 1877 – 25 January 1946).
Osler characterizes the book as an attempt to explain the Gospel miracles—especially cures—by medical and physiological principles, treating them as phenomena that could be examined within the laws of nature rather than as inexplicable violations of them. He notes that the work created considerable controversy and that Connor’s orthodoxy was questioned, which ultimately led to the book being placed on the Index of Prohibited Books. Connor’s Evangelium medici belongs to the same late-seventeenth-century effort as Ussher’s biblical chronology and Burnet’s Sacred Theory of the Earth: a project to reconcile the miraculous narratives of Scripture with an increasingly law-governed view of nature, not by denying miracle, but by rationalizing its mode of operation. Connor confines his naturalization of miracle almost entirely to the human body, leaving celestial and astronomical prodigies to other contemporaries such as Burnet, Halley, and Newton.
In Evangelium medici Connor repeatedly treats Gospel miracle-cures—especially sudden restorations of motion—as physiologically intelligible events. Paralysis and lameness, he argues, often arise from disordered nervous motion rather than irreversible bodily damage, and may therefore be resolved instantaneously once the proper stimulus restores the circulation of animal spirits. Christ’s cures thus appear not as violations of bodily law, but as its perfect execution—an interpretation that preserves the fact of healing while quietly displacing its traditional mythic explanation.
God is not above the laws but Master of the laws of nature. “non enim naturae leges solvuntur, sed eodem momento recte diriguntur” (the laws of nature are not broken, but rightly directed)
Motus in corpore humano saepe non a laesione partium, sed a perturbatione solius functionis dependet. Unde contingit, ut membra diu immobilia, nulla tamen structurae dissolutione affecta, subito pristinum usum recipiant, ubi causa impedimenti tollitur. Quare mirum non est, si in Evangelio legimus eos, qui diu claudicaverant aut paralysi detenti fuerant, uno verbo ad motum restitutos: non enim naturae leges solvuntur, sed eodem momento recte diriguntur.\
English translation
Movement in the human body often depends not on injury to the parts themselves, but on disturbance of function alone. Hence it comes about that limbs long rendered immobile—though affected by no dissolution of structure—may suddenly recover their former use once the cause of obstruction is removed. For this reason it is not astonishing that we read in the Gospel of those who had long been lame or held by paralysis being restored to motion by a single word: the laws of nature are not broken, but in that same instant rightly directed.
Connor’s Evangelium medici belongs to the same late-seventeenth-century project as Thomas Burnet’s Sacred Theory of the Earth, Robert Boyle’s experimental theology, and Isaac Newton’s law-governed cosmos: an effort not to deny miracle, but to relocate it within an intelligible order of nature. As Connor states explicitly in the Prooemium, God does not merely “set miracles before our eyes,” but also “reveals the manner and rationale by which they are effected” (efficiendi rationem modumque patefaciat). Burnet sought that rationale in the architecture of the Earth itself, explaining the Flood and the Fall as consequences of a divinely pre-designed natural system; Boyle located it in the constancy of natural laws, arguing that regularity magnifies divine wisdom rather than diminishing it; and Newton extended the same principle to the heavens, insisting that celestial motion obeys mathematical law while remaining sustained by providence. Connor applies this shared logic to the human body, proposing that Gospel miracle-cures operate not by suspending nature, but by perfectly directing it. In all four cases, miracle is preserved, yet stripped of arbitrariness: God acts not as a magician interrupting His creation, but as its supreme architect and physician, working through laws that human reason may gradually come to understand.
