Guest Post: Bathing with Sheeps' Heads: The Sick Child in Early Modern England

Dr Hannah Newton is a Wellcome Trust Fellow at the University of Cambridge. Here, she provides insights into the treatment and experience of childhood illness in the early modern period, and overturns three enduring myths about the history of childhood.

In the late-seventeenth century, the London gentlewoman, Katherine Jones, described how to make ‘A Good Bath…for Children that have the Rickets’. She instructed, ‘Take five sheeps heads and livers, bruise them and boyle them in water a whole day’. Next, add a handful of ‘Rosemary, Bays, Wormwood, Fatherfew, Smallage, Mallows, knotgrass and red fennel’. When these were ‘boyled enough…put it into the Bathing tub, and let the child stay in as long as it can Endure according as you think fit’. She warned, ‘When the child comes out of the Bath, put it to bed and have a great care it take no cold’.

I encountered this recipe whilst leafing through the fragile pages of Katherine Jones’ collection of culinary and medicinal recipes, now housed in the Wellcome Library, and available for digital download from the website. It sparked a series of questions in my mind. How might Katherine’s child have felt about taking a bath bobbing with the heads of dead sheep? Were children’s medicines the same as those of adults? How did young patients respond emotionally to illness and the prospect of death? What role did mothers and fathers play in the care of ill children? These questions are addressed in my new book, The Sick Child in Early Modern England, 1580-1720. At this time, the illness or death of a child was common – almost a third of the young died before reaching the age of fifteen – and yet historians have rarely touched upon this subject. Taking the perspectives of doctors, parents, and children themselves, my book investigates the perception, treatment, and experience of childhood illness in England between approximately 1580 and 1720. It exposes three myths in the history of early modern childhood, outlined below.

Myth 1: Children were miniature adults.

According to popular legend, there was no concept of ‘childhood’ in medieval or early modern societies. In old paintings, children resemble little adults, dressed in the style of their elders. This view, which has largely fallen out of favour amongst historians, has seeped into the history of medicine – it is assumed that before the late nineteenth century, children and adults were treated using identical medicines. However, an examination of medical texts, recipe collections, and doctors’ casebooks, sheds doubt on this notion. The medical author ‘J.S’, declared in 1664, ‘children are to be cur’d in a different manner in them then they are in other Ages’. Their bodies resembled ‘soft wax’ – they were weak, warm, and full of moisture. This unique physiology meant that ‘a special regard is to be had to the Methods and Medicines, for Children by reason of the weakness of their bodies, cannot undergo severe methods or strong Medicines’. Instead of using the usual remedies of the time – vomits, purges, and bloodletting – children were to be treated with milder medicines, such as topical ointments and baths, and non-evacuating internal medicines. Of the 482 medicines for children that were listed in the collections of manuscript culinary and medical recipes that I analysed in the Wellcome Library and British Library, less than 4 percent were for emetics and bloodletting, and only about 15 percent were for purges and enemas. Evacuative treatments were to be avoided because they were ‘unpleasing, ful of pain and molestation to Children’, stated the physician Francis Glisson in 1651. Of course, there were occasions when these treatments were used – older children were more likely to be given vomits and purges than infants, and when the child was gravely ill, practitioners were sometimes prepared to risk administering a more aggressive remedy on the grounds that it might save the child’s life. But on the whole, gentler treatments were preferred.

As well as giving children different treatments, doctors and laypeople thought it was necessary to ‘limit…the strength, quality and quantity of the medicine’ by adapting the treatments in various ways. Doses were lessened for children, and the more powerful ingredients were often omitted. Mary Poppins’ technique of ‘adding a spoonful of sugar’, was another common practice. Francis Glisson noted that he sought to make the medicine ‘grateful & pleasing to the sick Child, & such as trouble not its Pallate’. The recipe book of Anne Glyd suggests that a medicine for ‘chin cough’ should be put into ‘hon[e]y’ or ‘what ever the child likes best’. Doctors knew that ‘children will not take bitter things’, and therefore either left these ingredients out, or disguised them by putting them into the child’s normal food or drink. To persuade children to submit to treatment, bribery was sometimes used. John Yorke complained that his nephew James ‘is…so refractory [about] taking what is proper for him’, that ‘[it is] a hard taske to govern him’. Yorke had to ‘use all my perwasion’ to get the child ‘to take what the Dr order’d’. Eventually through promising him a copy of Robinson Crusoe, the child agreed to take the medicine.

Myth 2: Parents did not love their children in the past.

It is often suggested that high rates of death in the early modern period discouraged parents from investing too much affection in their children. Fathers in particular, have been depicted as unemotional, aloof figures at this time, who spent little time with their children, and rarely showed much grief at their deaths. Contemporary diaries and letters provide a very different picture. During illness, fathers and mothers tended their children with devoted care. In 1679, the Anglican clergyman Isaac Archer recorded that he ‘sate by’ his six-year-old daughter Frances with his arm around her, and ‘helpt it all night’, offering her words of comfort. Witnessing one’s child suffer pain, grow weak and pale, and eventually die, provoked the most painful passions imaginable in parents. In 1647, the Yorkshire gentleman Ralph Verney nursed his eight-year-old daughter Pegg, who was suffering from a cancerous ulcer. He told his uncle, Dr Denton, ‘Poore childe you doe not know what miserie she hath endured’: she was so weak she ‘she cannot turne her selfe in her Bed’. He concluded his letter, ‘oh Dr I am so full of affliction that I can say noe more but pray for us’. When death finally arrived, the grief of parents was often so intense that they found it difficult to express. When Ralph Verney’s wife Mary found out that Pegg had died, she told him, ‘I am nott able to say one word more but that at this time there is nott a sadder creature in the world than thine own Deare M’. It appears that both mothers and fathers loved their children with the same intensity that we expect from parents today.

Myth 3: It is impossible to access the child’s experience.

