Cotta’s Life and Works
Born in Coventry,John Cotta (1575-1627/8) was admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge in 1588 where he proceeded BA in 1593, before moving to Corpus Christi for his MA in 1596 and later an md in 1604.
He set a successful medical practice in Northampton as soon as 1600, and settled there permanently after finishing his md. His practise became successful thanks to the patronage of Sir William Tate, who, like Cotta, was a native of Coventry.[1113]Unlike Argentine or Erastus, Cotta never displayed ministerial ambitions, nor wrote works of devotion. During his lifetime he published three books. His first work—A short discouerie of the vnobserued dangers of seuerall sorts of ignorant and vnconsiderate practisers of physicke (1612)—was an attack against quacksalvers and diverse inexperienced and unlearned practitioners of medicine, which included a long chapter on witchcraft. In 1616 he published his most influential treatise, The Triall of Witchcraft, building a rationale for detecting true witchcraft. His last work was an engaged pamphlet—Cotta contra Antonium (1623)—published in Oxford against Francis Anthony and his contested remedy aurum potabile, a cure that Paracelsus had claimed to have devised. Although the publishing date is later, this angry attack, quite consistent with A Discoverie, was actually written in 1616 and Cotta was then persuaded by his friends to delay the publication.9
In those three works his main authorities remain the same: his philosophical position is grounded in Aristotle and completed with Julius Caesar Scaliger's criticism of Cardano,10 while his medical authorities are Hippocrates, Galen and Fernel. Cotta appears as a conservative physician deeply rooted in the traditional theory of humours, but, despite his attacks against the “Empirickes”, he is quite aware of the growing importance of direct experience and practice.