Talk:Valentine Greatrakes

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography, a collaborative effort to create, develop and organize Wikipedia's articles about people. All interested editors are invited to join the project and contribute to the discussion. For instructions on how to use this banner, please refer to the documentation.BiographyWikipedia:WikiProject BiographyTemplate:WikiProject Biographybiography articles

Skepticism B‑class Low‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Skepticism, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of science, pseudoscience, pseudohistory and skepticism related articles on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.SkepticismWikipedia:WikiProject SkepticismTemplate:WikiProject SkepticismSkepticism articles
B	This article has been given a rating which conflicts with the project-independent quality rating in the banner shell. Please resolve this conflict if possible.
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Ireland Low‑importance

	Ireland portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Ireland, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Ireland on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.IrelandWikipedia:WikiProject IrelandTemplate:WikiProject IrelandIreland articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Untitled

I have added some info regarding the power of healing. There have been many 'natural born healers' in the history of mankind. Magnetism has been said being the main attribute of these blessed people. CHITRANI-08 jAN/06-21.12 (GMT+1)

This user clearly had no grasp of what is considered appropriate content on Wikipedia. I've removed his entire mini-essay -- which should have been done long ago. Cgingold 23:11, 9 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Not factual

You can't say he had healing powers. Anything supporting the view that it's possible to heal people mysitcally does not belong on Wikipedia as it has no factual evidence.

This is absolute rubbish, and completely ahistorical.

Be that as it may, Lots of people believe in faith healing, and Wikipedia is not a place to say that they are wrong. --Guthrie 22:29, 4 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Birthplace

I do not think he was born in Affane but had an estate there. I have a reference to say he was born in Devon at Stoke Gabriel in a letter by Herbert Phaire

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Streona (talk • contribs) 15:26, 17 May 2010‎

Text taken form the source mentioned above

Extracts from the Port-folio of a Man of Letters

VALENTINE CREATRAKS. Extracts of Letters from Mr. Herbert ander Phairc, of St. John's, near Enniseorthy in the County of Wexford, in Ireland, relating to Mr. Greatraks,^[1] the famous Irish Stroker.—From the Originals in the British Museum.

February 29, 1743/4^{[see Old Style and New Style dates]}

MR. Valentine Greatraks was born at Stoke Gabriei,in Devonshire, where he had an estate, which he fold, and then lived and died at his estate of Afftne, within a mile of Ctppoqueen, in the county of Waterfoid. He was the eldest son, and educated at Oxford. There is some account of him in A. Wocd's Athtnæ Oxon. He was a lieutenant of horse (I think) in Ludlow't Troop, He was a man of great parts, and strictly virtuous. He married the sister of Sir William Godolphin, who was King Charles the Second's Ambassador at Madrid. He had but two childien, both sons. The eldest, William, married Col. Wheeler's daughter, in the Queen's County, and died soon after. The second, Edmund (after Sir Edmundbury Godfrey) married the daughter of a glassman in Bistol, and died soon after. There is one of the name, a distant relation, that now lives at Affane, where Mr. Gieairaks one night dreamed thrice, that he had virtue in his hands; and next morning seeing a man fail down as dead with the epilepsy, he stroaked, and recovered him instantly. This was his first patient. He grew so famous that his court was filled with diseased every morning, which he always spent in their favour. Wherever he went, a great throng attended him, most of whom he cured; but he would never touch any that looked venereal, saying, he took that to be a just judgment for their sins. All disorders were not obedient to his touch, but he failed in few. My father, who had the least implicit faith of any man, had a violent fever, and Mr. Greatraks turned it away in two minutes. He had, at another time, a terrible ague, which, when the fit struck him, Mr. Greatraks cured in a minute or two, by holding him by the wrists ; and he never had a fit after. Mr. Greatraks also cured a sister of mine of the king's evil, by stroaking.