It is notoriously difficult to investigate the experience of childhood in the seventeenth century. Children rarely left written records. However, there is one context in which their voices do survive: illness. Acutely aware of the likelihood of death, parents recorded the thoughts, words, and actions of their sick children in detail. The resulting evidence provides rare and intimate insights into the lives and deaths of early modern children. At eight o’clock one October evening in 1625 when Grace Wallington was washing the dishes, her three-year-old daughter Elizabeth asked her, ‘What doe you heere?’ Later that night when she was in bed, she said to her father Nehemiah, ‘Father I goe abroode tomorrow and bye [buy] you a plomee pie’. The reason these everyday sentences were recorded by Elizabeth’s father was that, ‘These were the last words that I did heere my sweete child speeke’, for the next day, she died. Some forty years later, John Vernon recalled the words of his dying son, twelve-year-old Caleb: he had spoken of his pet bird, saying ‘I will give it to my Sister Betty, who hath none, for Nancy [another sister] hath one already’.

Although these accounts may have been edited and censored by their parents, they do nonetheless shed light on children’s preoccupations. Children’s words also reveal their feelings for their parents. In the 1670s, six-year-old Jason Whitrow took his mother ‘by the hand, and said, Mother, I shall dye, oh that you might dye with me, that we might both go to the Lord together’. Daughters’ feelings for their fathers could be similarly deep. Thomas Camm described how his eight-year-old daughter Sarah lay in his arms during her illness in 1682, and told him ‘Oh! my dear Father, thou hast been very tender and carefull over me, and hast taken great pains with me in my Sickness…we shall meet in Heaven’. Christian beliefs about heaven were a source of unquantifiable comfort to all family members. While children rarely left written records, some sources do survive. When I was reading a recipe book in the Wellcome Library, I came across something very exciting: a child’s picture. It shows a woman cooking, perhaps boiling herbs for a medicine. Virtually indistinguishable from a modern child’s drawing, it brings the past to life.

Images:
- Katherine Jones, Lady Ranelagh, Collection of medical receipts, c. 1675-1710, Wellcome Library, MS.1340, 114v.
- Collection of cookery and medical receipts: written mainly by two compilers, c.1685-c.1725, Wellcome Library, MS.1796, 125v.

The Sick Child in Early Modern England, 1580-1720 (OUP, 2012) is available now. More information on the Wellcome Library's digitised recipe manuscripts is available through the Wellcome Library website.

Author: Dr Hannah Newton

Shackled in leg irony: black humour of the lower limb

Mezzotint by Jacob Gole (1660?-1737?) after Annibale Carracci.
Wellcome Library no. 24994i

It is a common experience to have enough feet but not enough shoes. The man shown here is, paradoxically, in the opposite situation: he has plenty of shoes but lacks a foot. The irony has a further twist: he is a shoe-seller whose single surviving foot is unshod, presumably because he cannot afford his own wares. No wonder he needs to keep up his spirits with a tobacco pipe.

Black humour (gallows humour, Galgenhumor) is a common feature of discourse about disability. However much we may deplore the fact, loss of mobility due to amputation of the lower limb -– at the thigh, leg or foot -- has been considered a particularly appropriate subject for such humour, perhaps owing to suppressed fear of losing such mobility as we may have. Irony is a way of playing down the horror of immobility while at the same time acknowledging it; and there can be intellectual pleasure (at least for functional bipeds) in the various paradoxes that can arise from limblessness, which are prominent in the drawings, photographs, prints and paintings in the Wellcome Library shown here.

Watercolour by C.W.D., 1866. Wellcome Library no. 12109i

Loss of a limb in a railway accident elicits no sympathy from this compensation board.
The victim (to Chairman) "Sir, in consequence of the carelessness of your servants. I have been compelled to have my leg amputated, besides suffering other injuries, and I consider myself entitled to compensation."
Facetious director. "Lost your leg have yer? Regular stumps etc? - Well! If yer any-think of a cricketer it must be an ill-convenience!"
Benevolent chairman. "Quite right sir - qu-i-te right, compensation by all means, loss of leg - eh? - an unfortunate accident that for all of us." (To secretary) "Here Mr Jones award this gentleman twelve shillings for a wooden one - and enter it on the minutes."'
Jones replies: "The usual discount sir I suppose for ready money? That'll make it eleven shillings." Another director adds: "One can't be too cautious but he don't look like a malingerer!".

Coloured etching, 19th century. Wellcome Library no. 44050i

To break one's natural leg is bad enough, but then to break its wooden replacement adds insult to injury. Two approximately contemporary prints show this subject. In the one above, the driver of the offending vehicle is asleep at the reins.

Coloured engraving published by Laurie and Whittle, 24 February 1800. Wellcome Library 44090i

But at least here the victim can smile as he sees the irony of his situation – and it's much less painful this time round for the young sailor who had lost his leg in the Far East. Fortunately a carpenter is passing with a saw and pot of glue in hand; "A broken leg, or the carpenter is the best surgeon. Haloo! Young Glewpot, de ye see Jack Junk has shivered his timbers, and we want a splice here." The surgeon coming out of his house on the left has no part to play on this occasion, and is pushed away.



There are even positive advantages to losing a leg!


Here another seadog has lost both his legs to the naval surgeon, but there's one compensation: no more suffering from corns ("Keine Hühneraugen mehr!").

 

Lithograph after Johann Bahr, 1909. Wellcome Library no. 577262i

Etching by Frederick Carter, 1928. Wellcome Library no. 44343i (Wellcome Library/©RG Clark)

"What, no legs? Lucky man!" are the words spoken by Ahasuerus (the Wandering Jew) to an immobile Spanish beggar in Frederick Carter's gloomy etching. It is the Jew's misfortune to be forever moving over the face of the earth without respite; the beggar's not to be able to move at all. You can see the world, or you can have a rest, but you can't do both.

Discarded crutches at Lourdes. Photograph, 1937. Wellcome Library no. 578619i

Once a leg has been lost, surely only a miracle could make it grow again. It was a friend of the writer Anatole France (1844-1924) who, contemplating the hundreds of discarded crutches at Lourdes, murmured "Une seule jambe de bois en dirait bien davantage" (Just one wooden leg would be much more significant). [1]

Coloured lithograph by C.J. Grant, 1834.
Wellcome Library no. 11854i.

