Title page

It’s hard to know every book in the library’s special collections, the existence of key items (Newton’s Principia, Hooke’s Micrographia etc.) we know of, but other items we only learn about if we stumble across them while checking the catalogue or if they catch our eye while we’re in the store. Sometimes we learning about them through more unusual ways, say a trip to the pub with some academics and Ph.D students. This is how I learnt about  Dr. Johann Bartholomew Adam Beringer’s Lithographiæ Wirceburgensis (STORE 199:15).

Beringer (1667-1740), a “Doctor of Philosophy and medicine, Senior Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Wurzburg, Advisor and Chief Physician to the Prince-Bishop of Wurzburg, and Chief Physician to the Julian Hospital”¹was given some remarkable stones in 1725 by three teenage boys.  The stones had various figures on them including birds, insects, fish, toads, spiders and flowers.

Celestial stones

More intriguingly some had images of the sun, moon, stars and comets on them. Beringer decided to write a treatise on the stones to explain how he thought they were created and to advertise his great discovery.  Now, if anyone looked at these stones today they would automatically think something wasn’t right. Beringer even  discusses in the treatise whether they are manmade, and mentions rumours of a hoax. For example in chapter two he states “The figures expressed on these stones, especially those of insects, are so exactly fitting to the dimensions of the stones, that one would swear that they are the work of a very meticulous sculptor”  and he goes on to point out that the stones aren’t broken and that the animals are perfectly posed. However, he dismisses these rumours and evidence thinking that there are too many stones for it to be a hoax, that other people have been given similar stones, and that a few years ago other similar stones were found.

Spiders, some with webs

Eventually Beringer realised he had been tricked, no one is sure exactly how he was finally convinced of this – either the Prince-Bishop had a word or he found a stone with his own name written on. A court case ensued in which two colleagues of Beringer, J. Ignatz Roderick a Professor of geography, algebra and analysis, and Georg von Eckart a privy councillor and librarian to the Court and University, were found guilty.  Roderick was banished from Wurzburg (or maybe left voluntarily, depending on which version you read, but certainly he left in disgrace) and von Eckhart was forbidden access to the archives of the Duchy.  One version of events then says that Beringer tried to buy all copies of the book back and was left ruined and soon died. However, it seems that it was von Eckhart who suffered the worst as he died four years later and left a large collection of unfinished work. Roderick wrote a grovelling letter to the Prince-Bishop of Wurzburg asking permission to return so he could sort out his friends library and possibly continue his work. Beringer’s life continued and the episode of the lying stones doesn’t seem to have had any negative impact on his academic work.

The Lithographiæ Wirceburgensis is full of a plates illustrating some of the stones that Beringer was given. My favourites are the more strange creatures like the one below.

Strange creature

Reference:

1. Jahn, M.E. Dr. Beringer and the Wurzburg “Lugensteine”, Journal of the society for the bibliography of natural history vol.4 (2) pp.138-152 (1963)

Further reading:

Jahn. M. E. & Woolfe, D. J. The lying stones of Dr. Johann Bartholomew Adam Beringer being his Lithographiae Wirceburgensis

Gould, S.J. The Lying stones of Wurzburg and Marrakech

Dawn

(Thanks to Dr. Cunningham and Prof. Jardine for telling me about this book)

Wood - Boy's modern playmate cover

We have a new Rev. J. G Wood book thanks to the eagle eye of Prof. Secord. The Boy’s Modern Playmate: a book of sports, games and pastimes provides details on how to play numerous games (indoor, outdoor and parlour); partake in sports such as gymnastics and archery; acquire skills including carpentry, amateur engineering and shipbuilding; has a section on home pets which Agnieszka has spotted has no mention of cats (were they not considered a pet in the late 1800’s?); a science section; and chapters on riddles and games of skill. It is, like other Wood books, beautifully illustrated and to keep in with the current weather the photo below is from the section on skating and sliding.

Wood - Boy's modern playmate, skating and sliding

Liver diet

While researching our current book display I became interested in sick-room cookery. (Watching too much of the Great British Bake Off has made me a bit baking mad). Practical nursing by W.T. Gordon-Pugh contains a selection of diets including the Liver Diet used to treat patients with pernicious anaemia which is caused by a lack of vitamin B12.  The photo on the right shows the interesting ways the liver can be prepared including the recipe for a liver cocktail. A. Millicent Ashdown’s The complete system of nursing contains a whole chapter entitled “Diets-sick-room cookery”, this chapter comes after the section on poisons therefore giving us the nice plot for a murder mystery.

