Science in Community: Anatomy, Academy, and Argument in the Eighteenth-Century Holy Roman Empire.

Understanding physicians as actors who implemented the early modern ideal of collective empiricism into their practices within the local contexts of everyday life, the paper explores two cases from imperial cities in southern Germany in the 1720s and 1780s in which anatomical studies were contested. By analyzing the strategies and arguments that the two physicians used to justify and continue their anatomical dissections, it focuses on their references to different kinds of (local) community and relates these references to another type of collective: membership in a scientific academy. To examine references to community, it is proposed, offers an opportunity to better understand the spread and practice of the ideal of the study of nature as a collective project and how it was intertwined with concepts and structures of order and society in the Holy Roman Empire.

Partisan Legal Traditions in the Age of Camden and Mansfield.

The 18th century is often treated by scholars as a period of juristic consensus. This article argues, in contrast, that the late 18th century saw the emergence of rival 'Patriot' and 'Tory' legal traditions. Through a detailed study of the jurisprudence of Lords Camden and Mansfield-who were both pillars of the law, as well as political and juristic rivals-we show that they differed systematically in their understanding of the common law, and that those differences had a partisan cast: although they were not crude attempts to instrumentalise law to political ends, their political and jurisprudential commitments influenced each other and emerged from the same intellectual roots. We place these differences in the context of the fragmentation of 18th-century Whig politics, and argue that they have important implications for how we understand and make use of the common law tradition in present-day scholarship.

The lure of the foreign stage: Chronicles of Italian mobility to France in the long eighteenth century.

This article investigates the migration of three Italian-born artists working in France in the field of ephemeral entertainment and argues that their stories were part of a broader process of cultural history and artistic mobility of the long eighteenth century. These artists are the firework makers Ruggieri brothers, the circus performer Antonio Franconi and his family and the stage designer Ignazio Degotti. They left their home country at different points (1730s, 1750s and 1790 respectively), settling in Paris under different socio-political circumstances. Due to the immaterial and contingent medium in which these artists chose to work, which is difficult to replicate and collect, the mobility of these artists has often remained a neglected story. To explore the reasons why these artists moved from their home country and the motivation that convinced them to stay in France, this research combines an attentive examination of archival material with a methodology influenced by methods of cultural history. The paper argues that their lives and their artistic expertise were not only aesthetically relevant, but also very much integrated within the defined social and cultural context they chose to live in.

Time troubles: clocks and practices of precision in early eighteenth-century observatories.

In 1736/37, Joseph-Nicolas Delisle and Jean Jacques Dortous de Mairan communicated about the clocks that would enable the astronomers of the Saint Petersburg observatory to make highly exact observations. Delisle, who was in charge of the Saint Petersburg observatory, demanded old-fashioned clocks in the manner of Huygens. Mairan, well-versed in astronomy himself, recommended equation clocks. The article uses these seemingly inappropriate preferences to discuss eighteenth-century notions of accuracy and precision in clocks. It analyses the multiple factors that influenced expectations regarding the performance of timekeeping instruments, and draws attention to handling and monitoring practices. The latter reflected the individual user's purposes and experience, but also affected the clocks' going. Furthermore, the article presents the result of a statistical analysis, which serves to evaluate the historical performance of the Saint Petersburg observatory clocks and provides a foil against which Delisle's judgement of them is examined.

Enslaved by the Uniform: Contemporary Descriptions of Eighteenth-Century Soldiering.

A wide variety of eighteenth-century authors made comparisons to soldiering and slavery in newspapers, pamphlets and books. The analogy tended to be applied to highlight the lack of personal autonomy and inadequate wages of army service, as well as its harsh punishment and lifetime enlistment periods. While some commentators championed soldiers' rights to better treatment, many had other agendas in mind. It was particularly prominent in anti-abolitionist propaganda, for example. Regardless of their intentions, civilians' soldier-as-slave rhetoric took a toll on the actual men in uniform. The few rank-and-file writers to acknowledge it suggest that the metaphor shamed and humiliated them.

Antonio Scarpa (1752-1832): His Contribution to the History of Surgery.

BACKGROUND: Antonio Scarpa (1752-1832) is generally remembered for his discoveries in the field of anatomy, but he also provided some important contributions to the history of surgery. METHODS: We analyzed main treatises written by Scarpa, highlighting how he contributed to the development of modern surgery. RESULTS: Scarpa made great innovations in three branches of surgery: abdominal surgery (hernia), orthopedics (clubfoot) and vascular surgery (aneurism). Furthermore, he contributed to the birth of modern ophthalmology.

Kant's theory of scientific hypotheses in its historical context.

