The Problem of Mad Dogs in the Eighteenth Century
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)...
View ArticleStrange Pigs
There are strange pig tails in the midnight sun From men who moil for hog’s stones The science trails have their secret tales That would make monstrous piglets groan; The English nights have seen queer...
View ArticleStorms, Sounds and Authorship
The wind has been wildly whipping the last few days, putting me on edge. It doesn’t help that the wind makes the neighbourhood noisier than usual: clanking gates, blowing cans… The normally distant...
View ArticleA Most Dangerous Rivalry
By James Hawkes The Royal Society is in turmoil as competing factions battle for control. Not only is our hero Hans Sloane’s job on the line, but the very existence of the Royal Society hangs in the...
View ArticleOn Tooth Worms
The 9th of February is St. Apollonia’s Day and, in the U.S., National Toothache Day. So I offer you tooth-worms, which–as Nicolas Andry described them in An account of the breeding of worms in human...
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An Eighteenth-Century Case of Hair Voided by Urine
“Honourable Sir!” wrote Thomas Knight to Sloane in February 1737 (British Library, Sloane MS 4034, ff. 34-5). He wished Sloane’s advice on an “uncommon Case”—the discovery of hairs discharged by a man...
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Domesticity and Astronomy in Eighteenth-Century England
This past week has been an exciting time for portents! What with a meteor blasting into Russia, an asteriod passing close to earth, St. Peter’s Basilica being struck by lightning, and the Pope...
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A Horrifying Pregnancy and Cesarean Operation in Eighteenth-Century Ireland
A surgeon performing a Caesarean operation on an agonized woman who had apparently been carrying a dead baby in her womb for five years. (Reproduction, 1933, of a woodcut, 1560.) Credit: Wellcome...
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A Visit to Seventeenth-Century Jamaica
One of my favourite letters in Hans Sloane’s correspondence is one written by twenty-eight year old Sloane to Sir Edward Herbert on the 17th of April, 1688 (British Library, Sloane MS 4068, ff. 7-9)....
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Lost Letters in the Eighteenth Century
Copies of William Dockwra’s postal markings used in 1680-1682. Credit: Michael Romanov, Wikimedia Commons. Sending a letter around the turn of the eighteenth century was an uncertain business....
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