Henry Hudson's Lost Voyage

By Peter C. Mancall

On April 17, 1610, the English sea captain Henry Hudson maneuvered his small ship called Discovery out of St. Katherine’s dock in London toward the Northwest Passage, the water route Europeans believed connected the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. On board were twenty-two men and two boys, one of whom was Hudson’s seventeen-year old son.

In the late summer of 1610 the captain guided the Discovery into modern Hudson Bay. He decided to spend the winter in Canadian waters even though he knew the ship would become trapped in ice. At some point during the bitterly cold months, some crew members decided they had suffered enough. When June came and the bay thawed, rebels put Hudson, his son, and seven loyal or ill men on a small boat (known as a shallop) and set them adrift. According to the survivors, the mutineers soon met a just fate when a group of Inuit killed four of them. A fifth rebel died, apparently of malnutrition, as the boat sailed homeward.

Sixteen months after its initial departure the Discovery, its decks stained with blood, returned to London with seven men and one boy. The survivors blamed the mutiny on the five men who had since died, but lingering suspicions about the captain’s fate prompted the High Court of Admiralty to investigate further. The suspects could not be charged with mutiny, because there was no such crime in England yet. The sailors had not committed treason because private financiers, rather than the King, owned the ship. The court charged four of the survivors with murder for purportedly exposing those on the shallop. But the accused were exonerated, probably because the court lacked evidence to prove that they had caused Hudson’s demise.

The bodies of Hudson and his last companions have never been found. No one was ever punished for the crime.


Peter C. Mancall is the author of Fatal Journey: The Final Expedition of Henry Hudson.

Telling Time in Early Europe

What time is it, you say? If you were living before the 18th century, you would not look at your wrist watch. No, you'd slip a portable sundial out of your pocket. The more complex sundials could also be converted to moon dials that indicated the time according to the amount of moonlight expected on a clear, starry night.

Although town squares began constructing clocks beginning somewhere in the 14th century, sundials remained in the picture well into the 18th century. Mechanical clocks were exorbitantly expensive and could be found only in the most noble of homes. And they were notoriously unreliable--telling time only within an hour, give or take. They also needed to be reset frequently. Of course, with the help of a sundial.

A well crafted sundial was the mark of good birth and high culture. One of the most famous sundial makers of the late seventeenth century was the Englishman Michael Butterfield, who set up shop along the riverbanks of Paris. His top-of-line sundials were made of silver, not brass, and were engraved with beautifully elaborate designs.

Sundial preferences were also gendered. Men went for larger sundials of about 2 1/2 inches nested in a silver box, that itself was nested in a brass exterior box. Women reached instead for daintier, 1 inch models in gold cases that could be slipped more easily in a purse.

Now I'm not a specialist of time telling in the early-modern period. Hardly! Much of what you have here is a distillation of Sara Schechner's outstanding article: "The Material Culture of Astronomy in Daily Life: Sundials, Science, and Social Change" (Journal for the History of Astronomy, 2001, 189-222). Well worth the read!

And for anyone near Chicago and interested in time keeping, a visit to the Adler Planetarium is well worth the trip. Their historical collections are remarkable. Any readers out there with a big checkbook? Take a peek at the sundial collections here. Feel free to ship one to me!

Image courtesy of the National Maritime Museum. For more information on the sundial above, click here.

Midwives and Witches

by Bronwyn Backstrom (Vanderbilt University)

The ideas of witches and witchcraft have been around for centuries and were hot topics. Witches were typically identified as older single women of lower class. Throughout history, there has been a stereotype that only women, specifically midwives and other women-healers, were witches. Women were targets because of the tradition of misogyny; women's participation in folk-healing; and changes in the awareness of female nature, their family and economic roles, and ideas of women's social behavior.

Female witches were accused of three main things: female sexuality (this included every sexual crime against men), organization, and having magical powers (both good and bad) that affected one's health. Witchcraft was considered to go against the Catholic Church. It was considered a threat to God's holy order because it was not based on scripture or religion. In addition, all witchcraft was considered based off of carnal lust, or strong sexual desires, with evil spirits.