This paper analyzes the historical context and systematic importance of Kant's hypothetical use of reason. It does so by investigating the role of hypotheses in Kant's philosophy of science. We first situate Kant's account of hypotheses in the context of eighteenth-century German philosophy of science, focusing on the works of Wolff, Meier, and Crusius. We contrast different conceptions of hypotheses of these authors and elucidate the different theories of probability informing them. We then adopt a more systematic perspective to discuss Kant's idea that scientific hypotheses must articulate real possibilities. We argue that Kant's views on the intelligibility of scientific hypotheses constitute a valuable perspective on scientific understanding and the constraints it imposes on scientific rationality.

Giovanni Maria Lancisi (1654-1720) and the modern cardiovascular physiology.

Giovanni Maria Lancisi (1654-1720) was one of the most important Italian physicians of the modern age. Orphaned of his mother, he spent his early years in the city of Orvieto; when he was 12, his father brought him back to Rome and enrolled him to study medicine at the Sapienza University in Rome. His dedication to study and work soon led him to increasingly important positions. Within a few years, the fame of Lancisi became such that he was appointed the personal physician of three popes. In De Subitaneis Mortibus (1707), he described the pathophysiology of heart diseases, identifying the cause of sudden deaths in structural anomalies of the heart, lungs, and brain. He also wrote about cerebral localizations and first discussed the physiological mechanisms of urine formation and excretion. In 1717, Lancisi described the pathogenesis of malaria and the close correlation between its onset and the swampy waters of the Tiber River, proposing the draining of marshes to eradicate malaria. In the posthumous De Motu Cordis et Aneurysmatibus (1728) he described for the first time heart dilatation and aneurysms of the great vessels, providing a fundamental contribution to the history of cardiovascular physiology. Proof of his interest in medical education is the establishment of an academy and the donation of a library to the hospital, bridging the gap between theory and practice in medical training. Over the centuries, Lancisi's memory has faded, but his work is still relevant for anyone practicing the medical profession.

De fósiles y rocas. Libros, prensa, debates y cultura material de la minería en Nueva España, siglo XVIII / Of fossils and rocks. Books, press, discussions and material culture of mining in New Spain, eighteenth century

El objetivo de este artículo es mostrar cómo la práctica de la minería se visibilizó en una serie de textos —libros y prensa— que, a lo largo de tres siglos, estabilizaron su trán-sito del mundo de lo empírico al académico; evidenciando en sus páginas la transformación de las formas de mirar y entender la mineralogía, tanto como la construcción de una cultura material propia del estudio de las minas. En este texto intentaré dibujar una trayectoria de estos procesos de transformación y construcción con centro en el contexto novohispano del siglo XVIII, en el momento de institucionalización y academización de la minería finisecular (AU)

Height and health in late eighteenth-century England.

Adult stature has become a widely used indicator of childhood nutritional status in historical populations and may provide insights into health inequalities that are not discernible in mortality rates. However, most pre-twentieth-century British data on heights suffer from selection biases. Here we present unique evidence on heights of adult males by occupation from an unbiased sample of adult males in Dorset in 1798-99. The mean height of fully grown (married) men was very similar to that of older military recruits, and our sample therefore confirms the taller stature of English males relative to males of other European countries in the same period. In contrast to previous evidence of negligible or U-shaped socio-economic gradients in mortality in this period, we found a fairly linear gradient in height by socio-economic status, that is similar in magnitude to class differences in adult height among English males born in the mid-twentieth century.Supplementary material for this article is available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/00324728.2020.1823011.

Stephanus Bisius (1724-1790) on mania and melancholy, and the disorder called plica polonica.

Stephanus Bisius (1724-1790) was a physician of Italian descent and a graduate of the University of Pavia. He was invited to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the early 1760s and became head of the Faculty of Medicine at Vilnius University in 1781. In 1772, Bisius had authored the first original study on nervous and mental diseases in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. In his 35-page booklet, written in Latin and Polish, Bisius characterized mania and melancholy as diseases of the brain, explaining that the organs that feed the human soul are affected, not the soul itself. He introduced the principles of humoralism and solidism to readers, and recognized that autopsies had failed to reveal reliable findings concerning mania or melancholy. Bisius also described the origins of the challenging disorder called plica polonica, a strange condition associated with tufts of matted hair. As a physician during the medical Enlightenment, Bisius criticized metaphysical speculations in medicine and stated that plica was only a result of superstitions. Even though he proposed antiphlogistic treatments for patients with mania and melancholy, he maintained that time and faith in God might help some patients overcome their infirmities.

Circular visualisation of historical migration in England in the long eighteenth-century.