The regrowth of a natural leg from an amputation stump was considered absurd enough to be worthy of an advertisement for Morison’s pills – the heavily-advertised vegetable remedy for diseases attributed to iatrogenic blood poisoning. The man on the left went to bed with wooden legs, took a dose of Morison's Universal Pills, and "when I awakes in the morning to kick off the clothes, I'm blessed if I didn't find myself with these 'ere couple of jolly good legs and my old wooden ones right at the bottom of the bed!!!".

 Yet … looking towards a future age of stem-cell therapy, who would claim that regeneration of a limb could not occur?

Colour lithograph by H.G. Banks, ca. 1899.
Wellcome Library no. 556713i

It would need more than stem-cell therapy to put poor Callaghan together again. In the song What will poor Callaghan do? a disabled soldier has his wooden legs stolen by four drinking companions in a bar.

The song describes an evening out for four stage-Irishmen called Hogan, Casey, Murphy and "me"; originally "me" was Michael Nolan, a popular Irish music-hall performer. They had spent all their money drinking beer in a pub with an ex-Highland soldier called Patsy Callaghan, who had had his legs shot off from under his kilt when at war. To recover their funds, they got Callagahan drunk, removed his wooden legs and false teeth, pawned them, and left Callaghan literally legless on the pub bench. His plight, depicted on the front cover of the songsheet, is regarded by all as hilarious, though the speaker can't help wondering (in the words of the chorus) "What will poor Callaghan do?".

Michael Nolan asking "What will poor Callaghan do?"

Poor Callaghan was a precursor (or, from another point of view, a post-mediaeval successor) to The Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) who unwillingly makes comedy out of limb-deprivation. "'Tis but a scratch!" he says after losing one arm, "It's just a flesh-wound!" after losing the other, and "All right, we'll call it a draw" after finally losing both legs. Before the Black Knight, one-leggedness had been the subject of another piece of tasteless comedy: One leg too few, a sketch written by Peter Cook while a Cambridge undergraduate in 1960. For this sketch Cook appears to have coined the Latin-derived word "unidexter" to denote a person with one leg, although there was already a Greek-derived word in English, namely "monopod". Again there was an ironic twist of which some audiences were unaware: the actor playing the one-legged role (Dudley Moore) had had club-feet as a child and still had one ineffective leg. Irony and club-foot lead us on the well-intentioned but disastrous operation in Flaubert's Madame Bovary (1856), but we have enough space here merely to allude to it.

Oil painting attributed to the Master of Los Balbases, Burgos, ca. 1495.
Wellcome Library no. 46009i

Conversely, many people are shocked by the absence of irony in this Spanish altarpiece showing a verger's dream. The verger dreams that his bad leg is substituted by Saint Cosmas and Saint Damian with the leg of a black man, and on waking, finds it is true. Some viewers tend to resort to jocularity, showing that they are sophisticated enough to realize that transplants cannot routinely be performed by such means, but not knowledgeable enough to understand the episode as a miracle that could, for example, comfort diabetics. 

The dream of Saint John Damascene: the Virgin attaches his severed right hand.
Drawing, 16--. Wellcome Library no. 651341i

Similar pictures showing the reattachment of a hand do not seem to arouse the same facetiousness. But then in favourable circumstances, surgical reattachment of a hand (or for that matter a foot) to its original limb is not impossible today, according to this popular webpage about "fascinating reattachment surgeries". That really is something to be glad about.

The first examples discussed here have irony and humour, while the last two examples show that in religious contexts lack of a limb could be represented without humour and without irony. Let's end with an example that has irony but not (I suggest) humour.

Engraving by L. Gaultier, ca. 1613. Wellcome Library no. 571261i

This engraving by Léonard Gaultier (1561-1641) shows a man with a wooden leg carrying arms, legs and feet in a basket. At first sight it appears to have a similar subject to the Dutch mezzotint after Annibale Carracci (top).

However, it is a detail of a broadsheet designed by the Franciscan friar Martin Meurisse (1584-1644) to teach logic in Paris in 1613. If it is the nature of man to be a biped, is a "unidexter" a man? And if the function of a foot is locomotion, does a detached foot have the nature of a foot? The answer is that parts that naturally belong to an entity and are necessary for its completion, if removed from that entity, are reduced to predicates of it. Students whose minds have been befuddled by the many distinctions in Aristotle's writings on logic will have been glad to have had such a vivid and ironic image to remind them of how the contingencies relate to the substance of human life.

[1] Anatole France, Le jardin d’Epicure (1895), Paris 1923, p. 158

Geffrye Museum Study Day: 'At Home with the World'

As part of their current exhibition At Home With the World, the Geffrye Museum is hosting a study day on 19th May, at which historians, specialists and curators will explore the themes of the exhibition in greater depth.

Topics discussed on the day will range from the development of Tudor and Stuart Gardens to orientalist interior decoration in the Victorian home. In one of the talks, Helen Wakely, Archivist, Wellcome Library, will draw upon our collections to reveal 'A Global Reader's Digest' - showing how health literature and recipe books from the 17th and 18th centuries reveal domestic responses in England to new global commodities, ideas and tastes.

More details on the study day are available from the Geffrye Museum's website (pdf).

Image: A girl pours coffee from a cup into a saucer. Colour halftone from an engraving by L. Marin, (Wellcome Library no. 25219i)

Easter 2012: "O death where is thy sting?"

Easter week celebrates the moment when, in Christian metaphysics, mortality is overcome by everlasting life. The crucifixion of Jesus Christ redeems mankind from the sinful state into which mankind fell through Adam's disobedience to the will of God in the garden of Eden. His resurrection liberates us from eternal perdition: in Saint Paul's famous words (I Corinthians, XV.54-55) "So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, 'Death is swallowed up in victory'. O death where is thy sting? O grave where is thy victory?".

These concepts were articulated with fresh force in the later sixteenth century through the Counter-Reformation, in media such as altarpieces, sermons, the educational work of the Jesuit Order, and through devotional prints which were widely disseminated. Here we present four such prints from the holdings of the Wellcome Library.

