Web of Nature: Martin Lister (1639-1712), the First Arachnologist (History of Science and Medicine Library, Volume 22 / Medieval and Early Modern Science, Volume 16) [Illustrated] 9004207031, 9789004207035

Citation preview

Web of Nature: Martin Lister (1639–1712), the First Arachnologist

History of Science and Medicine Library VOLUME 22

Medieval and Early Modern Science Editors J.M.M.H. Thijssen, Radboud University Nijmegen C.H. Lüthy, Radboud University Nijmegen Editorial Consultants

Joël Biard, University of Tours Simo Knuuttila, University of Helsinki John E. Murdoch, Harvard University Jürgen Renn, Max-Planck-Institute for the History of Science Theo Verbeek, University of Utrecht

VOLUME 16

Web of Nature: Martin Lister (1639–1712), the First Arachnologist By

Anna Marie Roos

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2011

On the cover: Illustrations of spiders in Lister’s Historiae Animalium (London, 1678). By courtesy of the Department of Special Collections, Memorial Library, University of Wisconsin-Madison. This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Roos, Anna Marie Eleanor. Web of nature : Martin Lister (1639–1712), the first arachnologist / by Anna Marie Roos. p. cm. — (History of science and medicine library, ISSN 1872-0684 ; v. 22) (Medieval and early modern science ; v. 16) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-20703-5 (hardback : acid-free paper) 1. Lister, Martin, 1638?–1712. 2. Naturalists—Great Britain—Biography. 3. Arachnologists—Great Britain—Biography. 4. Scientists—Great Britain—Biography. 5. Physicians—Great Britain—Biography. 6. Conchologists—Great Britain—Biography. 7. Great Britain— Intellectual life—17th century. 8. Great Britain—Intellectual life—18th century. I. Title. II. Series. QH31.L6913R66 2011 508.092—dc23 [B] 2011018143

ISSN 1872-0684 ISBN 9789004207035 Copyright 2011 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change.

To Ian, again To Gordon Roos (1929–2010), rara avis

What is the matter with my Dr Lister that he voyages, plants, marries, prints, and kills like Dryden’s Almanzor, a perfect hero? —Matthew Prior

CONTENTS List of Illustrations ............................................................................ Acknowledgements ............................................................................

xi xvii

PART ONE

THE BIRTH OF A NATURALIST,  I

Introduction ..............................................................................

3

II

Early Life and Letters, – ......................................... . Introduction .......................................................................... . Early Influences .................................................................... . The Birth of a Naturalist .................................................... . Lister’s Years at Cambridge, 1655–1663 ...........................

15 15 19 38 42

III

French Connection: The Voyage to Montpellier, – .................................................................................. . Introduction .......................................................................... . Arrival into France .............................................................. . An Introduction to John Ray .............................................

55 55 58 69

Lister’s Early Contributions to Natural History, –: The Influence of John Ray ...................................................... . Lister and his Views of Natural History .......................... . Debates About Spontaneous Generation .......................... . The Resignation of a Fellowship ........................................

77 77 88 94

IV

PART TWO

IN LOCATION AT THE PERIPHERY OF THE WEB, IN THE MIND AT ITS VERY CENTER: LISTER’S YEARS IN YORK  V

Spider Threads and a Tangled Web of Misunderstanding, – .................................................................................. . Introduction .......................................................................... . The “Ballooning” Debate over Arachnid Flight ...............

101 101 102

viii

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

contents . Taxonomic Questions and Doubts ................................. . A Waning Friendship .......................................................

116 124

“My Dear Hart”: Lister’s Marriage to Hannah Parkinson and his Medical Practice in York .................... . Introduction ....................................................................... . A Doctor in York ...............................................................

131 131 138

Lister and the Royal Society’s Debates about Plant Circulation in the s ....................................................... . Introduction ....................................................................... . The Royal Society and the Circulation of Sap .............. . The Argument with Nehemiah Grew .............................

151 151 153 160

Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral? Lister, Ray, Crinoids, and the Fossil Debate in the Royal Society ....................... . Introduction ....................................................................... . Lister and “Rock-plants” .................................................. . Chemical Theories of Fossil Formation ..........................

167 167 171 182

“All that Glitters”: Martin Lister and Fools’ Gold, – ............................................................................... . Introduction ....................................................................... . The Chemistry of Pyrites .................................................. . Pyrites and the Quarrel over Spa Waters ...................... . Pyrites and Natural History ............................................ . Petrifaction Within the Body: The Production of Gall and Bladder Stones ........................................................... . Formation of Magnetic Stones in the Body ................... A Speculum of Chemical Practice: Lister, Newton, and Telescopic Mirrors ................................................................. . Introduction ....................................................................... . The Chemistry of the Glass of Antimony ....................... . Antimony, the Royal Society, and Newton’s Mirrors .... . Antimony, Cawk, and Newtonian Alchemy ................. . The Move to London .........................................................

185 185 190 195 200 209 215

221 221 223 226 232 234

contents

ix

PART THREE

AT THE WEB’S CENTER: LISTER IN LONDON, THE ROYAL SOCIETY, AND THE PRODUCTION OF MASTERWORKS: – XI

XII

Lister’s London Beginnings: Virtuoso, Antiquarian, and Benefactor ....................................................................... . Introduction ....................................................................... . Medical Meteorology and the Histogram ...................... . Lister’s Quest for Medical Qualifications and his Antiquarian Enterprise ..................................................... The Art of Science: The Historiae Conchyliorum and the Historia Piscium .............................................................. . Introduction ....................................................................... . The Path to the Historiae Conchyliorum ..................... . Slugs, Fishes, and Snails, but no Puppy Dog Tails: The Making of Masterworks in Conchology and Ichthyology ......................................................................... . The Historia Piscium ........................................................

245 245 248 260

281 281 282

293 318

PART FOUR

TIME SPINS AWAY:  XIII

XIV

Publication and Prestige: The Sex Exercitationes Medicinales and the Royal College of Physicians ............ . Introduction ....................................................................... . Professional Prestige and New Ontologies of Medicine and Natural History ........................................ . Journeys and Losses ..........................................................

335 335 340 360

The Spice of Life: A Journey to Paris and a Cookery Book ......................................................................................... . Introduction ....................................................................... . The Journey to Paris ......................................................... . Lister’s Last Years .............................................................

375 375 376 395

Epilogue: Lister’s Portrait and the Tragedy of Burwell Park ..... Bibliography ........................................................................................ Index ....................................................................................................

421 427 465

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS . a) St John the Evangelist Parish Church, Radclive, Buckinghamshire. b) Baptismal font. Photographs by the author ................................................................................... . Radclive Manor, Radclive, Buckinghamshire. Photograph by the author. Courtesy Dr Jeremy and Mrs Sally Howarth ...................................................................................... . Dr Edward Lister (d. ). © Royal College of Physicians of London ................................................................................... . Dr Matthew Lister (d. ) by Paul van Somer. © National Portrait Gallery, London,  ......................... . Friarshead, Yorkshire. Photograph by the author .............. . Engraved portrait of Sir Martin Lister (–). Collection and photograph of the author ............................ . Susanna Temple, later Lady Lister by Cornelius Johnson, . © Tate, London,  ................................................... . Susanna Temple, later Lister attributed to Marcus Gheerhaerts the Younger, . © Christie’s Images Limited  .............................................................................. . St Mary’s, Melton Mowbray. Site of Melton School, Martin Lister’s grammar school. Image . Shutterstock images .................................................................. . Seventeenth-century view of St John’s College, Cambridge. Image AN. © British Museum, London ............ . Illustrations of spiders in Lister’s Historiae Animalium (London, ). By courtesy of the Department of Special Collections, Memorial Library, University of WisconsinMadison ...................................................................................... . The classification chart of spiders in the Historiae Animalium (London, ), p. . Shelfmark: ° D () Med. The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford .............. . Carleton Old Hall, Carleton-in-Craven. Photograph by the author ................................................................................... . Micklegate Bar and the Hospital of St Thomas, York. Engraving by W. Byrne and T. Medland, , after T. Hearne, . Wellcome Library, London ......................

16

17 20 22 30 33 35

36

40 43

117

122 135

143

xii

list of illustrations

a. Illustration of crinoid fossils from Martin Lister, “A Description of Certain Stones Figured Like Plants, and by Some Observing Men Esteemed to be Plants Petrified,” Philosophical Transactions, ,  (), p. , Table One. © Royal Society, London ................... b. A fossil specimen of crinoid. Geological Collections, The University Museum of Natural History. Specimen number OUMNH E.. University of Oxford .............. . Bladder stone from “An Account of a Stone Grown to an Iron Bodkin in the Bladder of a Boy Communicated by Dr. Lister Fellow of the Royal Society,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), pp. –, on p. . © Royal Society, London ....................................................... . Thomas Malton, Junior (–), Old Palace Yard, Westminster. Courtesy of The Palace of Westminster Collection .................................................................................. . Frost Fair Broadsheet. Shelfmark: C..f. (). © The British Library Board ................................................. . William Molyneax’s record of the weather using Lister’s histogram. Shelfmark: MS Ashmole , f. r. The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford ...................... . Lister’s method in the Boyle Papers, vol. , ff.  and . © Royal Society, London ............................................... . Lister’s engraving of the South Shield’s Altar in the Philosophical Transactions ,  (), Table One. © Royal Society, London ....................................................... . The Roman Altar donated by Lister to the Ashmolean. Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford. Photographer: Alex Croom .............................................................................. . Francis Place’s engraving of the Multiangular Tower at York. Shelfmark: MS//. © Royal Society, London ...................................................................................... . Engravings by Francis Place demonstrating caterpillars and their food sources, as well as their metamorphoses. From Johannes Goedaert, Of insects Johannes Goedaert; done into English and methodized with the addition of notes; the figures etched upon copper by Mr. Fr Place (York, ), p. . © Royal Society, London ...................

173

173

216

246 250

258 259

264

265

275

286

list of illustrations . Drawing by Francis Place for Lister’s “An Account of a Monstrous Animal cast out of the Stomach by Vomit,” Philosophical Collections, number , reprinted in Lister’s Letters and Mixed Discourses, pp. –. Shelfmark Letter Book Original, Volume , f. r. LBO//. © Royal Society, London ....................................................... a. Original drawings for Anthony von Leewenhoek, “An Abstract of a Letter from Mr. Anthony Leewenhoeck of Delft to Mr. R.H. concerning the appearances of several woods and their Vessels as observed in a Microscope,” Philosophical Transactions ,  (), p. . © Royal Society, London .......................................... b. Susanna Lister’s engravings of the Leewenhoek drawings of wood. Shelfmark: EL/L/. © Royal Society, London ...................................................................................... . Susanna Lister’s engravings of salt crystals for Anthony von Leewenhoek, “An Extract of a Letter from Mr. Anthony Leewenhoeck F. or the R.S. to a S. of the R. Society,” Philosophical Transactions ,  (), p. . © Royal Society, London .......................................... . a. “Table Four” or illustrations of the molluscan reproductive system from Martin Lister’s Historiae Conchyliorum ........................................................................... b. The figure legend for Table Four. The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford .............................................................. . Page from the Historiae Conchyliorum showing an engraving after Wenceslaus Hollar’s depiction of the Bear Paw Clam (Hippopus hippopus). Martin Lister, Historiae sive Synposis Methodicae Conchyliorum . . . (London: by the author, –). Collection and photograph of the author ...................................................... a. Etching of Bear Paw Clam (Hippopus hippopus), c. by Wenceslaus Hollar (–). The Royal Collection © , Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, RCIN  ........................................................................... b. The original copperplate that Anna Lister engraved of the Bear Paw Clam. Lister Copperplates  (plate ). The Bodleian Library, Oxford ...............................................

xiii

288

298

298

299

303 303

305

309

309

xiv

list of illustrations

. Lister’s corrections of his daughters’ depictions of sea urchins. Original Drawings for Lister’s Conchology c.. Shelfmark: MS , ff. r–r. © Science Museum at Wroughton, Swindon ........................................ a. Rembrandt van Rijn, The Shell, an etching, . © British Museum, London .................................................. b. Conus Marmoreus. © Natural History Museum, London ...................................................................................... c. Anna Lister’s drawing of the shell in her father’s Historiae sive Synopsis Conchyliorum (London, ), figure . © Royal Society, London ................................... d. The original copperplate that Anna Lister engraved of the conus marmoreus. Shelfmark: Lister Copperplates  (plate ). The Bodleian Library, Oxford ......................... . Working copy of Martin Lister’s De Cochleis, tam terrestribus, quam fluviatilibus exoticas, item de ijs quae etiam in Anglia inveniantur Libri II. (Conchyliorum Marinorum Liber III . . . [&] Buccinorum Marinorum Liber IV); De Cochleis (London: the Author, –). By Permission of the Linnean Society of London ............. a. Frontispiece to Francis Bacon, Instauratio magna (London: Joannem Billium, ). © British Museum, London ...................................................................................... b. Frontispiece to Francis Willoughby, De historia piscium libri quatuor (Oxford: Sheldonian Theatre, ). © Royal Society, London ....................................................... . The frontispiece to the notorious publication Two Essays Sent in a Letter from Oxford, to a Nobleman in London by the anonymous L.P. Shelfmark Sigma III. . The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford .............................. . Strombus listeri. Image . Shutterstock images .... . Frontispiece to Lister’s second edition of the cookbook of Apicius, De Opsoniis et Condimentis (Amsterdam: J. Waesbergios, ). Richard L.D. & Marjorie J. Morse Department of Special Collections, Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas ............................................. . Portrait of Martin Lister, M.D. F.R.S., circle of Charles Jervas (c.–). © Christie’s Images Limited  ...........................................................................................

311 313 313

314

314

317

326

326

368 385

403

422

list of illustrations . Burwell House, Burwell Park Estate, Lincolnshire. Reproduced by permission of English Heritage, National Monuments Record and Knight Frank a) Reception room before the house was abandoned ........ b) Reception room after the house was abandoned ........... c) Side-chamber after the house was abandoned. Note the family portrait above the mantel .....................

xv

425 425 426

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS A number of colleagues and institutions helped make this book possible. I would like to thank especially Lisa Jardine, biographer and scholar extraordinaire, who offered advice, encouragement, and who convinced me that Lister’s tale was worth telling. I am also grateful to Patricia Fara who, over dinner in Clare College, listened to my fears, asked me questions, and offered her good counsel. Robert Fox has been ever patient with my creative flights of fancy, helping me ground them into sound scholarship. Anita Guerrini kindly shared her cogent insights about Lister’s Apicius and eighteenth-century medicine. John Christie listened to my musings and struggles as I slowly came to comprehend Lister’s consummate empiricism. Mordechai Feingold kindly offered to read the manuscript in its entirety. The Royal Society receives special thanks. Keith Moore at the Royal Society Library deserves a medal for finding Lister’s portrait and taking out seemingly endless volumes of manuscripts from the vaults with cheerful good humor. His colleague, Felicity Henderson, also offered cogent assistance and an invitation to speak at the Royal Society about Lister, an experience I will always treasure. The Royal Society also gave me crucial financial assistance to finish this work. The assistance of the University of Oxford has also been essential in the research and writing of this biography. The bulk of Lister’s correspondence and papers is in the Bodleian Library, and librarians in the Duke Humfrey have acceded to my numerous requests to examine manuscript material with consummate efficiency and professionalism. Clive Hurst and Alexandra Franklin in Rare Books were especially helpful in locating the Lister copperplates. Colin Harris, the Superintendent of Special Collections, and Bruce Barker-Benfield gave me the provenance of several manuscripts. My research association with the Wellcome Unit has provided a wonderful home base, and I have been lucky to enjoy the friendship and collegiality of Carol Brady, Mark Harrison, Belinda Michaelides, and Margaret Pelling. As I was finishing this book, I was given a new position as the Lister Research Fellow in the Faculty of History at Oxford as part of the Cultures of Knowledge Project. I have had the distinct pleasure of

xviii

acknowledgements

working there with Philip Beeley, James Brown, Sue Burgess, Pietro Corsi, Peter Harrison, Kateřina Horníčková, Howard Hotson, Neil Jeffries, Rhodri Lewis, Miranda Lewis, Noel Malcolm, Kim McLeanFiander, Richard Ovenden, Leigh Penman, Michael Popham, William Poole, Richard Sharpe, and Kelsey Jackson Williams. Jim Bennett and Stephen Johnston at the Museum of the History of Science at Oxford have been extraordinarily helpful. A big thank you also to my “Culture of Knowledge” colleagues at the University of Wales—Helen Watt, Brynley Roberts, and Daffyd Johnston—for their assistance with the life and letters of Edward Lhwyd. There have been numerous individuals along the way who have given me crucial snippets of information so that I could do Lister justice. Chris Yeates scanned obscure articles. Robert Frost of the West Yorkshire Archives Service, Malcolm Underwood of St John’s College Archives, Cambridge, David Watts at the Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies, Jennifer Thorp of New College Archives, Oxford, and Lorna Williams at the Bank of England Archive helped me find sources that made all the difference. Lynda Brooks at the Linnaean Society found Lister’s working copy of his Historiae Conchyliorum, and Armando Mendez at the Natural History Museum Library assisted me with the Ray-Lister Correspondence. Bob Abel of the East Lindsey Historical Society, Karen Hearn of the Tate Gallery, Emma Strouts and Melissa van Vliet at Christie’s, Sir John Lister-Kaye, Peter Basham at the Royal College of Physicians, Miranda Lewis at the University of Oxford, David Robinson, and David Start, Director of Heritage Lincolnshire, helped me with the locations and iconography of the Lister family portraits. William W. Payne knew all there was to know about the artist Francis Place. Edward Grimsdale paved the way for an invitation to see Radclive Manor, Lister’s birthplace, which is owned by by the gracious and helpful couple, Dr and Mrs Jeremy Howarth. Gillian Lane sent me her own transcripts of the parish register of Thorpe Arnold, the manor owned by Lister’s father. John Underwood and Doug Stimson at the Science Museum Archives gave me the privilege of seeing Anna Lister’s original drawings for her father’s work on conchology. Jeremy Woodley and I had delightful conversations about the artistic talents of Lister’s daughters and the Lister family history. Michael Hunter helped me identify Lister’s histogram. Monica Price at the Natural History Museum in Oxford answered my persistent and obscure questions about minerals and mining. Arthur MacGregor helped me find Lister’s Roman altar in the vast collection of the Ashmolean Museum.

acknowledgements

xix

Alex Croom, the Keeper of Archaeology at Arbeia Roman Fort and Museum, gave me philological advice about the altar itself. Not surprisingly, arachnologists helped me understand Lister’s work. John D. Stanney at the British Arachnological Society kindly passed along articles by the past president and eminent spider specialist, the late John Parker, and Jerome Rovner at Ohio State explained how ballooning spiders shoot their webs. Bob Suter of Vassar shared his video clips of spiders in flight, and Robert Hallewell also offered his expertise. While arachnologists are so generous with their knowledge, glass technologists, chemists, and historians of chemistry are also extraordinarily altruistic. Bob Brill at the Corning Museum of Glass, Michael Cable of the University of Sheffield, Martin Horsley of Pilkington Glass, David Jupp of Jupp Associated Ltd, Sarah Lowengard of Cooper Union, David Martlew of the Society for Glass Technology, and Adrian Wright at the University of Reading answered my many queries about Lister’s experiments with glass of antimony. Andrea Sella helped me play with antimony in his laboratory. Victor Boantza, Hasok Chang, Stephen Clucas, Bernard Joly, Peter Morris, Bill Newman, John Perkins, Larry Principe, Jenny Rampling, Anna Simmons, and Georgette Taylor, the finest coterie of historians of chemistry if there ever was one, have been unfailingly kind and encouraging. I am grateful to the following institutions who provided images: the Ashmolean Museum, the Bodleian Library, the British Museum, Christie’s Images, English Heritage, Knight Frank, Kansas State University, the Linnean Society of London, the Natural History Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, the Royal College of Physicians, the Palace of Westminster Collection, the Royal Collection, the Royal Society, the Science Museum, Tate Images, the University Museum of Natural History, Oxford, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Tom Holland and Vivienne Larminie assisted me with the translations from Latin and French. Dave Collins used his expertise to present the illustrations in their best possible light. Miranda Lewis used her eagle eye to eliminate writing infelicities, though of course any mistakes made in the text are my own. Ian Benton read the book for clarity. My colleagues at Brill, including Boris van Gool, Marti Huetink, and Rosanna Woensdregt have made the publication process a joy. I have been pleased to write for Brill a second time. I am also grateful to the anonymous external reviewers whose comments improved the book.

xx

acknowledgements

Jeff Carr, the first scholar to write a doctoral dissertation about Martin Lister, also receives very special thanks. He is a kindred soul, his interests and training in biology and the history of science resonating so much with my own. Ed Ruestow was the first person to spark my interest in the history of science. Without his continued encouragement, none of this would have been possible. My Ph.D. advisor Marjorie McIntosh taught me how to be a historian. Thank you, Marjorie. My family and friends were, as always, patient and understanding. Andrew, Ruth, and Joseph Bramley, and Gordon, David, Debbie, Jordan, and Dillon Roos, and June Benton listened to me talk about Lister for years with good humor and kindness. Neil Storch, my dear mentor and friend, stood by me when I struggled. Rosemary StanfieldJohnson encouraged me to stay true to myself. Connie Jacoby and Mari Trine cheered me on. Tony Whall has always been his kind and considerate self. Sally Sheard offered a sympathetic ear and insights as we both wrestled with the joys and challenges of intellectual biography. And last but not least, my husband Ian Benton supported me in so many ways whilst I’ve been “Listering” these past four years, that words alone are not enough to express the depth of my gratitude and love for him. Te valde amo ac semper amabo. This project was funded by The British Academy, Award SG-, the National Science Foundation, award , and by a History of Science Grant from the Royal Society. Material was drawn from my articles in Ambix, Endeavour, History of Science, Natural History Magazine, and the Notes and Records of the Royal Society.

PART ONE

THE BIRTH OF A NATURALIST, –

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION The spider has remained structurally unaltered in  million years, its multiplicity of eyes, two poison fangs, and eight legs a constant. The usual reaction to these little creatures is fear of their webs, revulsion at their eating habits, and worry at their spindly legs. Early modern Italians thought that the bite of a furry tarantula would cause the sufferer to dance a jumping jig incessantly and invented a new dance to imitate their movements—the tarantella. The Russian composer Mikhail Glinka’s version for the piano features incessant and fiendish staccato for the right hand and a lively downbeat for the left. New Mexicans fear being bitten by a brown recluse spider, its beautiful dark and violin-shaped coloring a warning against wounds that are deep, piercing, and slow to heal; my father still has the fanged scars on his back from rolling over onto one hiding in his bed. Seventy percent of women in the United States are arachnophobes, and the enormous size of the long-legged English house spider is a national cliché.1 A few souls, though, have thought about spiders more benignly, their fear replaced by curiosity or wonder. Arachnids have been worshipped out of admiration, the Indians making the spider a symbol of liberty, “being the only creature that can raise itself up by its own bootstraps.”2 Victor Hugo, out of generosity of soul, stated that he loved the spider and the nettle, “because they are hated.”3 Modern cartoonists have created a hero played in Hollywood films by heartthrob and vegetarian Toby Maguire, whose alter ego can shoot spider-silk, climb buildings with grace, and swoop down his guidelines to save his girlfriend Kirsten Dunst from dastardly villains. He even eats flies. But this biography concerns another spider-man™ entirely; not a thin and polite movie star, but a bewigged and frock-coated seventeenth-century physician and virtuoso who was passionately interested

1

Zeldin, Intimate, . Zeldin, Intimate, . 3 Hugo, “Contemplation XXVII,” in Oeuvres, : . Hugo wrote, “J’aime l’araignée et j’aime l’ortie, parce qu’on les hait.” 2



chapter one

in the natural world and who was one of its very keenest observers. His name was Martin Lister and, among other things, he was the very first arachnologist. Keats wrote “It appears to me that almost any man may like the spider spin from his own inwards his own airy citadel.”4 This book will show that like the spiders he studied, Lister spun a citadel of unsurpassed scientific imagination and that he was a real superhero, a real spider-man™ to renowned natural philosophers such as Carl Linnaeus, Charles Lyell, and Charles Darwin, as well to scientists today. It is very fortunate that an enormous amount of Lister’s printed publications, private papers, and  pieces of correspondence have survived, now housed largely in the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford.5 Lister had donated some of his works to Oxford, but we have to thank William Huddesford, the perceptive eighteenthcentury antiquarian and keeper of the Ashmolean Museum for the bulk of the collection.6 Huddesford heard in  that one Dr John Fothergill had bought at an auction “put up in band boxes, confused like waste paper, several bundles of Dr Lister’s papers,” to save them from annihilation in the “pastrycooks oven” or as wrapping for purchases at the Grocers.7 As Fothergill confessed to Huddesford that he should “never have the leisure to peruse them,” he wondered “what to do with them?”8 He mused that he “had best give them to some public Body—either to the Universities or to the Royal Society,” closing his letter to Huddesford with the query “What dost Thee think?”9 Huddesford quickly replied, “You ask Dr an interested Man. I say to the University of Oxford and to the Ashmolean therein. But I will give you a reason also—The Papers consist of letters to . . . Lister . . . a very great Benefactor.”10 Fothergill readily agreed to the proposal, and Huddesford gleefully recorded: . . . came down one large Box, near a hundred weight. The contents as followeth

4

Keats, Life, . The author is currently engaged in preparing a calendar and scholarly edition of the Lister Correspondence for the “Cultures of Knowledge” Project at the University of Oxford. 6 MacGregor, “Huddesford,” –. 7 Nichols, Illustrations, : ; MacGregor, “Huddesford,” . 8 MacGregor, “Huddesford,”  and . 9 Nichols, Illustrations, : , as quoted in MacGregor, “Huddesford,” . 10 MacGregor, “Huddesford,” . 5

introduction



.  large Vols of letters to Lhwyd [Lister’s colleague Edward Lhwyd] . Several Bundles of Letters to Lister . Near  Books in to [quarto] of MSS annotations on, and extracts from various Authors—Lister’s hand. . Several Private Pocket Books in which Lister kept an account of the Fees He received in Practise.11

From sources such as these, we can reconstruct through Lister’s eyes what it was like to be a man, a doctor, a naturalist, and a virtuoso in the days when “science” or natural philosophy was just being born, before the age of specialization when “taking all knowledge for one’s province” was done as a matter of course. When Lister was a medical student in the s, the parameters of scientific method and experimentation were just being defined by a group of gentlemen in Gresham College, amongst them Robert Boyle, Robert Hooke, Isaac Newton, and Christopher Wren.12 Lister would come to know them all. Robert Boyle considered Lister an investigator of “piercing sagacity,” and Newton inquired after Lister’s chemical procedures and alloys for making telescopic mirrors.13 Lister ultimately served as vice-president of the organization these men created, the Royal Society, and his letters revealed the day-to-day administration and inner workings of one of the world’s first scientific society in its formative years. To understand Lister’s development as a scientist, I traveled to Burwell, Lincolnshire, over the Christmas season in . Lister spent a good portion of his adolescence climbing hills around Burwell, going “simpling” for fossils, iron samples, and for plant, spider, and snail specimens in the local woods surrounding his home, the manor at Burwell Park. Burwell is a sleepy village in the Lincolnshire Wolds. It consists of some scattered dwellings, a six-sided village hall called the Butter Cross, a fine pub with cask ales, and the scant remains of the Listers’ Georgian manor house on the hill. The house was rebuilt in the eighteenth century and subsequently demolished in  due to the ineptitude of the East Lindsey District Council.

11 MacGregor, “Huddesford,” . These documents comprise MSS Lister at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. 12 Sprat, History; Hunter, Establishing; Hunter, Royal Society; Lynch, Solomon’s child. 13 For Boyle’s comment as relayed by Dr Tancred Robinson to Lister, see Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. For Newton’s work on telescopic mirrors, see Roos, “Speculum,” –.



chapter one

The landscape is different from most of the surrounding wolds, as it is set among rolling and wooded hills, which are prime fossil-hunting territory. Ammonites, belemnites in cross section, and fragments of brachiopods and sea corals lie ready to be excavated from the red chalk. The middle Jurassic marine limestone and Cretaceous rock here is also hugely iron-rich, and attempts have been made to mine its ferruginous treasures. I was also hunting for treasure, not that of iron ore, but that of intellectual gold. Armed with several Ordnance Survey Maps and transcriptions of Lister’s notebooks, I wanted to see for myself where he made his first field observations, where he found his fossils, or, as he called them, “formed stones,” and to gauge how accurate he was in his locality records and descriptions. Lister never once let me down. The snail Cyclostoma elegans was feeding right where he said it would be in Grisel Bottom in Burwell Wood, as was the land snail Hyalinia fulva, present in moss at the roots of the great trees there.14 Samples of ore, pyrites, and the evocatively named eaglestone and millstone grit were easily spotted and collected on ancient walking paths according to his instructions. During term breaks from St John’s College, Cambridge, where he was first a student, and then a fellow in , Lister came to Burwell to visit his parents. His gruff father, also named Martin, had been a soldier, farmer, and Member of Parliament, and he worried that his asthmatic and scholarly son was too mollycoddled. His mother, Susanna, her letters revealing a lively intellect, had been a court beauty considered so comely that her portrait was sold as a polite early modern pinup.15 As for their son, he practiced country-dances with his sisters and nieces and ate an embarrassing amount of his favorite dish of venison pie to fuel a perpetually hungry adolescent metabolism.16 But in the interim, he scribbled down his observations of what he saw around him in one of his many pocket books.17 14

Lister, Historiae Animalium, – and . For Susanna’s letters to her son, see Bodleian MS Lister , ff. –. Her portrait appears in several collectors’ inventories, including those of Samuel Pepys who was known to collect the visages of notable beauties. See Latham, Catalogue, –, entry # /b. 16 For Lister’s penchant for venison pies, see for instance Bodleian MS Lister , f. . This was a letter from his sister Jane promising that he would be sent one shortly. Lister’s mother also promises one to him in MS Lister , f. . Lister’s niece Dorothy Hartopp mentioned their dancing together in MS Lister , f. . 17 For instance, Bodleian MS Lister  is his notebook of his student days at Montpellier (–); Bodleian MS Lister  also contained notes from his youth, and Bodleian MS Lister  served as his adversaria from  to . 15

introduction



Under the tutelage of Henry Paman, a professor of “physick” at Gresham College and at St John’s, Lister studied medicine and the relatively new discipline of natural history. According to Gascoigne, St John’s produced more medical graduates than any other Cambridge College from the period – and was an active “catalyst for work in natural history,” so it is likely it was here that Lister fostered his twin interests in medicine and field biology.18 Following in the footsteps of his great-uncles who were both royal physicians, he subsequently continued his study at a Protestant academy at Montpellier, site of one of the best medical schools. When not studying anatomy or pharmacology, Lister read with wonder about the new scientific discoveries of Francesco Redi, Thomas Willis, and Robert Boyle who argued about the nature of air and vacuums, debated if beings could spontaneously generate, and discovered new structures in the brain that redefined neurology and concepts of consciousness.19 Their works were published in the first scientific journals in the world, those of the Royal Society and French Academy of Science. All the books Lister read, he conscientiously recorded in his notebook.20 In France, Lister also mingled with an entire set of wealthy English expatriates who were, like him, enamored of natural history.21 With newfound friends John Ray, Francis Willoughby, and the Danish crystallographer Nicolas Steno, who would all become significant naturalists in their own right, Lister visited botanic gardens to learn about medicinal herbs and plants, dissected specimens, and continued collecting samples of flora and fauna. On his return from Montpellier, Lister would create a thriving medical practice in York, becoming the center of a group of fellow natural philosophers, artists, and antiquarians called the York Virtuosi. Lister and his fellow virtuosi distilled formic acid from ants, attempted to recreate Chinese porcelain, did some of the first mezzotints, and reported their results to the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. In , he moved to London, his skillful playing of the patronage game resulting in his membership of the Royal College of Physicians and 18 Gascoigne, Cambridge, –. Martin Lister’s tutor was Henry Paman who was a professor of physick at Gresham College and a close friend of Thomas Sydenham. Paman, as did most members of St John’s, had high-church sympathies. 19 Bodlean MS Lister  lists all the books that he read when a student at Montpellier. 20 Bodlean MS Lister . 21 Philip Skippon, a traveling companion describes the group of English expatriates (including Lister) in Skippon, Journey, : .



