A Seventeenth-Century Treasure Hunter in the Rubble of a Ninth-Century Library

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....

Seventeenth-century 'treasure' found in Royal Society archives: the Ludus helmontii and the stone disease.

Our archival researches at the Royal Society reveal that a small envelope attached to a 1675 letter from an Antwerp apothecary, A. Boutens, contained a sample of the 'Ludus' prepared as a remedy for the 'stone disease' then sweeping through Europe, which was first announced in J. B. van Helmont's De lithiasi (1644). After examining the fascination with the medical use of the Ludus (which requir...

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 Role of Language in Accusations of Witchcraft in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Spain

Linguistic factors played a significant role in the origin and spread of accusations of witchcraft in Early Modern Spain. The preoccupation with witches’ words is at its root a preoccupation about the power of speech and, to a great extent, of female speech. Studies in some Early European countries have connected aggressive female speech styles with accusations of witchcraft, and this article o...