Engraving by B. van Bolswert after Rubens. Wellcome Library no. 24606i.

The print above publishes an altarpiece painted for a church in Antwerp in 1619-20. The lettering names Pieter Paul Rubens as the painter, and Boëce van Bolswert (in Latin, Boethius à Bolswert) as the engraver and printer. Bolswert (ca. 1580-1633) worked in Antwerp in collaboration with the Rubens studio. The lettering describes the scene in the words of Saint John's gospel (XIX.19-34), which is also closely followed in the depiction.

For instance, Saint John mentions that the mocking inscription on Christ's cross "was written in Hebrew and Greek and Latin" (XIX.20), as it is here. The print also illustrates an act of casual cruelty which is described by Saint John: the soldiers broke the legs of the two men crucified with Jesus, but when they got to Jesus himself, they saw that he was already dead so did not waste any effort in breaking his limbs. Thus the print emphasizes the sinfulness of mankind and its need for the "corruptible to put on incorruption".

The altarpiece was seen in Antwerp in 1781 by the painter Joshua Reynolds. He describes it as "famous", meaning that it was widely known from  Bolswert's print. He commented in his diary:

'The altar of the choir is the famous crucifixion of Christ between the two thieves, by Rubens. To give animation to this subject, he has chosen the point of time when an executioner is piercing the side of Christ, whilst another with a bar of iron is breaking the limbs of one of the malefactors, who in his convulsive agony, which his body admirably expresses, has torn one of his feet from the tree to which it was nailed. The expression in the action of this figure is wonderful: the attitude of the other is more composed; and he looks at the dying Christ with a countenance perfectly expressive of his penitence. This figure is likewise admirable.

'The Virgin, St. John, and Mary the wife of Cleophas are standing by with great expression of grief and resignation, whilst the Magdalen, who is at the feet of Christ, and may be supposed to have been kissing his feet, looks at the horseman with the spear, with a countenance of great horror: as the expression carries with it no grimace or contortion of the features, the beauty is not destroyed. This is by far the most beautiful profile I ever saw of Rubens, or, I think, of any other painter …

'The genius of Rubens nowhere appears to more advantage than here: it is the most carefully finished picture of all his works. The whole is conducted with the most consummate art; the composition is bold and uncommon, with circumstances which no other painter had ever before thought of; such as the breaking of the limbs, and the expression of the Magdalen, to which we may add the disposition of the three crosses, which are placed prospectively in an uncommon picturesque manner: the nearest bears the thief whose limbs are breaking; the next the Christ, whose figure is straighter than ordinary, as contrast to the others: and the furthermost, the penitent thief: this produces a most picturesque effect, but it is what few such a daring genius as Rubens would have attempted. . . . I have dwelt longer on this picture than any other, as it appears to me to deserve extraordinary attention: it is certainly one of the first pictures in the world, for composition, colouring, and, what was not to be expected from Rubens, correctness of drawing.'

Although Reynolds's appreciation is primarily technical, written from the point of view of a professional painter, his feeling for the subject matter is also strongly expressed. In the 19th century the composition continued to be well known under the name Le coup de lance given to it in 1876 by the French painter Eugène Fromentin. Even today some writers call it Le coup de lance, even though many other incidents are shown in addition to the centurion piercing Christ's side with the lance. Although the lettering on the print and other evidence state that the author was Pieter Paul Rubens, there are reasons for thinking that, while Rubens designed the composition, his pupil Antonie Van Dyck may have been responsible for some of the detailing. [1] The painting now belongs to the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp.

At some stage Christ's body had to be taken down from the Cross. An episode after that, known in English by the Italian word Pietà, in which the Virgin Mary mourns her son, is recorded in many pictures and sculptures.

 Engraving by Lucas Kilian after Hans von Aachen, 1602. Wellcome Library no. 23231i.

This is one of the most finely worked prints of that subject. It is a truly international production. The designer was Hans von Aachen (1552-1615) who was born in Cologne, worked in Italy where he learnt a good deal about painting and design, and eventually became court painter to the Emperor Rudolf II in Prague, where he died. Our print is dated 1602, when Hans was in Prague. It bears a dedication from Dominicus Custos (the printer and/or publisher), dated to the day: "MDCII. VIII. Id. Maÿ", i.e. 8 May 1602. The dedicatee is Johann Philipp von Gebsattel (1555-1609),  Prince-Bishop of Bamberg from 1599 to 1609, not a man renowned for piety, which is perhaps why he was glad to be recognized as the patron of this magnificent print. He could hardly fail to be impressed by the engraver's work on the Virgin's halo. The engraver was the stepson of Dominicus Custos, Lucas Kilian, who was from Augsburg in Bavaria but carried out the work for this print in Venice.

The episode is not mentioned in the Gospels but became one of the standard Stations of the Cross in the Middle Ages. Evidently it was thought necessary to have a time for grieving between the killing of Christ and his burial. The Virgin's expression is one of bewilderment, while Mary Magdalene devotes herself to the wounded body of Christ. In the foreground are the causes of the sacred wounds, including the nails, a hammer, and the crown of thorns.

Engraving by Lucas Kilian after Tintoretto. Wellcome Library no.23236i.

The carrying of Christ's body to the tomb is shown in another print made by Lucas Kilian, again in collaboration with his stepfather Dominicus Custos as printer and/or publisher, but this time Lucas is engraving a design by a Venetian painter, Jacopo Robusti, called il Tintoretto. The patron to whom the print is dedicated is also Italian:  Anna Caterina Gonzaga (1566-1621), daughter of Guglielmo Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, and at this time the consort of her uncle, Ferdinand II, Archduke of Austria. Unlike the Prince-Bishop of Bamberg, she was indeed renowned for her piety: as a child she had received visions of the Virgin, and after her husband's death she abandoned the trappings of wealth and devoted herself entirely to religion and good works.

