SIMON

See also:

• FORMAN, ANDREW (c. 1465-1521)
• SIMON FORMAN (1552-1611)

FORMAN (1552-1611)  , English physician and astrologer, was born in 1552 at Quidham, a small village near Wilton, Wiltshire . At the age of fourteen he became apprentice to a druggist at Salisbury, but at the end of four years he exchanged this profession for that of a schoolmaster . Shortly afterwards he entered Magdalen College, Oxford, where he studied chiefly medicine and astrology . After continuing the same studies- in Holland he commenced practice as a physician in Philpot Lane, London, but as he possessed no diploma, he on this account underwent more than one term of imprisonment . Ultimately, however, he obtained a diploma from Cambridge university, and established himself as a physician and astrologer at Lambeth, where he was consulted, especially as a physician, by many persons of rank, among others by the notorious countess of Essex . He expired suddenly while crossing the Thames in a boat on the 12th of September 1611 . A list of Forman's works on astrology is given in Bliss's edition of the Athenae Oxonienses; many of his MS. works are contained in the Bodleian Library, the British Museum and the Plymouth Library . A Brief Description of the Forman MSS. in the Public Library, . Plymouth, was published in 1853 .