The Malleus Maleficarum, meaning "Hammer of Witches," was written in 1484 by two reverends: Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger. This book contains everything one needs to know about witches and witchcraft at the time, from what defines a witch and how they become one, to the sentences they would receive because of their participation in witchcraft. It also contains information on witch-midwives.

According to Malleus Maleficarum, witch-midwives were considered the most wicked and dangerous witches, who inflicted the greatest injuries. This is because they dealt with the health of others and had easy access to newborn children, who were used in offerings for the evil spirits. Witch-midwives were accused of causing miscarriages; however, if they allowed a child to be born, they would allegedly either feast on the child or offer it to the evil spirits, allowing the witches to infect the child and turn it into a witch.

The evil spirits called the witch-midwives to offer them newborn children for several reasons. One was for their pride. Another was to disguise the act of infidelity as a virtue. By associating children with the evil spirits, the witches drew in more innocent people, making it easier for them to turn into witches. Finally, they used the children to fill their ranks. When the evil spirits infected children at an early age, turning them to witches, they could set them aside to be used in the future as needed.

There was a decline in accusations against women as witches between the 17th and 18th centuries because of the increase in male midwives. Men began to replace women, resulting in fewer women in the field who could be accused of witchcraft.

Image: Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger. Malleus Maleficarum, 1669. (Courtesy of Wellcome Library, London.)

References:

Brauner, Sigrid. Fearless Wives and Frightened Shrews: The Construction of the Witch in Early Modern Germany. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995.

Ehrenreich, Barbara, and Deirdre English. Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: A History of Women Healers. Old Westbury: Feminist Press, 1973.

Kramer, Heinrich, and James Sprenger. Malleus Maleficarum. Trans. Reverend Montague Summers. Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 2007.

Friday Marvels

Two articles caught our attention this week. The first was this story about a “17th-century Urine Filled Witch Bottle.”

Apparently, according to the latest issue of British Archeology (and as reported by MSNBC), “this spell device, often meant to attract and trap negative energy, was particularly common from the 16th to the 17th centuries, so the discovery provides a unique insight into witchcraft beliefs of that period.” Looks like we’re not the only ones fascinated with witches!

And from the Wellcome Library for the History of Medicine London comes some thoughtful reflections on a painting by the 19th century Solomon Hart depicting an encounter between Galileo and Milton (Galileo and Jewish Emancipation).

If you haven’t subscribed to the Wellcome’s blog, be sure to do so. The Wellcome Library is a simply magnificent collection for anyone interested in the History of Medicine or early cultural history. For the cooks among us, they also have a great collection of 16th and 17th century cookbooks.

Heads up: there’s a new book out called Galileo Goes to Jail with top-notch articles by many of the most renowned historians of science today. Be sure to have a look.

Image: Courtesy of MSNBC

The Good Wife's Guide

Macy Halford posted a great review of The Good Wife's Guide on the New Yorker's Book Bench website. Translated by Gina L. Greco and Christine M. Rose, The Good Wife's Guide is a fourteenth-century instruction book for a young bride, written by her husband. It's a primer on the fine art of male dominence.

The dinner menu the husband offers up goes to prove that real men did not eat quiche in the Middle Ages. Green eel soup or black hare stew, anyone?

As the 17th century specialist that I am, the book reminded me--of course--of Moliere's Arnolphe in The School for Wives. The wiley Arnolphe offers up a list of "maxims" for his young bride, whom he plucked from a convent. Of course, in the great Moliere tradition, the canny Agnes ends up showing what a nut job her husband really is.

Maxim 1. The woman who intends to be married ought to remember, that the man who takes her, takes her only for himself, notwithstanding the vast numbers of admirers which other women have in these our days.

Maxim 2. She ought to consult her husband about her dress; it being for him along should she take care of her beauty, and regardless whether other people think her handsome or not.

Maxim 3. She must lay aside the practice of ogling, and must use no paints, pomatums, beauty washes, nor the numberless ingredients that are made use of to set off the complexion. These are always mortal poisons to honour, and the pains bestowed to appear beautiful are seldom for the husband's sake.

Maxim 4. When she goes abroad, she ought, as honour requires, to prevent the wounds her eyes might give, by concealing them under her hood: for she should study to please her husband, and no one else.

