56 research outputs found
A 'philosophical storehouse': the life and afterlife of the Royal Society's repository
No full textPhDIn June 1781, the Royal Society’s repository was transferred to the British
Museum. Though ostensibly as a result of the limited space in the Royal Society’s
purpose-built accommodation at Somerset House, the Society were perhaps also a
little relieved to relinquish a collection that had proved to be somewhat burdensome
during its residence at the Society and which was frequently criticised for its decaying
specimens, broken items and missing, possibly stolen, objects. However this seems to
be only part of the story. Drawing upon manuscript material in the Royal Society and
the British Library, this study will examine the repository’s pattern of usage,
collecting strategies and intellectual output throughout its life, in addition to exploring
its afterlife at the British Museum using the British Museum’s, Royal College of
Surgeon’s and Natural History Museum’s extensive archives. This thesis will seek to
reveal an alternative account of the Royal Society’s repository arguing that it was
comprised of a substantial and significant collection that the British Museum, at least
initially, appears to have been grateful to receive and which, periodically, played a
central role in the Society’s and naturalists' work
Interview with Patrick Madden
No full textPatrick Madden is the author of three essay collections, Disparates (2020), Sublime Physick (2016), and Quotidiana (2010), and co-editor of After Montaigne: Contemporary Essayists Cover the Essays (2015). He curates www.quotidiana.org, co-edits the journal Fourth Genre with Joey Franklin, and, with David Lazar, co-edits the 21st Century Essays series at the Ohio State University Press. He has taught English at BYU since 2004
(The) man, his body, and his society: masculinity and the male experience in English and Scottish medicine c.1640-c.1780.
No full textThis thesis examines the relationship(s) between medicine, the body and societal codes of masculinity in England and Scotland between c.1640 and c.1780. It responds to the way in which the men in histories of post-1660 masculinity are often disembodied, and to the comparative absence of men’s gendered experiences from the history of medicine. Its findings show that in both centuries the experience of being a man with a body that was the site of health and sickness was an open, candid, and often communal, one, inside and outside of the formal medical encounter. Thus, and on both sides of 1700, ill men had full freedom in the pursuit and acceptance of medical, familial and social assistance, while their physical suffering, and associated emotional distress, was met with sympathy. With their sick bodies the sites of honest self-examination and open discussion, it was in part this very public nature of their sicknesses that allowed men, as a gender and as individuals, independence and agency in their non-commercial health care. Indeed, later-seventeenth- and eighteenth-century men suffered no constraints in their ability to respond to the vulnerabilities of their bodies, even where this involved behaviours or attributes allegedly associated with women and femininity, or inconsistent with ideals of active, independent, masculinity.
These findings indicate, therefore, great continuity across the period 1640-1780, and not only in masculine ideals of and involving the male corporeality. There seems to have been significant consistency across time in men’s social and medical experiences of both sickness and their pre-emptive preparation for it, and in an apparent collective self-confidence concerning their corporeal masculinity, their sex, and, possibly, even their sexual potential. Indeed, these sources suggest that seventeenth- and eighteenth-century men had a resilient sense of self-identity (and personal masculinity), conceptually separable from the corporeal body and its known fragilities
Literary representations of maternity in the eighteenth century
No full textThe primary concern of this thesis is the representation, in the eighteenth century, of mothers' bodies. It is also concerned with the treatment of domestic duties which were supposed a consequence of a woman's very nature. Throughout the first seven decades of the century, medical men and virtuosi demonstrated particular interest in the nature of physicality, and especially in women's bodies, pregnancy, and childbirth. 1 will be testing out a widely-held view that dissection and new anatomical findings regarding women's bodies produced a new idealisation of motherhood, and that this was immediately translated into lay-medical and related discourse, and was thus firmly established in middle-class culture by the end of the century. The relationship between primary medical and lay-medical literature raises several questions: my work asks whether lay-medical literature mirrored medical writing, and whether there was a direct translation of material from one to the other. Lay-medical texts for women are especially interesting. They offer an insight into precisely what examples of female nature and correspondingly 'natural' behaviour were intended for women readers. Representations of maternity in specific forms of writing which rely heavily upon women for subject matter are further extended in the second half of this study. 1 have focussed upon two genres, conduct literature and narrative fiction. Neither is conventionally associated with medical or lay-medical discourse, yet both have significant links with these. Conduct literature and narrative fiction have much to offer in this attempt to recover what women were being taught about their bodies and roles; both were concerned with what the body displays externally, and with corresponding ideas of 'naturalness'. Conduct literature for women was enjoying a period of growth and change, and has obvious, direct links with medical texts. Narrative fiction also had important links with medical writing, and 1 will describe these. The dissemination of medical representations of the maternal body was a process which contributed to a contradictory cultural sense of female identity
Nicholas Culpeper and the book trade : print and the promotion of vernacular medical knowledge, 1649-65
No full textThis thesis examines print culture and the medical book trade during the middle decades of the seventeenth century. I examine a range of vernacular medical books which predate the publication of Nicholas Culpeper's (1616-54) translation of the London College of Physicians' first Pharmacopoeia (1618) in 1649. Culpeper's English version subjected the official medical knowledge of the professional to his caustic commentary, and launched his
programme to produce 'the whol Moddel of Physick' in the vernacular.