chapter one

in his appointment as a court physician to Queen Anne. Of course, it did not hurt Lister’s cause that his niece was Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, the Queen’s great favorite, and that his great-uncles served as court physicians to the other Stuart monarchs, James I and Charles I. Though Lister’s contemporaries knew him for his medical skills, later generations would benefit more significantly from his keen love of what he called “the small and trifling things of nature.” Lister did the very first studies of spiders and molluscs, founding not only arachnology, but conchology as well, his work cited by Charles Darwin and Linnaeus. Two species of mollusca, an entire genus of orchid, and a spider have been named Listeriana in his honor. Although he did not know it at the time of his first expeditions in Burwell, Lister’s “simpling” journeys would become habits of a lifetime, “physic” and natural history competing for his attention, his education and development as a virtuoso encouraging him to see the world from a multiplicity of perspectives.22 Lister’s expertise in natural history was in fact reflective of its “becoming the foundation for a great deal of contemporary science, including medicine.”23 But his integration of natural history and medicine went even further than virtuosic interdisciplinarity. His work on the interrelationship between theories of spontaneous generation, the petrification of fossils and petrification of gall stones; his studies of the role of pyrites and metallogenesis in spa waters and their role in healing; as well his analysis of insects as causes and cures in diseases like smallpox and syphilis were unique to the literature.24 As Cook remarked, natural history was the early modern equivalent of “big science,” and Lister was at its very center.25 A major feature of early modern natural philosophy was the rapid and exponential growth of natural history; “it would be more correct to talk of a proliferation of natural histories—in the plural—all with different philosophical pedigrees.”26 More recent scholarship such as that by Findlen, Daston, Ogilvie, and Cooper has considered the natural histories of zoology, botany, and mineralogy not as mere supplements

22 Houghton, “English Virtuoso,” –; Eamon, Secrets; Cook, “Physick and Natural History,” –’ Cook, “Natural History,” –. 23 Cook, “Natural History,” . 24 Roos, “Lodestones,” –. Roos, “Fool’s Gold,” –. 25 Cook, “Natural History,” . 26 Daston, “Historia.”

introduction



to the work in physics and astronomy of “the scientific revolution,” but at its very core.27 Teasing out the differences as well as the overlapping epistemological assumptions of these natural histories reveals connections between natural phenomena and the origins of ideas that early modern natural philosophers like Lister took for granted, but that we may overlook. Early modern Europe was also faced with what has been termed the “first bioinformation crisis,” as masses of new species, locality records, and observations flooded in from the New World and organized field expeditions.28 Lister’s techniques to cope with an onslaught of new specimens involved novel taxonomic methods and information retrieval which served as a conceptual bridge between Renaissance naturalists and eighteenth-century investigators like Linnaeus and Buffon. To help him gain his expertise, just as Darwin did  years later, Lister wrote incessantly to collectors in England, Jamaica, North America, Barbados, and continental Europe to obtain natural history specimens. His collection formed his own personal “cabinet of curiosities.” Live snails were sent to him in strawberry baskets lined with damp moss for safekeeping, ores were carefully wrapped in papers and popped in the post, sketches and copper plate engravings of hummingbirds, spider webs, and fossils crowded his correspondence. In creating his small museum, Lister was participating in a widespread “culture of collection” and acquisitiveness in the early modern period.29 His acquisitions, however, were inseparable from the seventeenth-century Republic of Letters; his work, education, and correspondence represented a cross-cultural exchange of knowledge and specimens between English, French, and colonial natural historians.30 Lister’s correspondence thus serves as an especially apt case-study for the Republic’s norms and systems of patronage. He donated his collections, which some scholars have considered scientifically more important than those of Elias Ashmole, to the recently founded Ashmolean Museum at the University of Oxford,

27 Findlen, Possessing; Daston and Park, Wonders; Ogilvie, Science; Cooper, Inventing. 28 Knight, Ordering, . 29 The literature on the history of museums and collecting in the early modern period has grown vast, so the following are a select few of the works that have influenced my research. Arnold, Cabinets; Findlen, Possessing; MacGregor, Curiosity; Swann, Curiosities. 30 For more on the Republic of Letters, see Goldgar, Impolite; Stegeman, Patronage.



chapter one

the world’s first museum of natural history. Lister was awarded an honorary M.D. by Oxford in  for his generosity, another example of how his interests and aspirations in natural history and medicine intertwined. The fine Roman altars he liked to collect (like many wealthy virtuosi, he was also a keen antiquarian) were placed on either side of the museum’s entrance, and Lister’s name was painted in gold alongside that of Ashmole’s above the door to the library at the top of the stairs: Libri Impressi & Manuscripti e donis Clariss. Virorum D. Elias Ashmole & Martini Lister . . .31 In his donation to the Ashmolean, Lister consciously made the decision to traverse the boundary from a private collection, which required a nonproprietary audience to validate its status, to a public declaration of his significant contributions to natural history, and what we would come to know as archaeology.32 Lister’s aggressively exploratory intellect was also accompanied by an exacting, and sometimes irascible personality. In an age where science was in its infancy, the priority of discovery in so many areas was there for the taking by an intelligent and keen empiricist, and Lister was keen to make his mark. He had a relentless publication program, contributing sixty-three papers to the Philosophical Transactions of the nascent Royal Society, and writing twenty books in natural history, antiquarian studies, and medicine. As vice-president of the Royal Society, he maintained a vast correspondence with the leading scientists of his day, including chemist Robert Boyle, physicist Robert Hooke, astronomer John Flamsteed, and naturalist John Ray. He cajoled his daughters Susanna (bap. –) and Anna (–?) into making over one thousand engravings of shells for his masterwork on conchology—the Historiae Conchyliorum—each shell surrounded by an elaborate and baroque printed frame. Their mother Hannah was related to the royal botanist John Parkinson, so she was already familiar with the obsessions of natural historians; it is certain anyhow that Anna and Susanna inherited their father’s and Parkinson’s keen powers of observation. The two young ladies also illustrated many of Lister’s and the Dutch microscopist Antony van Leeuwenhoek’s scientific papers for the Philosophical Transactions, and they were likely to have been among the first women to use microscopes in scientific

31 32

Ashmole and Lilly, Lives, . Swann, Curiosities, .

introduction



investigation.33 Susanna and Anna were not adjuncts to the “scientific revolution,” but a very part of it. In the course of his work, Lister quarreled about fossils with the naturalist John Ray, argued with Robert Hooke about magnetism, blackballed a rival chemist named William Simpson from membership to the Royal Society, and was jealous of botanist and anatomist Nehemiah Grew’s microscopic observations of plants. Lister’s experience in the Royal Society demonstrates how the norms of priority of scientific discovery were shaped and modifed in the seventeenth century, particularly within the confines of a nascent scientific society. Lister was directly involved in three disputes over priority of discovery: ballooning spiders, plant circulation, and the origin of fossils and “metallogenesis.” There is detailed documentation on each dispute, and Lister himself formulated written criteria for what he believed to constitute a true discovery in natural philosophy. His role as Royal Society vice-president, fundraiser, organizer and donor to the Royal Society Repository meant he had some control of the election of particular colleagues concerned in these disputes, and his accounts demonstrate patronage networks in the Royal Society beyond those we usually read about of Boyle, Hooke, or Newton. But behind all Lister’s prickliness and claims of priority was a deep desire to know nature to its very core via his own observations and by discussing and learning about the work of others. This biography thus not only portrays Dr Lister’s contributions to natural history and medicine, but also examines his role as a nexus for the republic of letters and scientific knowledge in the late seventeenth century. Just as Lister was the first person to make a systematic study of spiders and their webs, this book will be the first to analyze the significant webs of knowledge and patronage that governed his intellectual life. The limited amount of existing scholarship about Lister has primarily analyzed his work in conchology and arachnology. J.R. Parker, the former president of the British Arachnological Society, translated Lister’s Tractatus de Araneis () [Tract of English Spiders] to “restore him to his rightful position at the head of the roll of honor of British arachnologists.”34 Guy Wilkins noted the contributions Lister made to the shell collection of Hans Sloane, and traced the

33 34

See Chapter Four. Parker and Harley, eds, English Spiders.



chapter one

complex publication history of his Historiae Conchyliorum.35 Jeffrey Carr was the first to do a broad and well-considered empirical survey of Lister’s biological work in his  Ph.D. dissertation, and Unwin and Woodley have briefly examined his work in York and his use of scientific illustrators.36 Michael Hunter analyzed his accomplishments in archaeology and antiquarianism, considering them pioneering in their empiricism and use of scientific method.37 Other scholars such as Biagoli, Iliffe, and Stearns have mined Lister’s memoirs of his student days in Montpellier and his account of his  trip to Paris for anecdotes about the Grand Tour, etiquette, and sociability in seventeenthcentury science.38 No author, however, has placed Lister’s complete life and letters in a larger historical context. After my walk in the hills surrounding Burwell, and a little fossil hunting myself (just as Lister said, I found sea lilies or crinoids). I came back into the village to retrieve the key to the church from one of the villagers. St Michael’s is an ancient church with a distinctive Norman arch. It was built originally on an elevated site of a Roman fort alongside the Roman road between Louth and Boston, and it is clear that Roman stonework was used in its construction.39 Martin Lister’s grave is not in St Michael’s, as he chose a London burial, but the parish bible that his descendants had donated to the now unused church still survives with entries until the nineteenth century. Martin’s parents were buried here, their markers obliterated due to the weathering of lime-stone slabs; I wondered if the elaborate stone sarcophagus with its early modern death’s head outside in the church yard had belonged to them. On the interior wall of the disused parish church is the Lister family crest with its stag’s head and red stripes, lending some color to the durable and white marble monument to the son of his little sister Jane—a long time ago, Jane was Martin’s dancing partner. Near the altar, a villager had contributed a handwritten note about Martin Lister and his contributions as a naturalist and physician to science’s very beginnings. Though the author of the note mistakenly assumed he was related to the more famous Joseph Lister, the anesthetist, I was 35

Wilkins, Catalogue. Carr, “The Biological Work.” Unwin, “Provincial Man,” –; Woodley, “Anne Lister,” –. 37 Hunter, Science and Society. 38 Biagioli, “Etiquette,” –; Iliffe, “Foreign bodies,” –; Stearns. ed., Journey to Paris. 39 Parker, “Further Notes,” . 36

introduction



heartened to see that “the other Lister” was remembered in his ancestral home. Walking to the door to turn out the light, I looked once more at the nave of the church. A beautiful mottled brown Tegenaria duellica, an English house spider, was discreetly and industriously maintaining her typically untidy sheet web in a shady corner, waiting for her dinner to drop by. Lister would have approved.

CHAPTER TWO

EARLY LIFE AND LETTERS,  . Introduction The Aylesbury Vale in Buckinghamshire is an area of deeply green farmland, the nearest high point Combe Hill in the Chilterns. Red kites, yellowhammers, and firecrests feed on the flora which grow on Combe Hill’s alkaline heathlands, and the hill offers local schoolchildren some of the best sledding in this part of England. In this idyllic spot, Martin Lister was born in Radclive, a “small, but neat and cleanly” village perched on a cliff of reddish soil that overlooks the River Ouse.1 The Bishop’s copy of the Radclive parish register indicates his parents, Sir Martin and Susanna Lister, had Martin and four other of his siblings baptized at the small church of St John the Evangelist.2 Martin was christened on  April  in the font that still remains on its square plinth (Figure ). The thirteenth-century church boasts a fine crenellated tower and Elizabethan pews in the porch are decorated with poppy-head finials, symbols of peace, rest, and resurrection.3 It is likely Martin was born in Radclive Manor itself, a stately brick house that belonged to New College, Oxford and which was within view of the church (Figure ).4 Martin’s mother, Susanna, had an aunt and uncle, Thomas and Susan Denton, who were subleasing the manor at the time.5 It would have been an appropriate place for Susanna to have her “lying-in” period in the presence of older female relatives who would have provided comfort and experience to help her in her many

1

Sheaham, History, –. Bishop’s Transcripts, Buckinghamshire Archives. 3 Page, ed., “Radclive,” –. 4 My thanks to Mr and Mrs Jeremy Howarth for kindly letting me use a photograph of their home for the monograph. 5 Parker, “Lister’s England,” . Parker surmises Lister’s family lived in Radclive Manor, but a perusal of the New College Oxford lease documents reveals the property was never sublet to the Lister family. It was however sublet to Sir Thomas Denton and his son Alexander in the s; Thomas Denton was married to Susan Temple, sister to Susanna Lister’s father. See NC  and NC  with , New College Archives, Oxford. 2



Fig. 

chapter two

a) St John the Evangelist Parish Church, Radclive, Buckinghamshire.

Fig.  b) Baptismal font. Photographs by the author.

early life and letters, –

Fig. 



Radclive Manor, Radclive, Buckinghamshire. Photograph by the author. Courtesy Dr Jeremy and Mrs Sally Howarth.

pregnancies. In the early modern period, childbirth within wedlock was a rite of passage in adulthood, and it took place within a collective female culture.6 In the overall population there was a six to seven percent chance of women dying in childbirth; most early modern women feared their own death, and having female relatives in close proximity was psychologically important.7 A month of so after Susanna gave birth, she would have gone to St John the Evangelist for a Protestant thanksgiving for a safe delivery, a modification of the Catholic ritual of churching. Most likely, her aunt and other close female relatives would have also attended to recognize her status as a mother. The Manor House where she waited for Martin’s safe delivery is still standing, its sturdy gate posts from the period grandly framing the back entrance, though some of the other ball finials have migrated to the drive of the more humble Radclive Mill. At the time Susanna 6 7

Mendelson and Crawford, Women, . Mendelson and Crawford, Women, .



chapter two

stayed at the Manor, there was an additional wing that had been added to the north of the house when it was rebuilt in , so there was plenty of room for visiting relatives. Though this portion of the manor burnt down in , its uniquely splendid period oak staircase with an intricate openwork balustrade carefully cut out of the solid wood survived.8 One can easily imagine Susanna or her wetnurse walking her tightly swaddled infant up and down these stairs to comfort him when he cried. The Listers also had the option of staying with Susanna’s maternal uncle, Sir John Temple, who had a manor house close by in Stowe. Susanna’s uncle appeared frequently in parish records, as he was in a number of legal scrapes over water rights and the ancient manorial mill and waterwheel on the Ouse. Sir John was apparently diverting a brook that belonged to his neighbors onto his own property and had a reputation for being cantankerous, a trait his nephew Martin would inherit.9 Lister’s father, also confusingly named Martin, was an M.P. for Brackley, Northamptonshire in , which is six miles over the border from Radclive, and he also owned land in Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire, so it is clear the family lived somewhere in the area.10 Though we do not know the exact location of his permanent residence when he was a very small child, we do know that Martin Lister was born into a distinguished medical family connected to high office and royalty. Because of the Listers’ connections and wealth, Martin received the interdisciplinary education of a gentleman largely under the guidance of his great-uncle Matthew, a royal physician. As a reward for the loyalty Matthew showed to the Stuarts, Martin received a fellowship by royal mandate at St John’s College, Cambridge.11 Here

8 St John the Evangelist also has a communion rail that features pierced scrollwork in its balustrades, as does Princes Risborough Manor a short distance away, which indicates the same seventeenth-century craftsman was making his rounds. 9 NC  Court Rolls, –, New College Archives. In , “Sir John Temple knight by turning the water course straight and running between Boyrott ground and their cow pasture hath left out of his inclosure one little brooke of ground neere unto Boycott Lane end and all soe hath in another place neere unto the said same cutt away . . . about a pole of ground than that wch is left neither can the same lord and his tenaunts take the herbage of the same hooke of ground belonging to the said cow pasture without [washing] the ground of the same Sir John Temple.” My thanks to New College Archivist Jennifer Thorp for alerting me to these resources. 10 Brunten and Pennington, Members. 11 C., f. , St John’s College Archives, Cambridge. The letter of royal mandate in the archives is a copy made for the college’s letter books.

early life and letters, –



the renowned Dr Henry Paman served as his tutor. This chapter will elucidate these familial and political connections as well as analyze the intellectual context that developed Lister’s character and his work as a naturalist, physician, and virtuoso. . Early Influences As a younger brother, Martin would not inherit his father’s lands and would thus be groomed for a profession. His ancestral lineage would almost guarantee that he would study medicine, as both of his greatuncles, Edward and Matthew, were court physicians. But Edward and Matthew’s medical careers and temperaments could not have presented more different role models to their great-nephew. Edward (–), as typical of the eldest child, was a conventionally solid citizen who served as a physician-in-ordinary to Elizabeth I as well as to James I. He climbed the professional ladder attending Eton and King’s College Cambridge, where he received his M.D. in .12 Edward then became a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in , serving as censor from – where he examined candidates for membership. As he was considered precise and careful with money, he was appointed its treasurer in . A close colleague of William Gilbert, the physician and theorist on magnetism, Edward also married into a medical family; his wife Anne was a widow of John Farmery, another member of the Royal College of Physicians.13 Edward’s portrait by an unknown regional artist in the collection of the Royal College of Physicians shows a solid-looking figure with keenly observant blue-grey eyes (Figure ). His mouth is set in a resolutely stubborn expression that seems to exemplify the saying that “you can always tell a Yorkshireman, but you cannot tell him much.”14 Edward’s deeply piped ruff ornaments a plain but expensivelooking black physician’s gown, and he holds elaborately fringed and tooled leather gloves to allude to his status and wealth. For his talent and efforts, Edward was granted the family arms on  April , with three mullets crowned with a stag’s head “proper attired,” and

12

Furdell, Royal Doctors, ; Pelling and White, “Edward Lister,” in Physicians; Moore, “Lister, Edward,” Oxford DNB. 13 Pelling and White, “John Farmery,” in Physicians. 14 Wolstenholme and Piper, Portraits, –.



chapter two

Fig.  Dr Edward Lister (d. ). © Royal College of Physicians of London.

the crest appears discreetly and carefully painted in the corner of his portrait. Martin appeared to take from Edward his industry, perseverance, and pursuit of a traditional family life. If Edward was the sensible older brother, Lister’s great-uncle Matthew was the incorrigible younger sibling who seemed to get away with anything, a dashing rake with a brilliant career. Matthew did his undergraduate work at Oriel College, Oxford, but unlike his brother, rejected Cambridge for his medical training in favor of Basel University, which taught the new and still controversial “chemical medicine” of Paracelsus. Matthew was also elected a fellow of the College of Physicians in  and, along with William Harvey, served as a censor or examiner of new candidates.15 As a newly qualified physician,

15

Nance, “Lister, Sir Matthew,” Oxford DNB.

early life and letters, –



he was attached to the household of the widowed Mary Sidney Herbert (–), the Countess of Pembroke, with whom he flirted as well as having a business relationship. Matthew managed her estates, as Anthony à Wood sniggered to “her best advantage,” and received £–£ per year upon her death in , his being “well worn in her service.”16 In Aubrey’s Brief Lives, Aubrey speculated that Mary had secretly married the doctor, “a learned and handsome gentleman” who was ten years her junior, and that Sir Matthew had actually had Houghton House near Amptill built for the Countess, its two fashionable Italianate loggias of the latest fashion.17 Gossip about the couple even appeared in the State Papers where the Countess was “said to be married to Dr Lister, who was with her at the Spa.”18 Matthew also apparently cared for the Countess’s daughter Anne, who died unmarried after a long illness.19 A portrait of Sir Matthew by the court painter Paul van Somer shows he had the same keenly observant eyes as his brother, but he was an altogether more stylish figure (Figure ).20 Matthew wore a fashionably slashed and buttoned waistcoat with a rich cloak, his neat pointed collar visually echoed by a closely trimmed “Van Dyck” beard. He also holds a black cord in his hand attached to a piece of jewelry, perhaps a ring or portrait miniature given to him by the Countess which was concealed in his palm. There was apparently some strife in their relationship, as the Countess came to believe that Martin was having an affair with her dark-eyed and dark-haired niece, Mary Wroth, who was nineteen years old, nubile, and newly married. Though the accusation was untrue (Mary was actually dallying with William Herbert, Mary Sidney’s oldest son), there was a general air of intrigue in the 16

Wood, Athaenae Oxonienses, : . Aubrey, Brief Lives, , . 18 State Papers Domestic, James I, – ( April ), , National Archives, Kew. For more information about Lister’s relationship with the Countess, see Roberts, “The Huntington Manuscript,” . As Nance has indicated, Lister was indeed not married to the Countess, for in his will made on  August , he referred to “my loving wife the Ladie Anne Lister.” See Will of Sir Matthew Lister,  August , PROB /, sig. , National Archives, Kew; Nance, “Lister, Sir Matthew,” Oxford DNB. 19 Hannay, “Countess of Pembroke,” . 20 Matthew Lister’s friend and colleague, Turquet de Mayerne questioned van Somer about his artistic techniques, and recorded the responses in his manuscript about painting and sculpture, the “Pictorja sculptorja & quae subalternarum artium” (BL Sloane MS ). Van Somer painted Mayerne so it is little wonder that Matthew Lister also gave him his patronage. See Hearn, “Somer, Paul van,” Oxford DNB. 17



chapter two

Fig. 

Dr Matthew Lister (d. ) by Paul van Somer. © National Portrait Gallery, London, .

Countess’s household at Penshurst. Wroth was a playwright, writing Love’s Victorie, where the Countess’s romance with Matthew Lister was refigured in the love plot between Simeana and Lissius.21 The play was apparently performed in Penshurt’s gardens under the trees, Cupid declaring “Freinds shall mistrust theyr freinds, lovers mistake,/ And all shall for theyr folly woes partake.”22 There were woes indeed, as news of the Lister affair was common knowledge, leading to some public libel by the literati. The anonymous 21 22

Findlay, Playing, . Findlay, Playing, .

early life and letters, –



poem, “The Progresse,” possibly alluding to an actual royal progress taken by Charles I and his court, had this to say about the ListerPembroke affair:23 You ar well met good Doctor Lister Often y have given a great lady a glister24 Your Pipe25 was good, shee could not refuse But all thinges ar the worse for use

Another contemporary London satire entertainingly and scatalogically entitled Let Closestoole & Chamberpot Choose Out a Doctor (), which apparently had a wide manuscript circulation, remarked of him: Doctor Lister, were it his own sister, Must feel, before he raise, His reason is this, the pulse [is] better than the piss, [And] Discovers the diseased, And a Doctor may feel, from the head to the heel to grope out the disease, ‘Tis neither sin nor shame—Aesculapius did the same— Health is honest every way.26

As there were early modern taboos about doctors touching or viewing women’s bodies, this was damning satire.27 Although members of the Royal College of Physicians were often lampooned for every sort of vice, including “lecherous conduct, bad diagnoses and malpractice,” in the public mind, Matthew Lister seemed to have been especially notorious in his misconduct.28 In their less salacious moments, the young doctor and the Countess swapped medical recipes, Lister leaving forty-two pages of medicaments in interspersed code, perhaps in tribute to the countess of whom Aubrey wrote “Her Honour’s genius lay as much towards chemistry

23 Anonymous, “The Progresse,” Folger MS V.b., ff. –, Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington D.C.; also in Bodleian MS Ashmole –, f. r. 24 I.e. clyster, enema, suppository. 25 Pipe: literally, clyster-pipe, used for administering a clyster; however, the bawdy connotation here is obvious. 26 Bodleian MS Rawlinson , ff v–r. See Pady, “Medical Satire,” –. A version also appears in MS Additional , f. v, Cambridge University Library. See Harkness, “A View,” . 27 Duden, Woman, –. 28 Harkness, “A View,” .



chapter two

as poetry”.29 The Countess associated with many “chymists” including Adrian Gilbert, the half-brother of William Gilbert, Thomas Moffet, as well as Matthew Lister.30 Many of Lister’s prescriptions reflect his interest in Paracelsian “chymical medicine” including such ingredients as mercury to treat syphilis and vitriol (sulfuric acid), although some were traditional folk remedies—for example advocating a plaster of egg and honey for a woman’s sore breast. Sir Matthew’s colleague and fellow court physician, Theodore Turquet de Mayerne (–/), who also was a “chymical physician,” left manuscripts containing a number of Lister’s prescriptions.31 Influenced by his great-uncle who guided his education, Martin Lister would also complete his medical studies abroad and become an excellent “chymist” in his own right, using some of his great-uncles’ medicaments in his own prescriptions. One of Matthew’s efficacious recipes that his great-nephew used was for an eye ointment, which became quite famous. Hans Sloane (–), secretary and later President of the Royal Society, later publicized the remedy in his Account of a Medicine for Soreness, Weakness and other Distempers of the Eyes (London, ).32 Consisting of prepared “Tutty [zinc oxide], one ounce; prepared bloodstone [ferric oxide], two scruples; Aloes in fine powder, twelve grains;” mixed with Viper’s Fat “as is requisite to bring the whole to the consistence of a soft salve,” it was a popular patent medicine in the eighteenth century selling for one to two shillings per bottle.33 It is possible Martin Lister introduced it to Sloane, as he himself was using it to treat inflamed eyes caused by smallpox.34 Even the Country Housewife’s Companion () optimistically noted it: has cured many whose eyes were covered with opake films and cicatrices left by inflammations and apostumes of the cornea, many of whom were so totally deprived of sight, as to be under a necessity of being led to him; yet after some time could perfectly find their way without a guide. This liquid or thin salve is to be applied with a small hair pencil, the eye winking or a little open’d.35

29 Dr Matthew Lister, “Collectanea medica et chemica,” BL Sloane MS , ff. –b; Aubrey, Brief Lives, . 30 Hannay, “Countess of Pembroke,” . 31 Nance, “Lister, Sir Matthew,” Oxford DNB; Mayerne, “Recipes from Lister.” BL Sloane MS , ff. –, –. 32 Schiebinger, Plants, . 33 Anonymous, Toilet, . 34 Lister, Octo, . 35 Ellis, Country, .

early life and letters, –



Although we might find the therapeutic value of Matthew Lister’s medicament questionable, opthamologist James Ravin has noted its ingredients “can be beneficial.”36 Zinc oxide is used in opthalamologic and dermatologic medicines for its properties as a mild antiseptic; calamine lotion (% zinc oxide) is used to soothe the skin. Aloes, usually in the form of aloe vera, treat burns. As vipers were thought to be immune to their own poison, viper fat and flesh were utilized commonly as a therapeutic, composing one of “the most famous medications in the ancient world, theriac.”37 Advocated by the Roman physician Galen whose precepts of treatment guided the Royal College of Physicians, theriac was utilized extensively until , considered a universal panacea, an antidote to poison, and used to treat blindness as in Lister’s medicine. Matthew was not however able to save his beloved Countess from smallpox. After her demise in , he joined the royal household where he served Robert Cecil and Anne of Denmark. He lived in Covent Garden, having bought a substantial property in  on a twenty-one year lease from the Duke of Bedford with “ little houses containing  rooms beside a stable and hayloft, coach house and drying room, plot or yard used for laying of compost or dung to the said houses.”38 Matthew was clearly prosperous as the garden of his house was double the usual size, “nearly  feet long and  feet wide, with another -foot-square formal garden near the house.”39 His illustrious neighbors included John Parkinson, herbalist to Charles I and author of acclaimed botanical works.40 The Tradescants who served as the Royal Gardeners and owned “The Ark,” the first museum in England, also lived nearby, as did Turquet de Mayerne.41 Matthew Lister and Mayerne were not only neighbors and colleagues, but also friends, jointly proposing the formation of an English board of health in  to the crown in order to limit plague mortality; Matthew translated the proposal from French into English for Mayerne who was originally a court physician to the French King Henri IV.42 The board was to 36

Ravin, “Sir Hans Sloane,” –. Ravin, “Sir Hans Sloane,” . 38 Parkinson, Nature’s Alchemist, –. 39 Parkinson, Nature’s Alchemist, . 40 Parkinson, Nature’s Alchemist, . 41 Parkinson, Nature’s Alchemist, . 42 Cook, “Policing the Health,” –, particularly note . Mayerne’s paper was translated into English by order of the Privy Council of  March . See Acts of the Privy Council, June 1630 to June 1631, . 37



chapter two

make all decrees and statutes necessary for public health and safety, appoint officers of health, establish pest houses and a treasury, and punish offenders.43 Though the design was acclaimed, ultimately it was caught in monarchical bureaucracy and came to naught. Despite this setback, Matthew’s medical expertise was highly valued by the royal family. Lister was asked during his career as royal physician to provide testimony about the death of King James I, particularly about the rumor that he had been poisoned by the Duke of Buckingham. Apparently, when the King was languishing at Theobald’s suffering from a tertian ague, (a non-pestilential fever) the Duke had sent to one Dr Remington, the Earl of Warwick’s physician, a request for a posset drink and a medicinally-saturated plaster to treat the king.44 Buckingham claimed this was at the King’s request; Buckingham himself had recently been ill and these particular medicaments had helped him recover, so James desired them as well.45 Dr George Eglisham (fl. –), another of the royal physicians and a Scottish cryptoCatholic, described the affair in his sensationalist pamphlet, the Prodromus vindictae in ducem Buckinghamiae () later translated into English as The Forerunner of Revenge ().46 Eglisham related that “being the week after the king’s death at the Earl of Warwick’s house in Essex . . . [we] sent for Dr Remington who . . . said That one Baker, a servant of the Duke’s [of Buckingham’s] came to him in his master’s name and desired him if he had any certain specific against an ague, to send it him, and accordingly he sent him mithridate spread upon leather.”47 Mithridate was yet another name for theriac, which we have encountered before in Lister’s eye ointment. As Lawrence Brockliss and Colin Jones have demonstrated in their studies of early modern medicine at the French court, it was typical for royal patients to draw on a variety of expertise when the medicines of their court physicians failed, even trying remedies from empirics and quacks.48 James exhibited the same behavior when he used external consultants.