Maxim 5. Decency prohibits her from receiving any friends whatever, except such as come to see her husband: those people of gallantry that have no business but with the wife, are very disagreeable to the husband.

There are five more maxims. But you get the point...oh, the things history has done to quiet women.

You might want to head over to a post on Silence and the Scold's Bridle. Miranda Garno Nesler offers some details about the muzzles that were used to restrain women's speech in the Renaissance.

Wendy Moore also explores 18th Century Domestic Violence.

More things change, the more they stay the same. Regrettably.

Food for Thought

Here's a tidbit for any Wonders and Marvels readers out there who may be thinking about starting a family.

Until the late seventeenth century, Galenic notions of the body as a complex system of fluids (humors) dominated. In the sport of baby-making, the end goal was to mix male and female "seed" in just the right quantity and quality to make a boy. So this meant that the hotter the better.

Men were considered hot and dry in humoralist models. So, if the seed mix was hot, a boy would be born.

So, here are a few seventeenth-century tips for all of you out there. If you want a girl, stick with those cold foods like fruit and lettuce. If you want a boy, head straight for foods that early-modern physicians classified as hot: wine, meat, arugula.

I'm not so sure about the recipe for dried stag testicles, though. If it works for you, let us know. Early doctors recommend that you sprinkle them liberally onto your food.

Imagine this: "Excuse me, Sire. But could pass the salt and testicles?"

For more eclectic musings on embryology, childbirth, chastity belts, brothel madams, you name it...
take a peek here.

Chubby Cherubs

By Holly Tucker

Kids, I've told you a million times...Quit Dissecting the Dog!

I came across this image quite by accident today in the extraordinary Wellcome Library image collection. I've been working on some descriptions of early-modern dissections for my book manuscript--and was having a hard time putting into words the tools that anatomists used in their work: their size, shape, and use. Often when I'm stuck, I dip into my favorite arsenals of images to reawaken my creative juices.

It was only after I had flipped through a good hundred images or so that I realized: I'm too jaded. What an odd life it is when you can scan illustrations that are hundreds of years old and think "seen that," "been there," "done that" as you hit enter.

And then, just when I was thinking that nothing surprises me anymore: the putti magically appeared.

Putti (putto in the singular) are what those portly little babies are called. While they are regular features in Renaissance religious art, they show up from time to time as well in later scientific, and especially, medical illustrations.

One of my putti favorites has to be the frontispiece to Regnier de Graaf's De mulierum organis generationi inservientibus (1672), which announced the discovery of the human egg. (Spermatazoa were discovered in 1677--see post on Little Men in Sperm and The Chicken or the Egg).

The putti in the bottom left-hand portion of the illustration have just dissected a hare. They have put its ovaries on a tray and are looking at it close-up through a telescope-like device. Behind them stands a statuesque figure who holds a hand-drawn image of the female reproductive system.

But for as much as the Regnier image is eye-catching (and figures prominently on the cover of one of my books), I have to say that this new set of putti amuse and mesmerize me while also creeping me out in no small measure.

Related posts:

Gross Anatomy

Realism in Dissection

Dissection of Syphilis Patients

Anatomy of a Teaching Gig

Image: Etching by Bernard Picart, 1729. Wellcome Library, London.

Book of the Week: Keepers of the Keys of Heaven

By Holly Tucker

Here is an assignment that would send deep panic through my writerly self: Please write, in 500 pages or less, a history of Popes from the beginning to the present day.

Roger Collins has risen to the task magnificently! Written with clarity and verve, Keeps of the Keys of Heaven: A History of the Papacy is an approachable and deeply satisfying read on the big History (big H) of Popes that is interwoven with lots of intriguing behind-the-scenes history (little h).

For example, who knew that a woman named Donna Olimpia was the first and only woman ever permitted to address the secret-shrouded conclave following the death of Pope Innocent X, in 1655?

Donna Olimpia was the pope's sister-in-law and had been rumored to be his mistress. She was a formidable business woman who shepherded the family fortune, while also making time to take over the licensing of brothels in Rome. Brothels, it seems, were regulated by the papal administration until Olimpia made the case that this was an activity completely unbecoming of God's church. Makes sense.

