Akteure, Tiere, Dinge: Verfahrensweisen der Naturgeschichte in der Frühen Neuzeit. Silke Förschler and Anne Mariss, eds. Köln: Böhlau Verlag, 2017. 260 pp. €36.
cally informed attitudes to witchcraft: it was, for example, entering the demonic pact, rather than acts of maleficium, for which the witch deserved death, while the devil, although able to create deceitful illusions, could not alter the natural world. Like most contemporary writers on the subject, Cotta drew on a variety of sources in the construction of his ideas on witchcraft. There is some reference to works of demonology, with the Malleus Maleficarum being cited occasionally, and to recent English trials —for example, the Lancashire trials of 1612 and a well-known Northamptonshire case of the same year. But Cotta also depends heavily on allusions to witchcraft in classical literature and, of course, in the Bible: the Witch of Endor appears frequently. Cotta’s main argument is, as might be expected, that skilled medical practitioners like himself are the best placed to decide if the supposedly bewitched were indeed suffering from witchcraft. Accordingly, he dismisses such practices as swimming witches, scratching them, turning to cunning folk for advice about witchcraft, or burning supposedly bewitched cattle. At no point does Cotta reject the reality of witchcraft, but the Short Discovery does, however, represent one aspect of that caution about witchcraft accusations that does help explain the high acquittal rate in English witch trials. Overall, this volume constitutes a major contribution to our understanding of John Cotta and, indeed, of what sort of learning an educated medical practitioner of the period might draw upon in discussing the role of the physician in contemporary society.