Tag: Fall 2015

The time has come for my CCEPS fellowship to come to an end.  It has been a long semester, and my work here at the library was amongst a great number of responsibilities I had to keep up with over these past months.  So part of me is amazed I actually completed all that I had set out to do!  Last Friday, I presented a culmination of my work to friends and faculty.  You can view the presentation here.  

I apologize for the lack of updates during the past weeks.  Following the scanning of my works, I proceeded to review all the images, conducting extra research on the authors and popular research surrounding the publication of the works.  This took much longer than I had anticipated, especially as I had to translate many of the text describing the images.  But let me not bore you with only a summary of the work I have been doing.  I’m really excited at this point, not only because I feel accomplished enough to blog about it, but also because I am taking some of the final steps towards a completed project.  Allow me to share some of the more interesting pages I have the privilege to include in my final exhibit.

This week has been a bit tedious.  Now that I had reviewed the collection of books I wish to use in my online exhibit, it was time to turn the material into something that could be digitally shared.  I took this past week and a half to scan the interesting pages and illustrations I had come across in my research.  I used the overhead camera that is located in the reading room of Special Collections for my task, becoming quite the master scanner by the end of my work.

This is about how each book had to be arranged under the camera.  For smaller editions, they could be opened completely and a whole two pages could be photographed.  There was plenty of creative propping and use of paper weights in order to have pages lie just so.

Many books had pull out illustrations or charts, which proved to be one of the more challenging parts of all this (one example pictured above).  Some of them could be arranged to take up the space a larger page would have needed to be scanned.  But some were just a little too big to be digitized to their full potential.

I found this very interesting, especially since these pull out pages were some of my favorite discoveries as I read through my collection.  These create almost a multi-media experience, forcing the reader to interact with the text a little bit.  They also serve as a great example as to why electronic books will never offer as much as physical editions.

With my scanned images ready to be used, I shall soon be working on the exhibit website, the final product of this semester’s work.

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This week was more reading than I ever thought I was capable of.
 I requested 11 new materials last week and, somehow, I actually was able
to go through all of them.  The most challenging were definitely those in Latin and German; but I was able to get the gist of their contents by
translating chapter headings and some of the prefaces.  The range on these
materials was pretty broad, but this gave me a diverse record of experiments
and proper research as well as some accounts that definitely sound more like
fiction than fact.

 Before I jump into this week’s findings, I have to share that I
did find a 1628 edition of Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy last week.  It’s
a fascinating collection that is more literary than scientific in many ways.
 Burton focuses on the science of the humors, which leads to discussion on
what causes changes in the different humors, from physical ailments to more
spiritual/emotional factors.  I will definitely have more to tell about
this work, as I intend to spend more time with this material, possibly for
thesis purposes.

Cover plate from The Anatomy

One material that was really interesting to me was A New Theory of the Earth by William Whiston.  I had a later edition that was printed in 1696.  By this time, Whiston had already established himself as another voice trying to reconcile science and Revelation.  As a science work written by a chaplain, this reminded me of Primitive Physick.  It included theories surrounding creation and “the deluge” (Noah’s flood), both concerned with comets and other heavenly bodies.  Whiston also included plenty of scripture references scattered throughout his explanations.

Cover plate of A New Theory with illustration of the solar system

Something that was quite new to me this week was translating some of these materials.  Well, I can’t say it was completely new because I did take multiple years of Latin way back when.  But still, I had expected all my materials to be in English.  One inevitable product of translating was the surprise of realizing what the book was actually about.  An example: Opera Omnia Medico-Practica Et Anatomica by Georgio Baglivi seemed at first to be mainly about practical medicine.  That’s what its first book was concerning, and the title itself translates to “The Complete Works of Medical Practice of Anatomy.”  What a surprise to find that the whole second section was devoted to “The Anatomy, Bite, and Effects of the Tarantula.”  Apparently, “tarantism” was a thing back in the early modern era and it was a disease thought to be caused by the bite of tarantulas, which were believed to be the most poisonous spider mostly because of their size.  There’s a phenomenon I will definitely be reading up on in my free time!

Who doesn’t love stumbling upon spider illustrations while innocently perusing through medical literature? Illustration from a 1719 edition.

Another interesting pattern I noticed throughout many of these materials were pull-out illustrations and diagrams.  Many of these were for explanations of tools and methods for distillation or larger diagrams of cosmic orbits.  I thought it was interesting to have these tangible additions to the textual information, and it adds to the narrative of the binding and printing of the book itself.

The cover pages of a 1664 edition of The Opticke of Humors, including its own pull out with a more elaborate title page and diagram of the planets.

And now for my most favorite material of the week: Natural Magick.  I don’t know what it was, but this was the most amusing thing I’ve read so far during this project.  John Baptista del Porta covers a huge range of topics, from scientific to ridiculously obscure, including the proper cooking of peacocks and how to beautify women (from dying hair to clearing blemishes).  My favorite was a chapter in his (literally) “random experiments” section that described how one might alter his appearance so his friends won’t recognize him.  I looked through a facsimile of a London edition from 1658; although he published his first edition in the late 1500s, this one still shows traces of the strong mythical influence of earlier science.  One section of hunting and gathering animals included advice on capturing the unicorn, of course.  

The above mentioned passage.  But I had to also include the part about how to “make Wheezles come together,” because how could I not?

Some of the most amusing things I’ve found in going through these materials is the blatant intermixing of myth and science.  Early on, I noticed some notions of travel literature and scientific reports being less-than-accurate concerning zoology and even metallurgy.

Here, from a collection of The Works of Sir Thomas Brown, is a description of the Unicorn.  I particularly enjoyed this encyclopedic section of different animals, plants, minerals, etc. because it gave all the names of the subject in different languages and described their significance in different parts of the world.

From that same work is a description of the Phoenix.  Sir Thomas Brown also included the literary significance of some of these creatures, when applicable.

One book that piqued my interest was Primitive Physick by John Wesley.  For such a medically-inclined book to be written by this well-known theologian and philosopher was surprising to me and I quickly starting finding secondary sources to help me learn more about it.  It’s fascinating what Wesley was doing, because in this early modern era when the spiritual and the physical were bingeing to diverge, he argued that they were still very related.  Half of the work served as a space for this sort of argument, and the rest followed the tradition of medical receipts.

Within this edition, there also existed some marginalia from an unknown source.  The notes were mostly additions to the prescriptions and medical instructions.

As explained in my last post, my project for this semester surrounds the early modern science movement and the literature that came out of it.  Oh the joys of our wonderful library database!  While learning how to be efficient in my exploration of the contents of special collections, I have definitely taken steps in becoming more of an expert on the ways of our database.  One finding leads to another and before long, I have found many primary sources for this project.  Take a look at some of the first books I discovered:

 

Hello one and all.  As the CCEPS Archival Fellow for the fall of 2015, I would like to introduce myself.  My name is Lindsey and I am a senior Literature major (Biology minor) at Claremont McKenna College.  I am beyond excited for this semester at the Special Collections because not only do I love books, but I particularly love old books.  What’s that, you say?  The Special Collections has plenty of old books?  Well then, this is definitely the place for me.

Let me tell you a little bit about my project for this fellowship.  I will be researching what resources the collection has related to 17th-18th century natural history, early modern era science, etc.  Working alongside Lisa and the other Collections faculty, we would like to bring you something that exhibits what the library has in this area of literature, as well as tell a historical narrative about the intersection of science and literature during this key time of development in subjects such as philosophy, physicks (medicine), and even theology.

I will blog again soon to share some of the interesting works I have already found.  Cheers!