“Physician, Heal Thyself”: Michael Wigglesworth, Puritan, Poet, and Physician

Michael Wigglesworth (1631-1705) is most famous today for writing a book that became a bestseller throughout the colonized eastern Atlantic seaboard: The Day of Doom: or a Poetical Description of the Great and Last Judgment. This forbidding title underscores his function as Malden, Massachusetts’ primary clergyman: keeping his congregation toeing the line of God’s holy ordinances. It doesn’t, however, suggest his second role in Malden – that of physician. 

The epitaph on Wigglesworth’s gravestone closes with the line, “Mauldens Physician for Body and Soul Two.” It wasn’t uncommon for a pastor to also have medical training; in New England’s colonies, attaining higher education entailed gaining familiarity with theological and scientific treatises alike. However, Wigglesworth’s particular case is intriguing, as his blended career seems to have come to pass largely because of his chronic illnesses. His lived experience of bodily infirmity did not conform to contemporary professional expectations, requiring ongoing flexibility, creativity, and resiliency as he strove to make a living for himself and his family. Wigglesworth’s strategies for coping with his unpredictably changing capacity to meet his congregation’s expectations of an able-bodied minister included ongoing medical service in his community. 

Wigglesworth left little evidence for historians to glean details of his medical practice, particularly when compared to the vast corpus of writing he left on his religious beliefs. However, the few details that do exist hint at how profoundly his medical practice, his chronic illnesses, and his theology were intertwined throughout his life. The irregular fluctuations of his chronic illness created inflection points that spurred Wigglesworth toward medicine, for both pragmatic and spiritual reasons. This post examines how Wigglesworth deliberately reshaped his professional practice to accommodate his dynamic disabilities. 

“The Lord is thy physician”

Disability was never a stranger to Wigglesworth, even before the onset of his own chronic illnesses. His father, Edward, injured his back when Wigglesworth was nine years old and away at preparatory school. Edward’s resulting partial paralysis threw the family’s financial future into uncertainty. As the family’s only son, Wigglesworth was summoned home from his studies to tend to the family farm. However, for reasons both physical and temperamental, he was such an ineffectual farmer that Edward decided it would be more profitable for the family to have a well-educated son. Wigglesworth’s failures as a farmer sowed seeds of resentment between him and his father, creating a profound sense of personal insecurity that lingered into his adulthood. Maybe this is why, when Wigglesworth returned to school as a precocious thirteen-year-old, he was determined to outperform his peers despite the four-year break in his education. After three more years of study, he was ready to enter Harvard College.

When Wigglesworth first enrolled at Harvard, he planned to become a physician. Perhaps this career choice was motivated by a sense of obligation to his father; in a characteristically apologetic passage in his brief autobiography (likely written as part of his preparation for ordination), he lauded Edward’s benevolence in allowing him to pursue higher education: “It was an act of great self Denial in my father that notwithstanding his own Lameness & great weakness of Body wch required the service & helpfulness of a son, and having but one son to be ye staff of his age & supporter of his weakness he would yet for my good be content to deny himself of that comfort & Assistance I might have Lent him” (Dean 1871, 138). Wigglesworth may have hoped to bring his newfound medical knowledge home to recompense his father’s “great self Denial.” Although his relationship with Edward continued to be fraught, Wigglesworth was hyper-aware of the responsibilities he bore to his family. 

However, his own health declined as he studied for his Master of Arts degree. As a 21-year-old in 1653, he documented a constellation of symptoms in his diary: pain in his upper abdomen and back, spells of weakness and extreme fatigue, unexplained rashes and boils, nausea, and a chronically sore throat (Crowder 1962, 51). Given the religious doctrine he lived by, he was inclined to blame his ill health on his great sinfulness. He often castigated himself for excessive pride and lust, picking apart his daily failures and shortcomings. He wavered between studying to become a physician or a clergyman, ultimately deciding to enter the ministry when he felt the call to preach. The decision was agonizing, made more so by his tendency to treat wholly insignificant matters – like wondering if he should knock on a neighbor’s door to let him know that his gate was unlocked – with the same gravity as he did choosing a profession. Edward disapprovingly responded to his son’s anxieties by castigating him for his “weak and silly management of every business,” compounding Wigglesworth’s torment (Morgan 1946, 14). 

On October 15, 1653, Wigglesworth received word that his father had died. When he realized he felt none of the respect toward his father that the biblical Fifth Commandment mandated, his religious passion intensified and his health worsened. Throughout his final months at school, only a few glimmers of hope peek through otherwise bleak diary passages: “In our president’s exposition, I found sweet encouragement in regard to my bodily weakness, occasionally fetched from that, Isa. XI. 30, 31, ‘It may be thou art sickly. Why, the Lord is thy physician, who healeth thee. He can make thee strong in thy age, though thou be weakly in thy youth’” (Mather 1705, 45). God’s position as a physician was tremendously important to Wigglesworth – not only as a theological student and as a prospective pastor, but as a person suffering from unexplained physical ills.

“Taken off by Long Sickness”

Wigglesworth’s pathway toward establishing an independent and guaranteed income was cluttered with psychological and physical obstacles. He was terrified that his illness was venereal and could be transmitted to a future wife and that his disabilities would preclude him from useful church service. However, in 1655 – following consultation with three illustrious physicians – he married Mary Reyner (his mother’s niece) and tentatively entered negotiations to serve Malden, Massachusetts’ church. When Malden’s congregation offered him the job, he backed out, fearing that his chronic sore throats would stand in the way of his effective ministry. It was only when Mary became pregnant that he accepted Malden’s offer. He was concerned that he “desired Health more than Holyness,” but hoped to be a successful leader of Malden’s flock (Crowder 1962, 91). 