43

Cook, “Policing the Health,” . Rushworth, Historical,  and . 45 Rushworth, Historical, . 46 Eglisham, Forerunner. The imprint is likely false, and the book was probably published in the Netherlands. 47 Riddell, “Death,” . The primary source for the quotation (which Riddell did not provide) is Wilson, “Life and Reign,” : –. Wilson claimed to have received his information from some of Eglisham’s unspecified writings. 48 Brockliss and Jones, Medical World, . 44

early life and letters, –



After drinking his posset and having his plaster administered, the King unfortunately did not recover. The circumstances of his death seemed suspicious, and as a precaution, Lister and Eglisham kept a piece of the plaster after it was taken from the King’s corpse, and showed it to Dr Remington. Eglisham reported “Sir Matthew and I showing him a piece of the Plaster we had kept after it was taken off, [Remington] seemed surprised and offered to take his corporal oath that it was none of what he had given Baker, nor did he know what kind of mixture it was.”49 Eglisham averred that the Marquis of Hamilton was poisoned as well, and described in detail the grotesque postmortem changes exhibited by his body, as well as the “astonishment of the physicians and surgeons present, none of whom had ever seen comparable external signs, except for one who had been present at the opening of the body of the Earl of Southampton, another opponent of Buckingham, in Holland in .”50 Eglisham then accused Matthew Lister of being a creature of Buckingham who tried to quash any accusations of poisoning in either case; Eglisham wrote, “Doctor Leester . . . seeing Doctor Moore and others so amazed at the sight of my lord’s body, drew first him a syde and then the others one after another, and whispered them in the eare to silence them.”51 Nothing happened immediately, but after the coronation of Charles I, the House of Commons convened to impeach Buckingham, and one of the articles was based upon the disputed medicine.52 Though the autopsies proved that neither James nor the Marquis had been poisoned, and Buckingham’s impeachment case came to an end due to Charles I’s intervention, the circumstances were always considered a bit suspicious. As legal proceedings were instituted against Eglisham for libel against Buckingham, he moved to Brussels to escape punishment where he remained until his death.53

49

Wilson, “Life and Reign,” . Eglisham, Forerunner, , as noted by Harley, “Political Post-mortems,” . 51 Harley, “Political Post-Mortems,” . 52 Rushworth, Historical, , and Riddell, “Death,” . 53 Furdell, Royal doctors, . Eglisham continued to petition the Stuarts about James I’s mysterious death and for a royal pardon. See “To the most honorable the Nobility Knights and Burgesses of both houses of Parliament in the Kingdome of England: The humble supplication of Mr. George Eglisham doctor of Phisick,” BL MS Sloane , ff. –, and “Petition of George Eglisham to Charles I praying for justice upon the Duke of Buckingham . . .” BL MS Sloane , ff. –. 50



chapter two

As a reward for his honesty or perhaps discretion, as well as his foresight and services to the Royal Family, Matthew Lister was knighted by Charles I on  October .54 Sir Matthew went on to prove his loyalty to the Stuarts during the thick of the English Civil War. In the summer of , Queen Henrietta Maria had traveled to France to raise money (unsuccessfully) to support her husband’s troops. She came back to England via Yorkshire with the intention of rejoining her husband in Oxford, but the fighting proved too dangerous for her to make the trip. Stuck in the temporary haven of Exeter, she was pregnant, past her due date, and frantic with worry, and many thought she would not survive the birth. Charles sent a panicky letter from Oxford to Matthew Lister and Mayerne: “. . . pour L’Amour de moy alle trover ma Femme. C.R.” [for the love of me, go find my wife].55 Though Lister was nearly eighty and Mayerne quite corpulent and not a good traveler, the two doctors took the Queen’s coach and covered the  miles from London in seven days.56 When they arrived, Henrietta Maria apparently told the two elderly physicians that she thought she was being driven mad, whereupon Mayerne replied, “Madame, you already are.”57 Nonetheless, the physicians’ skill and calm demeanor had a happy result—her last child was delivered safely, and Henrietta Maria escaped back to France. Sir Matthew’s intimate involvement in royal business meant that in the Interregnum he became a target of Parliament’s “Committee for the Advance of Money,” which fined royalists with property worth more than £ to raise funds for the war.58 His friend Mayerne already had to pay Parliament £, half the worth of his estates.59 In July , Sir Matthew was served with a notice that assessed his Covent Garden property as worth £, but he only was penalized £; one of his

54

Nance, “Lister, Sir Matthew,” Oxford DNB. Green, ed., Letters of Queen Henrietta Maria, . Mayerne’s transcription of Charles I’s letter to him is in one of his case books, BL Sloane MS , f. . 56 Parkinson, Nature’s Alchemist, . 57 Nance, Turquet de Mayerne, . Also in Hamilton, Henrietta Maria, . 58 Green, ed., Calendar, : –. 59 Parkinson, Nature’s Alchemist, . See also Record of the Committee for the Advance of Money,  July , PSO /, : , National Archives, Kew. Mayerne however was not without friends. On  May , the Parliament upheld a tax exemption granted to him by the monarchy in ; the vote “manifested no small token of respect to an aged servant of the Stuarts.” Mayerne had been invited to England from France as a royal physician with the understanding he would be free from taxation. See Nance, Turquet de Mayerne, . 55

early life and letters, –



many nephews, Sir Martin Lister, “was on his way to becoming an officer in General Fairfax’s [parliamentary army],” and this protected the old doctor from the committee.60 Deciding that this brush with ruin was closer than he would like, Sir Matthew contemplated retreating up north, having previously gone into partnership with his brother, one Captain Martin, to buy property for his retirement. Captain Martin was a skilled soldier who fought in Brittany and Ireland for Queen Elizabeth, and he was M.P. for the borough of Clitheroe, Lancashire from –.61 In February , Sir Matthew and his brother had also purchased the manor of Thorpe Arnold in Leicestershire from one Arnold Wayring and his wife, Captain Martin staying on the lands, while Matthew remained in London.62 Captain Martin and Sir Matthew also co-owned the highly fashionable gentry house Friars Head, in Winterburn, Yorkshire (Figure ).63 The house is still extant, its symmetrical facade demonstrating a complex system of proportional ratios as well as some unusually ornate and truncated ogee windows and door lintels. As architectural historian Peter Leach commented, “The significance of this location however lies in the architectural identity of Friars Head as a whole, for in hardly any respects is it a building of regional character but rather is one which accords with sophisticated nationwide norms of Jacobean country-house design.”64 Considering the Listers were a family of national and regional significance, it is not surprising that they would be privy to the latest architectural trends.65 Sir Matthew may have had

60 Parkinson, Nature’s Alchemist, . Sir Martin Lister was a Commissioner of Parliament for levying money in Leicestershire in – for Assessments in Lincoln in /, and for raising Militia in Counties Leicestershire and Lincoln from –. See Lister-Denny, Memorials, . 61 Lister-Denny, Memorials, –, and Lipscomb, History and Antiquities, :  and . Though Matthew was avowedly loyal to the royal family, Captain Martin argued vehemently for parliamentary rights, spoke out against the Act of Union in the reign of the Scottish and English King, James VI and I, and indirectly defended a libelous speech made against the Scots by Buckinghamshire M.P. Sir Christopher Piggott. See Official minute book, : –. 62 Goulding, “Notes on the Lords,” . 63 See for instance the copy bargain and sale dated August , MS ////  in the Bradfer-Lawrence collection, York Archaeological Society, Leeds, involving Captain Martin Lister and Sir Matthew Lister concerning the enclosure of lands in Winterburn. See also Lister-Denny, Memorials, . 64 Leach, “Rose Windows,” . 65 In , Sir Martin Lister sold the house to Sir Thomas Hartop for £,. The deed of sale is in MS /, Yorkshire Archaeological Society, Leeds.



chapter two

Fig. 

Friarshead, Yorkshire. Photograph by the author.

other reasons than his safety for moving north. The Listers also owned leases on church lands, iron and coal mines near Craven, Yorkshire, dating back before the Norman Conquest, and their mines in the parish of Colne in Lancashire were of Tudor origin.66 Perhaps Sir Matthew reasoned that a permanent move up north would allow him to supervise more closely the mines to prevent their valuable ore from falling into Parliamentary hands. His concerns about the outcome of the war drove his acquisition of the manor of Burwell and Calceby in Lincolnshire in  for £,, a substantial estate with , acres of land, and approximately , acres of meadow and pasture.67 The purchase of Burwell was fortuitous for Lister, as its previous owner, Sir Thomas Glemham, was an active partisan of Charles I and required the proceeds to “fight for

66 Farrer and Brownbill, A History, –. In  the king granted a lease of the sea-coal mine of Colne to Christopher Lister, a family ancestor, as well as the fishery there, and quarries of slate stones at Accrington and elsewhere. A similar lease was granted to William Lister in . William subsequently left these assets to Michael Lister, the brother of Sir Matthew Lister. See Will of William Lister,  September  in Brown, ed., Yorkshire Deeds, : . 67 Goulding, “Notes on the Lords,” .

early life and letters, –



Church and King” as the Civil War loomed.68 Matthew would eventually retire to Burwell, but was apparently worried about his safety during the Parliamentary ascendancy in the war, so he built an escape route there; the ruins of Burwell House still have a locked entrance to an underground passage that runs between the house and the church.69 Access to the church was under the chancel, but it is presently sealed with stone slabs. Sir Matthew’s will also suggested disruptions during the s, describing “that poore remnant of plate which is left to me since these troubles.”70 His brother Captain Martin also retired quietly to the countryside, spending his last days at Thorpe Arnold, recovering use of the property after having leased it for twenty-one years to a local gentry family. Captain Martin Lister was buried at Thorpe Arnold on  September , and left his one-third part of Thorpe Arnold to his nephew Sir Martin Lister who had intervened with Fairfax to save Matthew Lister’s estate.71 Due to his past kindness and allegiance with Fairfax, Sir Martin Lister, the father of the subject of this biography, did extraordinarily well in his inheritance. To avoid further forfeiture of his assets at Burwell when the royal party was broken in Lincolnshire in , Matthew Lister also made over his portion of the Burwell and Thorpe Arnold estates to Sir Martin and his heirs, though he retained their use during his lifetime.72 This arrangement became permanent when Sir Matthew died at the age of eighty-seven in , his longevity attributed to the fact he was “not abstemious, but in bounds.”73 Sir Matthew’s long-suffering wife Lady Anne received the rent of his London “house in the Strand over against the new Burse,” an annuity of £ from his lands in Thorpe Arnold, and “one fringed satin gowen” lined with “polecat” fur (ermine).74 In contrast to his wife’s rather unpromising legacy, as Sir Matthew was childless, most of the rest of his estate went to his favorite nephew. Thus, Sir Matthew’s houses in “Coven Garden” and his “manors, lands, tenements, &c., in Thorpe Arnold, Burwell,

68

Goulding, “Notes on the Lords,” . Parker, “Further Notes,” . Parker’s observations were confirmed by a personal visit to the parish church. 70 Will of Sir Matthew Lister,  August , PROB /, sig. , Public Record Office, Kew. 71 Lister-Denny, Memorials, . 72 Goulding, “Notes on the Lords,” . 73 Lister-Denny, Memorials, , footnote . 74 Will of Sir Matthew Lister. 69



chapter two

Calceby, Muckton and Authorpe” were bestowed upon his “loving nephew Sir Martin Lister,” his sole executor and residuary legatee.75 Immediately after his Uncle Matthew’s death—Matthew had requested that his house would be kept “three monethes after my decease that my Servants may have time to Dispose of themselves”— Sir Martin Lister moved to Thorpe Arnold to assume his inheritance as lord of the Manor.76 Sir Martin Lister had been at Trinity College, Oxford, taking his degree on  October , and he was knighted by Charles I in  (Figure ).77 Shortly afterwards, he married his first wife the Honorable Mary Wenman (d. c.) of Thame Park, Oxfordshire. Mary was the daughter of the local worthy Viscount Richard Wenman, and through her grandmother was distantly related to Edward III though his son Lionel Plantagenet.78 Her father’s name however betrayed humbler origins, “wenman” deriving from the family’s early association with wool wagons, or wains. They were likely to have been yeoman traders in the sixteenth century whose wealth and power came from Cotswold wool.79 Their first child Richard was born at Ambrosden, Oxfordshire on  July , and perhaps because of his wife, Sir Martin remained in the general area for quite some time, relocating to the neighboring county of Buckinghamshire, settling somewhere near the manor of Radclive, and becoming one of the patrons of the living of Stoke Poges.80 He also entered into an indenture agreement with the Wenmans for lands in Brackley, Northamptonshire that is immediately over the Buckinghamshire border.81 Though Sir Martin and Mary had three more daughters—Mary, Dorothy, and Agnes—the marriage was destined to be a short one, Mary dying in childbirth in . With four young children to raise, Sir Martin apparently did not spend a good deal of time grieving and looked for a suitable partner who would be a loving mother and bring a sufficient dowry into the bargain. Susanna Temple (–) seemed to fit the bill. The only daughter of Sir Alexander Temple of Etchingham, Sussex, Susanna

75

Will of Sir Matthew Lister. Will of Sir Matthew Lister. 77 Foster, Alumni Oxoniensies, : . 78 For Mary Wenman’s pedigree, see Lister-Denny, Memorials, . 79 Thame Local History Society, http://www.thamehistory.net/people/Wenmans .htm. 80 Diocese of Lincoln Presentation Deed, , n. , Lincolnshire Archives, Lincoln. 81 E(B) ,  October , Northamptonshire Record Office, Northampton. 76

early life and letters, –

Fig. 



Engraved portrait of Sir Martin Lister (–). Collection and photograph of the author.



chapter two

was widowed, having been married to Sir Gifford Thornhurst (– ), Bt., of Agnes Court, Kent, in  for all of two months before he died tragically young.82 Despite their short union, she gave hope of further issue, already having had one daughter, Frances. As a young lady, Susanna been a maid of honor for Queen Anne of Denmark in James I’s reign, and was considered “the most distinguished beauty of her time.”83 Historian Jeffrey Carr speculates that Sir Martin may have met Susanna through his uncle Matthew Lister, who, as we have seen, served as physician to Anne of Denmark.84 There are indeed numerous surviving portraits of Susanna, the earliest a charming image by painter Cornelius Johnson (–). Born in London to Flemish parents, Johnson trained in Holland, his numerous portraits of court society and rich gentry characterized by individuality and sensitivity.85 One of Johnson’s earliest works, his portrait of Susanna is in a head-and-shoulders format in an oval trompe l’œil opening, painted to resemble a stone niche (Figure ). She was twenty when she sat for Johnson, and wore a delicate and high lace ruff, a feather fascinator in her hair, and her earrings sported martlets, heraldic birds from the Temple coat-of-arms. Susanna’s frank appraisal of the viewer and lovely youthful energy that nearly bursts out of the confines of the portrait made it a popular image, Robert White reproducing her visage as an engraving. The engraving of Susanna appears in several collectors’ inventories, including Samuel Pepys’s Library; Pepys was known to have an eye for court beauties and collected the early modern equivalent of “pin-up” girls.86 One year later, Susanna was painted by another Flemish artist, Marcus Gheerhaerts the Younger (/–) (Figure ).87 Standing on a costly “Turkey carpet,” she wore the same feather in her hair, and her costume was a rich red, red textiles being traditionally celebratory and a mark of high status.88 Her large drop pearl earrings and ring on her hand were threaded through with black ribbons. These

82

Lister-Denny, Memorials, –. Britton, Beauties, : . 84 Carr, “The Biological Work,” . 85 Hearn, “Cornelius Johnson.” 86 Latham, Catalogue, –, entry # /b. 87 The portrait could also be the “School of Gheerhaerts.” Karen Hearn of the National Gallery, an expert on the painter, has reason to doubt the work was painted by the master himself. Email message to author,  February . 88 Hearn, Gheerhaerts, . 83

early life and letters, –

Fig. 



Susanna Temple, later Lady Lister by Cornelius Johnson, . © Tate, London, .

black ribbons could “set off a lady’s fashionably white skin” and slender fingers, but they were often used to anchor and display a piece of jewelry inherited from a parent.89 Susanna is also portrayed placing her hand on a sumptuously fringed and draped table with a pair of unworn gloves on its top. Gloves were often given as wedding gifts or expressions of affection, and as Susanna was at this point unmarried, she was giving a visual signal that she had apparently not yet given her glove to a suitor. As scholars Peter Stallybrass and Ann Rosalind Jones indicated, gloves also materialized status, “gentling” the hand of the gentry, drawing “attention to the hands while making the hands useless, or useful only or putting on or taking off a glove, or for holding

89

Hearn, Gheerhaerts, .



chapter two

Fig.  Susanna Temple, later Lister attributed to Marcus Gheerhaerts the Younger, . © Christie’s Images Limited .

early life and letters, –



gloves or handkerchiefs or fans or flowers.90 The iconography of her portrait demonstrated Susanna’s wealth, availability, and value to a future suitor on many levels. After marrying Susanna in , Sir Martin Lister spent some years as a gentleman-farmer living near Radclive, Buckinghamshire, actively involved in the administration of his estates, and running his own “beasts” [cattle] on his lands.91 In , he became MP for the market town of Brackley, Northamptonshire, just over the Buckinghamshire border, and he served in the Long Parliament until August . While in Parliament, Sir Martin was on several financial committees in  and  involved in sequestering funds from imprisoned royalists and it was then that he intervened on Matthew Lister’s behalf; the monies from unluckier parties were given to “the Lord Fairefaxe, for the Use of the Forces under his Command.”92 In this capacity, Sir Martin often worked with Thomas Widdrington, who would later serve as Cromwell’s Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer and on the Council of State. Like Widdrington, Sir Martin refused to have any role in the trial of the king, though his brother-in-law, James Temple (–), was an Independent and one of the regicides. Sir Martin himself was also one of the Commissioners for raising troops in the West Riding of Yorkshire in . His son Richard by his first wife was Colonel of the trained bands of Leicestershire for Parliament during the war, and was the Parliamentary commissioner for militia in the county for /.93 Sir Martin’s cousin Frances also married John Lambert, the famous general in the Parliamentary forces under Cromwell, Cromwell witnessing their marriage in Thornton-in-Craven church in .94 This marriage symbolized a long-standing familial connection between the Lamberts and Listers that dated to the early sixteenth century. Sir Martin’s father William had helped finance John Lambert’s education at Trinity College, Cambridge, and the Inns of Court, and “the Lister network was essential to Lambert’s social and ideological development . . . not only at a personal level but in terms of his future standing

90

Stallybrass and Jones, “Fetishizing,” . Lister-Denny, Memorials, ; Carr, “The Biological Work,” . 92 Firth and Rait, eds, Acts and Ordinances, : , , , , , , , , , ; : , , . Lister began his committee work in August , and he continued serving the Parliamentary side until March  when the parliamentary militia was disbanded in the Restoration settlement. 93 Lister-Denny, Memorials, ; Carr, “The Biological Work,” . 94 Parish Register of Kirkby Malhamdale, . 91



chapter two

and role in society.”95 Through the Listers, Lambert was related to Lord Ferdinando Fairfax of Denton Hall, who commanded the Northern Association Army at the start of the Civil War, as well as his son Sir Thomas Fairfax who later commanded the New Model Army.96 Thus, with the exception of court physician Matthew Lister, the family was firmly Parliamentarian, which as we will see had implications for its economic fortune after the Restoration.97 . The Birth of a Naturalist After he inherited the manor at Thorpe Arnold, Leicestershire, in , Sir Martin settled there until the Restoration, when he, like his uncle previously, moved up north to Burwell to escape political vicissitudes. In the midst of all this political maneuvering and displacement, Sir Martin and Susanna managed to have ten children, their fourth child the Martin Lister of this biography. Little is known about Martin Lister’s upbringing in Buckinghamshire and then Leicestershire, but it is certain that, as a younger brother who would not inherit the bulk of the estate, he would receive an education to prepare him for a profession. Correspondence from his mother indicates that despite some highly irregular spelling and spindley handwriting, she was quite literate, so it is entirely probable that she introduced Martin to the rudiments of reading and was responsible for his basic religious and moral education through the psalms and the testament.98 It is also possible that Martin had a private tutor from an early age to help him “tackle reading and writing separately and in sequence”; the antiquarian Anthony à Wood stated that Martin’s great uncle Matthew closely supervised his education and certainly would have had the means to provide such private instruction.99 After two to three years of reading and penmanship practice to learn to “lean softly upon his pen,” Martin

95

Farr, “Education,” –; Farr, “Kin, cash,” –. See Farr, John Lambert, . Farr, John Lambert, . The kinship was through a branch of the Listers in the West Riding of Yorkshire in Westby. 97 “House of Commons Journal Volume :  April ,” –; “House of Commons Journal Volume :  October ,” –. 98 Mendelson and Crawford, Women, . 99 Cressy, Literacy, . Wood, Athaenae Oxonienses, : . 96

early life and letters, –



went to the grammar school at Melton Mowbray, two miles down the road from Thorpe Arnold.100 Melton Mowbray was then, as it is now, a prominent market town in Leicestershire known for foxhunting, Stilton cheese, pork pies, fairs on the Tuesday after Twelfth Day, in Whitsun Week, and on St Lawrence’s Day, and its grammar school.101 Taken over by the crown in  from the French Cluniacs, the grammar school, like most others, was dedicated to the teaching of Latin and the study of the classics as the gateway to a professional career. During most of the seventeenth century the school was housed in the northern transept of St Mary’s parish church to save the town the expense of constructing a separate building (Figure ).102 It is still possible to see the outline of the builtup door to the classroom from the Church Walk in Burton Street. Martin attended Melton School from / to , and he would have had three different schoolmasters. His first teacher was Mr Humfrey who was appointed as a new graduate from Cambridge in  at a salary of £ s. d., which, though meager overall, was on the higher end for a schoolmaster.103 Humfrey stayed thirty years at the school, his loyalty perhaps not only due to his love of teaching, but out of sheer necessity. As historian Brian Simon has indicated in his study of seventeenth-century Leicestershire schools, from –, there were more graduates from Cambridge than ever before, the level not attained for another two hundred years; Melton School itself had  university entrants from –.104 As a result, “there were few avenues of employment open to these university trained men except minor offices in the church or teaching.”105 Robert Burton, a Leicestershire native, lamented the scholar’s lot in his Anatomy of Melancholy:

100

Hoole in his A New Discovery, , states “for thus learning to read English perfectly I allow two or three years time so that at seven or eight years of age a child may begin Latin”; cited in Cressy, Education, . 101 Dates of fairs were from Nichols, History and Antiquities, : . 102 Corfe, School, . 103 Corfe, School, . 104 Simon, “Leicestershire Schools,” . Elizabeth Leedham-Green indicates that “the number of matriculations at Cambridge in  amounted to . Except in  and , when those who had been prevented by plague from matriculating in the previous year were also entered, this figure was not to be equaled until .” See Leedham-Green, Concise History, . 105 Simon, “Leicestershire Schools,” .



chapter two

Fig.  St Mary’s, Melton Mowbray. Site of Melton School, Martin Lister’s grammar school. Image . Shutterstock images. What course shall he take, being now capable and ready? The most parable and easy, and about which many are employed, is to teach a school, turn lecturer or curate, and for that he shall have a falconer’s wages, ten pound per annum and his diet, or some small stipend, so long as he can please his patrons or the parish.106

The overabundance of applicants for teaching positions did mean that the quality of instruction Lister received would have been exceptional, especially after Mr Humfrey retired in , and Mr Henry Stokes replaced him. Stokes was a Melton native, the eldest son of a local blacksmith, his intellectual gifts leading him to be admitted as a sizar

106

Burton, Anatomy, .

early life and letters, –



of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, receiving his B.A. in /.107 In , Stokes moved to be master of Grantham School in Lincolnshire where one of his pupils was Sir Isaac Newton; it was Stokes’s intervention with Newton’s mother which assured the young genius went to Cambridge rather than being confined to managing Woolsthorpe, the family’s Lincolnshire farm.108 Stokes voluntarily resigned Grantham School in December , returning to Melton School where he was reappointed master for life at a salary of £, with a sweetener of a house free from taxes (taxes were approximately one-quarter of the salary) and free from the quarter of soldiers.109 Certainly from the salary offer, it seems that Stokes was, as contemporary William Stuckley stated, “reputed to be a very good scholar, & an excellent schoolmaster.”110 Lister would have benefited enormously from his instruction. Humfrey, Stokes, and then one “Mr Barwick” followed a traditional curriculum, teaching Martin and his hundred other classmates how to read, write, and speak the Latin language.111 They would have introduced their pupils to the poetry of the ancients, theology, and taught some Greek and Hebrew. Martin would also have learned the composition of Greek and Latin verse, epigrams, and expository essays on oratorical themes, and how to keep a commonplace book of useful phrases and rhetorical tropes and figures to ornament his prose. His habit of keeping a notebook to record snippets from his reading and his field observations was formed early. More importantly, Lister was also inculcated with principles of religion, good behavior, and civility; his admission register to Cambridge recorded he was “bred” at Melton School after all, the implication being that his long education molded and transformed his character positively and thoroughly.112 As historian Keith Thomas indicated, it was thought the “job could best be done by what the French historians call scolarisation, taking education out of the household, segregating the young from the influence of their homes; of women; of their less fortunate contemporaries (for grammar schoolboys were warned to avoid “needless” association with

107

Corfe, School, . Corfe, School, . 109 Corfe, School, . 110 William Stukeley’s memoir of Newton, sent to Richard Mead in four installments ( June to  July ), each with a covering letter to Mead. MS Keynes  (part ), f. , King’s College Library, Cambridge. 111 Mayor, ed. Admissions, . 112 Mayor, ed. Admissions, . 108



chapter two

“apprentices and idle boys”); and even of the vernacular, for in most grammar schools the older pupils were supposed to speak Latin at all times, both in and out of school.”113 As part of this “proper breeding” the teaching of Latin, in the words of Walter Ong, was indeed a “puberty rite, designed to provide selected youths with a painful initiation into socially reputable but essentially non-functional mysteries.”114 In addition to the disciplining of the mind that learning Latin entailed, it is evident that Lister learned his lessons in languages well, for the Latin style in his later scientific works is exceptional and thoroughly peppered with references to the classics in the original Greek. He may have attained a basic command of French which would serve him well as he would later translate French scientific works, get his medical training in Montpellier, and write memoirs of his travels to Paris in . In addition to these humanist disciplines, Stokes added some practical arithmetic to the Melton curriculum for his prospective farmers and land owners. His lessons were comprised “mostly about measurement of areas and shapes, algorithms for surveying, marking fields by the chain, calculating acres (though the acre still varied from one county to the next, or according to the land’s richness).”115 Stokes also offered more than a farmer would need: “how to inscribe regular polygons in a circle and compute the length of each side, as Archimedes had done to estimate pi.”116 Though the schoolmaster’s efforts worked their magic on Newton, Lister was never one to evince mathematical gifts; later in life, he found the Newtonian medicine of Archibald Pitcairne or Richard Mead that incorporated higher mathematics incomprehensible and ill considered.117 . Lister’s Years at Cambridge, 1655–1663 After completing his education at Melton, Martin was admitted to St John’s College, Cambridge at the age of sixteen118 (Figure ).

113

Thomas, Rule, . Ong, “Latin Language Study,” . 115 Gleick, Newton, . 116 Gleick, Newton, . 117 Lister’s letters to and from Thomas Smith in  complain particularly about the Newtonian physicians. See MS Smith , ff. –, and Bodleian MS Lister , f. . 118 Mayor, ed., Admissions, . 114

early life and letters, –



Fig.  Seventeenth-century view of St John’s College, Cambridge. Image AN. © British Museum, London.



chapter two

Melton School seems to have had a special link with St John’s, many of its graduates attending university there, and Martin was no exception. He was admitted as a pensioner in , and his tutor was Henry Paman (bap. , d. ), the Linacre professor of “physick.” As an undergraduate at St John’s, Martin would have received a general education in the liberal arts, attending lectures in classics, ethics, logic, metaphysics, divinity, mathematics, philosophy, and astronomy. In doing so, he received a “generous Education in all kinds of Learning, for improving the Mind and Understanding, and enabling of it to exercise such a piercing Judgment and large Comprehension of so subtile and numerous natures and things whereof is requisite to the Art of Physick.”119 There was little or no formal instruction in medicine, and even as late as , the University calendar noted that “A student of medicine in this University is not required to attend any lectures but is left to acquire his knowledge from such sources as his discretion may point out.”120 As his interests in “physick” grew, Martin may have sought advice or informal instruction from Francis Glisson, who held the Cambridge Regius Professorship from –, and who was one of the rare exceptions to the mediocrities who taught the medical course. The ten volumes of his papers that have survived testify to the care with which he taught his students, as well as to the innovative nature of his research, lectures, and formal disputations.121 Martin may also have received such an education informally from his tutor Henry Paman, the renowned physician. The novelist and poet, Jane Barker, in a  poem praised him as “Ah happy Paman, mightily approv’d, Both by thy Patients, and the Poor belov’d.”122 Though Paman originally entered Emmanuel College to study medicine, he graduated M.A. from St John’s, became a fellow, graduated M.D. from Oxford, and held the Linacre lectureship in medicine. Paman eventually served as public orator for the University from –, evidencing an elegant Latinity in his eight speeches.123 With the assistance of his former tutor and patron William Sancroft (–) who would become Archbishop of Canterbury, Paman eventually became

119

Goddard, Discourse, . Winstanley, Unreformed Cambridge, . See also Rolleston, Cambridge Medical School, . 121 BL MS Sloane –. See Frank, “Science, Medicine,” . 122 Barker, Poetical, . 123 Moore, “Paman, Henry,” rev. Bevan, Oxford DNB. 120

early life and letters, –



professor of medicine at Gresham College, London, a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and L.L.D at Cambridge, before being appointed master of the faculties there by Sancroft. Though Paman did not publish medical treatises himself, he left behind a large amount of correspondence with Sancroft, colleagues at Cambridge, and with his colleague and friend Dr Thomas Sydenham, providing a prefatory letter to Sydenham’s work on venereal diseases.124 In the midst of a busy professional life, Paman amassed an enormous library of medical and scientific works—in this Sancroft, who also had an impressive library from which he often borrowed, may have influenced him. As well as gifts to Emmanuel College and the Royal College of Physicians, Paman left seventy-five books remaining at his death to St John’s, with £ to buy more. The works ranged from those in psychology (Robert Burton’s Anatomy of melancholy, ), to works in intestinal medicine (Thomas Willis’s Diatribæ duæ medico-philosophicæ, quarum prior agit de fermentatione siue de motu intestino particularum in quovis corpore, nd ed., ), hematology (Jacques Chaillou’s Questions de ce temps sur l’origine et le mouvement du sang, ), anatomy (John Browne’s Myographia nova, or, A graphical description of all the muscles in the humane body, as they arise in dissection, ), and materia medica (Jean Prevost’s Medicina pauperum, cum censu venenorum & alexipharmacorum, ).125 Cartographic works, numismatic guides, volumes written by antiquarians, and other works of polite literature such as the letters of Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac completed his collection. Paman’s bibliophilia and breadth of interests seem to have inspired Martin Lister, who also demonstrated virtuosity in a variety of fields, and who, in turn, collected books with fervor, eventually leaving his library, as his tutor had done to a variety of institutions. In his correspondence and political behavior, Paman demonstrated an avowed loyalism to the Stuarts and was a devout Anglican. In his letters to Sancroft, Paman lamented the Calvinist religious services instituted at Cambridge during the Protectorate under the mastership of Thomas Hill. Paman subsequently rejoiced when by the late s, “the religious atmosphere at Trinity had shifted away from sectarian 124

Pechey, ed., Works of Sydenham, . “Henry Paman,” Special Collections, St John’s College, Cambridge. http://www .joh.cam.ac.uk/library/special_collections/early_books/pix/provenance/paman/ paman.htm. 125



chapter two

Puritanism.”126 Paman wrote, “After soe long banishment the common prayer last Thursday at night entered into Tr: Chappell, and has once more consecrated it. Dr. Hill next morning they say snuffed; Hee thought sure his incense would not ascend with strange fire, and presently swept the chappell with an exposition.”127 Paman would later resign his professorship after Sancroft refused to swear an oath of loyalty to the newly installed William III.128 Like Paman, Martin also was a royalist and Anglican, and, though some of his beliefs may have been due to the influence of his greatuncle Matthew, it is possible Paman may also have shaped the thinking of his student; St John’s was also the most avowedly royalist of all the colleges in Cambridge in the civil-war era.129 During the Civil War, many Royalists at Cambridge had abandoned a career in the church or in government, pursuing scientific studies or medicine. In , physician and natural philosopher Walter Charleton wrote, “Our late Warrs and Schism, having almost wholly discouraged men from the study of Theologie; and brought the Civil Law into contempt: the major part of young Schollers in our Universities addict themselves to Physick.”130 Another commentator, Robert Sparkling, wrote “For Cambridge can never forget, that when her Theology and Law lay bleeding and expiring by the Swords of Rebels and Usurpers, Physic alone praeserved her perishing fame alive.”131 So, Martin may not have pursued medicine only out of personal interest; certainly through his great-uncle Matthew, Martin had the right connections and loyalties to be given a fellowship in physick by “his Majesties’ Command” at St John’s on  August  due to his “learning, civill behavior, and abilities.” Despite the fact that other candidates who had been ejected previously by Parliament in – and – were waiting to be restored to their fellowships, Lister’s appointment was made immediately “to the first voyd place.”132 126

Feingold, Before, . “Letter from Henry Paman to William Sancroft,  March ,” BL MS Harley  f.  r. For an analysis of the religious atmosphere at Trinity in the s and s see Hammond, “Dryden and Trinity,” –. 128 Moore, “Paman, Henry,” rev. Bevan, Oxford DNB. 129 Gascoigne, Cambridge, –. 130 Feingold, Before, . 131 Feingold, Before, . 132 “Cartularies and registers of college lands and goods, –,” St John’s College Archives, Cambridge, C., f. . The letter of royal mandate in the archives is a copy made for the college’s letter books. Leedham-Green, A Short History, . 127

early life and letters, –



In his political beliefs, Martin disagreed with his father. Though his son was in royal favor, Sir Martin faced a more uncertain future: we have seen that he was an avowed Parliamentarian, and he may have worried his estates would be subject to Royalist seizure. Greatuncle Matthew had died in , and upon the Restoration, Sir Martin moved Susanna and the rest of their children to Burwell, which he had inherited. Sir Martin, learning the lesson of his Uncle Matthew in the Parliamentarian ascendancy, was engaging in legal maneuvers to protect his property. On  June  Sir Martin transferred ownership of the village of Calceby and its surrounding lands to Drayner Massingberd of South Ormsby, a local worthy with whom he had served on the drainage board to regulate the water levels of the Lincolnshire Fens.133 Massingberd also held the inheritances of Lister’s daughters in surety until they reached their majority.134 In this manner, the land was shielded from any future seizure by the Royalist government. On  August , Sir Martin “leased” sizable tracts of lands surrounding Burwell, including the villages of Thorpe, Sutton, Cawthorp, Malmesgate, and Langdon to one John Boswell for one year for five shillings.135 The intention was to follow it with a release in order to convey the freehold ownership of the land back to the owner, which was the reason that the term of the lease and the rent specified were nominal. Again, the lease protected the estates from any possible seizure. By transactions such as these, and perhaps because of past family loyalties to the Stuarts, the Listers kept afloat economically as power dynamics shifted during the Restoration. In the meanwhile Martin continued happily as a fellow at St John’s. In addition to corn rents from the college estates, the College rental books showed he received an annual stipend of s. d, and bed and board.136 Lister also made good use of his annual book budget of s. d., and continued studies with Henry Paman. During his time at St