My guess is that there was also a little bit of financial incentive for her work. In fact, as Collins explains, the licenses that appeared over the doorways of houses of ill-repute soon bore her family arms. Thus giving her then nickname of La Pimpessa.

Ever curious, I have an email out to my colleagues who teach Italian for the full 17th century vocabularies of Italian Madams. I'm so curious about the play on words between Pimpessa and Papessa--which were, it seems, Olimpia's nicknames.

Professor Collins will also be here on Thursday to talk about Popes and booze. Amen.

And for those of you who can't get enough of Church trivia, you might take a peek at this gem about the Virgin's fertility belt.

Sacred Relic or Heavenly Accessory

Miracles of Prato

Childbirth as a Spectator Sport

By Catherine Delors

At Versailles, not only the Queen, but princesses of the royal blood were required to give birth in public. Why? To prevent any substitution of the infant in case he was destined to reign. I say “he” by design, because France’s unwritten constitution prevented women to step unto the throne in their own right, though they could, and often did govern the Kingdom as Regents.

In the case of Marie-Antoinette, her first laying-in was all the more eagerly awaited that she had been married for eight years without presenting her husband with an heir. For a Queen, this was a glaring failure. Her sister-in-law, the Comtesse d’Artois, married to the King’s youngest brother, had already been delivered of two healthy little boys. Marie-Antoinette had attended the deliveries, as required by the etiquette, and deeply felt the political and personal humiliation of her own childlessness.

Now at long last she herself was pregnant. The stakes could not be higher: if the child were stillborn, or a girl, the heir to the throne would remain the Comte de Provence, another brother of Louis XVI. The Comte de Provence was cunning, ambitious, and probably the most dangerous enemy of the royal couple. Every year that passed without Marie-Antoinette giving birth to a Dauphin brought him closer to the throne (to which he would eventually ascend, decades later, under the name of Louis XVIII.)

Let us listen to what Madame Campan, First Chambermaid to Marie-Antoinette, tells us in her irreplaceable Memoirs: “The Queen’s laying-in approached; Te Deums were sung and prayers offered up in all the cathedrals. On December 11, 1778, the royal family, the Princes of the royal blood, and the Great Officers of State spent the night in the rooms adjoining the Queen's Bedchamber.” This, by the way, was days ahead of time because the child would not be born until the 19th of December.

Finally, before noon, it became certain that the birth was imminent. “The etiquette,” continues Madame Campan, “allowing all persons indiscriminately to enter at the moment of the delivery of a queen was observed with such exaggeration that when the obstetrician said aloud: “The Queen is going to give birth!” the persons who poured into the chamber were so numerous that the rush nearly killed the Queen. During the night the King had taken the precaution to have the enormous tapestry screens which surrounded Her Majesty’s bed secured with cords; but for this they certainly would have been thrown down upon her. It was impossible to move about the chamber, which was filled with so motley a crowd that one might have fancied himself in some place of public amusement. Two chimney-sweeps climbed upon the furniture for a better sight of the Queen.”

Marie-Antoinette fainted. Was it simply pain? The body heat created by the crowd packed in the bechamber? The feeling of being exposed to strange eyes in a circus scene? Or the pressure to give birth to a boy? Apparently Marie-Antoinette and her friend the Princesse de Lamballe, Head of the Queen’s Household and member of the royal family, had agreed on a sign the Princesse would make to inform Marie-Antoinette of the child’s gender as soon as it became apparent. Normally that announcement would have been made more formally minutes later, and Marie-Antoinette wanted to know right away. And the child turned out to be a girl! Maybe the disappointment was enough to make the Queen lose consciousness.

The obstetrician decided that the patient needed to be bled (indeed what patient wasn’t in need of a good bloodletting in the 18th century?). More sensibly by modern standards, he called for the windows to be opened wide.

The King sprung to action. The windows had been stopped up (Versailles has always been notoriously drafty) and he rushed to force them open. Let us not forget that Louis XVI was a man of unusual height and strength.

