If you can read Latin, you might want to stop right here and scroll away. If you don’t know Latin, here’s the sentence to stop if you are squeamish, before I tell you what it says. Ready? “Hic liber Waltonus cute compactus est This book was bound in Walton’s skin.” As the discipline of Peptide […]
Anthropodermic Books Were Made from Human Skin Read More »
Dr. Timothy May, specialist in Mongolian history, spoke at Shippensburg University this evening. My favorite annecdote was when he talked about the Daoist monk who warned Chinggis Khan that he would live longer if he quit drinking, hunting, and having quite so much sex. The leader of ored the monk, and Chinggis Khan died from
Dr. Timothy May Talk on Mongolian History Read More »
This is an early 14th copy of the _Trotula_, a medical text on women’s conditions. Trota of Salerno was one of the book’s authors. She was from the 1100s, and was called “magistra” or “female master” because her medical knowledge was so respected in her day.
The Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia is definitely worth visiting. It was a unique and highly influential prison, and the current site now has first-rate displays with the buildings intentionally kept in a state of semi-decay. The ambience perfectly matched the subject. Once the USA’s largest prison, Eastern State Penitentiary opened in 1829 with
Eastern State Penitentiary Read More »
Orpheus turning back to look at Eurudice, from an early 15th century manuscript known as “L’Epitre Othea” or Harley 4431 (folio 126v)
This tiny bottle contains a unique substance: a perfume called _Fougère Royale_ created by the master perfumer Paul Parquet back in 1882. The line has since been discontinued or altered, so the smell in this bottle might actually be found nowhere else on the planet. This perfume, and 400 other unique fragrances, make up only
“Haboku sansui” is a breathtaking splashed-ink painting done by the Zen Buddhist monk Sesshu Toyo in 1495.
Haboku Sansui Painting Read More »
This is a 15th century aquamanile (pouring water vessel) representing the humiliation of Aristotle by Phyllis: a sort of “world-turned upside down” motif that actually reinforced ideas that men’s real place is above women. Picture taken at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC.
15th Century Aquamanile Read More »
This woodblock print from about 1787 is by the Japanese artist Torii Kiyonaga, and it’s one of the most elegant examples of the distinct art from the Edo period in Japan, a time when the country’s artistic creativity generated works admired both at home and by Europeans. “Interior of a bathhouse” shows several women in
Japanese Bathhouse Read More »
Britain’s laws preventing cruelty to animals are some of the strictest in the world today, but earlier centuries quite differed. It took a man with a pair of pet leeches, a charismatic MP with a battered donkey, and changes to social classes brought about by the Industrial Revolution to change the scene. Folks living in
Stopping Animal Cruelty in 19th-c Britain Read More »
The Knights Templar built the magnificent Castle and Convent of Christ in Tomar, Portugal, in the 12th century. But when the military religious order was dissolved and its members routed and killed after 1319, the kings of Portugal made Tomar a refuge for the monastic knights, changing their name to the Order of Christ and
Tomar, the Castle and Convent Where the Knights Templar Survived Read More »
This baddie not only flourished in 14th and 15th century Eurasia. It also killed millions in the 6th cenuury, and struck again in 19th century China. Scientists are now thinking it might have caused a bottleneck in the population of Europeans in the Neolithic era too!
Jamestown was the first permanent settlement by the English in the Americas, but its earliest years were hardly successful — in fact, the community almost died out at first, during the “starving time” winter of 1609-10. As settlers faced disease and drought, they also were surrounded by the hostile Powhatan peoples, which meant that leaving
Belladonna was a poison used during the Italian Renaissance. Sean Carroll’s “Mindscape” podcast this week features Raychelle Burks, who discusses poisons, chemical analytic forensics, and history.
This is an “oath skull” from the secret “vehmic” courts of northwest Germany’s Westphalia region. Dating to about 1600, it is carved with the initials S.S.G.G., which stood for “Stein, Strick, Gras, grün” (“stone, rope, grass, green”). The whole thing is macabre to modern viewers, and it might have been meant to be spooky and
Oath Skulls in the Vehmic Courts of Early Modern Germany Read More »
Almost 200 years ago (May 7, 1824), Beethoven’s Ninth – and final – Symphony debuted, and yesterday I got a chance to hear it at the First Evangelical Lutheran Church in Carlisle. It took the combined efforts of three groups (the Dickinson College Choir, Cantate Carlisle, and the Dickinson Orchestra) to perform the famously monumental
Beethoven’s Final Symphony Read More »
Late 18th-century Georgian Britain had such fascinating trends. An age of Enlightenment, it brought forth people who were in love with science and anything that sounded “science-y”, even when the actual science was missing. And, no surprise, interest peaked when said pseudo-science trend dealt with sex. This brings me to one James Graham (1745-1794), a
Sexologist James Graham’s Celestial Bed Read More »
This post is about a mathematical puzzle and a French astronomer-mathematician who tried to solve it: the Three-Body Problem, and Nicole-Reine Lepaute, an aristocratic woman working in Enlightenment-Era France. (See images one and two.) Practically as soon as Isaac Newton developed his ideas about gravity, he also realized that, while he could predict the orbits
The Three-Body Problem and Nicole-Reine Lepaute, an Astronomer Who Tackled It Read More »
Often revolutions are only recognized as such in the wake of their transformations. This was the case for the massive shift in human culture in accepting the fact that the earth orbits the sun rather than the other way around. Between the heliocentric model of Nicolaus Copernicus (d. 1543) and the Papacy’s condemnation of Galileo
Christopher Clavius and the Debate over Geocentrism Read More »
At the time of the Spanish discovery of the Americas, the Timucuan peoples were the largest linguistic group around modern Florida and Georgia, numbering about 200,000. They were not united peoples but lived in different groups, sometimes hunting and gathering, other times farming, but their culture was rich (see second image for Timucuan lands in
Timucuan Amerindians Record Their Written Language Read More »