It is clear why the archduchess would have been happy to be associated with an engraving in which the suffering Virgin Mary is literally so prominent: the three Maries are almost falling out of the front of the picture, with the Blessed Virgin in the centre, Mary Magdalene on the right and Mary the wife of Cleophas (John XIX: 25) on the left. Remarkably, what we might regard as the main subject, the carrying of the body of Christ, appears only in the background. The reaction of the Virgin to the sight of Jesus's body implies that a distinct earlier phase corresponding to the Lamentation or Pietà did not take place.

Engraving after Maerten de Vos, late 16th century. Wellcome Library no. 23283i.

Finally in this sequence, we have the powerful figure of Christ triumphing over death. The upper part combines two scenes: Christ is simultaneously resurrected from the tomb and ascends into heaven. In the lower left corner, Death itself is about to be swallowed up by a monster, while in the centre the snake that led Adam and Eve astray, and who is entwined around the secular world, is about to be trampled down by the wounded foot of Christ. On the right a tablet engraved with the Ten Commandments faces upwards, indicating that Christ is triumphing over righteousness of the law, replacing it with righteousness of faith.

The composition is by Maerten De Vos (1532-1603), and the engraving was produced by the publishing house of Hieronymus (Jeroen) Cock (c. 1510–1570) at the sign of the four winds ("Aux quatre vents") in Antwerp.

Thanks to Erika Delbecque for cataloguing the Wellcome Library's prints by Lucas Kilian.

[1] N. Van Hout, 'On the invention and execution of the Coup de Lance', in Rubens Bulletin Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen (KMSKA), 2011, 3: 2-39. Online at http://www.kmska.be/nl/Onderzoek/Rubens/Rubensbulletin_3.html

Hermitage and heritage: Augustinians in history

Austen (the surname of one of England's best-loved novelists and Austin (the capital city of Texas) are both abbreviations of the name Augustine. That name became popular from Saint Augustine of Hippo, Father and Doctor of the Church (354-430), philosopher and theologian (left: Wellcome Library no. 3493i).

In England the name Augustine later acquired added lustre from the Roman missionary Saint Augustine of Canterbury, who re-introduced Christianity to Britain in the 6th century. The earlier Augustine, Saint Augustine of Hippo, was a Roman citizen of the province occupied today by Algeria. At one time a professor of rhetoric in Rome and Milan, he returned to North Africa and died there after writing numerous works of theology and philosophy. His studies of such subjects as time, memory, mind, and magic are still much admired: today the School of Life in London recommends Saint Augustine's Confessions to its students, while a writer in a recent New York Review of Books boldly declared that he was "surely one of the mightiest intellects ever to walk this earth" [1].

The high intellectual standing of Saint Augustine of Hippo underlay the success of the Augustinian Order formed from various groups of hermits, and explains why he and members of his Order are so abundantly represented in the Wellcome Library. By Augustine himself the Library has an incunable edition of his De civitate Dei (Venice 1490), three incunable editions of his sermons, and many other works.

Of his followers, the Wellcome Library has nine editions of works by the Augustinian philosopher Giles of Rome (Aegidius Romanus, ca. 1243-1316), three of which (On the material of the heavens, On possible understanding against Averroes, and a Commentary on Aristotle's Physica) are edited by another Augustinian called Giles, namely Giles of Viterbo (Aegidius Viterbiensis, 1469-1532), also a cardinal and a student of Jewish mystical writings. The Wellcome Library's incunable edition of the work of the two Giles's has the inscription "Egidius in Phis." (Giles on the Physica) written on the bottom edge (above right): before the mid-17th century, books were generally stored with their edges facing towards the room (not their spines, as today), and the owner of this book in the sixteenth century evidently knew who "Giles" would be and what the "Phis" were. [2]

One of Giles of Viterbo's contemporaries north of the Alps was George Ripley (d. ca. 1490), a canon of the Augustinian priory at Bridlington, Yorkshire, whose scrolls of alchemical symbols have recently been discussed on this blog.

Another Augustinian of the same era was Saint Thomas of Villanova (1486-1555), Bishop of Valencia and a professor at the University of Alcalá, after whom many universities and schools are named. In the engraving on the left (Wellcome Library no. 11665i), a young woman finds her leg ulcers relieved after her cheek is brushed with a locket containing a portrait and a relic of Saint Thomas of Villanova.

The Wellcome Library has many writings by the Augustinian satirist and preacher Abraham à Sancta Clara (1644-1709), a famed communicator of his day both in Vienna and internationally.  The print below of a man literally dicing with death illustrates one of his popular books on death in the time of the bubonic plague.

 Nineteenth-century Augustinians include the experimental gardener Johann Mendel (1822–1884) -- or Brother Gregor, to use his name in religion -- after whom is named the Mendel University in Brno, Czech Republic (and, on a smaller scale, a meeting room in the headquarters of the Wellcome Trust in London). He was a member of the Augustinian Abbey of St Thomas in Brno, and from 1868 its abbot. In his horticultural work, Mendel grappled with botanical manifestations of the questions discussed by his predecessor Giles of Rome in the latter's De formatione corporis humani, written around the year 1270. An up-to-date introduction to the work of the Augustinian Order today can be found in the website Augnet.

Wellcome Library no. 47111i (detail)

The most monumental Augustinian work in the Wellcome Library is surely a gigantic etching (approx 145 x 160 cm.) produced on twelve plates in 1614 by the Italian engraver Oliviero Gatti of Bologna (1579-ca. 1648?). It bears the heading Mysticae Augustinensis Eremi sacrum gloriae decorisq. Theatrum ("Sacred display of the mystic glory and distinction of the Augustinian hermitage"); for brevity the work is also called Arbor augustiniana ("The Augustinian tree"). Gatti was commissioned to create this magnificent baroque print by two Augustinian friars, Marc Antonio Viani (from Bologna) and Paulus Vadovita (from Wadowice in Poland). Seven copies are known, not all of them now complete: the Wellcome Library's copy lacks two of the twelve plates. The print exists in two states: one from 1614 dedicated to Pope Paul V and King Philip III of Spain, the other dated 1678 and with updated dedications to their successors, Pope Innocent XI and King Charles II of Spain: the Wellcome Library's copy is of the first state. The print has been cleaned and conserved this year by Amy Junker Heslip in the Wellcome Library's Conservation department; during conservation, the superb quality of the paper and the vigour of the etching were revealed.