 As he had anticipated, Wigglesworth’s health impinged on what Malden’s congregation considered the fundamental duties of the ministry: namely, preaching. Another Puritan minister, Cotton Mather, later recalled, “It was not long after his coming to Maldon, that a sickly constitution so prevailed upon him as to confine him from his Publick Work, for some whole sevens of years.” Wigglesworth was “taken off by Long Sickness,” unable to venture outside his home to Malden’s church (Dean 1871, 55-57). Because Wigglesworth fell short of their desired mark, Malden’s residents felt little to no responsibility to pay him a set salary.

It is an unexpected irony that Wigglesworth turned to practicing medicine as a way to sustain himself and his family financially when he was too ill to preach. Little is known about Wigglesworth’s medical practice, but, given that his colleagues report him being housebound, it seems probable that he saw patients in Malden’s parsonage. One seemingly minor detail about Wigglesworth’s medical knowledge – that he originated or promoted a method for preparing a medicine known as “white balsam drops” or “fennel balsam” – becomes compelling when placed in the context of his own chronic illnesses. Fennel balsam was described as a “diaphoretic and carminative,” intended to provoke sweating and reduce biliousness (Holyoke 1829, 20-21). Given the range of symptoms Wigglesworth experienced, it is possible his experimentation with this medicine was motivated by a desire to find a cure for what ailed him personally. As Wigglesworth biographer Richard Crowder observed, “[Michael] applied himself to the study of remedies, not only to serve his community but to find relief for himself” (Crowder 1962, 125). 

During this time, Wigglesworth also began to write. He felt that if he wasn’t physically able to spread God’s message through the pulpit, he must evangelize in print. The Day of Doom was intended to be an accessible way for people without formal education to absorb the fundamental tenets of Christian eschatology. The predictability of its rhyme scheme grates on modern ears but was conducive to memorization. As Wigglesworth was ill and essentially – as we would term it today – “working from home,” he created accessible pathways for devoted Christians to study and recommit themselves to foundational theological principles.

Around the time of Wigglesworth’s second marriage in 1679, his health improved and ultimately stabilized. The reason for the sudden alleviation of his symptoms is as unknowable as the origins of his long illness. Wigglesworth’s aforementioned colleague, Cotton Mather, attributed his recovery to divine intervention: “It pleased God, when the Distresses of the Church in Malden did extremely call for it, wondrously to Restore His Faithful Servant. He that had been for near Twenty years almost Buried Alive, comes abroad again; and for as many years more, must in a Publick Usefulness receive the Answer and Harvest of the Thousands of Supplications with which the God of his Health had been addressed by him and for him” (Dean 1871, 99). Wigglesworth also saw God’s hand in his newfound health. 

Laboring Under “Manifold Afflictions”

Wigglesworth practiced creative professional and personal adaptation throughout his career. His son Edward noted such flexible resiliency as being intrinsic to Wigglesworth’s character: “My Father was eminent for Learning and holiness, for fidelity and constancy in his endeavours to serve God and benefit his people to the utmost of his Ability in some capacity or other amidst those manifold afflictions, difficulties and inconveniences which he laboured under for the greatest part of his Life…” (Dean 1871, 124).  Wigglesworth’s disabilities shaped the professional pathways he pursued, as he adjusted how he engaged with Malden’s townspeople depending on the state of his health.  

Fundamental dynamics across his career – Malden’s initial acceptance crumbling into rejection when he, as a disabled man, actually experienced disabling symptoms; his need to work from home and arrange his professional life accordingly; his shift to writing when the pulpit was no longer accessible; the motivation to become an expert in the symptoms he was personally experiencing – persist throughout the experiences of chronically ill and disabled people today. We can see threads of contemporary social issues shaping disabled people’s ongoing struggle for equity and access in Wigglesworth’s efforts to maintain a livable income. Past precarity informs contemporary disparity: when examining Wigglesworth’s life through the lens of disability, precedents for current social conditions emerge. 

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References

Bosco, Ronald A. 1989. The Poems of Michael Wigglesworth. Lanham: University Press of America.

Crowder, Richard. 1962. No Featherbed to Heaven: A Biography of Michael Wigglesworth, 1631-1705. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press. 

Dean, John Ward. 1871. Memoir of Rev. Michael Wigglesworth: Author of the Day of Doom. Albany, NY: Joel Munsell. 

Holyoke, Edward A. 1829. Memoir of Edward A. Holyoke, M.D. L.L.D.: Prepared in Compliance with a Vote of the Essex South District Medical Society and Published at Their Request. Boston: Perkins & Marvin.

Mather, Increase. 1849. A Faithful Man Described and Rewarded: A Sermon Preached at Malden, June 24, 1705, Occasioned by the Death of that Faithful and Aged Servant of God, Mr. Michael Wigglesworth. Boston: John Putnam.

Morgan, Edmund. 1965. The Diary of Michael Wigglesworth, 1653-1657: The Conscience of a Puritan. New York: Harper Torchbooks.

Wigglesworth, Michael. 1673. The Day of Doom: Or a Description of the Great and Last Judgment. With a Short Discourse about Eternity. London: W.G. for John Sims.

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Sarah Pawlicki (she/they) is currently a Women’s History Mellon Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow at the American Conservation Experience/National Historic Landmarks Program, where they are working to broaden the representation of women’s histories across the U.S. They earned a PhD in History from the University of Minnesota in 2023.