The Court’s head surgeon then seized his lancet and bled the Queen. Whether thanks to his ministrations or more likely the rush of fresh air in the stifling room, she opened her eyes. At this moment the Princesse de Lamballe, who was much given to what was then called “nervous spasms,” added to the general confusion by fainting herself. She had to be carried through the crowd “in a state of insensibility.” Only then was it deemed necessary to empty the room of all idle onlookers. “The valets,” writes Madame Campan, “dragged out by the collar such inconsiderate persons as would not leave the room.”

“This cruel custom,” continues Madame Campan, “was abolished afterwards. The Princes of the family, the Princes of the blood, the Chancellor, and the ministers are surely sufficient to attest the legitimacy of a prince.”

Certainly it was an improvement, but that still left a few dozen people to attend every royal birth...

Catherine Delors is author of Mistress of the Revolution. She also keeps a fascinating blog on all things royal during the eighteenth century.

Murder in a 17th Century German Village

By Tom Robisheaux, Ph.D. (History, Duke University)

From start to finish The Last Witch of Langenburg is high drama full of surprises. Where the pictures we have of most women accused of witchcraft give us only sketchy views of their lives The Last Witch of Langenburg offers a rich picture of a woman and family whose struggles became the pivot of one of the last small witch panics in Europe. The story reveals the terror of witchcraft as the offer of a gift triggered a panic that quickly spread throughout the village and out to the surrounding area.

The tale of Anna Elisabeth Schmieg—the last woman prosecuted for witchcraft in this region of the German lands—does not offer comfortable clichés about witchcraft and witch trials, however. The story unfolds from the vantage point of all of those touched by the events: village women, farmers and workers, surgeons, physicians, petty government officials, the territory’s chief minister, a prince struggling to return the land to order after a long war, as well as prominent university jurists and physicians drawn into the drama. Here witchcraft is shown to mean many things to many different people. Along the way we learn how seemingly disconnected things—Shrove cakes, medical autopsies, poison, mandrake roots, legal reform, torture, secrets between a mother and daughter, and the threat of a distant war—all come together to reveal a cosmic drama of good against evil. This is a story of what it was like to experience witchcraft.

[To read reviews of Tom Robisheaux's latest, click here. By the way, the image above depicts an early-modern imagination of a Witches Sabbath. Look carefully and you'll be able to find the demonic bat-like figure that the publisher used for the book! HT]

Book of the Week: The Last Witch of Lagenburg

By Holly Tucker

We're certainly on a Witch Kick lately...so imagine my delight when I came across this new title by Thomas Robisheaux, a professor at Duke.

The Last Witch of Lagenburg: Murder in a German Village hit the stores last week and has already met with rave reviews.

Kathleen Kent, author of The Heretic's Daughter and recent guest here at Wonders & Marvels, offers up this glowing assessment:

“A fascinating study of an accused witch, combining detailed historical research with the timeless and tragic story of an outspoken woman brought to a horrific end through superstitious dread. Professor Robisheaux brings the pacing and emotional pitch of a novel to an impressive recounting of trial documentation.”

Booklist gave it thumbs up (or should that be brooms up?) with praise that would make any historian blush:

"By 1672, Count Heinrich Friedrich of Langenburg had restored order and prosperity to his southwest German domain, which had been ravaged by the Thirty Years’ War. But a threat arose when a healthy young mother died suddenly, and suspicions fell on Anna Schmieg, a miller’s wife. Capitalizing on the meticulous record of Schmieg’s case, historian Robisheaux not only re-creates who Anna Schmieg was but also explores the confluence of social, legal, and religious streams that put her life in jeopardy. In literary terms, Robisheaux writes a courtroom drama that will hook readers and secure their attention until the last page....With an incisive ability to view matters through the participants’ eyes, Robisheaux vividly brings this historical incident to life."

Take one historian, mix up a good tale from the 17th century, throw in a witch, a little murder, a court case, and a writerly spell or two...and you have our Book of the Week pick.

Image: "The Stone Operation, or the Witch of Malleghem" After Pieter Bruegel the Elder (circa 1525-1569) by Pieter van der Heyden (circa 1530 - after 1569). Courtesy of Christie's.