133

Goulding, “Notes on the Lords,” . “Jane Lister’s Acquittance for Papers of Sir Drayner Massingberd,” MM ///– , Lincolnshire Archive, Lincoln. 135 “Conveyance of Manor/Lordship of Calceby by Sir Martin Lister to Massingberd with acquittances and deedpoll,” Lincolnshire County Archives, Lincoln, reference /mm///a. Five shillings was worth approximately £. using the retail price index, and £ using average earnings. See Lawrence H. Officer, Measuring Worth. 136 “Bound annual accounts of the College (rentals) subsuming internal accounts of the junior bursar,” Reference number SB, St John’s College Archives, Cambridge University. 134



chapter two

John’s, Martin was apparently a popular fellow who formed several close friendships, one in particular with Thomas Briggs, another fellow at St John’s in physick.137 Briggs, appointed in , served as the junior bursar with Henry Paman that year, and was also of royalist persuasion. He published a Latin broadside poem in  drawing a correlation between the reestablished rule of Charles II, the Restoration settlement, and natural order, commenting Natura fecit sceptra, moderatur Deus [Nature has made the scepters, God guides].138 Briggs and Lister corresponded frequently when Lister made his journeys to Burwell to visit family, as well as when Lister left Cambridge to study in France, Briggs handling his bills of exchange in his role as senior bursar.139 Even several years later in , when both Lister and Briggs had long left Cambridge, his old friend continued to write him, asking “I would fayne know whether yu can give mee any fresher hopes of seeing yu that wee might discourse our old storyes and bee once more happy againe.”140 Martin also kept an active correspondence with his family, the letters showing him as a lively young man who was cherished by his family and friends and who was often sent tokens of their esteem. A number of care parcels from his mother made their way from Burwell to St John’s, including a “goose pye with a ducke in the belly,” and “the best venison we can get you, for the keeper . . . is so weake and lasie that he can get no does killed so that my husband is out of patience.”141 Venison was perhaps something Martin could not readily get in the dining hall, as it was a frequent request. A bit of an invalid herself at this stage in her life, Susanna also fussed over her son’s health; he was having trouble with asthma and hurt his arm, and her letters of motherly concern with their idiosyncratic spelling were frequent. She sent a letter to St John’s again in January, reporting that the venison was apparently still in short supply, and that Martin’s older brother William was to go on the journey to France with Sir George Hamilton; Will was pestering his father for thirty pounds as traveling 137

Le Neve and Hardy, Fasti Ecclesiae, . Briggs, Primaeva, frontispiece. Literally, nature has made the scepters, but God guides or moderates. Monarchical power (represented by the scepter) though conferred by nature via the accidents of birth are moderated and guided by God. 139 Briggs was junior bursar from –, and then senior bursar from –. My thanks to Malcolm Underwood, the archivist at St John’s College, Cambridge for this information. 140 Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. 141 Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. 138

early life and letters, –



money.142 His brother Matthew seemed to have been giving his parents particular trouble by general shiftlessness, not deciding on a vocation, and overstaying his welcome at relatives’ houses; Susanna lamented in another letter that his father was so exasperated with him “hee is about sending him to a plantation but cannot determine of any.”143 Matthew would go to France with Will, perhaps thought to be necessary to cure some adolescent angst.144 Susanna also mentioned in her correspondence that her “daughter Hamellton,” delivered a stillborn baby that was nine weeks premature and that “Sister Gregory” had just had a son.145 “Daughter Hamellton” was Frances Jennings (–), Susanna’s granddaughter by her first marriage. Frances was the older sister of Sarah Jennings (–) who would become Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough and who would exchange correspondence with Martin Lister throughout her exceptional life. On  May , Martin received his first letter from the seven-year-old Sarah with a rather unusual gift, a red wax seal with several blue silks which still survives attached to her note. The gift, described by her mother as a “bonde seal,” and as a “tockenne” from “litell Sarey,” would serve as a “wides” or widow’s mite until she herself was able to pay her respects in a more substantive manner.146 Frances, for her part, married Sir George Hamilton (–), a count and Marèchal de Camp. Before Frances’s marriage, she was a maid of honor at court and described as “La Belle Jenyns”; Philibert Comte de Grammont compared her to Aurora.147 After such extravagant praise, however, he added more honestly “there was something lacking in her hands and arms,” and that “her nose was not the most elegant and her eyes left something to be desired.”148 Frances’s portrait attributed to Gascars seems to confirm de Grammont’s latter assessment, though she did have masses of curly blond hair that was elaborately styled.149 John Evelyn called her a “Spriteful young Lady,” and Pepys recorded “What mad freaks the maids of honour at Court have:

142

Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. 144 Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. 145 Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. 146 Bodleian MS Lister , ff. –. 147 Hamilton, Memoirs, . 148 Hamilton, Memoirs, . 149 Frances Duchess of Tyrconnel as Flora, by Henri Gascars, Sotheby’s Picture Library, London. 143



chapter two

that Mrs Jennings, one of the Duchess’s maids” went to the theatre disguised: like an orange wench, and went up and down and cried oranges; till, falling down, or by some such accident, her fine shoes were discovered, and she put to a great deal of shame. that such as these tricks, being ordinary, and worse among them, thereby few will venture upon them for wives.150

Perhaps she was intending to follow in the footsteps of Nell Gywn, the mistress of Charles II who also began life as an orange-seller. After such a notorious life at court, Frances of course did manage to get married but, by , she was widowed with three children. Sir George was killed while serving under Luxembourg at Zebersteeg. When Charles II heard of her plight, his sympathy was such that he created her Countess of Bantry. “Sister Gregory” on the other hand, had a rather more typical, quieter, and financially comfortable life as a member of the landed gentry. She was Lister’s sister Susanna who married George Gregory, who would become the High Sheriff of Nottingham in .151 Her marriage settlement shows she brought a dowry of £,, paid by Sir Martin to Gregory at £ per year for fifteen years.152 The only letter from her to Lister that survives described the death of their sister Barbara of smallpox and her body’s internment at Burwell; Jane was apparently visiting and had escaped the disease.153 Susanna then noted “Mr Gregory has promised me that I shall see you this summer which doe please me very much.”154 Lister’s sisters apparently missed his presence deeply when he was at Cambridge. His little sister Jane was especially keen to hear from her older brother whom she plainly hero-worshipped. Jane wrote: Deare Brother, if love to an parson in the world would afford matter enoufe [enough] to fill a letter, it ware impossible for me to want when I wright to you; if I had not so dull a fance [fancy] I would not for a world haue you the leest doubtfull of the reall pation [passion] I have for you;

150 de Beer, ed., John Evelyn Diaries, : ; Warrington, ed., The Diary of Samuel Pepys, : . 151 See Lister-Denny, Memorials, . 152 “Settlement on the marriage of George Gregory, Esq. with Susanna Lister,”  April , . PG. ///. Lincolnshire Archives, Lincoln. 153 Bodleian MS Lister , f. . 154 Bodleian MS Lister , f. .

early life and letters, –



but if I do neglect wrighting to you, imagin tis to fetch you over to Chide me, which insteed of spoyling our mirth would hughly highten it, and make us much more hapy then we are, espetially she who is your reall affectionat sister and sarvant [servant] . . . We want no books yet. Pray you present my services to my Hant [aunt] and my cosen.155

Shortly after, upon not hearing from him, she tried again, writing: My father commanded me to let you know he hath sent you a ven[i] son pie it is the best he can get. My mother desires you to excuse her that she dos not writ now, she reserved your last letter. She writ to you the weeke before which she hopes you had. I cannot but wonder that I never heare from you, but I shall be very well satisfied if it be that you intend to Com[e] to Burwell this spring, which will be very Joyfull nuse . . . My Cousin Doll Hartopp desired to tell you that she feares you are angrie with her or else her letter is missing because she never hears from you.156

Lister apparently heeded his sister’s wishes and visited her at Burwell, but after he returned to Cambridge, Jane lamented, “I think you took my heart away with you . . .”157 It is not entirely known what Lister himself thought about being at Cambridge far from his family, though the letters from his lively niece Dorothy or “Doll” Hartopp indicate that he may have been a bit homesick.158 Doll was part of the prominent Hartopp family who lived in the environs of Thorpe Arnold, in the small village of Rotherby and whose arms are in a mourning hatchment in the Thorpe Arnold parish church.159 Doll wrote: “Dear Uncle Whith much impatience I haue long expec[t]ed what I have now receaued which was the happiness of a leter from you whearin you were pleased to say you lived in so malancolick a place that you could not tell how to write so as to entertain me.”160 To cheer him up perhaps, she continued “but I asure you (dearest uncle) that a leter from you is the wellcomest thing imaginable to me.” She then described the arrival of some visitors:

155

Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. 157 Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. 158 Dorothy Hartopp was the daughter of Martin’s half sister Agnes Lister and Sir William Hartopp of Rotherby. Agnes Lister was the daughter of Sir Martin Lister and Mary Wenman, his first wife. 159 King, St. Mary’s. This booklet is based on a series of articles printed in the Melton Times in . 160 Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. 156



chapter two wee are very mery att my lady delafountane but doe not goe so far as a courante or a french dance for being in the countrey we practis nothing but what in therin used: you giue me very great hope of seeing you here which I hope my grandfather will not be so cruell as to frustrate and when we have that hapiness of you if you will condecent to Danse a country danse whith us we shall be for you.161

Although there is little doubt Martin would have delighted in country dances with his sprightly niece, Lister’s father may have been discouraging his frequent visits home as unseemingly for a young gentleman who had to make his own way in the world. Appended to her letter in a different hand, perhaps by Dorothy’s father Sir William Hartopp, is an entreaty on the behalf of an unidentified “Mr Smith,” who would “be at Cambridge about Easter, to admit his son . . . who lost an opportunity wch cannot be retrieved.” The younger Smith was supposed to be serving as a sizar for one Mr Jenkins at Caius College, but as Jenkins was “somewhat unhealthy,” he would likely “discontinue” his studies, meaning Smith would lose his sizarship and his place. Lister’s older half-brother Richard married Frances Pate Smith, so there may have been a family connection; the Lister and Smith arms are also intertwined in the Thorpe Arnold Parish Church. It is more likely, however, that Smith was Edward Smith, the son of the clergyman of the same name in the Hartopps’ parish of Rotherby, Leicestershire; university records show that Smith, like Lister, had gone to Melton Mowbray Grammar School, and he was ultimately admitted as a sizar at Gonville and Caius on  March , receiving his B.A. in .162 The letter to Lister continued, “my desire to you on his behalf is that if any place came to yr notice wch may be fit for the lad and an ease to his father, you would think of him, and let him have yr best assistance wch I shall take as a great kindness to myself.” Just as Lister had been the recipient of patronage, now, as a Cambridge fellow, he was already in a limited position to be a patron to a clever young man who did not enjoy his privileges of birth.

161 Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. Lady de la Fontaine was Mary Noel, who was married to Sir Erasmus de La Fontaine and lived in the nearby village of Kirby Bellars, Leicestershire. Noel was the daughter of Edward Noel, second Viscount Campden. The Hartopps lived in Rotherby, three miles away. See Mosley, ed., Burke’s Peerage, : . 162 See Venn, Cantab Alum, : .

early life and letters, –



Smith would follow a church career, becoming ordained at York after getting his M.A.163 In doing so, he would have received strong encouragement from Cambridge, which had been founded with a monastic ideal in mind. For a bachelor or master like Lister who was interested in natural philosophy and medicine, it was not so straightforward. St John’s, like many of the colleges, had a statutory requirement that a fellow, “once he had reached a certain point in his career, either as measured by his degrees or by his seniority in the college, was required to enter [clerical] orders.”164 Generally this meant that there was a hiatus of three to ten years in between the baccalaureate and the time he was to find a permanent career.165 Lister’s interest in medicine also necessitated a long period of study. Under the ancient statutes of the university, a medical student was required to take an arts degree before beginning medical studies. The Elizabethan statutes of  removed this requirement; students were allowed to take the M.B. as their first degree after six years’ residence, or they had the choice of taking a B.A. and M.A. before proceeding to medical studies. Both Oxford and Cambridge “demanded a total of approximately fourteen years of study from the time a young man matriculated, seven in the arts course, and seven in medicine.”166 Many candidates realized it was cheaper and more efficient to travel to Europe where medical training and the degree could be obtained more quickly, usually with a comparable or even superior medical faculty.167 Medical education at Oxford and Cambridge, despite advances by Sydenham, Harvey, and Willis, also remained resolutely conservative, concentrating upon the dictates of Hippocrates and Galen; Frank stated that: with few exceptions, the Regius Professors of Medicine at both universities during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries were mediocre occupants of a recognized sinecure. Under such circumstances . . . the statutory lecture course for medicine was distinctly less innovative than it could have been.168

163 164 165 166 167 168

See Venn, Cantab Alum, : . Frank, “Science, Medicine,” . Frank, “Science, Medicine,” . Frank, “Science, Medicine,” . Axtell, “Education and Status,” . Frank, “Science, Medicine,” .



chapter two

It is little wonder that, as Axtell has noted, of the “ fellows and candidates of the College for whom the College historian William Munk has information from  to  . . . a little more than half, received their M.D. from Oxford () or Cambridge ().”169 The rest did their medical training abroad, and Martin also took this option. When not in his “melancholy cell” in college, as Dorothy described it, recommending others for positions, or dancing with his sisters or nieces, Martin was planning a trip to France in  to study medicine and to travel. He decided to continue his studies in Montpellier, though he never formally received his degree at the University there. As a foreigner and a Protestant, Lister could not enroll formally, but he did belong to an academy in association with other foreign students, and could observe closely what was taking place in studies in medicine and natural philosophy at the university. The course attracted students from throughout the Continent and England and was “considered at that time to be the best for preliminary medical studies.”170 His stay in Montpellier also further developed his interests and his discoveries in natural history, the subject of the next chapter.

169 170

Axtell, “Education and Status,” . Mellick, “Sir Thomas Browne,” .

CHAPTER THREE

FRENCH CONNECTION: THE VOYAGE TO MONTPELLIER,  . Introduction Lister traveled to Montpellier during the most convenient years for most gentlemen to travel abroad, between leaving university and settling down to married life.1 Not only was he traveling to earn professional credentials, but also to attain accomplishments becoming of a gentleman of quality, a cosmopolitanism to add polish to his English education. Sir Thomas Browne wrote to his son in , advising him to lose his pudor rusticus abroad by practicing a “handsome gard and Civil boldness which he that learneth not in France travaileth in vain.”2 While in France, Lister met influential naturalists such as Nicholas Steno and John Ray who would influence and shape his understanding of natural philosophy. With their patronage and tutelage, Lister made his first tentative scientific observations and began his critical analysis of the scientific and medical works of the ancients and moderns, ultimately devoting himself to medicine and natural history, the pole stars of his intellectual life. Montpellier was a popular choice for English medical students, not only affording the chance to learn the French language and politesse, but also possessing a fine university and renowned academies for foreign students in a beautiful setting with over  days of sunshine a year. Capital of the region of Languedoc, Montpellier is  years old and is known as the city of “water and light” due to its proximity to rivers and the Mediterranean.3 Vines, cypress, and olive trees complete its Italianate atmosphere. The city was prosperous from trading in spices and cochineal insects (found on the local oak trees), which were used to make scarlet dye for textiles. By the thirteenth century, Montpellier was also considered to have one of the finest medical schools

1 2 3

Warneke, Images, . Keynes, ed., Works of Browne, : –, as quoted in Warneke, Images, . Mellick, “Montpellier School,” .



chapter three

in Europe, surpassed only in its age by Salerno; the formal statutes of incorporation for the school at Montpellier date from . In particular, there were five Regius Professors, and the year-long course, which attracted students from throughout the Continent and England, was considered at that time to be the best for preliminary medical studies.4 Because the Regius Professorships were so prestigious, they tended to attract highly qualified physicians. As Elizabeth Williams has noted: The crown-sponsored chairs at the university were much-coveted posts; they carried with them a modest fixed salary of only six hundred livres, but this figure could rise to a fairly impressive three thousand livres with the addition of the casuel, fees collected from students when they matriculated and took exams. Their holders enjoyed other favors and perquisites too–especially exemption from taxation—similar to those reserved to nobles and to elements of the clergy.5

When the professors paraded once a year in their scarlet satin robes and ermine hoods, it was a matter of splendid ceremony and civic pride. Martin left the house in Burwell on  August  for his journey to France that lasted nearly three years.6 He made comprehensive notes of his journey in a pocket almanac entitled Every Man’s Companion: Or, A useful Pocket-Book which came complete with “a letter case or a Comb-case with other useful things.”7 The little octavo also advertised that it contained reusable pages of blank tables and a lead pencil, and, as the use of pencils was relatively uncommon, it advised to use “a piece of new bread, and rub upon the writing, and it will take it clean off. Perhaps to some this may seem idle and ridiculous: but it may easily be experimented, to satisfaction.”8 Nonetheless, as neither the pencil nor the tables were provided, Lister had to make do with a blotchy quill pen. He recorded in his notebook that he sailed on the Yarmouth brig Matthew bound for Bordeaux, conscientiously reading the History of the French Academy, as well as furtively perusing the entertaining and timelessly bawdy Satyricon of Gaius Petronius Arbiter (c. A.D. –)

4

Mellick, “Thomas Browne,” . Williams, “Medicine in Civic Life,” . 6 Bodleian MS Lister , f. . 7 Bodleian MS Lister . This is the last surviving example of this printed edition. 8 Bodleian MS Lister , f. A. For a history of table books, see Stallybrass, “Benjamin Franklin,” –. 5

french connection



to pass the time.9 The first critical edition of the Satyricon was published in  and it became a bestseller. Narrated by Encolpius whose name roughly translates as “crotch,” the work abounds with endless feasts, contemporary Roman slang, and tasteless ostentation. It was an entertaining work that would appeal to a young man to stave off boredom during travel. Lister reached London on  August and then sailed for Rye, reaching the port in six days. The ship was driven back from its channel crossing by storms three days later, and he was stuck in Weymouth for three weeks, making observations of Chesil Beach. Lister wrote: I observe that upon the Beech at Portland the noble stones were the longest upon the surface thereof that towards the top of the Beech they were much larger than those that were at the foot thereof. That they became smooth and round, from the continuall washing it gives upon them likewise that there suddaine fall and rushing downe one upon the other (whence hard) too is horrible noise.10

Lister was correct that the pebbles were graduated in size according to location, the flint and chert pebbles ranging from fist-sized near Portland Beach to pea-sized at Bridport.11 Thousands of years of storms sifted the size of the pebbles, and local fishermen and smugglers who landed at night were said to be able to ascertain their location by the grade of shingle.12 Despite the shore’s inherent scientific interest, one can imagine Martin’s impatience to get to France while watching the high, crashing waves grinding the rocks in an unsettled sea. Finally on  and then  September, the ship attempted to leave Weymouth, was turned back due to the weather, and “with gros hazard of our lives,” Lister boarded the frigate Dove for St Malo on the nineteenth.13 It was again driven back for three weeks by storms and moored in Guernsey, and a seasick Lister did not reach France until  October. Lister recorded that the captain of the ship, Mr Bat, was regaled with cheers and teasing when he finally reached his destination, the sailors remarking that Bat had had a grand affair with a

9 Bodleian MS Lister , ff. –. Lister’s reading material is also noted in Stoye, Travellers, . Petronius was an adviser to Nero, and his work satirized those around him and their way of life. 10 Bodleian MS Lister , f. . 11 Haslett, Coastal, ; Packham and Willis, Ecology, ; Tilley, Metaphor, . 12 Tilley, Metaphor, . 13 Bodleian MS Lister , f. , f. .



chapter three

“femme sans langue,” his silent Dove.14 Bat conquered his woman and the seas in the end. . Arrival into France After taking a land journey through the flat terrain of the Vendée from Rennes to Nantes, Lister arrived in Bordeaux and stayed for three months recuperating from his travels. He referred to himself as having a “very crazy body,” having problems with asthma throughout most of his life. The attacks apparently had worsened when he was at St John’s College. In a draft letter with many crossings out, insertions and blotches, he wrote from Bordeaux to an unknown recipient, most likely his tutor Henry Paman: Most reverend Sr—If I acquit my selfe very late of my duty, it is my ill happ and not my fault: my great indisposition of body I contracted at the Colledge was noe small trouble and hindrance to me in my pretended Voyage; and now I can say that I have set up my selfe in this Cittie where I purpose to rest my selfe a while, soe here the first moment I found my selfe in a tolerable condition to pay my respects and honour I beare you . . .15

He then remarked, “If I had my health as other men theirs, I should be undoubtedly as happy as they and instead of being a Stranger to my Religion and Country,” and laments that he could not assist when “you officiate at the Altar,” begging the recipient to “remember me there in your Prayers.”16 Conduct manuals and travel essays commonly advised that the best way for a young Protestant to avoid the “snares of popery” was to have a thorough foundation in the Protestant faith, and Lister was clearly in need of some extra spiritual succor.17 It was obvious he was not only ill, but also homesick and afraid. His curiosity eventually won out over his self-pity and fears for his soul. As Lister was in Bordeaux, he made several comments in his notes on the terroir and its effect on wine production, noting the site-specific qualities of the best vineyards. Wine would always be an interest in his life, and in his voyage to France in  when he was

14 15 16 17

Bodleian MS Lister , f. . Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. Bodleian MS Lister , f. . Warneke, Images, .

french connection



an old man, he extensively and perceptively discussed the delights of oenology.18 Even as a young student, he realized well a slight difference in amount of sunshine or soil minerals made a large difference in the grapes’ sugar production and the wine’s quality. Lister wrote in his notebook: The wines which they are at Bordeaux . . . groweth in pebbly ground and it is there observed that the earth which is fullest of small white pebbles produceth the best wines . . . The ground on this side or river is very low and affordeth much better wines than the other, and is mountainous. The wines on the other side if they be of redde plants are often of a darke colour.”19

He was attentive in his observations as the best left-bank wines usually feature Cabernet Sauvignon from gravelly terroirs, and wines of the right bank tend to favor Merlot (or occasionally Cabernet Franc), and here limestone and clay (and sand) are more prominent.20 Leaving Bordeaux on  January /, Lister left for Montpellier on a direct and efficient route that followed the River Garonne and then the old Roman road Via Aquitania, no doubt making up for lost time.21 He made stops with little comment at Cadillac, St Hilaire de Lusignan, Finhan, Toulouse, Villefranche-de-Lauragais, Carcassone, and Narbonne, reaching his destination on  January.22 Though, as a foreigner and a Protestant, Lister could not enroll formally at the University in Montpellier, he did belong to an academy in association with other foreign students, and was permitted to observe closely what was taking place in studies in medicine and natural philosophy at the university.23 As typical to medical students at the time, he lodged with an apothecary, one Monsieur Forgeon, to learn by informal instruction the names and preparations of particular drugs.24 These informal

18

Stearns, ed., Journey, –. Bodleian MS Lister , ff. –. 20 Kissack, Bordeaux Wine Guide: Introduction. http://www.thewinedoctor.com/ regionalguides/bordeaux.shtml. 21 For a description of the Roman roads in southern France, see Coleman, “Romans,” –. The Canal du Midi which follos the route of the Via Aquitania did not open until . 22 Bodleian MS Lister , f. . 23 Stearns, ed., Journey, xxi. 24 The master apothecary Henri Verchant arranged Lister’s stay with Forgeon and also gave him advice on proper dress and customs, remarking for instance that use of a mitre or head covering was considered “plus rude de nos françois.” Verchant then advised Lister where to buy a suitable chapeau. See Bodleian MS Lister , f. . 19



chapter three

observations would be in addition to the more structured and theoretical education he would receive in lectures, as the study of the chemical and botanical pharmacopoeia and the study of medicine were inseparable at this time.25 Lister’s studies also went hand in hand with the seasons. As Ogilvie has indicated, in the early modern period, “connections between anatomy and natural history were chiefly occasional, not intellectual: because the cold winter months were the best for conducting dissections, and plants were best demonstrated in spring and summer, the same person might be appointed professor of anatomy and materia medica.”26 Martin would have walked to the northern part of the town quarter towards Nîmes to reach the medical school, perched on the slope of a hill, and surrounded by an exceptional Royal Garden. Lined with avenues of exotic trees, the Royal Gardens at Montpellier were donated by Henry IV in  for the study of pharmacology and botany. The oldest in France, these gardens would eventually be reorganized by the great botanist Pierre Mangol (–), who had received his M.D. shortly before Lister’s arrival. Mangol was the first to publish the concept of plant families as we know them, and the garden was separated into plants’ known eighteen medical and “therapeutic duties.”27 Some sections also were utilized to test how plants from different regions acclimatized to southern France. Lister could thus see the plant in vivo in the garden, and in vitro in the apothecary’s shop of Monsieur Forgeon. In addition to the traditional medical texts by Hippocrates and Galen, and Dioscorides’s De Re Medica, students at Montpellier were exposed to the new theories of chemical medicine, vitalism, and Cartesian philosophy. Month by month in the back pages of his pocketbook, Martin listed the texts he had read or consulted in his studies. He called them his Lections Achevées, and his reading list reflected the medical school’s mixture of established and more innovative works.28 To learn the pharmacopeia, Lister perused M. Garcie du Jardin and M. Christophe de la Coste’s Histore des drogues espiceries (), which

The Protestant Verchant hosted many Englishmen; both John Locke and Hans Sloane stayed with him in Montpellier. See Whittet, “Apothecaries,” –. 25 Jennett, ed., Beloved. Platter also stayed with an apothecary to assimilate knowledge of the pharmacopoeia. 26 Ogilvie, “Description and Persuasion.” 27 See Magnol, Hortus Regius and Bertrand, “Les herbiers,” –. 28 Bodleian MS Lister , ff. – contains Lister’s reading list.

french connection



was reissued with recently discovered materia medica from the Indies. This was in addition to Schroeder’s standard Pharmacopoeia MedicoChymica (), “perhaps the most widely used handbook of remedies from the seventeenth century.”29 Along with the more innovative “chymical” medicines such as mercury to treat syphilis (which does kill the spirochete causing the infection), Schroeder’s work contained instructions to make the famous weapon salve to heal wounds. The salve, when applied to the wound and the weapon, worked by sympathetic magic to heal the patient. Schroeder advised that the brain of a boar, boar fat, sandalwood, iron-rock, mummy or corpse dust, and skull scrapings from a hung man (which contained vital animal spirits) were to be combined to make the medicament.”30 As Stephen Jay Gould remarked: The nub of the revolutionary difference between prescientific and scientific explanation . . . lies beautifully exposed in this microcosm, for the Western world’s transition to modernity may virtually be defined by the realization that although some material property of the salve may heal the wound by direct contact, the formerly sensible practice of treating the weapon in a similar way must now be scorned as utter nonsense and absurd mysticism.31

Lister was in the midst of this intellectual transition, learning the ancient principles of humoral medicine, sympathy, and antipathy, as well as reading revolutionary works in physiology and philosophy. On his reading list was Descartes’s treatise on light and his De monde that contained the essentials of the mechanical philosophy. He annotated books about natural history such as Osservazioni intorno alle vipere [Observations concerning vipers] (Florence, ) by Francesco Redi, which in a virtuosic display of scientific observation, identified the location of the viper’s poison and explained its toxic effect. Also on Lister’s reading list was Malphigi’s Observationes Anatomicis De Pulmonis (), which contained his discovery of the capillary circulation, as well as the first account of the vesicular structure of the human lung that would make a theory of respiration for the first time possible. Lister noted Thomas Willis’s book on fevers, which contained brilliant observations on the types of fever, accurately describ29

Gould, “Jew Stone,” . Gould, “Jew Stone,” . 31 Gould, “Jew Stone,” . Gould’s quote does display Whiggish historiography, but there is little doubt that Schroeder’s work did contain elements of both traditional and chymical medicine. 30



chapter three

ing fevers associated with malaria, and camp fever ( febris castrensis). Willis’s work contained theories of fermentation that would later influence Lister’s theories of the iatrochemistry of syphilis and smallpox.32 To complement Willis’s chemical theories, Lister also read works by Nicaise Le Févre, Fellow of the Royal Society since  and chemist and apothecary at the court of Charles II. Lister recalled reading the first issues of Journal de Scavans, which had recently commenced publication.33 Along with the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, it was one of the first scientific journals in the world. Finally, to round off his education as a gentleman, he read literature—the authors and poets of classical Rome, as well as contemporary French letters and histories.34 It was important to achieve the correct balance between academic and social skills required of both a “gentleman” and a “scholar.”35 Thus, Lister studied the epigrams of Martial, as well as the writings of Livy, Tacitus, Suetonius, Horace, Catullus, Tibullus, Propertius, Claudian, Ausonius, Pliny’s Letters, and the Noctes Atticae of Aulus Gellius. Cicero’s letters, a mainstay of the studia humanitatis, were also mentioned repeatedly; memorization of “Tully” had long been required for students for the stylistic improvement of their Latin.36 Lister also was concerned with polishing his spoken French and his knowledge of belles lettres. In contemporary letters, we see R. Bary’s La Rhètorique Française () that listed all the appropriate grammar and figures of speech permissible in polite conversation. Lister’s Lections Achevées included the comedies of Corneille, including his Sertorius () and the burlesque Le Geôlier de soi-même (). Lister noted the Lettres of his favorite (or at least most mentioned) author Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac (–), a French author and member of the Académie française, who published correspondence that introduced new stylistic qualities of precision and clarity to French prose. Lister recorded reading Faret’s L’Honnête Homme (), which was a modern version of Baldassare Castligione’s famous conduct book, The Courtier, and he perused de Callières’s La Fortune des Gens de Qualité

32

See Chapter Eight. Stoye, Travellers, . 34 Stoye lists and classifies Lister’s notes on his reading in Bodleian MS Lister . See Stoye, Travellers, –. 35 Iliffe, “Foreign bodies,” . 36 Black, Humanism, . 33

french connection



(), a more aristocratic book on manners “less concerned with the preferment of merit than the virtues of preferment.”37 To put his polite reading into practice, Lister recorded that he went to the residence of Sir Thomas Crew (later Second Baron Crew of Stene –) to discuss ornithology and literature in an informal salon, and subsequently recorded an apparently embarrassing incident. As awkward young men in a hurry often do, Lister entered Crew’s chamber rather abruptly, causing Crew to stand up suddenly to greet him. In the process, Sir Thomas received “a broade knock upon the backe part of his head,” from a point of a window opening into the room.38 It took Crew five days to recover from a concussion, and Lister’s recollection of the incident in his notebook showed he was absolutely mortified. Expecting a “rude entreatie”, Lister expressed his “sorrow and took the misfortune to my selfe in as passionate a manner as I could,” but to his credit, Crew “quickly forgot the grief of his body and . . . with great Civilities and compliment as though nothing had happened.”39 Crew enjoyed meeting with the young man regularly, and “amongst other discourse” entertained him “upon the loves of Henry the Great of France.”40 For Lister’s part, he was quite taken with King Henry’s correspondence to his many mistresses, writing “I like the passage in another letter when his Mistresse Marquisse de Verneuil would be peevish and out of humour with him. Madame Gabrielle’s letter to the King pleaseth me especially,” as did some of the more salacious French plays with their “good relish of witty things.”41 He copied out several passages from the letters and plays, noting their prose style and elegance, and perhaps, as young men do, dreamed of having a bit of romance himself. 37 The assessment of de Callières’s is from Stoye, Travellers, . Lister’s reading list of the conduct book is in Bodleian MS Lister , ff. –. Iliffe also mentions Lister’s reading in Iliffe, “Foreign bodies,” . 38 Bodleian MS Lister , f. . Lister kept a separate series of notes and memories about his Montpellier journey in Bodleian MS Lister . The volume also contains papers, notes, and extracts chiefly about natural science, medicine, or botany. 39 Bodleian MS Lister , f. . 40 Bodleian MS Lister , f. . The edition was Hardouin de Beaumont de Péréfixe’s Histoire du Roi Henri le Grand, which was published in . Péréfixe was a tutor to Louis XIV. 41 Bodleian MS Lister , f. . Lister referred to Henriette de Balzac d’Entraigues, the Marquise de Verneuil, (–) who was mistress of King Henry IV and a central figure of plots and counterplots in the French courts. Madame Gabrielle was Gabrielle d’Estrées, Marquise de Monceaux and Duchess de Beaufort en Champagne (d. ).



chapter three

On the subject of love and beauty, Lister wrote to an unknown student friend: I received your book and your very obliging letter. I could not be sad when I read Scarron. But believe me, I am not alone in laughing at it. I have some beauties who are with me in this outburst. They are pupils after my fashion. Do not mistake: I do not mean to speak of your Muses (you know well that I have little part in that) which you others believe to be the only sources of beauty and wit. These are true beauties whose beauty of body is accompanied by that of spirit. But how ill-humored of you to mock my beauties! . . . Regarding beauties, does it signify to us boys and young men? Would that someone would snatch the paper away: I would never end, as I have the subject so much to heart.42

Four years after he returned from France, Lister confessed, “in the days of my Vanitie . . . I chose rather to court Ladies than Nature.”43 However, while he was certainly courting women [and/or men], and reading the French burlesque poet and satirist Monsieur Scarron (–), Lister also courted Nature, evincing great interest in natural philosophy. These interests included the secrets of manufacturing processes. Later in his life, Lister would make detailed observations of mining operations reflecting his interests in metallurgy and chemistry. As a student, he was fascinated with another sort of manufacture— wax-making. Lister wrote in his pocketbook about a sojourn to the home of Dr Joly, described as a “protestant and a very ingenious person, and civil to the English”: Dr Joly wanted us at his Vineyard where at he offered entertainments. He was pleased to shew us what was very observable in the vinierie