Diabetic diet

The Diabetic diet doesn’t seem to be that bad until your realise that after two days it changes and all the patient is allowed is weak tea and coffee with no milk and beef tea, with the added bonus of “More beef tea is permitted if required”. Beef tea appears in the broth section of recipes and involves the following:

Take one pound of lean beef (gravy beef), remove all fat, skin, and gristle, cut into small cubes about ¼ inch square; place it in a jar and add one pint of cold water, cover it tightly. Place the jar in a pan of cold water over a slow fire, or better in a hot oven, and allow to simmer for four hours; strain through a sieve, pressing all the goodness out of the meat, remove any fat or scum from the surface, add salt to taste, and serve hot

There are chicken, mutton and veal version for those who don’t like beef. For those with less time on their hands Volume two of The science and art of nursing contains a recipe for quick beef tea. This involves leaving the meat, salt and water in a pan to stand for 15-30 minutes then gently cook it for 20 minutes before turning the heat up and cooking for a bit longer. This recipe seems to think it’s a good idea if the tea looks red, but does suggested adding food colouring if it puts the patient off. There is no mention of what to offer vegans or vegetarians, there are recipes for barley, rice or oatmeal water and my favourite toast water (see below). There’s a lack of information on the nutritional value of these basic recipes and no mention of what the benefits are of drinking lots of beef tea but it must have done some good, it is, however, one recipe I won’t be trying.

Toast Water Recipe

http://www.sliderules.nl/mypapers/Gazette_12___J_H_Steward___a_family_dynasty.pdf

Conservation report

It’s fantastic to read the state this book was in prior to acquisition and how, in true Clark fashion, it was cared for and repaired, post-acquisition by the Whipple, which has now rendered the book sturdy and readable.

Without these past caretakers, the Whipple couldn’t offer us this important phrenological text. Insanity is a complicated work in which J. G. Spurzheim, amongst other things, challenges, but doesn’t oppose, Gall-ian assumptions and generalizations of phrenology. A past disciple of Gall’s, Spurzheim was a physician and phrenologist in his own right at the time of publication. Within the work, after discussing that in most cases certain ailments are prescribed to certain head sizes or shapes, Spurzheim goes on to conclude that although deductions of this sort are “mostly” true, they are “not always”. He concludes, “Thus, in insanity, the configuration of heads, is neither to be overlooked, nor to be over-rated” (146).

Plate 1

Plate 2

Spurzheim’s text ends dramatically, both with this weighted sentence, and with plates depicting images of the heads and skulls of the insane. The first page reveals a series of idiots, “whose brains, with respect to size, were defective in differing degrees” (309). The second, shows “three heads, distended by water in the interior of the brain” and three skulls of idiots. These visual representations of what idiots and the insane look like, clearly different from the norm, are intriguing. The plates are included to visually demonstrate Spurzheim’s scientific work on phrenology, but they also seem to counter his bold and compassionate statement at the end of his book. Depictions such as these would not normalize mental conditions but rather objectify them, in contrast to what Spurzheim called for. These few anonymous floating heads are a generic and shallow representation of the community of the mentally ill, which doesn’t seem to make any steps towards their normalisation.

Reference:

“John Willis Clark and The Care of Books” article at:

http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/gallery/clarke/index.htm

Johann Spurzheim Wikipedia article at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Spurzheim

By Andrea Kennedy

But what I find particularly interesting is what we’d see as the mish-mash of physical and psychological factors that cause (or are symptomatic of) disease. Hypochondria, today considered a psychological disturbance, was for Cullen closer to dyspepsia and so was more nosologically-related to gout and dysentery than to mania and melancholia. These types of insanity, too, reflected more on an individual’s temperament (welcome back, humours!) than on the physical condition of the brain or nerves.

Conveniently, this brings me to Cullen’s favourite topic: the nervous system. While Cullen used to be hailed for his discovery of ‘neurosis’, it should come as no surprise that he had a far more encompassing view of what this term entailed. For Cullen, all diseases involved the nervous system and so all could be called neurosis. This passage is from his discussion of fevers:

‘To discover the cause of the cold stages of fevers, we may observe, that it is always preceded by strong marks of general debility prevailing in the system. The smallness and weakness of the pulse, the paleness and coldness of the extreme parts, with the shrinking of the whole body, sufficiently shew, that the action of the heart and larger arteries is, for the time, extremely weakened. Together with this, the languor, inactivity, and debility of the animal motions, the imperfect sensations, the feeling of cold, while the body is truly warm, and some other symptoms, all shew that the energy of the brain is, on this occasion, greatly weakened; and I presume, that, as the weakness of the action of the heart can hardly be imputed to any other cause, this weakness also is a proof of the diminished energy of the brain.’

