For most of her life Anne Conway was afflicted by debilitating chronic illness for which no cure or palliative could be found. The crippling pain visited on her by her condition was an inescapable fact of her daily existence, and attempts to alleviate her suffering dominated her life. One consequence of this was that she had more than average contact with medical men. As we shall see, it was through events supervening upon her consultation of the Irish healer, Valentine Greatrakes, that she became a front-row spectator of the debates about method and interpretation occasioned by the experimentalism of Robert Boyle (1627–91) and his defenders in the Royal Society. In this chapter I shall discuss links between Anne Conway's medical history and contemporary debates about theoretical and methodological issues. I shall also discuss some of the metaphysical issues raised by the competing explanatory claims of those who attempted to interpret natural phenomena, especially in the context of medicine.

Anne Conway's personal experience of unrelievable pain certainly impinges directly on her philosophy. It is more than likely that her own incontrovertible experience of bodily pain affecting her mind contributes to her refutation of mind–body dualism in the passage in her Principles where she asks,