John Cotta

John Cotta (1575–1650) was a physician in England and author of books and other texts on medicine and witchcraft.

He was a native of Coventry, and his mother is believed to be Susannah Winthrop, aunt of John Winthrop. In 1590 he was admitted a scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge, and five years later, after taking the B.A. degree, he moved to Corpus Christi College where, in the following year, he proceeded to the M.A. degree. He obtained the M.D. degree in 1603, and then took up residence at Northampton, where, through the patronage and influence of Sir William Tate, he acquired a considerable professional practice.

Cotta wrote extensively about quack doctors, and exposed several in his book Ignorant Practisers of Physicke (1612). He put a traditional Galenist argument, to the effect that experience alone of was of limited value to medical practitioners. With his medical colleague James Hart from Northampton, he argued the case for learned medicine (the early modern tradition descending from Galen) and the requirement of a university degree for its effective use.

He believed in evil spirits, sorcerers and magic. He begins his book The Triall of Witch-craft (1616) by stating that these phenomena were beyond human knowledge, and that only by conjecture and inference is it possible to understand these events. He did warn readers that many suspected witches were really imposters, or unwitting agents of the devil. He presents as evidence that evil spirits exist the standard classical history and biblical texts. He even uses reason to dismiss the "water test" for witches, where a purported witch would be submerged in water, and if she had renounced her baptism and was a true witch, the water would reject her and she would float. Cotta did still agree with others like Reginald Scot that magic was clearly a factor in day-to-day life because many diseases displayed symptoms they could not understand, or did not respond to standard remedies. Also he asserted that eyewitness accounts were sufficient to charge a suspected witch with witchcraft.

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