Early Surgery & Cautery: Or How to Boil a Puppy

By Holly Tucker

How did early surgeons control bleeding? Many of you can guess the answer. For as horrific as it sounds, cautery with hot metal instruments and boiling oil were the methods of choice in the 16th and 17th centuries.

What is less well-known, however, is that the practice was thoroughly critiqued by Ambroise Pare, one of the most prominent French surgeons of the early-modern period.

In his First Discourse Upon Wounds Made by Gunshot (published in English in 1617), Pare experimented with salves as a way to avoid causing his patients the intense pain that comes--understandably--with pouring boiling oil on open wounds.

"I observed the method of the other Chirgurians in the first dressing of [gunshot] wounds, which was by the application and infusion of the Olye as hot as they could suffer it...:wherefore I became embolded to do as they did. But in the end, my oyle fayled me, so that I was constrained to use in steede thereof, a digestive made of the yolke of an Egge, Oyle of Roses and Terebinth. The night following, I could hardly sleepe at mine ease, fearing lest that for want of cauterizing, I should find my Patients on whom I had not used the aforesayed Oyle, dead and impoysoned; which made mee to rise earely in the morning to visit them: where beyond my expectation, I found those on whom I had used the disgestive medicine, to feele but little paine, and their wounds without inflammation or tumor, having resting well all that night.

The rest, on whom the aforesaide Oyle was applyed, I found them inclining to Feavers, with great pain, tumor, and inflammation about their Woundes: then I resolved with myselfe never to burn so cruelly the wounded Patients by Gunshot anymore."

Pare continued to pursue his studies on post-surgical balms. Not long after, he went to Paris and met with the King's surgeon. This high ranking surgeon gave Pare the "receipt" for his own balm. And, I should add here my history of medicine students cry out in protest when I remind them that "whelps" mean puppies...

RECIPE

"He sent me to fetch him two young whelpes, one pound of earth-wormes, two pounds of the oyle of Lillies, six ounces of the Terebinth of Venice, and one ounce of Aqua-vitae: and in my presence he boiled the whelpes alive in the saide Oyle, until the flesh departed from the bones. Afterward, he tooke the wormes (having before killed and purified them in white wine, to purge themselves of the earth which they have always in their bodies) being so prepared, he boyled them also in the said Oyle till they became dry, this he strained through a Napkin, without any great expressions, that done, he added thereto the Terebinth, and lastly, the Aqua-vitae, and called God to witnesse, that this was his Balme which is used in all wounds made by Gunshot."

I'll stick with neosporin, bactine, and my favorite hand lotion...Thanks.

Image: Ambroise Pare, De la methode curative des playes, et fractures de la teste humaine (1651). Wellcome Library, London

An Extraordinary Love Story

Guest Post by Mary Novik

My novel Conceit, which is set in 17^th-century London, is about the family of the poet John Donne. In writing it, I drew mainly on primary sources. I was happiest when I found eye-witnesses, for instance Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn, who wrote about the Great Fire of 1666 in their diaries, which I consulted for the prologue. As well as the fishing manual The Compleat Angler, Izaak Walton, a minor character in my novel, wrote the first biography of John Donne, which was full of half-truths and editorializing.

Donne's own works were invaluable, for instance the sermon he preached just before he died, "Death's Duel". During an earlier illness, he wrote Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, in which he penned his most famous words, "No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. . . . never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee." This book was a great source of information about spiritual belief and 17^th-century medical practice, such as putting dead pigeons on the patient's feet to "draw the vapors from the head".

By far the most useful source for Conceit was Donne's love poetry. We don't know the chronology, or which women he wrote them to, but we like to think that the most sincere love poems were written to Ann More, who became his wife. Ann, and her daughter Pegge, are known to history only through church records (births, marriages, deaths) and letters written by male relatives, but piecing the poems together into a chronological story gave me insight into John and Ann's extraordinary love--the fictional narrative that is at the heart of Conceit.

Mary Novik's novel Conceit won the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize and was chosen by AbeBooks as on of the "top ten hottest new Canadian books of 2008". She is now writing a novel set in 14^th-century Avignon. Her website is www.marynovik.com

(1) Latham, Robert and William Matthews, eds. The Diary of Samuel Pepys, 12 volumes. London: HarperCollins, 1995.

