Noah Biggs was an English medical reformer[1] and
alchemical writer of the middle of the seventeenth century. In his Chymiatrophilos, mataeotechnia medicinae praxes: The Vanity of the Craft of Physick,[2] from 1651, he attacked pretentious and
quack medical theories of his time. He also implied that
Galenists in the
College of Physicians opposed the Parliamentarian regime.[3] He is credited with introducing the words 'febrile'[4] and 'obesity'.
His book borrowed from
John Milton's Areopagitica, and the Advancement of Learning of
John Hall. He called for better diet, and criticised bleeding and other remedies of the period.;[5] and warned against
lead poisoning.[6] It was addressed to Parliament, and asked for reform of the universities.[7][8][9] evidences this attitude in his sharp attack on the universities of his day. It argued that medical practice should be open to all, a point also taken up by
William Walwyn.[10]
^Hill, Intellectual Origins of the English Revolution, p. 298: The radicals (Webster, Biggs), from whom the most violent attack on the universities came, inherited the craftsmen's alchemical tradition and the doctors' astrological tradition.
^The late 1640s and early 1650s saw an increasing interest in van Helmont in England,
Sir Cheney Culpeper,
Walter Charleton, and Noah Biggs were all enthusiastic about van Helmont, before
Starkey's arrival in England. William R. Newman and Lawrence M. Principe, Alchemy Tried in the Fire: Starkey, Boyle, and the Fate of Helmontian Chymistry (2002), p. 222.