42 Bodleian MS Lister , f. v. Je receu vostre livre et vostre lettre si obligéante. je ne sçaurois estre triste quand je lis Scarron. mais sçavez vous bien, que je ne suis tout seul, qui en ris. j’ay des belles qui m’aident à eclater. ces sont des escoliers de ma façon. ne trompez voùs pas, je n’entend pas parler de vos Muses (vous sçavez bien que j’ay ay peu de part) que vous autres croyez les seules belles et les seules spirituelles. ces sont des veritables belles, dont la beautè du corps est accompagnée avec celle de l’esprit. mais que vous estez de mauvaise humeur de vous moquer de mes belles! Monsieur, que vous connoissez, nostre cher Amy, m’escoutera plus favorablement sur ce subject. A propros des belles, nous appellat il des garçons et des jeunes gens? . . . que on me dechire le papier, je n’aurois jamais finis, tant j’ay le subject a coeur. My thanks to Vivienne Larminie for the translation. I have no other evidence that Lister may have been bisexual or experimenting with bisexuality. 43 MS Ray , f. , letter , Natural History Museum, London. This is a letter from Lister to the naturalist John Ray, whom he met in Montpellier, dated  December . It is printed in part in Lankester, ed., Correspondence, –, though Lankester omitted most personal material in his edition.

french connection



adjoining, which is a beekeeper whittling of bees wax which is dark after the summer. They melt the Wax downe in a Caldrene [Cauldron] which they pour out into a deep Vessel which has but one side of it a long trough of water. In the vessel of wax they dip certain molds of wood after the fayshion of long-crown hatt blocks, having a long handle out of the broader end, but which he first well rubbed over with [the] shine of common shell-snails. This . . . [ensures] that the wax sticke not too the wood and is soe great a deffense again both the heat . . . when you have once rubbed your hand and nails with it, you may without fail dipp it in the hot molten wax and make yourself a compleat glove. You must drawe out then coate it in the trough of water . . .44

Other than the diversion of making wax gloves, Lister clearly was fascinated with the chemical properties of beeswax, and indeed, he would later publish studies of plant resins, the “juices of vegetables,” as well as the chemistry of insects and insect excretions, particularly those of kermes and cochineal beetles.45 There was an established tradition of waxworks in early modern France, and Royal Society member and virtuoso John Evelyn recorded the use of wax to make anatomical models and relief maps.46 In the s, Royal Society members like Evelyn were actively making catalogues of artisanal trades, technical studies of crafts, and descriptions of innovations.47 In Evelyn’s case, understanding the technical processes of engraving and mezzotint was a means for him to develop principles of art connoisseurship, whereas colleagues like Hooke, John Beale, and William Petty were engaged in producing Baconian natural histories by taking knowledge controlled by the craftsman and putting it into the hands of scholars.48 Lister was apparently sensitive to such intellectual trends. In between making observations, Martin maintained a lively correspondence with friends and relatives back home, recording in his pocketbook that he wrote letters to “Mr Sharpe, Mr Briggs, Lady Hartopp, brother William, brother Michael, Robert Grove, Mr Peck, Dr Guning, Mr Canby.”49 Some of these letters survive, again demonstrating a flow of gifts this time from Lister to his family and friends in

44 The first quotation describing Dr Joly’s character comes from the work of one of Lister’s traveling companions, Philip Skippon. Skippon, A Journey, . Lister’s remarks about the wax-making may be found in Bodleian MS Lister , ff. –. 45 Lister, “Nature and Differences of the Juices,” –. 46 Evelyn, “Advertisement,” –. 47 Ochs, “History of Trades,” –. 48 See for instance Evelyn, Sculptura; Ochs, “ History of Trades,” . 49 Bodleian MS Lister , ff. –.



chapter three

return for their kindness to him at Cambridge. His sister Jane wrote, “Many thanks for your parfums; they are most rarely good. I am Confident the parfum[s] that Madame de Bourdet sent Balzac were not so good; although he could commend them in better words then I does, yet he could not esteem them more.”50 Jane referred to one of Lister’s favorite works, the letters of Balzac, and it is probable he sent Balzac’s works back to Burwell; Jane previously wrote of receiving a volume of the works of Scarron from her brother. Balzac said of the perfumes he was sent, “I speake not of the delicacy of your perfumes, in which you laid mee to sleepe all night; to the end, that sending up sweet vapours into my braine, I might have in my imagination, none but pleasing visions.”51 Jane was paying her brother a high compliment indeed for his gifts. In addition to handling Lister’s bills of exchange and his stipend at Cambridge, Thomas Briggs also kept him appraised at the news from the University, particularly about the effects of the last major visitation of plague that swept through London and south-east England in /. Approximately % of the population of London perished.52 Though it is well known that Sir Isaac Newton fled Cambridge for Woolsthorpe in remote Lincolnshire to escape the plague, it is apparent from Briggs’s letter that his impression was that Cambridge was lightly affected by the pestilence, as the colleges were closed. The Plague Bills of Mortality from  July  to August  indicated that “all the Colledges (God be praised) are and have continued without any Infection of the Plague,” though one thousand would die of the disease by January .53 The onset of the disease also seems to have delayed the post more than usual. Briggs wrote on  August : Whatever suspicion by miscarriage of letters may and that very justly bee entertaynede by you concerneing it has affection which I shall \ever/ retayne for you . . . Ive non[e] payment of theyr passage, where I perceive by a letter from Dr. Browne of Norwich54 must not bee onely to Paris but from Paris to Montpelier if they ever gett home. I received  letters

50

Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. Balzac, The Letters, . 52 Dobson, Contours, . 53 Leedham-Green, Short History, . 54 Presumably Sir Thomas Browne (–), the well-known physician and English author of Religio Medici. Browne settled in Norwich in  where he practiced medicine, living there until his death. See Robbins, “Browne, Sir Thomas,” Oxford DNB. 51

french connection



from you in this fortnight so that I suppose none miscarried. All your relations as I understand are well in Country I removing lately from Leicestershire, though by reasons of the sickness dispersed through many places in Country I could not see any of them; wee are all well in Coll.[ege] as also in University but the Coll. are all shutt up the infection being somewhat in Towne though very little (praised bee God). I have paid twenty pounds to Dr. Browne of Norwich for your use the surest way I judged to returne itt to you hees having opportunity to send to his sonn.55 and hee may easily transmitt itt to you. The Sickness much prevailes at London above four thousand dying so last weeke.56

As this letter indicated, Lister presumably met Edward Browne in Montpellier. Edward was the son of the famous physician and author of Religio Medici, Sir Thomas Browne, and was also on a tour of France and Italy to study medicine. After graduating M.B. from Trinity College, Cambridge in , Edward left for the continent to study in the Paris Hospitals in  and to travel in Italy and France where he visited Arles, Toulouse, La Rochelle, and Montpellier where he brought Lister his twenty pounds.57 Lister encountered a variety of doctors and natural philosophers at Montpellier who would shape his future research interests. In December , he met the physician William Croone (–) and the Danish physician Nicholas Steensen known as Steno (–) who had both published treatises on muscle contraction.58 Already known for his discovery of the duct of the parotid salivary gland (Steno’s duct), Steno, Croone, and Lister performed a dissection of an ox head in the study of Robert Bruce, the First Earl of Ailesbury and Second Earl of Elgin. Ailesbury evinced interest in natural philosophy throughout his life and was made a member of the Royal Society in . As Iliffe has noted, Lister secured the introduction to the Earl due to his family connections to Sir Matthew Lister; in a manuscript entitled “Adversaria,”59 Lister wrote, “I made my reverence to my Lord of Alsbury, who was infinitely civil to me upon my Unkle Sr. Matth. Listers memory.”60 Lister would assist Steno in four dissections in the Earl of Ailesbury’s study; he praised Steno’s technique that was “neat and

55 56 57 58 59 60

Edward Browne (–). Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. van Strien, “Browne, Edward,” Oxford DNB. Kardel, “Introduction,” Steno on Muscles, /: . Iliffe, “Foreign bodies,” . Adversaria is Bodleian MS Lister . Bodleian MS Lister , f. v.



chapter three

clever” and admired his “genius and great personal modesty,” stating “I observed in him (very much) of the Galant and honist Man as the French say, as well as of the Schollar.”61 Lister was especially fascinated by Steno’s dissections of the lacteals in the intestines of a dog and his experiments with the passage of blood and chyle through the digestive system; in the s Lister would repeat these experiments collaborating with William Musgrave, the secretary of the Royal Society.62 A keen empiricist, Steno also made detailed and exact observations of crystals using a microscope, realizing that they developed in layers and that their angles were constant, publishing his ideas in his Prodromus (). In his speech in  at the Copenhagen Anatomical Theatre, Steno rejected the ancient authorities in natural philosophy, proclaiming “Fair is what we see, Fairer what we have perceived, Fairest what is still in veil.”63 It is thus not surprising that the Prodromus also contained within it a bold assertion of the organic origin of fossils and how they came to be enclosed in layers of rock. Steno described a process in which juices seeped through cracks in the earth that were caused by the movement of geological strata. This juice dissolved mineral salts, penetrating interstices of animal shells, eventually replacing the shells with a stony substance. Though traditionally it is asserted that Steno formulated the first laws of stratigraphy from his observations in Tuscany described in the Prodromus, the privileged geological environment of Montpellier may have influenced his thinking. The city itself lies on Neogene subhorizontal layers, which contain visible outcrops of fossilized oysters in the botanical garden and city gates.64 The surrounding countryside had other fossil treasures—more enormous oysters and glossopetrae (teeth in fossilized forms)—which were the source of Steno’s conclusion that fossils were the remains of extinct organisms. He noticed in particular the similarities between modern shark teeth and their fossils. Upon his return to England, Lister published an article in the Philosophical Transactions in which he recalled that “the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, there may all manner of Sea shells be found promiscuously included in Rocks and Earth, and

61

Bodleian MS Lister , ff. v–v. Bodleian MS Lister , f. ; Lister, “An Extract of a Letter,” –; Musgrave, “A Letter,” –. 63 Pulchra sunt, quae videntur pulchriora quae sciuntur longe pulcherrima quae ignorantur. 64 Ellenberger, History, : . 62

french connection



at good distances too from the Sea (Montpellier is  kilometers from the sea)”.65 In this article, he would also critique Steno’s argument about the origins of fossils that they saw in France and, as we will see, develop his own theories of “formed stones” in the s.66 . An Introduction to John Ray It was also during his time at Montpellier that Lister met John Ray (–), the eminent naturalist and botanist, and Ray’s pupil, the wealthy Francis Willoughby (–) of Trinity College Cambridge, who was undertaking his own Grand Tour; Willoughby’s observations would later result in the first scientific work of ornithology which organized species according to their physical characteristics—Ornithologia libri tres ().67 Although Lister and Ray were at Cambridge at the same time, Ray being a fellow and tutor in Greek, Mathematics, and Humanities at Trinity College from –, there is no evidence that they met before Lister was in France. Ray previously had taken three different journeys throughout the greater part of Great Britain to botanize, two of them accompanied by Willoughby and, in , Ray published the result of their research in his Cambridge Catalogue of Plants.68 Lister recorded a series of conversations with Ray in December  who informed him he had not found any plant in France that he could not find in England, “soe that he knew not scarce any one plant which he could call properly English.”69 Lister noted that Ray did seem “pretty well satisfied concerning the Plants of Europe and that he beleeved he had seen the greatest share of them growing in their natural soiles and places of birth.”70 The Catalogue is not only a comprehensive list of the flora of England, which “provided a model for uncontentious inquiry into nature which Ray successfully translated into the disciplinary practice of natural history,” but

65 Lister, “A Letter Written August  ,” , as quoted in Ellenberger, History, :. 66 Lister, “A Letter Written August  ,” . 67 Willoughby’s manorial home, Wollaton Hall in Nottinghamshire, is still extant and houses, appropriately enough, a fine natural-history collection. The University of Nottingham Archives has Willoughby’s personal papers and notes in the Middleton Collection. 68 Derham, Select, . 69 Bodleian MS Lister , ff. r–v as quoted in Iliffe, “Foreign bodies,” . 70 Bodleian MS Lister , ff. r–v as quoted in Iliffe, “Foreign bodies,” .



chapter three

a thoroughly pious celebration of nature as an expression of God’s plentitude, which mirrored Ray’s deeply held religious beliefs.71 Due to the strictures of the Act of Uniformity to secure the authority of Charles II’s regime, Ray resigned his fellowship on  August ; he had “often intimated his dissatisfaction with the conditions imposed on his tenure.”72 Fellows were forced to use the Book of Common Prayer in Chapel and to deny the Solemn League and Covenant of . The treaty was an alliance between the English Parliament and Scottish Covenanters who hoped to unite the churches of Scotland and England under a Presbyterian system of church government in exchange for Scottish military assistance to the Parliamentarians in the English Civil War. Derham, in his biography of Ray, mentioned that the reason of his refusal to take the Oath: was not (as some have imagined) his having taken the Solemn League and Covenant; for that he never did, and often declared that he ever thought it an unlawful oath; but he said he could not declare for those that had taken the oath that no obligation lay upon them, but feared there might.”73

Derham then speculated that Ray resigned as he had been influenced by some “zealous noncomformists.”74 As McMahon has shown, however, it would be far too simple to conclude that Ray was a radical Presbyterian or nonconformist; the evidence shows he simply been increasingly “dissatisfied with the intellectual climate” of Restoration Cambridge and possessed an “aversion to imposed oaths.”75 Ray later confessed to Lister in a letter of  after John Wilkins’s elevation to the See of Chester in : I am absolutely delighted that Mr Wilkins has been elevated to an episcopal see, both for his own sake, and mine, and that of the church. Yet it is clearly impossible for me to be restored to the church through his efforts as long as my opinion remains unchanged, and I do not think that I can ever be induced to subscribe to the declaration which the law, which was passed not so long ago, imposed on the Presbyterians and other ministers of the church, yet the loss of myself is not of such great

71 72 73 74 75

Ford, “Shining,” . Ford, “Shining,” . See also McMahon, “John Ray,” –. Derham, Select, –. Derham, Select, . McMahon, “John Ray,”  and .

french connection



importance, since I would be of hardly any use to the church, however upright (as the saying goes) I stand in open court.76

Ray’s extreme conscientiousness that he had shown as a tutor and fellow seems to have bled into other more personal areas of his life.77 Ray was part of a nucleus of scholars at Trinity, including mathematicians Isaac Barrow and Francis Jessop, anatomist Walter Needham, and Francis Willoughby who were interested in the new science and conducted experiments in chemistry, anatomy, and botany.78 At the time, Ray must have thought the resignation of his fellowship might be disastrous to his career in natural philosophy. He wrote to Lister in , recalling his feelings about the required oaths, asking “How many are the difficulties and snares into which they have driven men who are by no means evil, but somewhat fearful, insecure about the future, and afraid of poverty. What wounds have been inflicted on the consciences of wretched persons?” He continued: You will say that candidates are well aware of the condition on which they are to be admitted as fellows to the college, and the oath they are bound to swear . . . And yet nearly all of those who apply for fellowships (at least in some colleges) are unruly young men, rash and headstrong, prepared to do and to suffer anything, provided that they obey the wishes of their parents . . . and achieve their own wishes. And why should I not complain to you freely about these matters, since I feel that I too have been badly treated by these statutes?79

76

The letter was originally in MS Ray, f. , letter , Natural History Museum, London. As the original is now missing, my translation uses the edition of Lankester, ed., Correspondence, . [D. Wilkins in episcopalem cathedram evectum, et sui-ipsius, et mei, et praecipuè ecclesiae causâ vehementer gaudeo. Me tamen per eum ecclesiae restitutum iri, stante sententiâ, planè est impossibile, nec enim unquam adduci me posse puto ut declarationi subscribam quam lex non ita pridem lata presbyteris aliisque ecclesiae ministries injungit, nec tamen tanti est jactura mei qui nulli fere usui ecclesiae futurus essem, utut (quod dici solet) rectus in curia starem.] 77 Derham, Select, . 78 Feingold, Before, –. 79 NHM Ray, f. , letter . Natural History Museum, London. The letter is also printed in Derham, Philosophical Letters, –; Lankester, ed., Correspondence of Ray, –; Gunther, Further Correspondence of Ray, –; Derham had left out this outburst in the first edition of Ray’s letters. [in quot angustias et laqueos compulerint homines minime quidem malos, at timidiores, de futuro non securos, et pauperiem veritos: quae miserorum conscientiis vulnere inflixerit. Dices non ignorare candidatos qua conditione in collegium sociorum admittendi sunt, quo jusjurandum praestare tenentur, verum quidem id est; at sunt plerique omnes qui sodallitia ambiunt (in nonnullis saltem Collegiis) κομιδῆ temerarii et praecipites, quidvis agere et pati parati, modo parentum et tutorum voluntatibus obsequantur, et votorum suorum compotes fiant. Quidni ego



chapter three

However, his decision to leave Trinity College, if anything, expanded his knowledge and reputation as a natural historian. Ray served subsequently as an escort and botany tutor for Willoughby and his Cambridge companions Philip Skippon (d.) and Nathaniel Bacon (–) during their peregrinations throughout the continent from –.80 Ray, Skippon, and Bacon toured the Low Countries, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, and then southern France botanizing and visiting museums, and Ray would later publish an account of their travels.81 In doing so, Ray was following a long established tradition in which, by writing and publishing his travel journal, he exhibited his membership in polite society, measuring his “success in the number of entries and the quality of access to the leading cultural institutions—museums, academies, courts, gardens, and homes of learned men.”82 Lister would do much the same thing in his old age, when he published his memoirs of a visit to Paris in . In July , Ray arrived in Montpellier with his entourage, where he met Lister. Lister also mingled with Ray’s other friends and colleagues. These included Dr William Croone; Sir Thomas Crew; Peter Vivian, a fellow at Trinity College; Francis Jessop from Sheffield with whom Ray stayed with in England in  and Lister would later correspond; Dr Clopton Havers; and Samuel Howlett, a fellow of St John’s with whom Lister was previously acquainted.83 Lister’s noted that he and his colleagues discussed with Dr Joly the relative merits and disadvantages of English and French medicine, and that the virtuosi met to perform a variety of experiments.84 One experiment tested the hypothesis that the: specifique and distinguishing virtu of a plant was to be found in the Oily part of it which was various and different in all, than either in the fix salt or spirit . . . all fix salts of Plants being alike as alsoe all spirits. This was

de hisce apud te libere conquerar, cum et ipse ab ejusmodi statutis me male multatum sentiam.] 80 Nathaniel Bacon would immigrate to Virginia in , in response to a property dispute with the family of his wife. Later, he would instigate Bacon’s Rebellion in  against the Virginia Governor, Sir William Berkeley, before succumbing to dysentery during the rebellion. 81 Ray, Observations. 82 Findlen, Possessing, –. 83 Raven, John Ray, . Most of the accounts of their journey are taken from Skippon, “An Account of a Journey,” : –. Skippon lists the English expatriates in Montpellier on . 84 Bodleian MS Lister , ff. –, ff. –.

french connection



the result of an Entretien[ment] wherein Mr Wray and Mr Havers were the Antagonists, and where I assisted.”85

In his later work, De Fontibus (), we shall see Lister formulated an elaborate theory of meteorology as well as fossilization. His theory involved volatile and fixed salts of plants and animals that established him as an expert in saline chemistry.86 With these companions, Lister subsequently did a natural-history tour in Languedoc and Rousillon, and formed an especially close friendship with John Ray. Skippon related that they rode a short distance to Frontignan outside of Montpellier, where they dined and enjoyed the rich muscat wine of the region, and “then rode along the beach between the estang and the sea to a cape . . . where rare plants grow, viz, Uva marina, Alypum M. Ceti, etc.”87 Uva marina was the grape variety uva de troia, usually grown in Puglia to make the wine Rosso Barletta, but it is possible the French vineyards near Montpellier were trying new varieties. Their idyllic travels to sample wine and to collect specimens were to come to a precipitous end. On  February , King Louis XIV, in preparation for the War of Devolution, ordered all Englishmen to leave France within three months. Lister’s studies at Montpellier were thus peremptorily finished, and he left for Lyon, accompanied by Francis Jessop, physician Henry Sampson, Peter Vivian, a fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge, and Sir Thomas Crew. Lister later met Ray and Skippon and “Dr Moulins” (the Scotsman James Milne from Aberdeen) there before they all proceeded on horseback to Paris.88 Arriving on  March, they stayed two weeks, catching a glimpse of Louis XIV en promenade to Versailles, the Sun King in an open chariot.89 While in Paris, the group of young naturalists met Dionys Joncquet, a professor in the Jardin des Plantes, who wrote a magisterial catalogue of the , plants grown there. This sumptuous volume dedicated

85

Bodleian MS Lister , f. v. See Roos, Salt, –. 87 Skippon, “Account,” . Skippon is describing the Étang de Thau, a string of lakes or étangs that stretch along the Languedoc-Roussillon French coast. Alypum montis Ceti is better known as gutwort or globularia alypum, a purgative and diuretic. It can grow in Europe, but it is far more common in Northern Africa, particularly Tunisia. 88 Skippon, “Account,” . For more on Moulin, see Morris, “Identity of Jaques du Moulin,” –. 89 Stearns, ed., Journey, xxiii. 86



chapter three

to Louis XIV opens with an engraving showing the apotheosized Sun King as Apollo. Louis is in his chariot drawn by four celestial horses, surveying his gardens below, “an important showcase for his reign,” with smug satisfaction.90 Founded in  as a garden primarily dedicated to medicinal plants, the Jardin Royal hosted courses on botany, zoology, and forestry, nearly “all branches of natural history.”91 Along with the garden at Montpellier, it was considered an essential stop for any botanical explorer, part of a network of collections and curiosity cabinets that genteel collectors and natural historians would visit. Lister and Ray were also introduced to Léon Marchand and saw his renowned “hortus siccus” or herbarium of dried plants, and then met Guy Crescent Fagon (–), a court physician and described by Ray as “a very ingenious person and skilful herbarist who had the greatest hand in the editing of the Catalogue of the Physic Garden then put forth and was employed in the laboratory and apothecary shop.”92 Fagon would later be appointed by Jean Baptiste Colbert to be keeper of the Montpellier Botanic Garden in , expanding it immensely, and growing and distributing the first coffee plants in France. On April Fool’s Day in , their botanical tourism at an end, Ray, Lister, Skippon and Moulins along with a “Mr Howlet and Dr Ward” left their lodging to travel out of Paris in a chasse-marée or “fish-cart” for Calais. Suddenly, “one of the French king’s officers, a captain de Guet, appeared and asked for monsieur Moulins.”93 Moulins was seized and hurried away to the Bastille under royal orders. Moulins or James Milne was from Aberdeen, and he had been living in the south of France most of his life, perhaps getting medical training in Montpellier and subsequently practicing as a physician. But he had another career as an informant and ad-hoc diplomatic officer. In , Moulins was employed by French Huguenots in Nîmes to pass along information to Oliver Cromwell. “Before an election of magistrates, the Protestants had shot some guards called in by the Catholic party. Fearing retribution, they fortified the city and sent Moulins to England to tell Cromwell.”94 Moulins reached England eight days later, having called on the ambassador in Paris, and returned in January  with

90 91 92 93 94

Joncquet, Hortus Regius. See also Conan, Baroque, . Schiebinger, Plants, . Raven, John Ray, . Skippon, “Account,” . Morris, “Identity,” .

french connection



“letters from London that the ambassador took to Mazarin, who sent orders to stop the troops marching on Nismes, remarking that ‘France is not in a condition to deny England anything.’ ”95 Although neither Skippon nor Lister could find out the reason for Moulins’s arrest, they guessed that “his chief crime was, he had lived too long among the French protestants in Languedoc,” and he might reveal their inclinations in England, “he being very intimate with some of good quality that were discontented with the present management of affairs in France.”96 While the other members of the party continued to Calais in the fish-cart, Lister and Skippon “not liking that way of travelling” stayed behind for a week waiting for news of their friend. Moulins sent a note from the Bastille for some linen to their lodging, and Lister “returned by the messenger a little billet, which only condoled his misfortune, but the captain of the guard at the Bastille tore it in pieces.”97 Moulin was not released for six months until “the king sent for him, and told him he had done him no wrong, and then bid him begone out of France within a fortnight.”98 When he came back to England, Moulins profusely thanked Lister for his help in Paris and reported that he was serving as a physician to Lord George Berkeley (–), lamenting the “bad fortune that still tirelessly pursues me.”99 Subsequently, Berkeley proposed Moulins for membership to the Royal Society, and Moulins signed the Charter Book on  December  along with Berkeley’s son Charles.100 Moulins would go on to translate Thomas Sprat’s History of the Royal Society into French for the Royal Society in , but a year too late; he was scooped by a translation published in Geneva in  and again in Paris the year after.101 Bad fortune, indeed. As for Skippon and Lister, they eventually left Paris not in a fish-cart, but in a more comfortable and less aromatic “coach waggon” along with a Genevan refugee and a young Swedish soldier who “had stolen

95

Morris, “Identity,” . Skippon, “Account,” . 97 Skippon, “Account,” . 98 Skippon, “Account,” . 99 Bodleian MS Lister , ff. –. His letter was written on  October . 100 Charter Book, . Royal Society Library, London; Morris, “ Identity,” . 101 Morris, “Identity,” . Moulins discussed the translation with Lister in Bodleian MS Lister , f. v. The letter is dated  February . 96



chapter three

away a wench.”102 Although three Frenchmen went in hot pursuit of their wagon, the Swede “outvapour’d them, and turn’d them down stairs. . . hectoring them all the way at the inn-gate” where they stayed en route.103 Skippon related, “When he came to London, I met with this Swede, and ask’d him in Italian where was his Bella Donna, he replied he had dismissed her and said . . . I have got a handsomer.”104 Before he left France, Lister still had one final thing to accomplish, and like the Swede, it had to do with a woman. In Lyon he wrote a letter addressed to an unknown mademoiselle who seems to have been his first significant love, the draft copy surviving in his papers.105 Lister wrote: Mademoiselle, I did not know how to leave France without saying farewell to you once again in writing. I have you so much in my heart and your courtesies will be forever in my memory in whatever country I dwell. I may be returning home, but I will eagerly await news of you there. Cursed war! How you give me pain as I tear myself from my delights. This is for you and for everything beautiful in Montpelier. Do not be content with sharing my [affections] with such a beautiful town. Pray do me the honour of your remembrance from time to time. I will see if there are means by which you may have my letters. I end, Mademoiselle, your very humble very obedient and very [devoted] servant. Martin Lister106

We do not know if he sent the letter or if she ever replied, but we do know that he kept it until his death.

102

Skippon, “Account,” . Skippon, “Account,” . 104 Skippon, “Account,” . 105 Bodleian MS Lister , f. . 106 Mademoiselle Je ne sçaurois quitter la France, sans vous dire adieu derechef par escrit. tant vous ay-je à coeur et vos civilites me seront eternellement dans ma memoire en quel pais qui ce soit, ou je vay demeurer. Si je me retire tout a faict chez moy, j’y attenderois de vos nouvelles avec passion. maudite guerre! que tu me donnez de chagrin en m’arrachent de mes delices; ce transport est pour vous et pour ce qu’il y a de beau à Montpelier. ne soyez pas satisfé de partager mes inclinations avec une si belle ville. me voudriez vous faire l’honneur de votre souvenance de temps en temps. je verrois si il y aura moyen de vous faire tenir de mes lettres. je finis. Mademoiselle votre tres humble tres obeissant et tres passioné serviteur. My thanks to Vivienne Larminie for the translation. 103

CHAPTER FOUR

LISTER’S EARLY CONTRIBUTIONS TO NATURAL HISTORY, : THE INFLUENCE OF JOHN RAY . Lister and his Views of Natural History Upon his return to Cambridge, Lister recorded his travel expenses in his pocketbook. He noted £ was “expended upon the roade” for his three-year journey, and he was still awaiting some bills of exchange. Though he recorded that he received his stipend from his Cambridge fellowship when he was away, it is clear some of this small fortune came from his family upon reaching his age of majority.1 After he returned to Cambridge, he also accomplished his first systematic observations of the behavior of arachnids and molluscs and developed his own views on controversial topics such as the spontaneous generation of insects. These endeavors were accompanied by an extraordinarily productive exchange of letters with his mentor John Ray, which continued regularly for ten years. In these letters we see the discussions that resulted in Lister’s first publications in the Philosophical Transactions. The two virtuosi also exchanged views about Lister’s literature reviews of the nascent field of entomology, Ray strongly encouraging Lister’s efforts. Ray commented, “I found a letter from you, the reading whereof gave me no small content, it containing expressions so significant and full of heat and πάθος,2 as certainly nothing but sincere love [of the field] could dictate.”3 Their first letters dating from March  were surprisingly formal on Lister’s part. Lister wrote in Latin, and his topics were limited to reviews of the works of natural historians, exchange of plant and animal specimens, and reports of observations. Lister’s formality toward Ray may have been because his friend was twelve years older, and

1

Bodleian MS Lister , f. . Strong feeling or passion. 3 MS Ray, f. , Natural History Museum, London. The letter is also partially transcribed in Lankester, ed., Correspondence, –, as well as in Gunther, ed., Further Correspondence, –. The letter to Lister from Ray was dated  June . 2



chapter four

because he acknowledged Ray as his intellectual “master.”4 One also suspects Lister was trying to impress Ray with his fluid Latinity, but it was a pretense that did not last very long; by  June , Lister was teasing Ray: How are you? Are you laughing at this Latin letter of mine? Of course you are. Come on now, no more pretending you’re not. Just let me be amused by my foolishness too. Think how presumptuous I am being when in your presence I earlessly use those very words in which you surpass even the most educated person.5

By , Lister and Ray wisely decided to write each other in the vernacular. The first of the letters from Ray to Lister dated  June  has been lost, only surviving in an abstracted form, describing plant species that Ray had encountered in Calais during one of his excursions with Willoughby.6 Shortly afterwards, on  June , Ray paid Lister a visit in Cambridge. Together with the apothecary and naturalist Peter Dent (/–) who would generously contribute to Ray’s Catalogue of English Plants, they went on a botanical “simpling” expedition. The journey lasted from June to September , began at Histon and

4 MS Ray, f. , letter , Natural History Museum, London. The letter is partially transcribed in Lankester, ed., Correspondence, –, and the reference to Ray as Lister’s “master” is on . The letter is dated  December . 5 MS Ray, f. , letter , Natural History Museum, London. The letter, originally in Latin, is partially transcribed in Lankester, ed., Correspondence, . Lister wrote: Quid tu? ridesneme istas meas Latinas? Certè rides. age, tolle caeliumum; ut et ipsesese me delectem meis ineptiis. Vide, quàm insolens sim, quòd non verear, iis verbis coram te uti, quibus vel literatissimo cuivis excellis. Ray, for his part, was quite impressed with Lister’s Latin. In a letter of  November , he wrote, “Obviously you have achieved that most difficult accomplishment, the ability to speak and write elegantly, to the point where you no longer have to strain after the purity of your Latin and a polished style, since you excel to such an extent in these matters and effortlessly snatch the palm of victory from your other contemporaries.” [Rem sanè difficillimam planè consecutus es, ornatè dicendi scribendique facultatem; adeò ut de Latini sermonis puritate, déque stylo expoliendo tibi ampliùs laborandum non sit, cùm in his tantopere excellas aliísque aequalibus tuis palmam facilè praeripias]. See MS Ray, f. , letter , Natural History Museum, London. Ray’s letter is partially transcribed in Lankester, ed., Correspondence, –. 6 MS Ray, Derham Abstracts, Natural History Museum, London. Among the Ray Letters in the Natural History Museum is a lengthy list of briefly abstracted letters to and from Ray in the handwriting of William Derham who edited The Philosophical Letters of Ray (). Though these letters were available to Derham at the time, many have been lost, and his abstract-inventory is now the only clue to their former existence. Gunther, ed., Further Correspondence includes these abstracts; the abstract of this particular letter is on page .

lister’s early contributions to natural history



Taversham in Cambridgeshire, proceeded to the Gog Magog Hills, and continued to Lincolnshire, including a visit to Burwell. They traveled not only to collect specimens, but to escape the plague that was still ravaging Cambridge. Lister’s field notes on the flora and fauna that they encountered still survive, and he makes numerous comparisons between his English samples, using Ray’s Catalogue of Plants as a guide, and the flora he encountered in Montpellier.7 Some of the plants which Lister recorded in the Burwell Wood still exist there, including Lady’s Mantle (Alchemilla vulgaris) as well as Hawkweed (Hieracium perpropinquum), which Lister recorded accurately as having a “small round hard and stiff stalke, some two foot high. Sett which very brawd leafes something long and sharpe pointed, in order one after another at a distance the leaves and stalke are somewhat ruffe and hairy.”8 After their tour, Ray spent the summer of  “between Essex and Sussex visiting friends,” and reading “over such books as Natural Philosophy as came out since my being abroad.”9 These included Robert Hooke’s Micrographia, tracts by Boyle, Sydenham’s work on fevers, and a perusal of Athanasius Kircher’s Mundus Subterraneus (–), his treatise on geo-cosmology. In between reading, Ray was cataloguing the collections of “plants, fishes, foules, stones, and other rarities” he made with Willoughby, and mentioned to Lister “I could wish you would take a little pains this summer about grasses, so we might compare notes, for I would fain clear and compleat their History.”10 Lister was not only interested in grasses at that point, but was also observing insects and spiders around his parents’ home at Burwell and at Cambridge. This is not as abrupt a change of focus as one might think, as all branches of natural history were interconnected in the early modern period; it encompassed “investigation into all res naturae—the things of nature.”11 Lister himself remarked in his later translation of Johannes Goedaert’s (–) work Of Insects (), “Here we must note, how necessary it is, in order to the compleating of

