Elizabethan Occultist and Astrologer, Simon Forman, Inspires Hit Storytelling Game

“Jennifer visited the Casebooks Project and had a long conversation about Forman, his manuscripts, his patients, and the histories of astrology and medicine. As the game developed, Casebooks provided selections of material from Forman’s records and information about his methods and suggested further readings.

We read drafts of the character summaries and storylines and provided feedback about their historical accuracy, focusing especially on the social dynamics of early modern medical practice, the politics of the early modern medical marketplace, and how patients and practitioner understood health and disease. We encouraged the uses of humour and deliberate anachronism, rather than romanticised nostalgia, to challenge players to think about meanings of health and illness.

 From the perspective of Casebooks, working on Astrologaster contributed to our thinking about the performative nature of the casebooks; about how to (re)present the casebooks in our search interface; and about innovative ways to communicate the history of medicine to both academic and non-academic audiences,” Lauren Kassell said.