March 1743/4
Mr. Greatraks was of large stature, and surprising strength. He has very often taken a handful of hazlenuts, and cracked most of them with one gripe of his hand, and has often divided a single hazlenut by his thumb and lore-finger. He had the largest, heaviest, and softest hand (I believe) of any man in his time, to which I do attribute the natural reason of his great virtue in his hand above other men. Many years ago, I took the following note out of a book, intitled "Enthusiasm Triumphant, per Dr. R. Dean of C.—" I refer all his virtue to his particular temper and complexion, and I take his spirits to be a kind of elixir and universal ferment, and that he cures (as Dr. Mead expresses it) by a sanative contagion." I remember, Sir Edmundbury Godfrey, in his Letters, mentions some of those he stroaked and cured in England, and that continued perfectly well. It is a pity thole letters, to the number of 104, are not in some body's hands that would oblige the world by publishing them: they contain many remarkable things, and the best and truest Secret History of King Charles the Second's Reign;

March 10, 173/4)
. When Mr. Greatraks came to my father's, the court was crowded with patients, whom he attended all the forenoon. Mary were perfectly cured, without any return of their dilonier, and most received benefit; but, in my time, his virtue was much abated; but I have heard my two eldest sifters, who were women grown, and my eMell brother, and my father and mother, and many other honest people, xxx would speak nothing but truth, often xxx that they have many times seen him sixx a violent pain from the shoulder or the elbow, and so to the wrist, and thence to the top of the thumb, and, by holding it strongly for some time, it has evaporated. There are many wonderful relations of this kind, which, though assuredly true, have so much the air of romance, that I have no pleasure in relating them. Mr. Greatraks married to his second wife the widow Rotheram, near Camolin, in the county of Wexford, and died, I believe, is the year 1685.

--PBS (talk) 21:15, 29 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

With reference to the comment in the letters "He married the sister of Sir William Godolphin" The father of Sir William Godolphin (1635–1696) was William Godolphin(1605–1663) --not very imaginative family when it came to Christian names-- lead me to a new reliable source that says Greatrakes married one of his daughters:

Elmer, Peter (2013), The Miraculous Conformist: Valentine Greatrakes, the Body Politic, and the Politics of Healing in Restoration Britain (illustrated ed.), Oxford University Press, p. 63, ISBN 9780199663965

-PBS (talk) 14:49, 30 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

As to where he was born one of the letters states "MR. Valentine Greatraks was born at Stoke Gabriei, in Devonshire" Elmer 2013, p. 17 states that he was born in New Affane, County Waterford, Munster (Ireland) to a Protestant settler family. -- PBS (talk) 16:54, 30 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ See the following pamphlets published respecting this extraordinary man :—Greataricic (Valenc.) Account of his strange Cures, London, 1666, 4to. Wonders no Miracles; or, an Emination of Grcararick's Cures, London, 1666, 4to. "Enthusiafmus Triumphatus, written by Philophilus Parresiastes, with the Observations and Reply of Alazonotnastix, London, 1656, 8vo. Monthly Mag. No. 100.

Expanded with old PD text

I have expanded the article using the PD text in:

Urban, ed. (1779). The Gentleman's Magazine, and Historical Chronicle. Vol. 49. E. Cave. pp. 22–23. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)

However this text was published in 1779 and will need checking and modifying against modern texts. I have cited one for his death (it was previously in external links) and the rest of the text needs checking against sources such as this:

Frahe, Willie (26 July 2001). "Valentine Greatrakes - 'The Stroker'". Waterford County Museum.

I will leave that task to someone else

-- PBS (talk) 20:36, 29 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

death year

This article says 1682 while wikidata says 1683. One must be wrong. MB 19:14, 18 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

[1] See the following pamphlets published respecting this extraordinary man :—Greataricic (Valenc.) Account of his strange Cures, London, 1666, 4to. Wonders no Miracles; or, an Emination of Grcararick's Cures, London, 1666, 4to. "Enthusiafmus Triumphatus, written by Philophilus Parresiastes, with the Observations and Reply of Alazonotnastix, London, 1656, 8vo. Monthly Mag. No. 100.

[1]