7

Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. Bodleian MS Lister , f. r, v. 9 MS Ray, f. , Natural History Museum, London. The letter is also partially transcribed in Lankester, ed., Correspondence, –, as well as Gunther, ed., Further Correspondence, –. The letter to Lister from Ray was dated  June . 10 MS Ray, f. , Natural History Museum, London. The letter is also partially transcribed in Lankester, ed., Correspondence, –, as well as in Gunther, ed., Further Correspondence, –. 11 Cook, “Cutting edge,” . 8



chapter four

Natural History, that our naturalist should be well skilled in plants.”12 Zoology, botany, entomology and ornithology were considered part of natural history, but so were cosmology, geography, chorography, and meteorology. Early modern physicians such as Lister often were also prominent natural historians, imbibing a commitment to “natural history as the best way of knowing.”13 As Lister wrote in his notebook of adversaria, “I must yet for my owne part affirme that I am much beholden to the studdie of Insects for the disciplining my thoughts, and making of them readier in observing, if you will . . . usefull and necessarie things in Phisic.”14 From September  to February , Lister was at Cambridge and dedicated himself not only to medical studies, but also to the investigation of minerals, plants, insects, molluscs, spiders, birds and fish. Ray wrote to Lister in his letter of  June : I was much pleased to understand, that you doe not confine your studies and enquiries to Phytologie only, but take in Zoologie and the whole latitudes of naturall history. Lincolnshire for fish and foule affords a large field, yet is it very much that in one winter you should meet with upward of  species, and I wish I had the sight of your descriptions, which I doubt not to be very exact; but because they cannot easily be transmitted, I shall only desire a Catalogue of their names, that so I may know what there are I have not yet met with.15

Though Ray requested only a catalogue, Lister could not resist providing some of his observations in detail. One week later, while in Cambridge, he wrote Ray a thorough description of Cicindela or tiger beetles.16 Lister gave a fairly accurate description of their long spindly legs that hold the body well off the ground (Lister thought them similar to the “common black” fly or house fly), narrow thorax, and nearly oblong elytra or sheath wings (he noted correctly that “the little creature’s body was distinguished only by the protective covering and the

12

Goedartius, Of Insects, . Cook, “Physicians and Natural History,” –. 14 Bodleian MS Lister , f.  r. Folios – appear to comprise an unprinted preface to Lister’s Letters & Mixt Discourses. 15 MS Ray, f. , Natural History Museum, London. The letter is also partially transcribed in Lankester, ed., Correspondence, –, as well as Gunther, ed., Further Correspondence, –. 16 MS Ray, f. , letter , Natural History Museum, London. The letter is also partially transcribed in Lankester, ed., Correspondence, . The letter from Lister to Ray was written on  June . 13

lister’s early contributions to natural history



wing-cases”).17 It is likely he saw them on the beaches of Lincolnshire as the beetles require an environment of undisturbed sand as they live for two years as larvae in sand burrows. Tiger beetles are increasingly endangered, and Lister seems to have made a sighting of a now-rare cliff tiger beetle that is blackish in color, the most common ones being green.18 After a short hiatus in the summer when he apparently visited London—his aunt Frances Jennings remarking that she would “soe happy as to see you”—Lister received a short visit from his sister Jane who had “not found any thing more pleasant to me than the time I spent at Cambridge . . .”19 He then resumed his correspondence with Ray in October  and his fieldwork in Burwell, having “a suitable period of leisure” at his disposal.20 Lister paid special attention to spiders, devoting to them “not merely hours, or even days, but whole months exclusively in an examination of these tiny little creatures.”21 As part of his studies of arachnids, Lister indicated in a letter to Ray, dated  March , that he was actively involved in assessing the entomological works of his day. He wrote: I value Aristotle’s Natural History enough to concern myself with it; but the distinguished man gives very little help or satisfaction. Certainly in those things which concern me daily, I find him to err badly, and to be not at all that admirable and splendid author whose works are to be consulted by custom: quite the reverse. It is plain that he was content to build an elaborate structure on slight experiment; About Pliny abundantly you have made amends to me with your letters; And so far your judgment from the most careful reading [of him], I embrace and I approve of strongly. I think among our men [natural historians], the chiefest and most clever and careful writer is Aldrovandi22 (as for 17 MS Ray, f. , letter , Natural History Museum, London. [Tres pedum tenuissimorum ordines, ad fabricam et similitudinem vulgaris muscae nigrae facti.] [. . . tegumento tantùm, alarúmque thecis, distinguebatur animalculi corpus.] 18 Hymen and Parsons, Review, . 19 Bodleian MS Lister , ff. r and r. 20 Martin Lister, “To the Reader,” in Historiae Animalium Angliae, sig. A. In this preface, Lister was recalling his field expeditions in , stating: “it is now ten years since I described very many of the insects of our island . . . I dealt with the spiders separately . . . not very long afterwards.” [Decennium est, ex quo plurima nostrae Insulae Insecta descripsi; atque; ex iis cum Araneos, qua fere nun sunt methodo, disposuissem, eorum specimen non ita diu post publici juris feci.] 21 Lister, “To the Reader,” in Historiae Animalium, sig. A. [ubi non horas tantum, aut dies aliquot, sed menses bene multos in harum minutarum bestiolarum investigatione totus impendi.] 22 Aldrovandi, De animalibus insectis.



chapter four Albertus, Cardano23 and other men of those sorts I am greatly angry with, because I myself feel as they did not disclosed the findings of others, they have clearly ruined their work.) This is unless it is permitted for the most learned men to play the fool, which these Philosophers may wish to do.24

Lister’s epistle demonstrates not only his particular world view—Ray thought it a “true copy” of Lister’s mind—but the very “nature” of natural history at this time.25 Lister began his assessment of works of natural history with Aristotle and Pliny not just due to chronology, but because he was engaged in a comparative assessment of ancient and modern natural philosophers, a major preoccupation among intellectuals in the late seventeenth and first part of the eighteenth century.26 Lister acknowledged that Aristotle’s works on zoology, like his History of Animals had tremendous merit, as did Pliny’s Natural History, but knew that they also were often compendia of data not gathered from direct observation, but gleaned from written authorities. This was because first-hand experience, according to Aristotle, was a dubious type of knowledge—“sense perception must be concerned with particulars, whereas knowledge depends on the recognition of the

23 Probably Cardano, De rerum varietate (). This gallimaufry includes such surmises as ants were given wings to console them in old age. 24 MS Ray, f. , Natural History Museum, London. There is a partial transcription of this letter in Lankester, ed., Correspondence, –. [Itaque ne veteres quosque praetermittam, in primis de Historia naturali, Aristotelis ita censeo, eum hominem Philosophum praeclarè agere: sed egregius vir minimè satisfacit tantis facultatibus atque adjumentis, quorum meminit Plinius ei praestita fuisse ab Alexandro. certè in his praecipuè rebus, quibus me quotidie exerceo, turpissimè illum errare deprehendo, neque sane id mirum cum praeclarissimus author summum suum ingenium consulere maluit, quam res ipsas. illud manifestum eum paucissimis experimentis fuisse contentum ut immensam structuram exaedificaret. De Plinio tu mihi abundè satisfecisti superioribus tuis literis; adequo tuum judicium à diligentissimâ lectione vehementer complector approboque. Ad nostros homines venio, quorum, in primis ingeniossimus juxta ac diligentissimus scriptor Aldrovandus (nam Albertum, Cardanum caeterosque id genus homines stomacher valdè quod \me/ plane operam perdidisse sentio quam iis evolvendis dederim. nisi quod id profecerim, quam licere homines doctissimos ineptire, qui ultra apparatum velint philosophari. Sed ad Aldrovandum redeo, virum sanè mirificium, cui tamen aegrè fero istos locos suos communes; mallem equidem substituisset corollas de suo seque dignas, sed id moris est hominum, immensam lectionem et industriam ostentare malumus, quam accuratissimè in paucis eisdemque nostris sapere.] 25 MS Ray, f. , Natural History Museum, London. The letter is partially transcribed in Lankester, Correspondence, –, as well as Gunther, ed., Further Correspondence, –. 26 See Levine, Battle, for a thorough discussion of the battle between ancients and moderns in early modern scholarship.

lister’s early contributions to natural history



universal.”27 That was why scholars preferred “to display immense reading and industry” rather than rely upon their own wisdom. Lister’s letter also well demonstrates that the encyclopedic means of gathering previous knowledge in natural history was changing with a new emphasis on direct observation. It is well known that part of this intellectual transition was due to the inductive empiricism advocated by the philosopher Francis Bacon, but part of the novel emphasis on “matters of fact” was due to Italian natural philosophers. The Italian medical schools emphasized direct experience in teaching anatomy in the fifteenth century. As Paula Findlen has demonstrated, the construction of cabinets of curiosities by naturalists like Ulyssi Aldrovandi (–) in Bologna also were a basic feature of academic and polite culture in early modern Italy, and were some of the first natural history museums.28 Aldrovandi himself said of his cabinet that everything in his “museum is seen by many different gentlemen, who, passing through this city, visit my Pandechio di natura like the eighth wonder of the world.”29 Aldrovandi’s cabinet was indeed impressive and contained over , specimens, and in the late seventeenth century, the Senate of Bologna was still administering it; he also established a vast scientific library. The results of his research were published in a magnum opus, which he intended to include everything that was known about natural history; he provided nomenclature and attempted to classify over , plants, animals, minerals, rocks, and fossils.30 Aldrovandi’s four volumes were published between  and , and Lister’s letter shows he particularly admired his last volume De Animalibus insectis. Historians of science have often characterized Aldrovandi as an indiscriminate encyclopedist. Some scholars, such as Carr, have been puzzled why Lister would so admire the Italian naturalist, attributing it to “uncritical enthusiasm,” but this conclusion would be a misapprehension of the new episteme that guided both Lister and Aldrovandi, who were not compiling previously known “commonplaces” but consulting nature herself.31 Aldrovandi himself stated: 27 Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, a–, b–, in Complete Works of Aristotle. See also Daston, “The Moral Economy,” – for a discussion of early modern empiricism. 28 Findlen, Possessing, –, passim. 29 Findlen, “Museum,” . 30 Vai and Cavazza, “Ulisse Aldrovandi,” . 31 Carr, “The Biological Work,” .



chapter four My Natural History was truthfully written, not having ever described any thing not previously seen with my own eyes and touched with my own hands, examining the anatomy of both external and internal parts and preserving each, one by one, in my little natural world, so that everyone at any time can observe and contemplate, all [things] being stored as paintings and samples in our Museum . . .”32

Likewise, Lister had directly observed materia medica in the herbaria and botanical gardens in Montpellier and performed anatomical dissections, a reflection of the new empiricism that dominated the medical curriculum and had its origins in renaissance humanism in Italy. As Pomata has demonstrated, the Italian Renaissance humanists adopted a model of natural history derived from the classical historian Pliny; in Pliny’s view, “historia” included both the human and the natural sciences, so a medical case was “historia,” as was a history of past events, as was a history of animals and plants.33 And, throughout his career, Lister was also influenced by this tradition, his library having a heavy concentration of classical authors, his Latinity elegant, and he continued writing treatises in Latin well after this ceased to be the fashion; Pliny was also one of the most cited authors in his works. Lister stretched the Plinian idea of “historia” to its limits, writing medical case histories, antiquarian histories, and the natural history of insects or “small animals,” considering them of equal importance to all other types of histories. He then refined these histories, in accordance with a new emphasis on rational empiricism by making his own keen observations. Lister continued in his letter to Ray: . . . That having been said, surely the whole of Mouffet’s Insectorum Theatrum has been organized so far indiscriminately, with an exposition that was utterly barbarous. But, to be fair, these great men that do natural history receive so little praise as it is as the ignorant have almost disregarded them. Nonetheless we should be able to give natural history to the unskilled man and well as to the willing, and to this end, I must gather authoritative writings, considering which of then are distinguished and good. But when using other’s writings, I have acknowledged others’ work openly, and I marvel at the insolence of the man (Mouffet), and say with a heavy heart, which especially about the nature of insects, has almost to the word plagiarized from Aldrovandi, yet nowhere does he

32 33

Vai and Cavazza, “Ulissa Aldrovandi,” . Pomata, Historia, .

lister’s early contributions to natural history



mention his source. Had but Aldrovandi published his work before thirty years, how advanced his efforts were would have come into the light. Just a small number have written about insects—F. Imperatus,34 F. Columna35 clearly are worthy; I have read Mouffet and nobody else besides Johannes Goedart, of which surely his diligence is to be recommended especially. For besides the most elegant illustrations, Goedart has added accounts of the insects’ diet, the seasons it transmutes, which he observes most carefully . . . 36

Lister began his entomological work by comparing the quality of his own observations to those in published works like Thomas Mouffet’s (–) Insectorum, sive, Minimorum animalium theatrum or Theatre of Insects. And in the case of Mouffet, it was not a straightforward task, as Lister was correct that it was “organized … indiscriminately.” The book was published posthumously in , but had been completed originally in  by Mouffet from a compilation of work

34 Imperato, Historia Naturale. The first edition was published in . Imperato was an Italian botanist at Naples, active during the last part of the sixteenth century. This beautiful catalogue was of the ‘Museo’ of the Neapolitan apothecary Ferrante Imperato (–) and his son Francesco. The catalogue is divided in  books with sections on mining ( books) and alchemy ( books), the remainder being devoted to flora and fauna. 35 Columna, Fabii Colvmnae. Columna (–) was a naturalist and a member of the Lincei (Lynx) Society. 36 Lister refers to Johannes Goedaert’s Metamorphosis et Historia Naturalis Insectorum which he translated into English and published in . Goedaert was trained as an artist in the Netherlands and was an accomplished scientific illustrator; his Metamorphosis was the first book on Dutch insect fauna and included one of the earliest scientific accounts of insect metamorphosis or “transmutation.” The Latin for the excerpts of Lister’s letter is as follows: [nam ab his ferè omnibus commentarii plurium annorum, at moriantur pessime crediti, eorumque literas videre mallem quas causatur, quam huius ineptam diligentiam, ita profectò universum Theatrum suum adeo confusè et sine ordine condidit . . . ut quae ei materies ab aliis, turpissimè collocatur et minimè in laudem tantorum virorum. At non solum ipsam rem fere ignoravit, verum barbarè omnino exponit. Sed ea homini imperito et benè volenti condonare possimus, nisi alia planè res contra suaderet, cui equidem in legendis autoribus multum tribuo studeoque, ut sc. Intelligerem, qui sit eorum naimus honestusne et probus. at ex eius scriptis aliud apertè cognovi, quo salis mirari nequeo, arrogantiam sc. hominis, ne quid gravius dicam, qui cum infinita penè, praesertim de natura istorum minutorum animalium totidem ferè verbis transtulit ab Aldrovando, tamen nusquam eius ingeniosissimi viri (si quis alius nostri seculi) mentionem facit. ediderat autem Aldrovandus opus seeum ante triginta annos quam haec in lucem prolata sunt. Pauca ea, quae de his rebus scripsere F. Imperatus, F. Columna, tantis veris planè digna sunt, Mouffeto citem neminem legi praeter Geodartium Batvum, cuius certè industria summè laudanda est. Nam praeter elegantissimas figures, quas appingi caravit, singulorum, animalium cibatum, transmutationumque tempora, accuratissimè notat; ut tantum apud eum desideretur eorum exacta descriptio.]



chapter four

by Conrad Gesner (–), the notes of Thomas Penny (c. –), and Edward Wotton (–).37 The book was still unpublished when Mouffet died in , most likely due to the expense of printing its  woodcuts. Luckily, the manuscript survived, and it was sold on behalf of Mouffet’s widow to Sir Theodore de Mayerne, a physician of the king. Mayerne had the work published in  and dedicated it to Dr William Paddy, an alumnus of St John’s, member of the Royal College of Physicians, and colleague of Sir Matthew Lister.38 John Rowland translated the Insectorum into English, and it was published as a part of Edward Topsell’s Natural History of Four-Footed Beastes (London, ). The Insectorum was thus a disorganized gallimaufry bristling with quotations from hundreds of different authorities. On the other hand, Martin Lister may have been a bit harsh when he accused Mouffet of plagiarism, as Mouffet made his good intentions clear in his preface, stating “I had rather something should be taken off my own estate than from his [Penny’s] glory who had spent so much paints in he description of Insects and so much money for the Plates engraving” and characterizing his own abilities as only “small.”39 Mouffet also included a long list of authorities he had consulted, and put Gesner’s, Penny’s, and Wotton’s names on the title page. And Ray certainly reproved Lister for his opinion, “Regarding Mouffet, you have been exceedingly unjust, he has not, in my opinion, been merited badly in the republic of letters; and learned opinion supports my judgment.”40 Lister’s deprecatory words may have been because a few years earlier when in Montpellier he told Ray he had greatly admired Mouffet, stating “he would for ever be quoted with honour” as “Insects was yet a vast subject for any person of judgment to exercise his curiositie and leasure about.”41 It seemed Lister was later disillusioned with Mouffet’s actual contributions to the Insectorum Theatrum when he examined it more closely.

37 Harkness has demonstrated that Mouffet and Penny were part of a community of naturalists living in Lime Street in Elizabethan London, and she traces briefly the history of the Insectorum. See Harkness, Jewel, . 38 Potts and Fear, “Thomas Penny,” http://www.britarch.ac.uk/lahs/PENNyart.htm. 39 Mouffet, “Introduction,” Theatre, in Topsell, Natural History, . 40 Lankester, ed., Correspondence, . The original letter has been lost, and only printed editions remain. 41 Bodleian MS Lister , ff. r–v.

lister’s early contributions to natural history



In most of the work, Mouffet combined his own fairly anthropomorphic commentary with Penny’s detailed observations. So for instance, Mouffet stated of spiders: I know not whether were best to commend the spider for the gifts of her minde, as wisdom, justice, valour, humanity . . . love of poverty . . . [the spider] hath the same colour that Ovid writes that Lovers have, that is, pale; and when she sticks aloft with her feet cast every way, she exactly represents a painted Starre. As if Nature had appointed not only to make it round like the Heavens, but with rays like the Stars, as if they were alive.42

Penny, on the other hand, was the first entomologist to note that young spiders could be carried on their parent’s backs.43 Mouffet wrote: There are yet more kinds of Spiders, for there is a kinde of black Spider, with short feet, that hath a white egge under the belly, white as snow, and running swiftly; when the Egge breaks, many young Spiders run forth, which go all with their Dam to feed, and at night they rest upon the Dams back. Penny supposed that this was rough with warts, until he touched it with a straw, and saw the young Spiders to run down.44

When Mouffet departed from Penny in his portrayals of spiders in the Insectorum, his illustrations of the arachnids varied “from possible sketches to mere caricatures.”45 Mouffet’s comments were like those from a medieval bestiary, and Penny’s the result of careful empiricism. Mouffet’s particular shortcomings in describing arachnids may have been why Lister saw an opportunity to do his spider survey, though he would not formally publish it until .46 To modern eyes, Lister’s (and Ray’s) extreme concern for empirical accuracy and the “mere” sifting and organization of facts may be taken, as by historian Charles Raven, as an indication that Lister was a “mere observer rather than a thinker,” but this would be an incorrect interpretation.47 As Hal Cook has commented, “to large numbers of people [in the seventeenth century] . . . the discovery of true facts and the sorting out of details seemed wonderfully fresh and new . . . but

42

Mouffet, “Introduction,” Theatre, , . Potts and Fear, “Thomas Penny.” 44 Mouffet, “Introduction,” Theatre, . 45 Potts and Fear, “Thomas Penny.” 46 Lister, Historiae Animalium Angliae Tres Tractatus. The first of these three tracts concerned spiders. 47 Raven, John Ray, . 43



chapter four

it also presumed certain attitudes towards knowledge . . . many natural philosophers in early modern Europe were arguing that one really must get the facts straight before theorizing about causes.”48 Empiricism was not merely naïve, but the surest route to certain knowledge. As Sir Hans Sloane, who Lister later nominated to membership of the Royal Society and who would become its president in , wrote: It may be ask’d me to what Purposes serve such Account, I answer, that the Knowledge of Natural-History, being Observations of Matters of Fact, is more certain that most Others, and in my slender Opinion, less subject to Mistake than Reasonings, Hypotheses, and Deductions are . . . These are things we are sure of, as far as our Senses are not fallible; and which in probability, have been ever since the Creation, and will remain to the End of the World, in the same Condition we now find them.49

This was why in the late seventeenth century, works of natural history were “grainy with facts, full of experiential particulars conspicuously detached from explanatory or theoretical moorings.”50 And it was those experiential particulars with which Lister and Ray concerned themselves, Ray writing to Lister: I rejoice much that you still pursue the study of nature, not only because of the propensity I myself have to it—and consequently to love such as agree with me—but also because I judge you to be a person . . . as well qualified as any I know in England for such an undertaking, and so likely to make the greatest advance and improvement, you having taken the right course and method; that is, to see with your own eyes, not relying lazily on the dictates of any master but yourself, comparing things with books, and so learning as much as can be known of them.51

. Debates About Spontaneous Generation In addition to its concern with “matters of fact,” Lister’s closing remarks in his letter to Ray of  March  also revealed that the

48

Cook, “Cutting edge,” . Sloane, Madeira, sig. Bv. 50 Daston and Park, Wonders, . 51 MS Ray, f. , Natural History Museum, London. The letter is also partially transcribed in Lankester, ed., Correspondence, –, as well as Gunther, ed., Further Correspondence, –. 49

lister’s early contributions to natural history



two naturalists were concerned about the problem of spontaneous generation, or the generation of life from inanimate matter. Usually the term referred to the creation of insects or worms from animal or plant tissue. Lister wrote, “I myself remember to have formerly elicited your judgment about [Athanasius] Kircher. In the tract, the Mundus Subterraneus, among other things, he discourses about the spontaneous generation of insects; which I vehemently doubt occurs.”52 In his refutation of the idea of the spontaneous generation of insects, Lister agreed with Penny’s statements in the Insectorum Theatrum. While Mouffet insisted that fleas were bred from dust or “dried filth,” and bed-bugs were born from “certain putrescent humors found around beds,” Penny thought bed-bugs reproduced sexually: “For while he (Penny) was studying plant life . . . he tried to draw his sword to cut off a branch of a tree, when however, it wouldn’t come because of the rust he had to cut open the scabbard and in it he found lots of adult cimices (bed bugs) and a good few young with a great number of pale white eggs.”53 At this point, Ray was even less sure than Lister about spontaneous generation. He wrote, replying to Lister, “I have no judgment about Kircher; I am unable to determine truly if insects spontaneously generate.”54 Ray may have been being tactful, as the Collegio Romano’s most famous scholar had a rather checkered reputation amongst members of the early Royal Society. Henry Oldenburg, the secretary of the Royal Society, wrote to Robert Boyle in , complaining about Kircher’s Mundus Subterraneus, stating, “ ’Tis an ill Omen, me thinks, that the very first Experiment singled out by us out of Kircher, fails, and it ’tis likely, the next will do so too.”55 Kircher may have intended his book to “encourage a meaningful and intellectual contemplation

52 MS Ray, f. , letter , Natural History Museum, London. Lister was referring to Athanasius Kircher (–), the Jesuit Polymath and his Mundus Subterraneus, published in twelve volumes between  and . The work was largely devoted to volcanology, but it also contained speculations on a variety of subjects, including tidal mechanisms and spontaneous generation. See Hirai, “Kircher’s Chymical Interpretation,” –. 53 Mouffet, “Introduction,” Theatre, . 54 MS Ray, f. , letter , Natural History Museum, London. The original letter in Latin is missing in MS Ray, and all that is remaining are notes about parts of the letter not published in the Lankester edition. See Lankester, ed., Correspondence, p. . [Kircheri judicium nihili facio; an verò Insecta quaedam spontè oriantur nécne, determinare nequo.] 55 Hall and Hall, eds, Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, : –.



chapter four

of the hidden depths of the Earth through a mix of iconography and probabilism, presenting to his audiences a glimpse of the world as it might be,” but it was clear that his manner of creating knowledge was at odds with the protracted empiricism of the Royal Society.56 Kircher described his theories of spontaneous generation in the last book of the Mundus, which centered on his concept of semina, a “seed” which contained a force that gave each living thing its form, figure, and color. There were two types of seeds, one forming minerals and other inanimate bodies, and one forming plants, insects, and animals. Kircher asserted that the universal spermatic force was individualized in living beings as a particular seed, and diffused throughout their bodies. If this seed dropped from the body of an animal when it died, thus losing its original power and nature, it became a separated seed. Kircher argued that insects could generate spontaneously from unheated “separated seeds” in putrefied matter from a dead body of a plant, insect, or animal, but as they had less latent heat, they would be more degenerate in form.57 Kircher’s premises, and indeed the whole concept of spontaneous generation, was the source of much debate in the early Royal Society in the s, and so it is not surprising that Ray, a Royal Society Fellow, and Lister, an aspiring naturalist, would discuss it in their correspondence. In May , a Royal Society committee, which met at Robert Boyle’s lodgings, was formed to “erect a library” and to examine the generation of insects; members included John Wilkins, Seth Ward, Christopher Merrett, Henry Oldenburg, and John Evelyn, amongst others.58 In , Royal Society members were testing the Duke of Orleans’s claim that he had produced animals by the putrefaction of vegetables, and Mr Evelyn “was put in mind of the experiment committed to him of closing up blood and pieces of flesh, to see whether it would produce any insects.”59 Cheese and sack were tested to see if they could produce maggots and, from  to , Robert Boyle created a “catalogue of experiments relating to spontaneous generation to be made two ways . in glasses hermetically sealed, having the ordinary air in them: . in glasses first exhausted, and then sealed

56 57 58 59

Waddell, “The World,” . Hirai, “Kircher’s Chymical Interpretation,” . Birch, History, : . Birch, History, : .

lister’s early contributions to natural history



up.”60 In this manner, Boyle “sought to test the hypothesis that the capacities of seminal principles of animals might be activated without the presence of air.”61 In doing so, Boyle indirectly foreshadowed the experiments of Francesco Redi, published in his Experiments on the Generation of Insects (Florence, ). Lister had read Redi’s work in Montpellier and, in it, Redi directly criticized Kircher’s belief in spontaneous generation, so perhaps Lister was convinced by some of his arguments. In Lister’s earliest published paper for the Philosophical Transactions, submitted by Ray on his behalf, he made his first published comments arguing against spontaneous generation.62 The paper opened with his observations on snails, reproduction, and the phenomenon of sinistral shells of snails that are “left-handed” or coiled in a counter-clockwise direction. Just as the majority of humans are right-handed, most snail species have shells that turn from left to right, but the species he examined were a rare exception. Early naturalists often did not notice the chirality of the shells, printing them backwards in engravings. Sinistral snails in right-handed species can also be rare genetic mutations, their survival in the wild compromised as their genital openings are on the wrong side, making it difficult though not impossible to mate; their rarity has led to their moniker of “snail kings,” and they are much in demand by collectors.63 Lister’s paper was the first to notice the significance of shell chirality, as he had been observing snails for a number of years. In his visit to France, Lister mentioned he and Ray found the species Helix aspersa, or the common brown garden snail, which in France is known as petit gris and is collected to eat.64 He also collected the species Baliotis in Guernsey in , and his pocket student notebook shows he bought Rondelet’s de Piscibus in June  that discussed gastropoda.65 In his paper, Lister noted that the sinistral specimens were small, so fragile he could not send Ray samples, and duskish in color; he wrote, “the opening of the shell is pretty round, the second turn or wreath is very large for the proportion, and the rest of the wreaths, 60

Birch, History, : –. Anstey, “Seminal principles,” . 62 Lister, “Concerning the Odd Turn,” –. 63 Sturtevant, “Inheritance of direction,” –. Sturtevant was the first to provide a genetic model for the incidence of sinistral snails. 64 Carr, “The Biological Work,” . 65 Carr, “The Biological Work,” ; Bodleian MS Lister , f. . 61



chapter four

about the number of six, are still lessen’d to a point.”66 Lister believed that the species was “something like those of Aldrovandus de Testaceis, markt [marked] p. . Turbinum levium.”67 Turning to Aldrovandi’s figure, it is likely Lister was observing the most easily obtained sinistral land snails in the UK, the Clausiliidae (the “door snails’ ”).68 These are “small turret-like snails which can be found at the base of trees in damp deciduous woodland. The British species tend to be brownish in color and rarely grow to more than mm in length.”69 Lister then turned to the question of snail reproduction and spontaneous generation, stating: In March they are still to be found in paires, Aristotle affirmes all these kind of creatures to be of a spontaneous birth, and no more to contribute to the production of one another, than Trees, and therefore to have no distinction of sex. I have no reason to subscribe to his authority, since I have seen so many of them pair’d, and in the very act of Venery.70

Lister did affirm that many snails could be hermaphrodites, something with which he had previously discoursed with Ray, and he described their eggs as lined up like “gardin peas” in a pod. Many years later in /, Lister and the mathematician John Wallis also discussed the phenomenon upon the occasion of Lister presenting him with a copy of his work on snail anatomy.71 Wallis commented to Lister: What you note, of their being Androgynous, which I find you & some others of late years to mention as a late discovery; was a little surprise to me. Not as to the truth of it (for it is very evident,) but as to its being new. I will remember that above forty years agoe (about the year  or ) I did myself observe it more than once (soon after my coming to Oxford) when I found snayls so coupled neutrally, having buryed themselves under ground close to a stone-wall; with a yard number of round white egges, about the biggness of a peppercorn, close by them. This I showed then to some, but made not much discourse about it, because,

66

Lister, “Concerning the Odd Turn,” . Lister, “Concerning the Odd Turn,” . 68 Aldrovandi’s figure of the snails to which Lister refers may be found in Aldrovandi, De reliquis animalibus, : . 69 Ruscoe, C. “An Insight into Collecting,” http://www.britishshellclub.org.uk/ pages/articles/sini/artsini.htm. 70 Lister, “Concerning the Odd Turn,” –. 71 Lister gave Wallis his Exercitatio anatomica in qua de cochleis. 67

lister’s early contributions to natural history



though new to me, I supposed it not to have been unknown to others; till of late years I found it noted as a thing not commonly known.72

Lister’s early paper clearly was part of an entire body of work concerning spontaneous generation written in the last decades of the seventeenth century. His research elucidating the life histories of plant and insect parasites such as gall wasps and ichneumons also led to further investigations by other natural philosophers. Earlier naturalists like Redi mentioned these species in their discussions of spontaneous generation, as the insects seemed to appear suddenly from plant galls or the dead bodies of other insects. Lister’s careful observations of ichneumons, however, led to his “strong belief that they have a way yet unheeded, whereby they do as boldly, as subtly, convey their Eggs within the Bodies of Insects and parts of Vegetables.”73 He did not realize at the time that the female lays an egg in or near the host’s body, so the larval ichneumon can feed either internally or externally, killing the host when they pupate. Lister also made observations of gall wasps, most species that attack specific tissues of the host plant, the plant subsequently forming galls in defense on roots, stems, or flowers. The formation of galls is actually encouraged by salivary secretions of the wasp, as the galls serve as good and shelter for wasp larva. The wasps thus appeared to “spontaneously generate” from the plant galls. Though Redi’s work on maggots that disproved their spontaneous generation from putrid substances such as rotting meat had “marked a decisive turning point in views on spontaneous generation amongst members of the Royal Society and their associates,” Redi did not discount the possibility that creatures could arise from plant flesh which he considered to have a vivifying power.74 Redi thought the production of gall wasps in plants was due to the “peculiar potency of that soul or principle which creates the flowers and fruits of living plants.”75 Redi reasoned, “if a thing is alive, it may produce a worm or so, as in the case of cherries, pears and plums; in oak glands, in galls and welts . . . worms arise, which are transformed into butterflies.”76

72 BL Add. MS , f. . The letter was dated  March /. My thanks to Philip Beeley for alerting me to this reference. 73 Lister, “Vegetable Excrescencies,” . 74 Anstey, “Seminal principles,” . 75 Redi, Experiments, . 76 Redi, Experiments, .



