A Primer of Dutch Seventeenth Century Overseas Trade

The seventeenth-century Dutch hospital in Colombo.

Sri Lanka, known as Ceylon till 1972, is an island which was successively occupied by the Portuguese (1505-1656), the Dutch (1656-1796), and the British (1796-1948). The Portuguese and the Dutch succeeded in conquering only the maritime provinces, the central highlands being under the control of the kings of Kandy, who by force or ruse contrived to keep their kingdom intact from these two Europ...

A Dialectic of Seventeenth-Century High Culture

The “New Science” of Galileo, Kepler, Harvey, Descartes, Boyle, Steno, etc., and the Baroque in visual arts and literature, are two conspicuous aspects of seventeenth-century European elite culture. If standard historiography of science can be relied upon, the former of the two was not affected by the latter. The lecture asks whether this is a “fact of history” or an artefact of historiography....

Syphilis in seventeenth century Lancashire.

Medicine in seventeenth century England

ALLEN G. DEBUS (editor), Medicine in seventeenth century England, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, University of California Press, 1974, 8vo, pp. xiii, 485, illus., £8.50. Reviewed by Kenneth Dewhurst, D.Phil., M.Litt., F.R.C.Psych., The Manor House, Sandford-onThames, Oxford 0X4 4YN. A symposium has some merits but more disadvantages, and this collection of papers in honour of the late C. D. ...

The medical revolution of the seventeenth century

Taking the other tack, Richard Palmer explores the story of the papal physicians, a subject "killed ... stone dead" by the erudition of Prospero Mandosio (1696) until resurrected by Palmer with his witty and pithy observations. The turn-of-the-seventeenth-century German Prince, Maurice of Hesse-Kassel, took a direct interest in the medical details of his court and country, which Bruce Moran exp...