William Grigg was a

medical doctor A physician, medical practitioner (British English), medical doctor, or simply doctor is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through the study, diagnosis, prognosis ...

in Salem Village, Massachusetts. He is best known as the doctor who diagnosed the Salem Villagers as possessed, during the time of the

Salem witch trials The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft in Province of Massachusetts Bay, colonial Massachusetts between February 1692 and May 1693. More than 200 people were accused. Not everyone wh ...

. Griggs was in charge of diagnosing and determining how "much" of a witch they were. Griggs claimed that the "afflicted" girls were "under an Evil hand" (most likely referring to the

Devil A devil is the mythical personification of evil as it is conceived in various cultures and religious traditions. It is seen as the objectification of a hostile and destructive force. Jeffrey Burton Russell states that the different conce ...

In Popular Culture

In ''Burned: A Daughters of Salem Novel'', a 2023 young adult novel by Kellie O'Neill, the private high school in Salem, Massachusetts where the main characters attend is named "Griggs Academy", after William Griggs.

References

External links

* http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/saxon-salem/servlet/SaxonServlet?source=salem/texts/bios.xml&style=salem/xsl/dynaxml.xsl&chunk.id=b47&clear-stylesheet-cache=yes * http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/saxon-salem/servlet/SaxonServlet?source=salem/texts/names.xml&style=salem/xsl/dynaxml.xsl&group.num=all&mbio.num=mb47&clear-stylesheet-cache=yes Year of birth missing Year of death missing People from colonial Massachusetts 17th-century American physicians Physicians from Massachusetts People of the Salem witch trials Witch hunters {{Salem-stub