 Wellcome Library no. 32491i (plate 8 of the Arbor augustiniana) 

In the centre of Gatti’s composition, Saint of Augustine of Hippo sits holding the Rule of his Order (above), while around are representatives of the sacred and knightly orders associated with him, saints and martyrs, and eminent Augustinian friars and nuns, including his mother, Saint Monica. Giles of Rome appears no fewer than three times: once as a bishop, once as a cardinal-archbishop (left: Wellcome Library no. 32476i), and once among those who renounced a princely or royal title to become an Augustinian hermit: Giles of Rome was widely believed to be a member of the Roman noble family of Colonna, though the truth of this has been doubted. [3] A full analysis of the work is of course beyond the scope of this posting, but the prints themselves are available in the Wellcome Library to anyone wishes to study them, or indeed just to enjoy the brio of their draughtsmanship.

If we turn back from the Augustinian Order to Saint Augustine of Hippo himself, in addition to the many graphic representations of the saint the Wellcome Library has an oil painting, the subject of which has recently been identified by Mr Roberto Tollo in the course of his studies of Augustinian iconography. The painting is painted on a large sheet of copper (69 x 85.7 cm.) and was acquired by Sir Henry Wellcome in Granada in Spain in 1934.

  Wellcome Library no. 44998i

The copper support, the Spanish provenance, and the costumes in the painting (similar to those in paintings by the Antwerp painter Frans Francken II) together suggest that this is a Flemish painting made in Antwerp in the mid-seventeenth century and painted on copper for export to Spain or Latin America. Paintings on copper travelled well, and once exported, could serve as models for larger paintings on wood or canvas for display in the churches, hospitals and convents of Spain and New Spain. [4]

Mr Tollo has now confirmed this by pinpointing the exact source of the composition as an engraving by the Antwerp artist Schelte Bolswert (1586-1659), apparently after his own design. That Schelte Bolswert's prints of Augustinian iconography were popular in the Hispanic world we know from the painted versions of them that have been found in Seville, Madrid, Quito, and Lima: the evidence is given in the Wellcome Library catalogue.

The subject derives from an episode in Carthage in the year 388, described by Saint Augustine himself [5]. The man in bed on the left is Innocentius of Carthage, who suffered from a rectal fistula, and was about to be treated for it by a painful surgical operation: in Augustine's words, "curabatur a medicis fistulas quas numerosas atque perplexas habuit in posteriore et ima corporis parte" (he was being treated by doctors for the many and difficult fistulas which he had on the posterior and lowest part of the body). However, for reasons of propriety, Schelte Bolswert shows the patient instead with a bandaged leg which a surgeon is expecting to amputate.

The surgeon, dressed in early 17th-century clothes, is sitting nearby with a brazier full of cautery irons – red-hot irons for sealing blood vessels -- and, on a table, an amputation knife for cutting the flesh around the bone: the surgeon's instruments are described in Augustine's account as "tremenda ferramenta". In the centre, blessing Innocentius, Saint Augustine is portrayed as a tonsured friar. Beyond him is a group of hermits of Saint Augustine, kneeling in prayer. Innocentius believes himself to be cured by a modern miracle without surgical innovation, and the surgeon almost lets go of his amputation-saw in surprise. On the right, a "marvellous Alexandrian surgeon" mentioned by Augustine as having been called in as a consultant raises his hand in an expression of astonishment, as well he might. He here represents those who assumed that miracles ceased in post-Biblical times, an assumption challenged by Saint Augustine from his own experiences. Augustine's message is that even eminent consultants cannot afford to take anything for granted.

[1] London review of books, 19 May 2011, p. 22. New York review of books, 27 October 2011, p. 54
[2] Questio Egidii Romani Eremite de materia celi. Padua: Hieronymus de Durantis, 1493, fol. B1v "F. Egidius Eremita Viterbiensis castigavit et dedit"
[3] M. Anthony Hewson, Giles of Rome and the medieval theory of conception: a study of the De formatione corporis humani in utero, London: Athlone Press, 1975, pp. 3-4 and 25 (find in the Wellcome Library here)
[4] Isaac van Oosten, Noah leading the animals to the ark, painting on copper 69.5 x 86.8 cm., Sotheby's, London, 6 July 2006, lot 101 (discussion in catalogue entry). Note that van Oosten's painting is very close in dimensions to the Wellcome Library painting. Pablo Escalante Gonzalbo and Martín Olmedo Muñoz, 'De invloed van de Zuid-Nederlandse gravure in Nieuw-Spanje', in Werner Thomas et al., Een wereld op papier: Zuid-nederlandse boeken, prenten en karten in het Spaanse en Portuguese wereldrijk (16de-18de eeuw), Louvain 2009, pp. 212-232
[5] De civitate dei, book XXII, chapter 8 (online at http://www.augustinus.it/latino/cdd/index2.htm)

Guest Post: Exploring Health and Medicine in Early Modern Wales

Dr Alun Withey is an academic historian of early modern medicine, technology and the family. Here, he describes the inspiration and contexts of his new book, Physick and the Family: Health, Medicine and Care in Wales, 1600-1750, which includes research carried out in the Wellcome Library.

I never set out to be a medical historian. Whilst studying for my History BA, I was struggling to find a topic for my dissertation. I knew I wanted to do something connected to Wales and the seventeenth century, and settled upon the Civil Wars. I visited a local record office, and was introduced to a source that nobody had done much work on…a commonplace book. Amongst the notes and jottings were several medical remedies that looked interesting to the untrained eye. My curiosity was piqued and I decided to look into it further. Seven years, and a PhD later, I’m still looking!