Quite something, I hope you agree. But for those of you who don’t and who might be concluding that such anachronistic tittering is unseemly, then I should point out that the above paragraph comes from the 1791 edition of ‘First Lines of Physic’ – a year after Cullen died. I merely echo the editor, therefore, in pointing out that Cullen seems to have returned to this particular theme at every opportunity. And if there is anything that can span across human culture and history, surely it is exasperation.

The Whipple has a later edition of ‘First Lines of the Practice of Physic’ published in 1816 (STORE 116:18-19)

By Sean Dyde

Title page of On the Functions of the Cerebellum

How energetic is your ‘instinct to reproduction’? To find out, just feel behind your head to where your neck meets your skull. If this area is bulging then you’re in luck. Your faculty of ‘amativeness’ (as nineteenth-century phrenologists referred to it) is particular well developed. (Note, these phrenologists would also be keen to warn you that such sexual drive may deflect from the kind of intellectual endeavour encouraged by this blog.)

On the Functions of the Cerebellum, by Drs Gall, Vimont and Broussais, translated from the French by George Combe (1838) (STORE PH:W.194) treats this subject in detail. Early nineteenth-century phrenologists held that the cerebellum was the seat of the faculty concerned with reproductive drive (the aforementioned ‘amativeness’). Famously, the phrenologists also believed that the contours of the skull mirrored that of the brain and, therefore, anyone could read off individual characteristics by feeling for bumps. (The cerebellum is located towards the rear base of the skull, hence why I had you feeling behind your head.)

For historians of science, this text is exciting for two reasons: first, its racy and, second, its in translation.

With respect to explicit content, On the Functions of the Cerebellum is much more forward than many other texts published by Edinburgh phrenologists at the time. In fact, its editor George Combe acknowledges this in his preface, stating that the work contains details “which in some respects are not suited to general perusal”. However, he makes the case that a select audience, particularly medical men, should not be restricted from developing their knowledge of phrenology just because (in Edinburgh at least) it was part of a popular movement intended for “both sexes, and of persons of all ages and conditions”. With this warning in place, Combe doesn’t hold back. We hear of the spread of masturbation in school, the loss of libido in injured soldiers and, most controversially of all, a twelve-year-old girl suffering from “Nymphomania”. So, On the Functions of the Cerebellum is clearly an important text for those charting the genealogy of sexual theory pre-psychoanalysis. It also presents the historian with a fantastic opportunity to investigate the ways in which different types of knowledge were carved up and negotiated as socially acceptable.

Related to this point, and something I am working on, is the fact that On the Functions of the Cerebellum imports many works from French and provides them in translation for an audience in Edinburgh. We have leading French phrenologist François-Joseph-Victor Broussais’s Cours de phrénologie as well as Franz Joseph Gall’s Petition and Remonstrance to the Emperor of Germany (a response to having his lectures banned). All this affords the historian an opportunity to chart the interactions and connections phrenology made beyond particular localities such as Edinburgh or Paris.

In short, On the Functions of the Cerebellum is recommended reading for two (very occasionally overlapping) groups of historians: those interested in the history of sexual theory before Freud, and those interested in how knowledge traverses national boundaries.

By James Poskett

Illustration showing the base of the brain and cerebellum (p.xx)

Dawn

Click to view slideshow.

Lefroy's inscription

Following on from the post about Hugh Miller and his sad demise, I came across another interesting death relating to a book we have recently received.  The Crayfish: an introduction to the study of zoology by T.H. Huxley (STORE 150:13) has just been transferred to us from the Medical Library and has the following inscription on the title page: H. Maxwell-Lefroy. King’s College. Cambridge. Feb 1896. After typing his name into a well known search engine and looking at the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography to see if he is worthy of a mention on the catalogue record, I discovered that he died after accidently gassing himself with an insecticide he was working on. Harold Maxwell-Lefroy (1877-1925) was an entomologist who spent time in India working for the Imperial Department of Agriculture and serving as Imperial Entomologist investigating insects and their impact on agricultural crops. He moved back to England to take up a post at Imperial College and in 1925 he set up Rentokil. Sadly this was also to be the year of his death. He was found unconscious in his laboratory on 10^th October and died on 14^th October never regaining consciousness. The inquest noted that he had chronic toxaemia (blood poisoning) due to ‘repeated inhalation of poisonous vapours’ and that ‘…[he] was a brilliant research worker who had lost his life in trying to benefit the human race’.  The book itself has some nice illustrations of crayfish, like the one on below.

One of the books illustrations

Dawn