John Case

John Case (c.1660–1700) was an English astrologer and quack doctor, a writer on anatomy, astrology and medicine. Life Case was born about 1660, at Lyme Regis in Dorset. In about 1682, he lived in Lambeth. By 1696, he had placed the letters M.D. after his name, and was living close to Ludgate, having succeeded to the business of Thomas Safford, who had succeeded to that of William Lilly; he was in possession of their apparatus. Over his door he had the verses Within this place lives Doctor Case, and Joseph Addison wrote in The Tatler (No. 240) that Case made more money by them than John Dryden by all his poetical works. It is Doctor Case who, in Alexander Pope's poem, is summoned to attend John Dennis in his "phrenzy". Works Case first appears as the author of The Wards of the Key to Helmont proved unfit for the Lock, or the Principles of Mr. Wm. Bacon examined and refuted (London, 1682). The work is a protest against the theory in William Bacon's Key to Helmont that water is the principle of all bodies, and prefixed is a recommendatory epistle by John Partridge, the astrologer. Case's friendship with Partridge is noted by Jonathan Swift.