Welsh medical history, at least in terms of the early modern period, has often been overlooked. In 1975, the editor of a collection of essays on the subject concluded that there were problems caused by a lack of medical sources for Wales. Such work that had been done tended to concentrate on the folkloric and magical elements of medicine in Wales, doubtless an important element of Welsh heritage, with the legendary ‘Physicians of Myddfai’ and their remedies garnering a lot of attention. The problem with ‘folklore’, however, is that it is a loaded term; Although magical remedies, symbolism and the ‘cunning man’ were important components, I felt that they also somehow contributed to a rural caricature, and made Wales seem remote, cut off from the wider world by its language and sometimes awkward terrain.

Physick and the Family, the first academic monograph on early modern Welsh medical history, set out to give what I see as the other side to the story of Welsh medicine. In doing so I not only wanted to write a new medical history of Wales, but also to use Wales as a test-bed to address much broader questions in medical history. In this sense, a new study wouldn’t just fill in gaps, but could provide a credible new investigation of the experience of sickness, health and care in the early modern period.

In many ways, the sources, dictated what questions could be addressed and answered. Contradicting the earlier view about Welsh sources, it soon became clear that there was actually a wealth of source material – much of it untapped. The book draws upon Welsh remedy collections, of which a good number survive – one especially rich example surviving in the Wellcome Library, known as the ‘Welsh Leech Book’ (MS.417). A study of the types and derivations of Welsh recipes proved insightful into the movement of medical knowledge both into, and within, early modern Wales, and not least in changing medical terminologies in the Welsh language. Diaries and letters yielded much useful information about sickness, the ways in which people described their symptoms, and also important factors such as the social rituals and conventions of sickness and the sufferer.

But the book also uses different types of source material, and it was often this that yielded the most interesting and surprising results. A detailed study of probate inventories, for example, looked at evidence for medical paraphernalia in the early modern home, but also for evidence, in shop inventories, of medicines for sale. From studies of shop inventories in three Welsh counties, it is clear that even small, remote village shops often sold a range of medical goods.

Other records such as those of the Old Poor Law were revealing in matters of care. Who, for example, cared for the sick, and what measures did the parish take to look after its own sick poor? The survival of some astonishingly detailed poor law records for one particular Welsh parish, allows for a detailed case study of the often sophisticated structures of care available to the early modern patient.

The book is intended to have a broad appeal, and not just to those inside the Welsh borders. It has been written to speak to anyone with an interest in medical history certainly, but also in social history more widely, since it is at heart a book about the experiences of ‘ordinary’ people. But as a regional history, it also encourages a more nuanced view of the early modern medical world, and one that takes into account the often important variations that could be caused by topography and geography, as well as language and literacy.

I said earlier that this was the first book of its kind; technically it is. But it is also worth mentioning a hidden gem in the Wellcome Library archive. In the 1920s an eminent physician, Dr David Fraser-Harris, was busy compiling his ‘History and Lore of Kymric Medicine’ – a richly detailed study of Welsh medical history and one in many ways far ahead of its time. Sadly, he died before it was completed and it now survives only in many boxes and unfinished drafts. In seeking to say something new about Welsh medicine we obviously shared a similar goal. I hope that he would have approved of my modest efforts some 90 years later.

Author: Alun Withey

Approaching Sikandra

Everyone who visits Agra in Uttar Pradesh visits the Taj Mahal, the monument which was built from 1632 onwards by the sorrowful Shah Jahan (1592-1666), fifth Mughal emperor, in memory of his wife, Mumtaz Mahal, after her death in childbirth.

Not everyone visits nearby Sikandra. Here, those who do will find the magnificent earlier mausoleum of Akbar (1542-1605), the mighty third Mughal emperor, conqueror of northern India, patron of arts and sciences, and grandfather of Shah Jahan. [1] The mausoleum (above) was planned by Akbar himself and built by his son Jahangir (1569-1627) between 1605 and 1613. At Sikandra, the future builder of the Taj Mahal could therefore contemplate the mausoleum of his grandfather, built by his father. One might suppose that the earlier mausoleum would have influenced the later.

The historically-aware visitor would therefore want to view the Taj Mahal in the perspective of Sikandra, inter alia and vice versa. And many people have done so. The views of some of them on the Taj will be the subject of another posting on this blog. The present posting, however, concerns some of the many paintings, drawings, prints, photographs and written accounts of Sikandra that have found their way into historic British collections such as the India Office Library in the British Library, the British Museum, the Wellcome Library and no doubt others. This posting reviews some of the drawings and prints of Sikandra in the Wellcome Library, a repository of (among other things) records of sepulchralia of all kinds, and of Indian history.

Coloured soft-ground etching with watercolour by William Hodges, 1788.
Wellcome Library no. 26689i

We start on the approach road, in the company of William Hodges (1744-1797). Under the patronage of Warren Hastings, Hodges had sketched Sikandra on the spot in the early 1780s, and produced this print in 1788 --a year in which India was in the news in England because Burke, Fox and Sheridan were railing against Hastings at the opening of the latter’s trial in Westminster. The road at Sikandra as seen by Hodges is a broad dirt-track with a couple of donkeys on it, surrounded on either side with dilapidated minor tombs scattered in a park. More inviting than the immediate surroundings is the prospect of fine buildings glimpsed through the trees on the far right.

Coloured etching and aquatint by Thomas Daniell, 1795.
Wellcome Library no. 27432i

We next find ourselves tranported not only to the end of the road but also forwards seven years to the year 1795, when this aquatint by Thomas Daniell was published (above). It shows the leftmost of those buildings glimpsed through the trees: it is one of the gateways leading to the the mausoleum of Akbar. Though only a gateway, it is a grand building of sandstone topped with four white marble minarets. Not so long previously, vandalistic snipers have had some sport shooting the tops clean off those minarets. In the clearing in front of the gateway, a military camp is still in residence: it is a British one, to which the artist Thomas Daniell is attached.

In the early nineteenth century Indian artists also produced views of the building, presumably for purchase in the main by western visitors. These are commonly called Company drawings (after the East India Company), and those in the Wellcome Library are characteristic examples. One watercolour (left: Wellcome Library no. 25209i is small and relatively simplified, though attractive enough to its previous owner to be put into a gold frame.