Connor or O’Connor, Bernard, M.D. (1666?–1698), physician and historian, descended from an ancient Irish family, was born in the county of Kerry about 1666. Being brought up as a catholic he was unable to receive a university education in his native country, but he was thoroughly instructed by private tutors. With the intention of adopting the medical profession he went to France about 1686, and studied at the universities of Montpelier and Paris, but took the degree of M.D. at Rheims on 18 Sept. 1691 (Munk, Coll. of Phys. 2nd edit. i. 514). He became highly distinguished in his profession, and was particularly skilled in anatomy and chemistry. When the two sons of the high chancellor of Poland were on the point of returning to their own country, it was arranged that they should be accompanied by Connor. He first conducted them to Venice, where he cured the Hon. William Legge, afterwards Earl of Dartmouth, of a fever. He then proceeded to Padua, and thence, through the Tyrol, Bavaria, and Austria, to Vienna. After some stay at the court of the Emperor Leopold he passed through Moravia and Silesia to Cracow and Warsaw. He was appointed physician at the court of King John Sobieski in consequence of letters of recommendation addressed to Hieronimo Alberto de Conti, the Venetian minister, whose wife was the Lady Margaret Paston, eldest daughter of Robert and sister to William, earl of Yarmouth. His reputation was increased by the decided opinion he gave, that the king’s only sister, the Duchess of Radzevil, was suffering not from ague as other physicians maintained, but from an abscess in the liver. A post-mortem examination proved the correctness of Connor’s diagnosis. In 1694 he was appointed to attend the king of Poland’s only daughter, the Princess Teresa Cunigunda, who was to travel from Warsaw to Brussels to marry the elector of Bavaria. He set out with the princess on 11 Nov. 1694, and they arrived at Brussels on 12 Jan. 1694–5. Having resigned his charge to Dr. Pistorini, the elector’s physician, he came in February to London and took up his residence in Bow Street, Covent Garden.
Soon afterwards he visited Oxford, where he lectured with great credit upon the discoveries of Malpighi, Bellini, Redi, and other celebrated scientific men whom he had known abroad. In 1695 he published ‘Dissertationes Medico-Physicæ. De Antris Lethiferis. De Montis Vesuvii Incendio. De Stupendo Ossium Coalitu. De Immani Hypogastrii Sarcomate,’ The above treatises, which are printed separately with distinct title-pages, show their author to have been a man of much thought and observation, as well as of great reading and general knowledge. He returned in the summer of 1695 to London, where in the ensuing winter he gave another course of lectures. On 27 Nov. 1695 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society (Thomson, List of Fellows of the Royal Soc. p. xxix). On 6 April 1696 he was admitted a licentiate of the College of Physicians. In the latter year he lectured at Cambridge.
Hirsch-H. II, 90; Wellcome II, 382; Krivatsy 2642; ; Osleriana 2358
Jamesgray2@me.com 617-678-4517
US,CA UNIV OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES
US,CT YALE UNIV MED LIBR
US,IL UNIV OF CHICAGO
US,IN UNIV OF NOTRE DAME
US,MA HARVARD UNIV
US,MD NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE
US,PA COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS OF PHILADELPHIA L
US,VA UNIV OF VIRGINIA US,CA CALIFORNIA STATE UNIV-LONG BEACH LIBR
US,CA UNIV OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES
US,CT YALE UNIV MED LIBR
US,DC GEORGETOWN UNIV
US,GA EMORY UNIV, PITTS THEOL LIBR
US,MO UNIV OF MISSOURI–COLUMBIA
CA,BC SIMON FRASER UNIV
US,OH CASE WESTERN RSV UNIV
US,RI BROWN UNIV
US,VA GEORGE MASON UNIV
US,WA WASHINGTON STATE UNIV LIBR
CA,BC SIMON FRASER UNIV
CA,ON QUEENS UNIV LIBR.
US,NY CORNELL UNIV
US,MA HARVARD UNIV DIVINITY SCH LIB
US,MA HARVARD UNIV, MED SCH, COUNTWAY LIBR
US,MI UNIV OF MICHIGAN LIBR
US,NJ PRINCETON UNIV
US,NM UNIV OF NEW MEXICO
Short Link: https://wp.me/p3kzOR-8N9
Leave a Reply