Migration is a central component of both individual life-courses and macro-level demographic systems. In the absence of population registers and other surveillance systems, however, it is often difficult to measure. This is especially the case in historical populations. Compared to measures of fertility, nuptiality and mortality, then, migration processes are rather less studied. Recent studies in the English historical context have challenged long standing theoretical constructs concerning the relationship between migration and modernisation; gender and distance travelled; motivation for movement and the very nature of the movers themselves. Using a set of marriage registers for a large, agricultural county, this study explores intra-county migration among a predominantly young population over the period 1700 to 1836. The proportion of migrants is explored as well as the distance between 'home' and 'marriage' parishes. For perhaps the first time, chord diagrams are deployed for historical English migration data to visualise inter- and intra- regional/district migration. Although there are numerous limitations concerning the scope of the sample and the study, the evidence presented here broadly accords with recent studies of migration in pre-industrial England; and shows the potential to both use circular visualisation and exploit large scale samples of marriage registers to gain a further insight into a particular type of historical migration.

James Petiver's 1717 Papilionum Britanniae: an analysis of the first comprehensive account of British butterflies (Lepidoptera: Papilionoidea).

Although the contributions of James Petiver to the early development of systematic natural history are widely acknowledged, he is often criticized for scientific, curatorial and even social shortcomings. This rather dubious reputation is at odds with his standing among entomologists as 'the father of British butterflies'. Shortly before his death in 1718, Petiver published a densely packed eight-page pamphlet entitled Papilionum Britanniae. Analysis of this work, which at first sight makes an apparently exaggerated claim of accounting for 'above eighty English butterflies', reveals that Petiver was an original, perceptive and truly systematic entomologist, in several important respects ahead of his time.

Reading versus Seeing? Winckelmann's Excerpting Practice and the Genealogy of Art History.

From his arrival in Italy in 1755, Winckelmann's work is infused throughout by a fundamental antinomy: reading versus seeing. This antinomy possesses for him a decidedly epistemological significance: it allows him to present himself as the father of a discipline deserving of its name, i.e., the history of art. In Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums (1764), he claims to break with a long tradition of art discourse which had been primarily supported by ancient texts, basing his book instead on the direct observation of the artworks. The aim of this paper is to critically examine this antinomy. How does seeing relate to reading in his working method? What relationship does art history, in the empirical dimension Winckelmann wanted to give it, have to book knowledge? Winckelmann's excerpts collection provides valuable answers to these questions. Following an old scholarly tradition, Winckelmann used to write down passages of his readings, constituting a vast handwritten library of excerpts which never left him. The result of this intense excerpting practice consists in some 7,500 pages, which allow to better define the share of empirical observation and book-based knowledge in his approach to ancient art.

"The Boundless Realm Where All Form Lies". Representing Imagination at the Crossway Between Literary and Neurocognitive Studies.

According to ancient texts on poetics, the concept of representation is deeply bound to that of "mimesis;" this last was intended in two main ways: as "imitation" and as "world construction." In Aristotle's Poetics, mimesis is theorized as the main form of "world simulation," giving rise to the complex universe of fiction. The concept of simulation plays a pivotal role in the neurocognitive theories on the embodied mind: within this frame, embodied simulation is intended as a functional prelinguistic activation of the human sensorimotor mechanism. This happens not only with regard to intercorporeality and intersubjectivity in the real world but also in relation to the process of imagination giving rise to literary imagery and to the reader's reception of the fictional world, since human beings share a common sensorimotor apparatus. Imagination is a central concept in the recent neurocognitive studies since it plays a core role in human life and in artistic production and reception. Imagination has been considered as a complex emergent cognitive faculty deeply intertwined with perception, memory, and consciousness, shaping human life and transforming the limited horizon of our perceptual affective understanding, being, and acting. Although there is an immense bulk of literature on this topic, imagination is still an elusive concept: its definition and understanding change according to different heuristic frames-mainly the philosophical, aesthetic, poetic, and cognitive ones-giving rise to debates about its modalities and effects, particularly in relation to the construction of aesthetic and symbolic constraints. In this paper, we claim that scientific research may take advantage from the literary representation of the imaginative faculties, which occurs in specific tests characterized by dynamic images and motion. In such meta-representation of the imagination, we witness the phenomenological emergence of endogenous dynamic processes involving a cluster of cognitive faculties, activated by triggering the reader's embodied simulation. One of the main German poets, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, in the second part of his masterwork Faust II, intuitively represents the very process of the imagination and its responding to embodied simulation with regard both to the author's creative act and to its reception by the reader. At the crossway between literary and neurocognitive, this study aims to highlight the advantage offered to future transdisciplinary inquiries by the literary representation showing features and dynamics of the still mysterious phenomenon of the imagination.

Cancer and the emotions in 18th-century literature.

