History, animals, science, food
A few weeks ago I looked at some manuscripts of the French intellectual and antiquarian Nicolas-Fabri de Peiresc (1580-1637) at the Bibliothèque Méjanes in Aix-en-Provence, France. I describe Peiresc as an “intellectual”; he was one of those universal scholars we find in early modern Europe who were interested in everything. Peiresc’s fame, such as it …
Various large bones, discovered across Europe from around 1500 onward, raised the possibility among Renaissance naturalists and intellectuals that very large humans – some five or even ten meters tall – once existed in the past. The idea of giant ancestors already was prominent among scholars: the hugely popular works of Annius of Viterbo, particularly …
I’m always looking for skeleton stories. But it’s not often that I come across an article in the scientific literature that includes references to the ancient Greek physician and herbalist Dioscorides (ca. 40-90 CE) or the medieval abbess and scholar St. Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179). So this open-access article in Science Advances, “Medieval women’s early …
My essay on my experiences with translating has just appeared, open access, in Isis, the journal of the History of Science Society.
Although the human skeleton was well known as a symbol of mortality before 1500, the articulated skeleton does not seem to have come into its own as an object –scientific and artistic as well as symbolic – until the time of Vesalius. Curiously ubiquitous, since everyone has one, but yet largely invisible, anatomists revealed the …
Last month I spent some time in Special Collections at the University of Glasgow Library, looking at the catalogues of the anatomical preparations of London anatomist and man-midwife William Hunter (1718-1783). Hunter, a Scot, left his collections to the University of Glasgow, where they still reside. Among the anatomical preparations listed in 1784 was “A …
The fabulous online journal Atlas Obscura just published an article on some of my skeleton research. This is based on the talk, "The Whiteness of Bones," that I gave a Columbia a couple of weeks ago. Thanks to Sarah Laskow. Link here.
