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Simon Forman

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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SIMON FORMAN (1552-1611), English physician and astrologer, was born in 1552 at Quidham, a small village near Wilton, Wiltshire. At the age of fourteen he became apprentice to a druggist at Salisbury, but at the end of four years he exchanged this profession for that of a schoolmaster. Shortly afterwards he entered Magdalen College, Oxford, where he studied chiefly medicine and astrology. After continuing the same studies in Holland he commenced practice as a physician in Philpot Lane, London, but as he possessed no diploma, he on this account underwent more than one term of imprisonment. Ultimately, however, he obtained a diploma from Cambridge university, and established himself as a physician and astrologer at Lambeth, where he was consulted, especially as a physician, by many persons of rank, among others by the notorious countess of Essex. He expired suddenly while crossing the Thames in a boat on the 12th of September 1611.

A list of Forman's works on astrology is given in Bliss's edition of the Athenae Oxonienses; many of his MS. works are contained in the Bodleian Library, the British Museum and the Plymouth Library. A Brief Description of the Forman MSS. in the Public Library, Plymouth, was published in 1853.