April 17, 2005

Big old books

14 Fatum Subscribat Eliza / Princess Elizabeth / A blank tablet. Click to enlarge.

Minerva Britanna, or A Garden of Heroical Deuises, furnished, and adorned with Emblemes and Impresa's of sundry natures, Newly devised, moralized, and published, By HENRY PEACHAM, Mr. of Artes. (London, 1612), the "sophisticated and intriguing" emblem book posted online as a student project — how wonderful! (via Bibi).

More emblems at Giornale Nuovo: Johann Theodor de Bry and Pieter Bruegel the Elder, and a reprint of Théâtre d’Amour (1620).

Johnson's Dictionary: an appreciation by Verlyn Klinkenborg in the NY Times (free; reg. required). Heads up from Kevin Berland on C-18L. (See also John Carey's review, in the Times Online, of Dr. Johnson's Dictionary: The Extraordinary Story of the Book that Defined the World by Henry Hitchings, and Samuel Johnson's Dictionary: Selections from the 1755 Work that Defined the English Language edited by Jack Lynch.)

Seeing is Believing: 700 years of scientific and medical illustration: online exhibition based on 2000 exhibit at the NY Public Library (via Exclamation Mark).

Notes on the Book of the Revelation by John Nelson Darby (1876; 2nd ed.) (via Plep).

And, old but not so big: Masterpieces in Miniature: Italian MSS from the middle ages and Renaissance (also via Plep).

February 04, 2005

I have a cold

and I'm feeling very sorry for myself. I started to read a novel described as a thriller in order to take my mind off the tap that is my nose, but I don't like either of the main characters. In fact, reading about them is painful. So instead, I offer some links:

The CNN Health Library advises the following: "To stop your runny nose, try the following: Blow your nose." The U.S. Food and Drug Administration — perhaps they have the same consultants? — helpfully advises, "Try to Avoid Getting a Cold."
A site with the alarming name Wrong Diagnosis says that there are 32 possible causes for a stuffy nose. In related news, "Airborne Fungus May Cause Chronic Stuffy Nose."
More cheerfully, "Sex stops a runny nose." Now if I could just find someone who likes a woman with a tissue wadded up each nostril...
Oh well, there are always Runny Nose Gifts.
But is there a cure? Seems that Echinacea is overrated. Perhaps garlic? red wine? warm and cold showers? super duper cold killing soup or sucking on a lemon? a gentle cup of Chamomile tea? Or ... bread?

But wait: "Stuffy Nose Remedies." I came upon this and looked no further:

Ingredients: 1/3 Cup Jalepeno Pepper Juice
2 Tablespoons Chili Powder
A big glob of Horse raddish
A pich of Salt
Butter USED SEPERATLEY
Instructions: Add all the Ingredients (EXCEPT THE BUTTER) in a small to medium sized sauce pan and Fill the rest with water. Let it come to a rolling boil. Put the pan on the table make a tent over your face with a Towel and inhale deeply untill the steam is gone. The smear Butter inbetween your eyes and let it sit for 5 minutes. It smells absolutley wretched but it not only clears out your sinuses at that time but it will keep them clear for a few hours to come. Trust me on this one people. I have been a certified hippie for 31 years.

I'm off to the kitchen. Catch you later.

January 24, 2005

Representations

From the Bottom Up: popular reading and writing in the Michael Zinman Collection of early American imprints (via Bostonia). A lot of these items are reprints of, or are very like, texts printed in the U.K.

At the same site, another exhibit: Picturing Women explores how women are figured, fashioned, turned into portraits, and told about in words and pictorial narrative.

January 16, 2005

Midwives

Natalie at Phiobiblon has a couple of posts about midwifery and illegitimacy in 18thc France (in the latter post she mentions the mind-boggling possibility that upwards of 40% of infants born in France in the period were illegitimate ended up in foundling hospitals).

Attaining Legitimacy: Eighteenth-Century Man-midwives and the Rhetoric of their Texts by Candice Dahl in Gateway: an academic journal on the web.

Sites and Margins of the Public Sphere, special number of Eighteenth-Century Studies, 32.4 (Summer 1999), has a number of great articles available through Project Muse.