chapter four

Redi’s equivocation resulted in a long series of letters between Lister, Ray, and Henry Oldenburg, secretary of the Royal Society, on the origins of insects from plants. Ray seems gradually to have been convinced by Lister’s observations of the life cycle of gall wasps and ichneumons that spontaneous generation was false, and he concluded that “even all Insects are the natural issue of parents of the same species with themselves.”77 In a publication for the Philosophical Transactions, Ray summarized the debate: F. Redi hath gone a good way in proving this, having cleared the point concerning generation ex materia putrida. But still there remain two great difficulties. The first is, to give an accompt of the production of Insects bred in the By fruits and Excrescences of Vegetables, which the said Redi doubts not to ascribe to the Vegetative Soul of the Plant that yields those Excrescencies. But for this I refer you to Mr. Lister. The second, to rend an accompt of Insects bred in the Bodies of other animals.”78

In preparation for future publications, Lister continued to do his fieldwork on insects and arachnids, but he clearly had other things on his mind. Ray wrote to him on  October : I received your latest and earliest letters, in which you included the lists of names of thirty Spiders you had recently observed. Certainly I admire the skill and diligence with which you have been able to discover so many distinct kinds in so short a time and such a restricted area. Indeed I think it astonishing how you found the leisure in such a difficult time, when your mind was distracted hither and thither with the worry of manifold cares and anxieties, and it was beyond its power for you to be able to devote yourself entirely to any study whatever.79

. The Resignation of a Fellowship These anxieties involved Lister leaving Cambridge by . Despite his enthusiasm for natural history and his fellowship that allowed him his 77

Ray, “Extract of a Letter,” . Ray, “Extract of a Letter,” . 79 MS Ray, f. , letter , Natural History Museum, London. The original letter is missing in MS Ray, though the letter is partially transcribed in Lankester, ed., Correspondence, –, and Gunther, ed., Further Correspondence, . It was written on  October . [Literas tuas et novissimas et superioris accepi, quibus Araneorum 30 à te nuper observatorum nomenclaturas inseruisti. Miror sanè quâ arte et industriâ usus, tam brevi temporis spatio, tam angustis loci limitibus tot distinctas species investigare potueris: At verò satìs mirari nequeo, unde tibi tantum otii tam alieno tempore cum curis et solicitudinibus variis perturbatus huc illuc fluctuaret animus, nec sui juris esset, ut posit cuiquam studio se totum impendere.] 78

lister’s early contributions to natural history



“simpling” tours to gather specimens, Lister was contemplating resigning his fellowship to pursue a more lucrative profession in medicine. Lister’s fellowship at St John’s was not in physick and, as Carr argued, he may “have been under some pressure [to leave] because of his not having taken the holy orders required for ordinary fellows.”80 Carr’s speculation is borne out by a letter from Ray to Lister, in which Ray wrote: I too received word of the fellowship. I at once believed that you had received the sacrament(s), for this so-called “fellowship” demands this as a condition. But . . . Mr South informed me that this had never been either your or your parent’s intention, and you too write that you are awaiting your father’s instruction at the beginning of spring to be called away from the university to practise medicine . . .81

Though it seemed from the amount of monies available to him for his studies in Montpellier that rents from inheritance would have provided him a reasonable living without the fellowship, there was some financial risk in setting up a new medical practice without a guaranteed income. As Lister seemed loath to risk leaving the university before his plans were more settled, there was “the small possibility of obtaining a royal dispensation from collegiate statutes” to avoid taking orders.82 The dispensation proved to be Lister’s exit strategy. He rather abruptly left St John’s in the spring of  for a three-month visit to Burwell at the start of the Easter holiday. His friend at College, Thomas Briggs, wrote a rather hurried and impassioned letter late at night to him on  March to ask him to reconsider his decision to leave Cambridge: [ I was] very glad to understand your safe arrivell att Burwell . . . I knew not how I came to bee out of my [cha]mber when you woke up on so suddain resolution of a journey . . . Dear Martin though a fellowship in St Johns’ bee of small value and so the loss perhaps not so much to you yet consider you are not the onely person conserned in the Case. You have very many good wishers and friends in College that will thinke themselves much loosers by your remove and twill bee but justice to them (absteining your owne Interest) to endeavour what you may your continuance amongst us, if you wish you againe here, I know no other

80

Carr, “The Biological Work,” . The original from MS Ray, Natural History Museum is lost. A partial transcription can be found in Lankester, ed., Correspondence, . 82 Frank, “Science, Medicine,” . 81



chapter four means then a dispensation from the Court the which assure your self wee all desire . . . I should thinke twould not bee difficult to perswade Sr Martin to consent to the K[ing’s] letters . . . I am going above a hundred miles tomorrow morning Southward upon Coll.[ege] conserns and am now betwixt sleep and wake.83

By the end of April, Martin was in negotiations with his father over some sort of financial agreement, Briggs remarking in correspondence: I should rejoice to understand anything from Sr. Martin to your better advantage, but, till assured of that, quit not a certainty if it may be retained; and if you procure a dispensat lett it be onely till such time as a Phisique place falls voyd, whereby the College will apprehend less infringement of the statutes . . .84

Lister’s father, now elderly, had a reputation for being something of handful, and negotiating with him may not have been easy. Lister’s sister Jane wrote him from London in November  about Sir Martin, “On Munday come seven-night I does intend for Burwell where I heare my company is very much desired for the old man. I dare not trespass on his patience any longer.”85 Lister’s mother Susanna noted later that month that an official at St John’s, one “Mr. Gardiner” was “to come to burwell between this and crismas and then he will speake with him concearning you . . . and give you an answer.”86 One also wonders if Lister’s trip to London the previous summer had something to do with the dispensation, as his sister Jane mentioned being at court and asked his advice about a court matter.87 In the end, Lister was able to convince both the “old man,” the Court, and the College to get what he wished. He obtained a royal dispensation dated  June  that required St John’s to retain him in his fellowship until one in medicine became available. His finances by that time would also be in order. Even before he had successfully navigated the waters of court patronage, Lister convinced his father to provide him with rents on some properties to replace his fellowship funds. His brother-in-law George Gregory wrote to him about a £

83

Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. 85 Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. 86 Bodleian MS Lister , f. . 87 Gunther, Early, : . Carr also noted this source in his “The Biological Work,” . Jane’s letter asks him for advice about court life in Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. 84

lister’s early contributions to natural history



rent that was due to him from one Mr Markham in Lincolnshire.88 It is a possibility that Lister’s father could have settled land on his son at this time as well, which was why Martin was not mentioned in his will.89 Thomas Briggs wrote to Lister at Burwell to express his congratulations on  May : Yours was every ways welcome, but espetialy since it carried the good news of Sir Martin’s consenting to your requests, though wee in College shall bee loosers thereby yet the gaine will bee the better since youle bee a saver However I thought good to advise that your receipt for Ladyday was sent to Mr Gardiner, who sent it backe againe and says hee’s not to pay any, you being in Country may satisfy your selfe better of his meaneing, as to my owne particular I does not well understand it.90

Despite any difficulties with his fellowship payment on Lady Day, Lister’s funds from his father were well in hand, and he would take advantage of his dispensation to receive his fellowship from Cambridge for one more year to set up his medical practice. His sister Anne congratulated him in her letter in August , but, as relatives do, she could not help but ask for a bit of free medical care as she was clearly in a bit of dental agony. She wrote: I cannot but reioyce in that you have found a settlement to suit yor natural inclination . . . I can but returne my ready thanks and not forget the kindness your pills dus me for the toothache which I am much punshd [punished] with but as soone as I take a pill it frees me of the paine: I have only one left and am very nice to use it lest I should have non[e] when I have greater occasion for it.91

As he rolled the opiate pills for his sister, Lister may have mused it would be the first of many such requests that he would receive as a doctor as he proceeded to the next stage of his life.

88 89 90 91

Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. Carr, “The Biological Work,” . Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. Bodleian MS Lister , f. r.

PART TWO

IN LOCATION AT THE PERIPHERY OF THE WEB, IN THE MIND AT ITS VERY CENTER: LISTER’S YEARS IN YORK –

CHAPTER FIVE

SPIDER THREADS AND A TANGLED WEB OF MISUNDERSTANDING, – . Introduction Martin Lister’s last year at St John’s College, Cambridge (–) was an eventful one. His royal dispensation permitted him to spend one more year in his college fellowship, and he made the most of it as he prepared to embark upon his medical practice. Lister entered his most productive period as a physician and natural philosopher. In /, after submitting eleven communications to the Royal Society concerning entomology and botany, Lister was elected a fellow. During this period, he contributed items to Ray’s English Catalogue of Plants and gained a reputation within the Royal Society for his accurate observations of insects, snails, and molluscs. He also matured as a natural philosopher and doctor, writing to Ray in December  about the principles that guided his research, Lister remarked: For my part, I think it absolutely necessary that an exact and minute distinction of things precede our learning by particular experiments, what different parts each body or thing may consist of; likewise concerning the best and most convenient ways of separation of those parts, and their virtues and force upon human bodies as to the uses of life; all these, besides the different textures, are things subsequent to natural history.1

Lister’s dedication to empirical accuracy and “exact and minute” description made his mark as a naturalist in the early Royal Society. His passion for his work, or as Ray called it, his πάθος, also meant that Lister became engaged in his first of many public intellectual disputes. Although throughout his life, he would argue with other natural philosophers about a variety of matters—plant circulation, the identification of minerals in spa waters, and the origin of fossils or formed stones—in this chapter we will specifically examine his disputed claim that he had made the first discovery of ballooning spiders. Analyzing 1 MS Ray, f. , letter , Natural History Museum, London. This is also reprinted partially in Lankester, ed., Correspondence, –, on .



chapter five

this dispute, the medium of which was correspondence, allows us to understand scientific practice and social norms of discourse within the Royal Society, as well as the interdisciplinarity of investigations into natural history in the early modern era. We will see also that the matter proved to be a pyrrhic victory for Lister, resulting in a deep personal rift with his beloved mentor John Ray. . The “Ballooning” Debate over Arachnid Flight As we saw in the last chapter, Lister’s first paper for the Philosophical Transactions concerned sinistral shells, and rare left-handed snail kings. Although the ancient philosophers concluded most snails had a shell that turned “from the left to the right” following the “like motion of the Sun,” Lister’s observation that snail shells could spiral counterclockwise demonstrated otherwise. Lister continued, “but this is not the only case, where they [the philosophers] are out, who consult not the Stores of Nature, but their own phancy. What I am further about to tell you concerning Spiders, is as evident an Instance against them.”2 The person he was “telling” was John Ray, whose inquiry by letter also resulted in the publication of Lister’s arachnological observations about the “darting of spiders.” Ray’s inadvertent mishandling of Lister’s data resulted in Lister also becoming embroiled in a public dispute with a fellow naturalist. Dr Edward Hulse (–), was a fellow Cantabrigian who studied in Leiden and eventually became Court Physician to the Prince of Orange.3 Both natural historians claimed the priority of the discovery that spiders shoot their webs to propel themselves through the air. From this point forward, Lister gradually tapered his correspondence with Ray, an action which historian Charles Raven in his influential biography of Ray interpreted as indicative of Lister’s extreme attention to his own interests. Raven surmised that as Lister’s economic star rose and Ray’s fell, Lister had no more use for Ray’s friendship and concluded that Lister also “gained excessive satisfaction from his own achievements.”4 But closer examination of the Ray-Lister corre-

2

Lister, “Concerning the Odd Turn,” . The narrative of this episode is described by Harley and Parker, eds, English Spiders, –. 4 Raven, John Ray, –. 3

spider threads and a tangled web of misunderstanding



spondence does not appear to support Raven’s conclusions. Rather, it is more likely that Lister had good reason to feel at the least irritation, and at the most betrayal from his old friend about Ray’s handling or mishandling of his first paper in the Philosophical Transactions, and therefore very gradually diminished contact from that point onwards. Life circumstance also played a part in their parting of the ways. Their letters also reveal the tropes of polite discourse about natural philosophy in the late seventeenth century, and the shifting boundaries between private epistles and public discoveries in the republic of letters.5 The Republic of Letters was based upon group virtues taken from the ethos of early modern gentlemanly behavior, characterized by cooperation and modesty, and based upon intellectual tolerance, trust, honor, and self-control. As Robert Hatch has noted, these virtues in theory served to “minimize competition, conflict, and threats of external control,” but in actuality, epistolary discourse exposed unequal relations and the disputes over the priority of discovery.6 In the Lister-Ray correspondence, we see that standards of truth, friendship, and power were continually re-negotiated. When Lister initiated correspondence with Ray after their return from Montpellier, their relationship was hierarchical, Lister sending Ray his observations as a pupil to a cherished teacher. But by /, the boundaries were beginning to shift. Ray was no longer a fellow at Cambridge, but an independent botanist employed by Francis Willoughby to organize his collections of flora and fauna. Lister was also becoming a naturalist in his own right, and Ray recognized Lister as an arachnological expert. Ray remarked in a letter of  October , “I myself have been less diligent and busy in the investigation and observation of Spiders—I especially, who from an early age have been possessed by the vulgar prejudice, even now somewhat recoil from them.”7 Nonetheless, Ray was curious to know if Lister had ever seen 5 Valle examines the priority dispute using tools of linguistics and discourse analysis in her article, “Let me not lose yr love & friendship.” I will concentrate, however, upon the shifting boundaries between patronage and public and private scientific knowledge. 6 Hatch, “Correspondence Networks.” http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/rhatch/. 7 The original letter in Latin previously had been in MS Ray, f. , letter , Natural History Museum, London, though it is now lost, replaced by a partially transcribed copy. The letter has also been partially published in Lankester, ed., Correspondence, –, and Gunther, ed., Further Correspondence, . Ray wrote, “Ego equidem (ut verum fatear) in Araneis inquirendis et comtemplandis minùs diligens et industrius fui, partim quòd aliis studiis et negotiis impeditus iis attendere non vacaret; partim



chapter five

a “hunting and ambushing spider” which he had read about in Robert Hooke’s Micrographia. Ray also queried about the phenomenon of flying spiders reported to him by a “most reliable friend” (who would turn out to be Edward Hulse). Ray continued: “Without doubt some Spiders not only draw out their threads and tease them out, as their custom is, but thrust them forth and, as it were, cast them to a considerable distance—by ‘cast’ I mean they are actually shot out slantingly, and to the side, and not simply let down in a straight line for I had also learnt of this previously from the observation of others. I am far from clear about how that can happen . . .”8 Lister dutifully responded on  November , remarking he knew of both types of spiders, designating the flying Spider as the “bird Spider . . . perhaps because I first noted this habit in the species.”9 He then asks Ray to “listen to the actual thing from the beginning,” much as if they were having a personal conversation. Lister’s invocation “to listen” was a common trope of early modern correspondence, as in antiquity, the letter was described as akin to an oral conversation between absent partners.10 William Fulwood, who wrote the first vade mecum of letter writing in English in , stated, by letter we may absence make even presence selfe to be. And talke with him, as face to face, together we did see.11

As Shapin and Schaffer have demonstrated, articles and letters written by early modern natural philosophers were a form of “virtual witnessing” in which authors rendered present the absent other and thus transformed an experiment or past observation into a lived reality.12

quoniam ob veneni suspicionem vix tractabiles sint hae bestiolae, mihi praesertim, qui ab ineunte aetate vulgari praejudicio abreptus, ab iis nonnihil etiamnum abhorream.” 8 MS Ray, f. , letter , Natural History Museum, London. Ray wrote, “Nimirum quòd Aranei nonnulli telas suas non extrahant tantùm et eliciant ut moris est, sed protrudant et quasi projiciant ad distantiam notabilem, projiciant inquam, i.e. prorsum ejaculantur obliquè, et ad latus, et non tantùm demittunt rectà deorsum, nam et hoc ab aliis observatum nobis antea innotuit. Quomodo illud fieri posit . . .” 9 MS Ray, f. , letter , Natural History Museum, London. It is partially printed in Derham, Philosophical Letters, –; Lankester, ed., Correspondence, –; Harley and Parker, eds, English Spiders, –. Lister wrote: “. . . quam ideo volucrem appellavi an quòd in eâ hanc rem primùm notavi.” 10 Mauelshagen, “Networks,” . 11 Fulwood, Enemie, . 12 Shapin and Schaffer, Leviathan, chapter , passim.

spider threads and a tangled web of misunderstanding



Lister did this in his letter with Ray where he vividly conveyed this lived reality of his fieldwork, appealing to their shared memories of being in France together. He continued: . . . certainly if you had been with me in September I would have gladdened your heart with a delightful spectacle. You will remember that long spell of sunshine and fine weather then, such as you and I have so often enjoyed in the happy land of Narbonne in the south of France. I then, while collecting Spiders . . . wanted to examine more closely those marvelous strands fallen from the sky, and in those investigations chanced upon this Spider which I had never seen before . . . Suddenly the one I was watching left off what it was doing, and bending backwards it pointed its anus into the wind and shot forth a thread in exactly the way a lusty lad expels urine from his swollen bladder. I was surprised at the creature’s unusual behavior, then I saw the thread stretched for many ells and waving in the air; soon, however, the Spider herself jumped upon it and was swept away whither she was pulled by the thread which was still sticking firmly to her rear, and was borne over some quite tall trees.13

Lister also noted that the spider would re-use its silk and that the silk was quite durable, and reminded Ray that his observations of spiders and sinistral snails “you thought facts worthy of the notice of your renowned Society [The Royal Society].”14 Here Lister reminded his friend of the promise of publication. On  December , Ray wrote that he was delighted with Lister’s discovery, and he suggested that “these and your earlier observations

13 MS Ray, f. , letter , Natural History Museum, London. It is printed in Derham, Philosophical Letters, –; Lankester, ed., Correspondence, –; Harley and Parker, eds, English Spiders, –. Lister wrote, “profectò si mecum fuisses mense Septembri jucundissimo spectaculo te beâssum. Nam possis meminisse tum plures serenissimos dies continenter illuxisse, quales tu et ego toties admirati sumus in illâ felici Galliâ Narbonensi. Ego, inquam, tum temporis Araneas conquirendo, mirificas illas telas coelitùs delapsas propius considerare volui, in quibus pertractandis fortè incidi in hanc Araneam, mihi nunquam antea visam. Hâc ego novitate mirè commotus, alias illico telas intercipio, aliasque easdem Araneas itidem notavi. Atqui ne adhuc quidem suspicare potui, eam tot tantarumque telarum authorum fuisse. Fortè in diebus paucis dum attendo artificio aliarum mihi notissmarum Aranearum, subitò ab instituto destitit ea quam contemplatus sum, atque resupinata anum in ventum dedit, filumque ejaculata est quo planè modo robustissimus juvenis è distentissimâ vesicâ urinam. Miror inusitatum morem bestiolae, videoque jam filum in plures ulnas remissum flucturansque in aëre; mox verò insiluit ipsa bestiola, eoque rapiebatur, quo ducebat filum an etiamnum firmitèr adhaerens, supraque non nimium similes arbores evecta est.” 14 MS Ray, f. , letter , Natural History Museum, London. Lister wrote: “Cochleae, qua superiori anno observaveram, spiris è dextrâ in sinistram tortis tibi visae sun res dignae notitiâ vestri amplissimi collegii.”



chapter five

merit communication to the Royal Society; I could do this in your name, and in your own words should you see fit.”15 He also mentioned an earlier paper in the Philosophical Transactions published that year by Richard Stafford (–), high sheriff of Bermuda, who related that some spiders there “spin their Webbs betwixt Trees standing seven or  fathom asunder; and they do their work by spirting [sic] their Webb into the Air, where the wind carries it from Tree to Tree.”16 Lister however in his next letter reported that had “just read for himself the letter of that Bermudan, where he indeed describes the facts but puts forth a ridiculous means of their occurrence; namely, that the threads are ejected by Spiders but as though from the mouth and not from the anus.”17 Lister continued, “meanwhile I shall add one thing, which I omitted in my earlier letters that I had ascertained for sure that Spiders exercise the power of flight, not only for pleasure but also to catch gnats and other tiny creatures, with which the air is fill in incredible numbers in autumn.”18 Lister’s attribute of pleasure to spiders displays the same type of anthropomorphism for which he critiqued Mouffet’s Insectorum Theatrum (Chapter Four), but, it is evident he was pleased and excited himself about his discovery of how spiders balloon into the air. Lister currently is given the credit for his discovery of spider ballooning in the literature, and modern-day entomologists are now constructing mathematical models that show how turbulent air can propel these creatures much further than even Lister thought—up to

15 MS Ray, f. , letter , Natural History Museum, London. It is printed in Derham, Philosophical Letters, –. Lankester, ed., Correspondence, –; Gunther, Further Correspondence, –; Harley and Parker, eds, English Spiders, . Ray wrote, “Et has et superiores tuas observationes dignissimas censeo quae Soc. Reg communicentur, quod et faciam tuo nomine tuisque verbis si tibi ità visum fuerit.” 16 de Bills and Stafford, “Extracts of Three Letters,” . 17 MS Ray, f. , letter , Natural History Museum, London. The letter is printed in Derham, Philosophical Letters, –; Lankester, ed. Correspondence, –; Harley and Parker, eds, English Spiders, . Lister wrote, “nisi quòd ipse jam proximè perlegeram epistolam illus Bermudensis, ubi factum quidem enarrat, sed fiendi modum ridiculum exposuit; nimirum fila ab iis exspui, ac si ex ore Aranearum et non ex ipso ano ejacularentur.” 18 MS Ray, f. , letter , Natural History Museum, London. The letter is printed in Derham, Philosophical Letters, –; Lankester, ed., Correspondence, –; Harley and Parker, eds, English Spiders, . Lister wrote, “interim unum addam, quod superioribus literis omisi, me compertum habere Araneas volatum exercere, non solùm ob oblectationem, sed etiam ut Culices aliasque bestiolas capiant, quorum incredibili vi aër circa autumnum repletur.”

spider threads and a tangled web of misunderstanding



hundreds of kilometers out to sea.19 As the entomologist Eric Duffey has indicated, the activity of ballooning is especially prevalent in the temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere among a small species of the family Linyphiidae, as well as among juvenile spiders from larger species.20 Their best flight times apparently are on cloudy autumn and summer days when there is a combination of cooler temperatures and superior updrafts. Lister had also noted that this behavior was seasondependent, and spiders ballooned to catch gnats and other prey. He wrote: In Winter and at Christmas I have observed them busy a darting, but few of them saile then, and therefore but single thred only are to be seen; And besides, they are but the young ones of last Autumns hatch, that are then employed; and it is more than probably, that the great ropes of Autumn are made only by the great ones, and upon long passages and Summer weather when great numbers of prey may invite them to stay longer up.21

This spider behavior has recently been of note to farmers; as Dr Andy Reynolds noted, “Each day of the growing season, around , spiders land in each hectare . . . of arable farmland after ballooning [to eat gnats]. If the farmers can predict the influx of spiders, they can reduce the amount of pesticides accordingly.”22 After having received Lister’s observations, Ray had them sent to Philip Skippon, their mutual friend they had met in Montpellier. As Skippon lived in London, he sent on the information to Henry Oldenburg, the secretary of the Royal Society on  February /. Skippon wrote: The enclosed coming to my hands but yesternight and my occasions urging me out of Towne this morning I could not my selfe wait upon you with it; the account was sent to Mr Wray from Cambridge by an ingenious person who for the present desires to have his name concealed; I am desired to deliver it to you and if you thinke fitt, it may be communicated to the Society.23

19

“Leap forward for ‘flying’ spiders.” Duffey, “Aerial Dispersal,” . 21 Lister, “Concerning the Odd Turn,” . 22 Anatei, “Flying Spiders Forecast the Weather,” http://news.softpedia.com/news/ Flying-Spiders-Forecast-the-Weather-.shtml. 23 MS S/, Royal Society Library, London. The letter is also printed in Hall and Hall, eds, The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, : –. 20



chapter five

Lister’s article on ballooning spiders, also containing his account of sinistral snails, was subsequently published on  August  anonymously.24 The paper received a “kind reception” in the Royal Society with commands to the “ingenious observer” for a “further enquiry into these matters.”25 So an anonymous publication in itself was not unusual or pejorative, and the early Philosophical Transactions were full of anonymous extracts; some contributors adhered to earlier norms of publication that had stressed that it was not gentlemanly to publish unless it was anonymous, as modesty should be paramount. Lister evinced these qualities when, in company with Skippon, he visited London in  and met Oldenburg at home, without revealing himself as the author of the anonymous paper published two years earlier.26 It was only in that summer that Willoughby told Oldenburg that Lister, like Willoughby himself and Ray, had been making observations about the fluctuating levels of sap in trees.”27 In some cases, such as medical case studies, the contributor to the Transactions wished to be anonymous to preserve his own identity or that of his patient(s).28 Lister himself later agreed to have an account of his eight-year-long suffering from a growth under his tongue “as bigg as a bean” published in the Philosophical Transactions as long as it was anonymous; he later donated the stone to the Royal Society Repository.29 However, by the mid-seventeenth century, we see a growing transition of authorial norms in scientific publications, as Adrian Johns has stated, “with new practices and representations making the advertisement of originality a polite possibility.”30 As Johns noted, the 24

Lister, “Concerning the Odd Turn,” . MS S/, Royal Society, London. This letter from Skippon to Oldenburg dated  March / is also printed in Hall and Hall, eds, The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, : –. 26 Hall, Shaping, . Lister only himself mentions the visit himself in a letter to Oldenburg on  August . See Hall and Hall, eds, The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, : . 27 Hall, Shaping, . 28 This point was also made by Kronick in “Anonymity,” . 29 MS L/, Royal Society Library, London. The letter from Lister to Oldenburg, dated  September , is also printed in Hall and Hall, eds, The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, : . Lister, “An Account of a Stone Cut Out from under the Tongue of a Man,” –. Lister is not identified as the sufferer of the malady in the letter. 30 Johns, “Prudence,” . 25

spider threads and a tangled web of misunderstanding



Royal Society “acknowledged royal patronage, yet, thanks in part to the monarch’s personal absence from its deliberations, could bear to announce its members as individual gentleman-authors.”31 By manipulating practices of reading, printing, and publication the Royal Society orchestrated new possibilities for scientific authorship in which natural philosophers could use their ideas to establish their reputation and then use their reputations to gain patronage, position, and status. So by having his original ideas contributed anonymously, Lister saved himself from public embarrassment if his work was not received well. In fact, his claims were briefly called into question, Christian Huygens writing to Oldenburg: What you put in your next to last Transactions about the flight of spiders seemed to be very strange and scarcely credible. For how could it happen that before this observation by your Cantabrigian, no one in the world had ever chanced to see the same thing . . . I should much like to know what the Fellows of the Royal Society think of it; as for the members of our society, they are in the same difficulty as myself.32

Oldenburg assured Huygens that far from being a “fairy tale,” the flying spiders were observed by “sound and experienced men.”33 However, Lister also shortly found anonymous publication could backfire, and that he was in danger of denying himself of a chance to establish his reputation as a naturalist. It could be claimed that Lister as a young natural philosopher, may have been ignorant of the changing norms of laying claims to new ideas. As historian Peter Dear indicated in his analysis of the authority of the Royal Society, fellows reported discrete empirical events that were independent of ancient texts. “In such reports, the operator or observer (the two were equivalent) was central to the episode recounted—and episodes they were. Located, explicitly or implicitly, at a precise point in space and time, the observer’s reported experience of a singular phenomenon constituted his authority.”34 If no credit was granted for the discrete observation, one had little authority as a natural philosopher.

31

Johns, “Prudence,” . MS H/, Royal Society Library, London, and Hall and Hall, eds, The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, : –. 33 Hall and Hall, eds, The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, : –. 34 Dear, “Totius in Verba,” . 32



chapter five

However, about the same time as his first publication in the Philosophical Transactions, Lister prepared a list in one of his early private notebooks entitled, “Noble Instances or Observations and Experiments in Natural Historie, which may justly challenge a precedence before all others,” which seems to indicate he was au fait with the norms of discovery. His examples of priority of discovery were: . An observation of a single nature without the company of any other . An Observation or Experiment where a nature is in a reciprocal motion either generated or destroyed. Example . . . A yellow flower by the affusion of the juice of a pismire [ant] is turned red, and by the affusion of an Alcaly [alkali] is turned green, which red is restored again by the same acid spirit. . An Observation where a nature is highly manifest and paramount. example: red in Cochineal and Kermes. Blew [blue] in . . . Indigo. . An Observation where a nature is scarce discernable and of little power. As red in the thorny Catterpillar. . An observation where a Nature is but in part discerned.35 Numbers two and three referred to work he and Ray had done in – with formic acid emitted by ants, as well as Lister’s own experiments with cochineal, a red dye derived from alum and kermes, or coccus insectorium from the family coccidae or scale-insects.36 The Royal Society had a persistent interest in dyes and colors, and one of their first committees in the Royal Society was on dyeing. In , William Petty wrote, An Apparatus to the History of the Common Practices of Dy[e]ing, and later that year Robert Boyle presented his book Experiments and Considerations touching Colours to the Society which was reviewed in the Philosophical Transactions. In the late s, even the philosopher John Locke was ordered by the Royal Society to “procure the history of the making of verdigris with wax, and that of the kermes berry,” and he examined kermes scales under a microscope to understand the secrets of the dye; like Lister, Locke

35 36

Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. Trengrove, “Chemistry at the Royal Society,” –.

spider threads and a tangled web of misunderstanding



made meticulous notes on artisanal processes practiced in the South of France such as wax-making and preparing dyestuffs.37 Ray had reported in the Philosophical Transactions in  that he had stained yellow chicory flowers red with acid produced by baring “an ant hill with a stick,” and then casting the flowers upon it.38 Upon hearing Ray’s report, Oldenburg also wrote Lister a query in a letter of  January / asking whether he had observed the same behavior, and “how these flowers . . . come to be so stained.”39 Though Lisa Rosner has claimed that it was not until the eighteenth century that Andreas Sigismund Marggraf (–) distilled formic acid from ants, one of Lister’s correspondents and fellow Montpellier student, Francis Jessop, was engaged in distilling it in .40 Jessop reported his work to the Royal Society with Samuel and John Fisher, two Sheffield physicians; thus Lister well realized it was an acidic substance.41 Lister subsequently replied that the pismires’ acid made red flowers “of a fairer red,” and “alcaly’s quite alter and change the Colours of the same flowers . . . from red to green.”42 He noted that he had “tried concerning Cochineal which of itself is red, that upon the affusion of the Oyl of Vitriol, that is, an Acid salts, it strikes the most vivid crimson that can be imagined; and with . . . Alcalys, it will be again changed into an obscure violet twixt a violet and a purple.”43 Lister also indicated in his report that cochineal was especially color-fast, and would make an exceptional material for dyeing, and that he himself had discovered a black pigment from vegetable juice excellent, amongst other things, for writing letters. As historian Lynette Hunter noted, there was no “early receipt book or manuscript without its recipe for ink. Without ink, of course, neither the book nor the manuscript would exist, yet it is not an easy thing to get that balance of dense blackness with the essential quality of quick drying.”44 Lister sent samples to Prince Rupert of Bavaria, who was interested in the process of mezzotint, and Boyle, who wished to

37 Sprat, History, ; For the review of Boyle’s work, see Philosophical Transactions  (–), . For Locke’s work with dyes, see Walmsley, Locke’s Essay, . 38 Ray, “Extract of a Letter,” . 39 Hall and Hall, eds, The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, : . 40 Rosner, “Ants,” –; Armytage, “Francis Jessop,” . 41 Armytage, “Francis Jessop,” . 42 Lister, “Touching Colours,” –. 43 Lister, “Touching Colours,” . 44 Hunter, “Domestic Lady Experimenters,” .



chapter five

delineate its chemical qualities. According to his private classification scheme for discovery, Lister’s finding was an observation where nature was “highly manifest and paramount,” though after an excited flurry of letter exchange, nothing more was said of his miraculous ink. Though these were “noble instances” of discovery, according to Lister’s classification system, his observation of sinistral snails and ballooning spiders were even more important as they were completely unique, “a single nature without the company of any other.” He wanted to be given credit for them. Ray in fact apologized to Lister about some misunderstandings that arose when Lister’s letter about ballooning spiders was published anonymously by the Philosophical Transactions: One thing I must not omit to tell you, that I have robbed you of the credit those observations you communicated to the Society have gained in foreign parts, by letting my name stand before them and suffering yours to be suppressed; for I hear they are attributed to me: whereas I never had either the wit to find out, or the good fortune to hit upon any so considerable and unobvious experiments.45

Lister appeared not to have been too perturbed, or he hid it very well, and he continued to correspond with Ray regularly, sending him his observations of plants and grasses. Ray had enquired previously if Lister would “take pains” to revise his Catalogue of Plants before it went to press, as he prized Lister’s botanical knowledge.46 Lister’s accuracy in providing site reports was notable, and some of the observations can be currently verified. In a letter of  June , Lister wrote Ray an account of “simpling” expeditions around Yorkshire in Malham Cove: “as for Valeriana greca [Polemonium caeruleum, according to Linnaeus] I have found that also in an unquestionable place this last week, both with a white flower . . . and also a blue one.”47 This plant, also known as Jacob’s Ladder, indeed still grows alongside the spring at Malham, appropriately in close proximity to the Lister Arms,