At the same time the involvement of the Fellows of the College with the book trade during the Interregnum is explored. Examination of the Stationers' Register reveal that Presidents of the College were prepared to endorse English translations of scholarly books and new
works by non-Collegiate authors. Through this Register and the 'Annals' of the College I show how two astute London stationers were able to gain control of the rights to the
College's Pharmacopoeia.
The social relationships between Culpeper and his publishers are analysed, as well as the network of agents responsible for the production and publication of Culpeper's books and their reception. I focus on Culpeper's four principal works - his two translations of the
College's Pharmacopoeia (1649 and 1653); his herbal, The English Physitian (1652); and A Directory for Midwives (1651). Their presentation (typography and page-layout),
dissemination, and reception are also explored.
Apparent from the early history of Culpeper's medical books is the commercialism of the book trade in the 1650s. Medical practitioners and writers exploited print culture to
promote their name in the medical marketplace and create a public persona. I discuss Culpeper's activities as an editor and writer, and the fluidity of these texts in response to commercial threats from rival publishers. The development of his work through subsequent editions counters the assumption that printing preserves and fixes a text's meaning.
This thesis argues that historical bibliography is essential for an understanding of a book's reception and influence, and I show how print culture was significant to the promotion of vernacular medicine in these years
Best and nearest way to physick and chyrurgery
No full textTranslation of: Encheiridium anatomicum et pathologicumSignatures: A⠴ D-P⠴ T-Z⠴ 2A-2N⠴ 3A-3D²Includes index(on title page) 1 Describing all, and every of the bones of mans body, according to the antient method. 2 Describing the belly, and all its parts and bowels, with their respective diseases. 3 Describing the chest and all its parts and contents, with their respective diseases. 4 Describing the head, and face, with all their parts containing and contained, and their respective diseases. 6 [i.e. 5] Describing the limbs of the body, with the many regiments of muscles, and their diseases. 5 [i.e. 6] Containing a new description of the bones, by a method first invented by our author, handling all the diseases and symptomes of the said bone
Midwifery, kitchen physick, and the medicatrix: science and the female author in early modern England
No full textMidwifery, kitchen physick, and the medicatrix: science and the female author in early modern England
No full textPublic defense: 2013-12-19D
The gardeners dictionary
No full textAs also, the physick garden, wilderness, conservatory, and vineyard, according to the practice of the most experienc'd gardeners of the present age. Interspers'd with the history of the plants, the characters of each genus, and the names of all the particular species, in Latin and English; and an explanations of all the terms used in botany and gardening. Together with accounts of the nature and use of barometers, thermometers, and hygrometers proper for gardeners; and of the origin, causes and nature of meteors, and the particular influences of air, earth, fire and water upon vegetation, according to the best natural philosophers.In 1730 Philip Miller was asked by Nathan Bailey, the English lexicographer, to write the botanical entries for the Dictionarium Britannicum. With this prior experience Miller decided to produce his own Gardeners Dictionary (1731), a work that rivalled Bailey's in size, and covered all aspects of gardening (in kitchen- and flower-garden, orchard, greenhouse, and tree plantations), together with descriptions of plants, and essays on horticultural ‘science'. Miller's Gardeners Dictionary (1731) was the first comprehensive garden dictionary in English, and was written just before he became Curator of the Chelsea Physic Garden. It was the most influential gardening book of the 18th century, with readership aimed at the gentry and their head gardeners, clergy, academics and fellow members of the Royal Society. Eight up-dated editions were published before Miller's death in 1771. It weighed nearly 8 kg
- …