This essay argues that the emotional rhetoric of today's breast cancer discourse-with its emphasis on stoicism and 'positive thinking' in the cancer patient, and its use of sympathetic feeling to encourage charitable giving-has its roots in the long 18th century. While cancer had long been connected with the emotions, 18th-century literature saw it associated with both 'positive' and 'negative' feelings, and metaphors describing jealousy, love and other sentiments as 'like a cancer' were used to highlight the danger of allowing feelings-even benevolent or pleasurable feelings-to flourish unchecked. As the century wore on, breast cancer in particular became an important literary device for exploring the dangers of feeling in women, with writers of both moralising treatises and sentimental novels connecting the growth or development of cancer with the indulgence of feeling, and portraying emotional self-control as the only possible form of resistance against the disease. If, as Barbara Ehrenreich suggests, today's discourse of 'positive thinking' has been mobilised to make patients with breast cancer more accepting of their diagnosis and more cooperative with punitive treatment regimens, then 18th-century fictional exhortations to stay cheerful served similarly conservative political and economic purposes, encouraging continued female submission to male prerogatives inside and outside the household.

Showing and hiding: The flickering visibility of earth workers in the archives of earth science.

This essay interrogates the motives of eighteenth-century European naturalists to alternately show and hide their laboring-class fossil suppliers. Focusing on rare moments of heightened visibility, I ask why gentlemen naturalists occasionally, deliberately, and even performatively made visible the marginalized science workers on whom they crucially depended but more typically ignored or effaced. Comparing archival fragments from elite works of natural history across a considerable stretch of time and space, including Italy, France, Switzerland, Britain, Ireland, Germany, Spain, and French, Spanish, and British America, this essay sketches the contours of a disparate group of people I term 'earth workers': laborers of very low social rank, such as quarrymen, shepherds, ditch-diggers, and fieldworkers, whose daily labor in and on the earth enabled the discovery of subterranean specimens. At the same time, archival traces of laboring lives ultimately reveal more about the naturalists who created them than they do about the marginalized laborers whose lives they faintly record. Cultural norms of elite masculinity and scholarly self-presentation in the Republic of Letters help us to understand why some eighteenth-century naturalists felt they had to publicly disavow a form of labor that would come to be recognized as a crucial and skilled part of scientific fieldwork in the modern era. Compared to other kinds of invisible labor that historians of science have brought into view, the social meaning of earth work rendered it uniquely visible in some ways and uniquely invisible in others.

An Overlooked Eighteenth-Century Scrofula Pamphlet: Changing Forms and Changing Readers, 1760-1824.

This article tells the story of an eighteenth-century medical pamphlet called An essay on the nature and cure of the King's Evil, deduced from observation and practice. This was written by John Morley (d. 1776/7), a wealthy Essex landowner who advertised free medical treatments. The pamphlet is one of many short tracts on scrofula produced after the ceremony of 'the royal touch' ceased with the death of Queen Anne. However, it merits special attention from historians of medicine and historians of the book because it was edited and reprinted many more times than other surviving scrofula tracts: 42 editions appeared between 1760 and 1824. This suggests significant popularity. The Essay is also of interest because the first 15 editions display changes and additions completed by Morley before his death in late 1776 or early 1777. Between these versions, Morley consistently refashioned his identity as practitioner and author. He also adjusted his portrayal of the intended readers of the pamphlet: in later editions, readers are recorded using the Essay in increasingly complex and autonomous ways to design their own medical treatments. The pamphlet is therefore testimony to the fluid relationship between practitioner and patient. It shows that seemingly simple, formulaic and easy-to-read forms like pamphlets and case studies could play a variety of complex and shifting roles in eighteenth-century medical encounters and the construction of healing knowledge.

Networked names: synonyms in eighteenth-century botany.

This paper addresses early modern botanical nomenclature, the practices of identifying and publishing synonyms in particular, as a collaborative "information science". Before Linnaean nomenclature became the lingua franca of botany, it was inevitable that, over time, the same plant was given several names by different people, which created confusion and made communication among botanists increasingly difficult. What names counted as synonyms and actually referred to the same plant had to be identified by meticulously comparing living and dried specimens of this and similar plants as well as relevant illustrations und descriptions in the botanical literature. Identifying synonyms required and generated an ever-expanding mass of data, which was used continuously to adjust and rearrange plant names. Despite the greatest care, judgements on synonyms were not definitive, which meant that published lists of synonyms for individual species of plants were in a state of flux and had to be constantly updated, corrected, and rewritten. This required long-term international collaborations, the accumulated results of which were not published once but consecutively, in augmented and corrected editions of a book. As a result of this networked approach, synonyms are networked names that reflect the epistemic interconnectedness of the botanical community. These questions will be discussed with a focus on the Dutch botanist Johannes Burman (1706-1779), who placed synonyms at the centre of his work as posthumous editor-and co-author-of the botanical manuscripts that were left behind by other botanists.