Free Republic

The year 1850 was plagued by stormy weather and the turbulent conditions were closely followed by the aptly named George Merryweather, a doctor in Whitby, North Yorkshire, who claimed to forecast storms using leeches. Merryweather had been inspired by distinguished predecessors such as the 18th-century poet William Cowper. “I have a leech in a bottle that foretells all these prodigies and convulsions of Nature,” Cowper wrote. “He is worth all the barometers in the world.” Edward Jenner, inventor of the smallpox vaccine, was another believer in the forecasting abilities of leeches, observing how agitated they became before storms: “The leech...

The great British preacher John Newton had a friend, a poet by the name of William Cowper, who along with Newton wrote hymns which eventually were compiled in the Olney Hymnal. Cowper’s more noted contributions to this hymnal were “Oh, for a closer walk with God” and “There is a fountain filled with blood.”......Sadly, we find documented in Forbes Winslow’s Anatomy of Suicide (written in 1840) that Cowper has tried more than once to take his own life. As psychiatrist and Christian author John White puts it, “Here then we are presented with a gifted and Godly man, a man...