Sex, Gender and the Female Body, special number of Women's Writing 11.2 (2004). Articles not free yet but will be twelve months after publication.

Childbirth, midwifery, and science: The life and work of the French royal midwife Louise Bourgeois (1563 — 1636) by Bridgette Ann Majella Sheridan (Diss., Boston College, 2002).

Sharon's bibliography, Pregnancy and Childbirth.

Books/chapters and articles about midwifery history, a bibliography at Nursing and Midwifery History UK.

The History of Women and Science, Health, and Technology: a bibliographic guide to the professions and the disciplines: Midwifery.

Martha Ballard and a Man-Midwife: a time of transition in midwifery: an interactive exploration of the famouse illustration by Isaac Cruikshank. An an annotation from the Literature, Arts, and Medicine Database (links from Caricatures of Nurses and Midwives through history).

Ask the Quack: post and get diagnosed. Be sure to check out the literary endorsements.

Update (17/1/05) In the comments, Sharon links to Elain Hobby's "Secrets of the Female Sex: Jane Sharp, the reproductive female body, and early modern midwifery manuals." Women's Writing 8.2 (2001): 201-212.

January 14, 2005

It's payday

(Click for larger image)

and I just ordered this. For half price, my fellow dix-huitiémistes! I got very excited when I read that it was edited by William Smellie, but it was not the William Smellie I was thinking of.

Though they were both Scottish.

According to Robbie Burns,

SHREWD Willie Smellie to Crochallan came;
The old cock’d hat, the grey surtout the same;
His bristling beard just rising in its might,
’Twas four long nights and days to shaving night:
His uncomb’d grizzly locks, wild staring, thatch’d
A head for thought profound and clear, unmatch’d;
Yet tho’ his caustic wit was biting-rude,
His heart was warm, benevolent, and good.

Bonus links on the first Smellie:

William Smellie, A sett of anatomical tables, with explanations, and an abridgment, of the practice of midwifery (1754)
Of the Management of new-born Children, with the Diseases to which they are subject; A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Midwifery (1762)
Smellie lived for a time with William Hunter, author of Anatomia uteri humani gravidi tabulis illustrata [The anatomy of the human gravid uterus exhibited in figures] (1774), and of whom I have written.
Collection of obstetrical and gynecological instruments in the Historical Library, Cushing/Whitney Medical Library.
Obstetric Literature and the Changing Character of Childbirth.
The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists Collection.

And the second:

Major Topics of the Encycopedia Britannica, First Edition (1768–1771)
Buffon's Natural History: General and Particular translated by William Smellie (8 volumes, 1781).
A Romantic Natural History Bibliography
Elegy on the death of Smellie's son (facsimile from the wonderful The Word on the Street).
"Romanticism and the Triumph of Life Science: Prospects for Study."
The Scottish Printing Archival Trust. See particularly Links to printing historical resources. Also of interest: First Scottish Books.
The Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire Raisonné des Sciences, des Arts et des Métiers.

January 02, 2005

Places to go

For you, not me:

The latest Early Modern Carnival is up at Claire's: Part I and Part II.

Beautiful works by Max Ernst at Giornale Nuovo.

Rich and wonderful antique tiles and exhibition: John DePol: Artist and Engraver (links from Life In The Present).

4,000 years of women in science (via Plep).

And oh my god, except for the goatee, this is me (via Boing Boing).

December 09, 2004

Dream Anatomy

Dream Anatomy, an online exhibit by the U.S. National Library of Medicine about the history of anatomical imagery, from 1500 to the present:

The interior of our bodies is hidden to us. What happens beneath the skin is mysterious, fearful, amazing. In antiquity, the body's internal structure was the subject of speculation, fantasy, and some study, but there were few efforts to represent it in pictures. The invention of the printing press in the 15th century-and the cascade of print technologies that followed-helped to inspire a new spectacular science of anatomy, and new spectacular visions of the body. Anatomical imagery proliferated, detailed and informative but also whimsical, surreal, beautiful, and grotesque — a dream anatomy that reveals as much about the outer world as it does the inner self.

Over the centuries anatomy has become a visual vocabulary of realism. We regard the anatomical body as our inner reality, a medium through which we imagine society, culture and the human condition.

Here is the gallery.

(Via Boing Boing).