However, the painter of a larger one (39 x 56.3 cm., below Wellcome Library no. 579856i), spares no effort to do justice to the elaborate flower and leaf motifs realized in pietra dura around the central doorway.


A photograph taken in 2008 (right) shows that the tops of the minarets have been restored. By comparison with the painting above, the photograph vindicates the great care taken by the watercolour artist. The minarets themselves may be called the grandfathers of those which stand at the four corners of the Taj Mahal.

Soft-ground etching by William Hodges. Wellcome Library no. 26823i

The gateway at Sikandra leads to a long walkway at the end of which is the mausoleum of Akbar the Great. Starting again with Hodges in 1788 (above), he shows the building as being obscured by vegetation. There seems to be no picture of the mausoleum by Daniell, but there are plenty of Company drawings by Indian artists, made slightly later and showing the building (actually or ideally) cleared of trees and bushes, perhaps in order to show it as they imagined it to be at the time of Akbar's interment.

Wellcome Library no. 579159i

This view (above), like three others in the Wellcome Library, shows an interplay between a white marble colonnade on the ground floor and three sandstone terraces above adorned at the corners with domes of the Rajasthan type (chhatris).

In current photographs of the building, that interplay no longer exists: the ground floor arcade seems to be painted red. All however show the topmost terrace as of crisply carved white marble, marking by its filigree craftsmanship and costly materials the cenotaph of Akbar, high above his actual tomb directly below in the crypt.

The Company paintings (such as, left: Wellcome Library no 25226i) differ among themselves in showing the setting of the building in varying perspectives in relation to its surrounding char bagh or Persian pleasure garden: the setting provides cooling channels for running water, gardens and pools.

The effect of the setting is to emphasize that even the humblest of the living can here enjoy the created world more than Akbar, for all his power, now that he is dead. One small but highly detailed watercolour (right: Wellcome Library no. 578936i) is taken from a viewpoint so close to the central runnel that the base of the first story is no longer visible, apparently as a gesture to western artistic conventions.

Finally, there is a complete outlier (left: Wellcome Library 575709i) in which the building is condensed so that the long first-storey terrace becomes the same width as the second storey. An inadvertent slighting of His Imperial Majesty! As we do not need to rely on this watercolour alone, we can afford to sympathize with the artist's mistake. The noble resting place of the mighty Akbar, author of this and other admirable buildings, remains for the recreation and inspiration of those lucky enough to visit it.

[1] Irfan Habib (ed.), Akbar and his India, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997 (find in the Wellcome Library here)

Further reading
Catherine B. Asher, Architecture of Mughal India, Cambridge 1992 (The New Cambridge history of India, part I, vol. 4), pp. 105-111 (find in the Wellcome Library here )

Mildred Archer, Early views of India: the picturesque journeys of Thomas and William Daniell, 1786-1794, London: Thames and Hudson, 1980 (find in the Wellcome Library here)

Ernest Binfield Havell, A handbook to Agra and the Taj, Sikandra, Fatehpur-Sikri and the neighbourhood, London 1912

Thanks to the following for making their photographs available on Flickr.
Top: by Takehiko Ono at http://www.flickr.com/photos/onopko/529915275
Gateway: by Koshyk at http://www.flickr.com/photos/kkoshy/2252005330.
Detail of mausoleum by Saad.Akhtar at http://www.flickr.com/photos/saad/47375523.
Other images: Wellcome Library.

Here's one we made earlier...

As the latest issue of the Wellcome Trust's Big Picture tackles the themes of Food and Diet, we thought we would set a culinary challenge for chef Zack Mila. Faced with the Library's collection of 17th recipe manuscripts - and an absence of details, such as cooking times and temperatures - could Zack bring a centuries old recipe to life?

Click on the film above to see how Zach - aided by the Wellcome Library's Helen Wakely - got on (and if you want to look at the recipe in more detail, this link from our catalogue will take you to a digitised edition of it).

Video by Barry J Gibb, Multimedia Editor, Wellcome Trust

A Useful Scot

Physician, Geographer, Antiquarian... the activities and interests of Sir Robert Sibbald - born on this day in 1641 - mark him out as one of the most interesting and influential Scotsmen of the the late seventeenth century.

The third son of David Sibbald, keeper of the great seal of Scotland, Robert Sibbald made the most of his social connections in life, rising to become physician-in-ordinary to the King, Geographer Royal for Scotland and also the first Professor of Medicine at the University of Edinburgh. Perhaps most importantly, he was one of the founder members of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, being elected as its President in 1684 (the Library of the College is named after him).

Sibbald can be seen as an examplar of early Enlightenment thinking: his interlinked interests were central to his aims in rationalising the value of the natural and human resources of Scotland. Or, in other words he sought the "creation of useful natural knowledge" [1]. To Sibbald, attempts at promoting the economic interests of a nation, could only properly be achieved after a detailed survey of its resources was completed.

Although Sibbald's attempts at such a "Scottish Atlas" remained unpublished, the Wellcome Library holds copies of two works, The history, ancient and modern, of the sheriffdoms of Fife and Kinross and Description of the islands of Orkney and Zetland, which stemmed from the collection of correspondence which the unpublished work was based upon. We also hold a copy of Auctarium Musaei Balfouriani e Musaeo Sibbaldino, the catalogue of the cabinet of natural history specimens which Sibbald and Andrew Balfour, a close scientific colleague, presented to the University of Edinburgh.

Sibbald was in close correspondence with fellow virtuosi at the Royal Society in London, sharing with them an outlook on how a closer understanding of the world could shape the future prosperity of a society. Indeed, Sibbald tried - and failed - to establish a Royal Society of Scotland, along similar lines to other learned academies.

A key figure in the growth of Enlightenment values in Scotland, Sibbald also had close relations to another burgeoning Scottish interest. Rather painful ones however, as in 1690 he was injured after being struck in the face by a golf club.

[1] Sibbald, Sir Robert (1641-1722), physician and geographer, by Charles W.J. Withers, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Image: Sir Robert Sibbald. Line engraving by W. H. Lizars after J. Alexander. (Wellcome Library no. 8552i)