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Nominations for Giants’ Shoulders #70
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Sloane’s birthday is rapidly approaching and April 16 just happens to coincide with a well-known History of Science/Medicine/Technology blog carnival. To celebrate Sloane’s birthday this year, I’ll be hosting Giants’ Shoulders #70. Huzzah! Please send in your blog post nominations by April 15 at the latest. You can send them directly to me at lisa… Read more »
April 8, 2014
Nursing Fathers, Slacking Dads and False Assumptions
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Things I learned on the weekend… Slacker dads watch sports instead of read their children stories. They avoid housework and childcare as much as possible. They prefer work-life to domesticity. And above all, they look upon “Wet Wipe” daddies—those who are prepared with things like spare nappies and who concentrate on what their children are… Read more »
March 27, 2014
An Eighteenth-Century Case of Cotard Delusion?
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Recently, I found myself doing a little seat dance in the British Library when I came across a fascinating series of letters (Sloane MS 4076) from 1715, written by apothecary William Lilly about the Countess of Suffolk, Henrietta Howard. Historians of medicine, of course, are generally loathe to engage in retrodiagnosis, but sometimes it’s just… Read more »
March 3, 2014
An Eighteenth-Century Love Story
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The Newdigate family became Hans Sloane’s patients around 1701, starting with Lady Frances Sedley (née Newdigate), her husband, and father-in-law. By 1705-6, Sloane was treating Elizabeth Newdigate (b. 1682) for colic, hysteria and fever (BL Sl. MS 4076, 1 July 1705, f. 173; 4077, 21 December 1706, f. 164). But Elizabeth’s complaints went far beyond… Read more »
February 13, 2014
The Problem of Mad Dogs in the Eighteenth Century
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Surgeon John Burnet shared “a very strange account” with Sir Hans Sloane in March 1720. The tale, sent to the French Académie des Sciences, had come straight from the Czar of Muscovy (Peter the Great) himself. Apparently, a Man was bitt by a Mad-dog & that he lay with his wife the same night &… Read more »
January 27, 2014
The Preserved Puppy Proposal
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Edmund Curll, a bookseller’s apprentice, wrote to Sloane in 1703 with news of “A Wonderfull production in Nature”: an unusual puppy. Recently, a Scottish gentleman’s dog had Whelp’d two Puppies one of them was whelp’d dead and the other that was whelp’d alive being a Male in 24 hours after voided from the fundament another… Read more »
January 22, 2014
Recording Dr. Sloane’s Medical Advice
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Sir Hans Sloane might have collected recipe books in search of knowledge, but patients in turn might record his medical advice for later reference. The Arscott Family’s book of “Physical Receipts”, c. 1730-1776 (Wellcome Library, London, MS 981), for example, contains three recipes attributed to Sloane, which provides snippets of information about his medical practice…. Read more »
January 9, 2014
Sloane Family Recipes
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In his Recipes Project post, Arnold Hunt focused on the recipe books owned by Sir Hans Sloane. The Sloane family may have had an illustrious physician and collector in their midst, but they, too, collected medical recipes like many other eighteenth-century families. As Alun Withey points out, medical knowledge was of part of social currency…. Read more »
January 7, 2014
Recipes in Sir Hans Sloane’s Collections
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Happy New Year! This week, I have a couple recipes-related posts planned in response to Arnold Hunt’s fascinating interview at The Recipes Project on recipe books from Sloane’s collection. Hunt, a Curator of Manuscripts at the British Library (and friend of this blog), has much to say on the process of collecting and curating, as… Read more »
January 6, 2014
Mary Davis, the horned woman
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By Felicity Roberts At the British Museum, near the centre of the Enlightenment Gallery in wall press 156, there is a portrait in oils of a woman with what appear to be horn-like growths coming from the side of her head. The woman has an arresting, impassive facial expression. She wears no cap, so her… Read more »
December 2, 2013
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