(2) Bray, William, ed. The Diary of John Evelyn. 2 volumes. London: J.M. Dent, 1907.

(3) Donne, John. Devotions upon Emergent Occasions and Death's Duel. New York: Vintage, 1999. This volume also includes "The Life of Dr John Donne" by Izaak Walton.

(4) Donne, John. The Complete English Poems. Ed. A.J. Smith. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1971.

Take a Peek: 17th Century Cookbooks

By Holly Tucker

I mentioned last week that the Wellcome Library for the History of Medicine is one of the wonders of the world for people working in the history of medicine. I have been there several times and have felt like a child in candy store. My last trip was about a year ago. It was generously funded by a Library travel fellowship. I rented a studio flat about five minutes away from the library, which is in central London not from King's Cross station. I spent my days carefully turning the pages of 400 year old dissection manuals, and my evenings reading up on what I needed to prepare for the next day's research foray. The trip was blissful.

I recall vividly my first trip to the collections several years ago. I was finishing up a book on women's medical knowledge in the seventeenth century. I stumbled across the Library's extraordinary collection of early cookbooks and household manuels.

The large bound volumes had clearly been passed on through generations. The hand written recipes and notes were in the hand of different women at different moments. These were not recipes on how to make cakes. No, the recipes included procedures for distilling herbs, curing common ailments, and even tips on how to stay beautiful.

I gasped aloud when I turned the page of one such cookbook--I think it was the one by a French family dated 1699--and discovered several meticulously pressed leaves. Imagine this: those leaves had been in the book for nearly 3oo years. This is why I do what I do for a living. This is why I delight in being a researcher.

The Wellcome has made many of its cookbooks now accessible online. In fact, they're looking for beta testers. If you want to have a look yourself, just head over to the Library's outstanding blog for more information.

And let me know if you're hooked too. I'll bet you will be!

Image Wellcome Library.

Early Lens Making

By Holly Tucker

As part of my day job, I write. I research. I write some more.

There are moments when it's hard to cut out hard-earned words. This is one of them. But I also know that--at least for this chapter that I just finished buttoning up--readers' eyes could glaze over in all the details about early telescopes and the challenges of lens making. It had to go.

So here I am, asking your indulgence as I put a least some of that writing to use in a post...

In the seventeenth century, the challenge for astronomers was to be found in the lenses. Lenses were extraordinarily difficult to make, and the quality was inconsistent at best.

The best available glass for telescope lenses was concocted from a mixture of sand and soda, borax was then added along with a bit of lime and manganese oxide. These last two ingredients tempered the yellow and greenish hue in the glass, not entirely but at least noticeably. All of the materials were left to boil in gigantic melting pots until the various components fused into a unified liquid. Sweating and covered in soot, the glassmaker then began the delicate and dangerous process of scooping the molten liquid onto marble slabs and rolled thin layers flat. The glass would be built up progressively, in layers, until just the right thickness had been achieved. Anything could go wrong in the process--and it usually did. Bubbles, particulates, and fissures specked the glass. And even the most faultless piece of glass was never perfectly clear. "The good colors of glass," wrote the astronomer and instrument-maker Cherubin, "are approaching wine-colored, or blue, or green, even black, but always transparent. Green or the color of sea water is most common."

Once the rough shape of the lens was traced out and cut with a diamond, the grinding process began. [Imagine here several paragraphs of minutiae on lens griding--also deleted!] It could take twenty, thirty, and sometimes more tries to get one lens that was of sufficiently high enough quality for use in a telescope.

Now before you think that I've gone the way of history of engineering, know that much of this great information is indebted to Maurice Daumas' Scientific Instiruments of the 17th and 18th Centuries and Their Makers. Another excellent book is J.A. Bennett's The Divided Circle: A History of Instruments for Astronomy, Navigation and Surveying. Or, the visually stunning Scientific Instruments: 1500-1900, an Introduction by Gerard L'E Turner.

Image courtesy of the Wellcome Library for the History of Medicine