45 MS Ray, f. , letter , Natural History Museum, London. The letter is printed in Derham, Philosophical Letters, –; Lankester, ed., Correspondence, –; Gunther, ed., Further Correspondence, . Harley and Parker, eds, English Spiders, . 46 MS Ray, f. , letter , Natural History Museum, London. The letter is printed in Derham, Philosophical Letters, –; Lankester, ed., Correspondence, –; Gunther, ed., Further Correspondence, –. 47 MS Ray, f. , letter , Natural History Museum, London. The letter is printed in Derham, Philosophical Letters, –; Lankester, ed., Correspondence, ; Harley and Parker, eds, English Spiders, .

spider threads and a tangled web of misunderstanding



the pub named after Lister’s family who had lands in the region. Ray subsequently entered this locality note in his Catalogue of English Plants, along with other plant identifications that Lister had provided for him. Unfortunately, Hulse, seeing Lister’s (anonymous) article in the Philosophical Transactions, wrote to Ray on  June  more fully about his own observations.48 Hulse noted the fact that flying spiders sometimes shot out forked threads and secured web strands to surfaces by “beating their . . . tails against them as they creep along.” Hulse was somewhat accurate in his observations, as spiders do touch their spinnerets at intervals against the surface to attach a dragline. However, spiders do not produce silk by shooting it from their spinnerets; liquid silk hardens when it is pulled, and ballooning spiders rely on the pull of the breeze to lengthen the thread. Modern arachnologists have thought that the forked threads Hulse observed could have resulted from two threads being pulled simultaneously from separate spinnerets, or threads could have fused to form two thick lines that would give a forked appearance.49 This was also a possibility Lister considered, writing to Ray, that Hulse “might very wel mistake many threads shot at a time (as is usual with many spiders, more or less), for one thread divided and forked, or as Blancanus in Redi says, ramose, woolly, or from which many small filaments proceed . . .”50 Redi as well as the Dutch naturalist Swammerdam noted the forked threads, which Swammerdam considered to be “generally made up of two or more parts.”51 Ray subsequently sent Hulse’s letter to Oldenburg to clarify what had transpired, with a “covering letter about the two men’s coincidental discoveries.”52 Lister upon finding about Ray’s actions was apparently angered and told Ray so, whereupon Ray found himself having to placate his friend. Ray wrote to Lister on  July , opening his correspondence with a neutral topic concerning some plant specimens for his catalogue, with a promise that he would send back his table of 48 MS Ray, f. , letter , Natural History Museum, London. The letter is printed in Derham, Philosophical Letters, –; Lankester, ed., Correspondence, –; Harley and Parker, eds, English Spiders, . 49 Dr Jerome Rovner, e-mail message to author,  June . My thanks to Dr Rovner for his expertise and assistance. 50 MS Ray, f. , letter , Natural History Museum, London. The letter is printed in Derham, Philosophical Letters, –; Lankester, ed., Correspondence, –; Harley and Parker, eds, English Spiders, –. Blancanus was a commentator of Aristotle, who observed the flight of spiderlings. 51 Aristotle, Historiae animalium, .b.; Gilroy, Silk, . 52 Harley and Parker, eds, English Spiders, .



chapter five

spiders, and proceeded to a description of a caterpillar he had seen in England, a “horned Eruca, which you and I observed around Montpellier,” feeding on fennel and changed into a chrysalis.53 Perhaps Ray thought the memory of happier times would soften the blow of what was to come next: I must deprecate your Displeasure for publishing to the World (in case Mr. Oldenburgh print my note, as I believe he will) that Dr Hulse was the first man from whom I had the first Notice of Spiders projecting their threads. The observation is yours as well has his, and neither beholden to other (that I know of ) for any hint of it, only he had the hap to make it first: and being questioned about it, I could doo no lesse than own the first discovery of it, to me, to be from him.54

Ray than offered his forthcoming plant catalogue to Lister as a gift, and continued, “Let me not lose your love and friendship, which I doo very highly prize and therefore should be loath to doo or say any thing which might give you any displeasure, or alienate your Mind from me, or in any measure abate and cool that affection and good will which you have professed to me.”55 He closed his letter wishing that Lister’s wife Hannah was “safely at least delivered if not up again” and asserted in Latin that the beauty of the mother would ensure the beauty of the child.56 Ray clearly wished to divest himself completely from the matter without giving offense to any of the parties involved. Lister had different ideas, and his emotions about the matter were probably exacerbated by personal stress. As shall be further elucidated below, he had recently married, he was a new father, and he was contemplating a move to York to establish his medical practice. He now faced a very public challenge to his priority of discovery from a mentor and trusted friend. To set the record straight, Lister decided to write to Oldenburg directly. In a letter dated  August , Lister recounted what happened in his correspondence with Ray, indicating he had been responding to Ray’s queries about the darting of spiders, stating “This Sir, is the truth of the business; which Mr Wray will not

53 MS Ray, f. , letter , Natural History Museum, London. The letter is printed in Derham, Philosophical Letters, –; Lankester, ed., Correspondence, –; Harley and Parker, eds, English Spiders, . 54 MS Ray, f. , letter , Natural History Museum, London. 55 MS Ray, f. , letter , Natural History Museum, London. 56 MS Ray, f. , letter , Natural History Museum, London.

spider threads and a tangled web of misunderstanding



deny.”57 He also told Oldenburg he hoped that, when the account of the affair was printed, “no unhandsome reflection will be made upon me or anything detracting from my credit in suffering my notes to be published.”58 Lister then indicated that he would take great pleasure into entering into correspondence with Oldenburg about natural history, as he had happened “upon something new and than which may not be unwelcome to you.”59 Oldenburg subsequently published a fair-minded account in November  of the entire brouhaha about the ballooning spiders in the Philosophical Transactions.60 The text had a covering letter from Ray, a letter from Hulse, and a detailed account of the incident that exonerated everyone from any wrongdoing. Hulse and Lister were both credited with their observations. Lister mentioned that to Ray that he had “seen the November book” and subsequently thanked Ray for his “public testimonie” and admitted “some time after I had write to you out of feaver, I writ alsoe to Mr Oldenburgh . . . although it was not absolutely necessary, yet I was willing to prevent any note of Scandal.”61 The next month, Lister continued to correspond with Oldenburg about his findings in natural history, sending him observations on bees, viviparous worms, and promising a history and “set of general Enquiries on this subject of spiders.” Lister also sent another conciliatory letter of  March  to Ray with the salutation now reading “Dear Friend.”62 Lister admitted that, while it was possible Hulse had first described the darting behavior, the discovery of ballooning was his—“but for their sailing and mounting up into the Air, as yet I find the Ancients were silent, and I think I was the first who acquainted you with it, but that is best known to your self.”63 Lister then asserted to Ray he was “no Arcana man” keeping knowledge secret, but that he was adhering to the norms of discourse in the Royal Society that

57

MS L/, Royal Society Library, London. The letter is also published in Hall and Hall, eds, The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, : –. 58 MS L/, Royal Society Library, London. 59 MS L/, Royal Society Library, London. 60 Ray, “Confirmation,” –. 61 MS Ray, f. , letter , Natural History Museum, London. The letter is printed in Derham, Philosophical Letters, –; Lankester, ed., Correspondence, –; Harley and Parker, eds, English Spiders, . 62 MS Ray. f. , letter . The letter is printed in Derham, Philosophical Letters, –; Lankester, ed., Correspondence, –; Harley and Parker, eds, English Spiders, . 63 MS Ray, f. , letter .



chapter five

was in theory, a society of cooperative and public cognitive enterprise. Lister wrote “I would have every body free and communicative, that we may (if possible, considering the Shortness of our Lives) participate with Posterity.”64 Indeed he was true to his word, sending a letter to the Royal Society on  January  containing a catalogue of “thirty three several sorts of spiders to be found in England . . . reduced into several classes, together with a set of queries on that subject, in order to the composing a philosophical history of it.”65 This paper, later published in the Philosophical Transactions would later serve as the basis for his Tractatus de Araneis (), his ground-breaking tract on spiders contained in his Historiae Animalium (Figure 11). . Taxonomic Questions and Doubts Lister’s interest in classification of spiders reflected a larger impulse in the Royal Society to organize the natural world. Many historians of science, such as Clucas, Hunter, Lewis, and Rossi have traced the desire of the members of the Royal Society to “construct a universal taxonomy which would accurately mirror the order of nature” using John Wilkins’s (–) famous universal language scheme.66 Wilkins’s ideas were outlined in An Essay Towards a Universal Character, And a Philosophical Language (), and his work served as the conceptual basis behind a Royal Society committee created to construct a new and rational means of describing all reality. But as could be imagined, this committee, composed of members such as John Aubrey, Robert Hooke, and John Ray, ran into a bit of a snag. As Lewis has noted, most other language schemes of this type were based on “Aristotelian universals and their cognates.”67 Aristotle defined his universals in his Posterior Analytics as follows: So out of sense-perception comes to be what we call memory, and out of frequently repeated memories of the same thing develops experience; for a number of memories constitute a single experience. From experience

64

MS Ray, f. , letter . Birch, History, : . Lister, “Philosophical Inquiries about Spiders,” –. 66 Hunter, Science and the Shape, ; Lewis, Language; Maat, Philosophical Languages; Clucas and Rossi, Logic. 67 Lewis, Language, . 65

spider threads and a tangled web of misunderstanding



Fig. 11 Illustrations of spiders in Lister’s Historiae Animalium (London, ). By courtesy of the Department of Special Collections, Memorial Library, University of Wisconsin-Madison.



chapter five again—i.e. from the universal now stabilized in its entirety within the soul—originate the skill of the craftsman and the knowledge of the man of science, skill in the sphere of coming to be and science in the sphere of being . . . 68

In other words, universals are properties or relations that are common to their various instances, for the things that are “said of many.”69 These properties or relations exist only when instantiated; they exist only in things. The universal is also always identical in each of its instances. So all yellow things are similar in that there is the same universal of yellowness in each yellow thing. So by collecting and tabulating separate experiences about discrete objects in the natural world and using them to create universal inductive conclusions or classifications (as Francis Bacon suggested), it was possible for the natural philosopher to make new discoveries about nature. However, Wilkins’s language scheme departed from Aristotle. It was not based on universals, but on abstract and artificial constructs and organization. Wilkins assembled words representing concepts, grouping them into tables according to his own idiosyncratic hierarchy. As Scharf has noted, there were four levels in the hierarchy—genus, difference, species, and numerical position, and within each species, items were largely grouped into nines, with each species having a place on the table.70 Each species could be identified and located also by both a numerical rotation and a word. As Maat indicated: “elephant” occurs under the genus “beast,” and under the first difference, that is “whole footed,” as the fourth species. To locate elephant on the tables, one would write .. since “beast” is the th genus on the list of genera, “whole-footed” the st difference, and elephant the fourth species under that difference.71

The genus was represented also by a two-letter word, and Wilkins indicated differences by adding different consonants, and he distinguished species by the use of different vowels at the end. Using this notation, “..,” which was equivalent to “elephant,” could also be

68

Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, .. Cohen, “Aristotle’s Metaphysics,” http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotlemetaphysics/. 70 Scharf, “Multiple Independent Inventions,” . 71 Maat, Philosophical Languages, . 69

spider threads and a tangled web of misunderstanding



spelled “zibi.”72 To be effective, Wilkins’s classification system not only “demanded a perfect and universal body of knowledge from which to work,” but its categories had to cover in Lister’s words all “single natures without the company of any other”; in other words, species.73 Once complete, as Lewis has noted, Wilkins’s scheme also “would not be useful in the further study of nature,” and would make the study of natural history redundant if it was successful.74 John Ray had been recruited by Wilkins to work on the tables of plants using this schema. The problem was that when Ray tried to apply Wilkins’s method to his work in botany, the sheer variety of plants he encountered overwhelmed the limited number of categories. As Ray wrote to Lister in , not only was he “compelled to not to follow nature’s lead but to fit the Plants to the author’s prescribed Method.”75 In a following letter, he complained: This next Week we expect the B[isho]p of Chester [John Wilkins] at Middleton, who desires out Assistance in altering and amending his Tables of naturall history. To make exact Philosophical Tables, you know, is a Matter very difficult, not to say impossible: to make such as are tolerable, requires much diligence and experience, and is work enough for one mans whole life; and therefore we had need call in all the assistance we can from our friends, especially not being free to follow Nature, but forced to bow and strain things to serve a design. . . . To what Purpose you’ll say is all this?76

Completely frustrated, Ray then begged Lister for a copy of his spider tables still in draft form, for “this work hath struck long upon our hands, and we doo now resolve to dispatch, and get quit of it.”77 Ultimately, when Wilkins’s project failed, Ray ended up following his own schema for botanical classification in his Historia Plantarum; for instance, while he followed the traditional groupings of herbs, shrubs, and

72

Scharf, “Multiple Independent Inventions,” ; Maat, Philosophical Languages,

. 73

Lewis, Language, . Lewis, Language, . 75 MS Ray , f. , letter , Natural History Museum, London. This letter of  May  is printed in Derham, Philosophical Letters, –; Lankester, ed., Correspondence, –; Gunther, ed., Further Correspondence, –. 76 MS Ray , f. , letter , Natural History Museum, London. This letter of  April  is printed in Derham, Philosophical Letters, –; Lankester, ed., Correspondence, –; Gunther, ed., Further Correspondence, ; Harley and Parker, eds, English Spiders, . 77 MS Ray , f. , letter , Natural History Museum, London. 74



chapter five

trees, he moved away from tradition in his examination of leaf and floral characteristics to classify the plants into monocotyledons and dicotyledons. In studies like these, he made pioneering discoveries, isolating the species Carex from grasses.78 After his work was published, Ray sent a presentation copy of his plant catalogue to Lister, remarking “I have not dared to make generally known my feelings on ancient and modern botanical writers . . . for fear of stirring the hornets into anger.” But it was clear he considered previous classifications inadequate, “their diatribes and rhapsodic writings to be more deserving of censure than praise.”79 In the interim, Lister was anxious to see what Ray thought of his table, stating he could “not be satisfied concerning them untill I heare from you,” and also seems to have learned a lesson from Ray’s laments when he did his own spider taxonomy.80 Lister realized that Wilkins’s scheme did not work very well for natural history specimens because it was too conceptually restrictive, even for creatures as seemingly small in numbers to classify as spiders (Lister mistakenly believed there were only  species in England). So he had to go his own way. Lister’s examination of works by Aldrovandi had taught him that natural historians in the Renaissance were primarily interested in collecting a wide variety of specimens, describing their external, observable particulars and comparing their morphological variations. In this manner, they could “grasp the multiplex beauty and diversity of the natural world.”81 “Sustained observation and morphological comparison” were also “the means to classification”; an image drawn after the specimen was considered sufficient to supply the necessary information, and organisms were classified by analogical reasoning and appeal to classical authorities.82 So that Renaissance naturalists could cope with the sheer amounts of new specimens being collected and imported from the New World, they used serial lists or grids to put species in aesthetically pleasing order with nods to ancient reference works like Pliny’s Natural History.

78

Robertson, “History of Carex,” . MS Ray , f. , letter . The original is missing, with only a transcribed abstract in the Ray folio. This letter of  August  is printed in Derham, ed., Philosophical Letters, –; Lankester, ed., Correspondence, –; Gunther, Further Correspondence, ; Harley and Parker, eds, English Spiders, . 80 MS Ray , f. , letter , Natural History Museum, London. 81 Ogilvie, Science, . 82 Swan,“From Blowfish to Flower,” . 79

spider threads and a tangled web of misunderstanding



The failure of Wilkins’s scheme indicated that simple lists were not sufficient any more to represent the growing complexity of nature. Lister, thus, in his own taxonomy of spiders combined the Renaissance naturalists’ references to classical authority, their emphasis on detailed particulars gleaned from empiricism, and Wilkins’s idea of hierarchies. Because he considered the relationship of structure and function when classifying arachnids, he anticipated modern taxonomy and avoided the pitfalls of analogical thinking by past naturalists. If we look at his finalized table of English spiders, we see an acknowledgment to classical authorities like Pliny in the tradition of the Renaissance naturalist. Lister adopted his term of “scutulate” to classify spiders that made mesh webs arranged within the same plane in the manner of a round shield. (Figure 12). We also see that he noted fine empirical details of outward form as his predecessors would have done, such as their colors or the number of eyes the spiders possessed; Lister went to even greater lengths, carefully burning away all the hairs on the spiders’ heads before using a magnifying lens to examine them. He wrote to Ray that, “I like the making of genuses and tribes ex moribus et vita, though I would not, as near may be, have the form excluded.”83 But, then Lister went beyond earlier naturalists combining his extraordinary understanding of form with an understanding of structure and behavior; for instance, he noticed that without fail that twoeyed spiders do not make silk. Lister remarked in his Tractatus de Araneis that “it is of little importance to know the colours of spiders, or even the form of the body, until the other distinguishing features, such as feeding and reproduction, are known.”84 Thus, in his table, he placed arachnids in a larger scheme of nature, ordering spiders not just in lists according to external appearance, but in detailed hierarchical schemes which related their behavior to their classification. Upon realization that spiders varied in the types of webs they made to capture food, he organized his classification scheme accordingly, whether orb, sheet, hammock, or scaffold webs.

83

MS Ray, f. , letter , Natural History Museum, London. This letter of  December  is printed in Derham, ed., Philosophical Letters, –; Lankester, ed., Correspondence, –. 84 Carr, “The Biological Work,” .



chapter five

Fig. 12 The classification chart of spiders in the Historiae Animalium (London, ), p. . Shelfmark: ° D () Med. The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.

spider threads and a tangled web of misunderstanding



He also considered how spiders reproduced, characteristics subsequently used by modern entomologists.85 Lister was the first to observe that rather than using a penis, males transfer their sperm to specialized pedipalps in preparation for their meander to find a mate. Their palps are then introduced into the female’s genital opening, or epigyne, on the underside of her abdomen. In his letter to Oldenburg, Lister communicated his discovery that the knobbed horns of the males (papal bulbs) were “used in the coit alternately” which was the first observation of this phenomenon, and duly incorporated into his scheme.86 By keeping living specimens in captivity, and preserving them in spirits (one of the first naturalists to do so), he noted the structure of their egg cases, the hatching period, the appearance of the young, and observed courtship behavior. He noted that spiders had elaborate courtship rituals to prevent the smaller males from getting cannibalized by the larger females before fertilization, and that in web-weaving species, patterns of vibrations on the webs are a large part of these rituals, as are rhythmic touches on the female’s body to hypnotize the female into submission. Although previous scholars have claimed that Lister “ignored the deeper questions of function,” his spider classification system is evidence to the contrary.87 In a combination of fieldwork and observation of captive specimens, he also continued his research into spontaneous generation (see Chapter Four), realizing that ichneumon wasps parasitized spiders and their eggs, not just the eggs. Using Pliny the Elder as a resource, Lister discovered that the name “ichneumon” was of Egyptian origin, meaning “the mouse (or rat) of the Pharaoh,” which tracked the eggs of snakes or crocodiles as a food source, much as the wasps hunted and tracked down spider’s eggs.88 He later remarked in his Tractatus de Araneis that “the eggs of spiders, while in the grub state, are not the only sort of food for the wasps, for the spiders themselves are also attacked by the same wasps . . . as I have myself observed not without wonderment and pleasure, and so have others in correspondence with me—all reliable eye-witnesses to this occurrence.”89 The latter reference was to

85 Bell, “Emergence of Manipulative Experiments,” –; Harley and Parker, eds, English Spiders, . 86 Lister, English Spiders, . 87 Arnold, Cabinets, . 88 Parker, “Arachnological History,” . 89 Lister, English Spiders, .



chapter five

Ray and Willoughby. Lister employed his knowledge of parasitism to correct the Dutch naturalist Jan Goedart’s work On Insects, on which he was also working in the early s (though it was not published until ); Lister noted many of Goedart’s “caterpillars” and their “offspring” were actually larvae of parasitic wasps or “by-births,” the “Caterpillar which bore them, serving only as Food to them, not a Mother.”90 Ten days after receiving Lister’s spider classification, Oldenburg wrote to Lister “I consider your virtue and merit to be such, as deserveth to make you a member of the R. Society . . . I shall propose you for a candidate, and take care for your Election.”91 Oldenburg proposed Lister for membership on  May .92 Lister wrote some anxiously conscientious letters about the progress of his candidature, to which Oldenburg patiently explained: If the R. Society had not discontinued their publick Assembly’s in this long Vacation, you had been one of them long agoe. And I can assure you before-hand, from the universall applause, which all your communications have met with there, that you will be as welcome amongst them, as any. Nor shall I omit, at the first opening of their meetings again, to put them in mind.93

True to Oldenburg’s word, Lister was elected F.R.S. on  November , the first meeting of the Society since the end of June.94 . A Waning Friendship As far as Ray’s and Lister’s correspondence was concerned, it resumed after the controversy about spider ballooning but with much less frequency.95 Some of the reason for the decline in the letters was certainly due to life circumstance. Lister married during the time of the spider controversy and established a medical practice in York, and he became 90

Godartius, Of Insects, . Bodleian MS Lister , f. . The letter is also printed in Hall and Hall, eds, Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, : –, on –. 92 Birch, History. : . 93 Bodleian MS Lister , f. . Oldenburg’s letter of  October  is also published in Hall and Hall, eds, Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, : –. 94 Birch, History : . 95 There is one letter from Ray to Lister dated  August ; its content indicates that they had not written directly to each other for a long time. See BL MS Stowe , f. . 91

spider threads and a tangled web of misunderstanding



increasingly busy with his family and with matters of “physick.”96 He was no longer the postgraduate fellow with the leisure for extensive simpling expeditions who was looking to his mentor for advice. As for Ray, he was still at Willoughby’s estate, Middleton Hall in Warwickshire, “reviewing and helping to put in order Mr Willoughby’s collection of Birds, Fishes, Shells, Stones, and other Fossils, Seeds, Dried Plants, Coins, etc” gathered from their travels. Ray was loyal to Willoughby, having rejected a “most generous proposal” made to him in August  to reprise his role as “guide or companion to three young men of exalted social rank” on a foreign tour with a salary of £ per year with expenses paid.97 Unfortunately for Ray, Willoughby died prematurely of pleurisy on  July , leaving his widow and three young children, Francis, Cassandra, and Thomas. Lister’s and Ray’s previous exchange of letters demonstrated that Willoughby’s health had always been a worry; in , Lister had remarked “I am very glad Mr Willughby is near well again, and I thank God for his recovery . . . Methinks he is very valetudinary, and you have often alarmed me with his illness.”98 Worried that with the death of his patron Ray had no where to go, Lister subsequently made an invitation to Ray to join him at his home, but Ray chose to stay at Willoughby’s estate at Middleton. Stunned by the lost of his friend and patron, Ray apparently considered Lister’s offer seriously, annotating Lister’s letter with the words, “I shall have nobody heer to converse with,” and it would be “inconvenient to die heer for want of attendance.”99 Ray’s position after Willoughby died was indeed one of great loneliness, as Lady Willoughby had little appreciation of her husband’s pursuits in natural history and did not comprehend Ray’s plan to publish his manuscripts.100 But Ray decided ultimately against living with Lister.101 Ray’s reasons, noted in his handwriting on Lister’s letter, were several.102 First, Ray was an executor of Willoughby’s estate, and was left £ per

96

See Chapter Six. MS Ray, f. , letter , Natural History Museum, London. 98 MS Ray, f. , letter , Natural History Museum, London. 99 Gunther, ed., Further Correspondence, . Raven argues that Ray wrote these notes as he was considering marriage, but I think it possible they could be just as well in part a response to Lister’s proposal of moving to York. See Raven, John Ray, . 100 Allen, “American Ornithology,” . 101 Gunther, ed., Further Correspondence, . 102 Gunther, ed., Further Correspondence, . 97



chapter five

annum to serve as a tutor to his sons Francis Jr. and Thomas when they grew a bit older; perhaps he felt he had a duty to his friend.103 Willoughby’s extended family also had a reputation for contentiousness over inheritance; Ray traveled with Francis to Nottinghamshire to help him with legal matters when his father, Sir William Willoughby, died in . Although this was at personal cost, Ray noted to Lister, “This journey has interrupted my observations about the bleeding of trees,” perhaps Ray wished to assist Willoughby’s widow in any future legal battles.104 Continuing to live at Middleton also meant that Ray could devote himself more conveniently to the preparation and study of Willoughby’s manuscripts, particularly the unfinished ornithological ones. Ray had “resolved to express his friendship in the labor of preparing Willoughby’s ornithology for the world,” though he admitted in a letter to his friend Peter Courthope, “The death of Mr Willoughby hath cast more business upon me than I would willingly have undertook.”105 Finally, there were other personal considerations that Ray was too circumspect to mention to his friend. Willoughby’s children at the time of their father’s death were too young to need Ray’s tutoring and were under the care of a governess. To salve his loneliness and to ensure a surer footing with which to carry out his duties, Ray proposed marriage to the said governess, Margaret Oakley, a girl less than half his age. They were married on  June , about eleven months after Willoughby’s death. It is possible Lister may have been hurt that Ray refused his offer to live with him, and though Lister well knew Ray had a “habitual reticence about his inner life,” he was perhaps even more hurt that Ray had not told him the real reason until six days before his wedding.106 Relations between them, however, continued to be cordial, Lister assuring Ray: “I am glad you thinke of wedding: I pray God blesse your choice to you; for if she be good natured (as I will not believe otherwise) you will find all the satisfaction and joy in marriage that any condition in this life is capable to give us.”107

103

Lankester, ed., Memorials of John Ray, . MS Ray, f. , letter , Natural History Museum, London. This letter of  March  is printed in Derham, ed., Philosophical Letters, –; Lankester, ed., Correspondence, –; Harley and Parker, eds, English Spiders, –. 105 Allen, “American Ornithology,” –. 106 Gunther, ed., Further Correspondence, p. . See Derham’s abstract of letter h; See also Raven, John Ray, . 107 MS Ray , f. , letter , Natural History Museum, London. This letter of  June  is partially printed in Derham, ed., Philosophical Letters, –; Lankester, 104

spider threads and a tangled web of misunderstanding



Ray was evidently a nervous groom, cognizant of the large age difference between himself and Margaret, “his austere outlook and frugal habits” making it difficult for him to “adjust himself easily to the intimacies of marriage.”108 For some time, he had been taking medical advice from Lister about sexual dysfunction. In a series of letters that were “lost” or perhaps destroyed by William Derham, the editor of the first edition of Ray’s correspondence, the short abstracts which remain reveal that in two letters written in July , Lister advised Ray to take diasatyria and cantharides, well-known aphrodisiacs.109 One letter of  July , however, escaped Derham’s censorship, as it was amongst Lister’s letters in the Bodleian Library.110 Ray wrote: I think that I am suffering from a two-fold illness, for although in order to complete intercourse it is required first on the part of the male member both that it should become distended and erect, and also should remain hard and extended for a sufficient space of time, yet, if any erection does occur as a result of intense anticipation or an embrace, it is incomplete and momentary. Secondly, as far as sperm is concerned, it is required that it should not to be ejaculated without an erection at the first onset of sexual anticipation. But when I am in an embrace and a state of intense anticipation I can scarcely prevent my seed from leaping out without an erection . . . There is however something which keeps me from total despair, because when I awoke after the first period of sleep following a lavish dinner before my wedding, or had been kept awake from eating some flatulent foods, then sometimes I felt a powerful stiffening. Since then this occurs at the prompting of nature, why might it not also be achieved by some artificial means? As far as the unstoppable outpouring of semen is concerned, it might perhaps be curbed by astringent medicines. You can see what a mess my affairs are in. I beg you to consider what needs to be done.111

ed., Correspondence, –, Harley and Parker, eds, English Spiders, , but these editions leave out the introductory paragraph in the original where Lister congratulates Ray on his wedding. 108 Raven, John Ray, . 109 MS Ray , Derham Abstracts, f. , Natural History Museum, London. These substances are discussed as cures for sexual dysfunction in Pechey, The Compleat Herbal, ; Bonet, Mercurius Compitalitius, . 110 Bodleian MS Lister , f. . 111 Ego me duplici morbo laborare exsitimo nam cum ad coitum complendum requiratur primo ex parte Membri Virilis non tantum ut distendatur et erigatur sed ut sufficienti temporis spatio rigidus et extensus permaneat, mihi siqua erectioa forti imaginatione aut complexu succedat imperfecta ea est et momentanea. Secundo ex parte spermatis, non sine erectione ad primam rei venereae imaginationem ejiciatur. Ego a complexuet imaginatione forti vix contineo τὴν γονν ne absque erectione exiliat . . . Est autem quod facit ne prorsus desperem, quod ante nuptias a cena lautiore aut flatulentorum esu post primum somnum cum vigilaveram fortem tensionem aliquotiens senserim.



chapter five

By September , Lister was “comforting” Ray in his predicament; the early modern equivalents of Viagra® may not have worked very well.112 It did after all take eleven years of marriage before Ray’s first child was born. Despite these obstacles, Ray and his wife appeared to be quite happy, his references in his many publications giving a picture of a contented family life. As Ray settled into married life, there was even more lack of communication between himself and Lister, the letters stopping almost completely by . Some of this was due to his increasingly serious illnesses (digestive complaints and leg ulcers) that curtailed Ray’s travels to see his friend. Until he inherited his mother’s house at Black Notley, Ray had no fixed home for the first six years of his marriage, which made his position difficult, and nearly impossible for him to reciprocate visits.113 Willoughby was also a common link between the two gentlemen, and as his memory faded, so perhaps did their friendship. But it seems that the rather precipitous drop in their communications was fundamentally about early modern notions of reciprocity and patronage. Lister’s natural history reports and plant and mineral samples to Ray enclosed in his letters were a form of gifts and, in giving these gifts to a senior naturalist, Lister was adhering to the norms of early modern scientific correspondence. As David Roche and Paula Findlen have noted, “scientific” letters not only had news of natural philosophy, but gifts in the form of unpublished papers or extracts, descriptions of specimens from natural history collections, dried flowers or plants, and even wine, bacon, and chocolate. And as Lister left Cambridge, his work in natural history improved in quality and scope, he needed to increase his professional stature as a newly qualified physician and naturalist, and hence it would be expected that Lister anticipated something in return for his efforts from his mentor Ray. It was not coincidental that the English deluge theorist John Woodward (–) had proposed a “commerce of letters” to the Swiss naturalist Johann Jakob Scheuchzer, as scientific commerce was a form of career economics.114 Lister and Ray were close friends, but it also was

Cum ergo hoc sponte naturae succedat cur non et arte procurari possit? Quod ad importunum se minis effluxum attinet possit fortasse is medicamentis astringentibus cohiberi. Vides quam in angusto sint res meae. Tu quaeso quod facto opus est consulas. 112 MS Ray , Derham Abstracts, p. , Natural History Museum, London. 113 Raven, John Ray, . 114 Mauelshagen, “Networks,” .

spider threads and a tangled web of misunderstanding



a relationship of patronage. It seemed when Lister gave Ray his most cherished and innovative findings such as his observations of ballooning spiders, he did expect recognition for them. When this recognition was dissipated by a priority dispute indirectly of Ray’s making, Ray refused Lister’s hospitality, and then suddenly intended to marry without having told his friend, Lister gradually invested less of himself in the exchange, both emotionally and practically. Memories of what happened in the spider controversy also persisted until the s. In December , in a sad confession to Dr Tancred Robinson, the Secretary of the Royal Society, Ray stated that he believed Lister remained disturbed by his having “ravished the discovery” and given credit for spider flight to Hulse.115 As Parker has noted, in  Ray even suppressed his own treatise on respiration that contained views he knew Lister did not share lest it offend “his honoured friend.”116 Lister had a long memory too. In , in a letter to Edward Lhwyd, the keeper of the Ashmolean, Lister advised him that although Ray was a man “most generous of mind, full of honour . . . and integritie,” he really could not keep a secret.117 Apparently Lhwyd had told Ray about some fossil observations of “the formed stones growing” which he was going to publish. Lister subsequently reported: I was the other day at a Frenchmans, where Lord Sloane had been and there upon certain formed stones he produced. Dr Sloane gave his opinion, which I suppose he had from W[ray] and therefore I advise you to bring it in your discourse, you intend us, for I profess’d I never opened my mouth about it.”118

Ray had told Sloane in innocence about Lhwyd’s ideas, and Lister was advising Lhwyd that although Ray was honorable, he was a bit free with information, and thus urged Lhwyd to publish his ideas. Lister then warned “there are the sort of Privateering men, who will be normallie pillfering of these you cannot be enough cautious.”119 Perhaps Lister hoped his advice would help Lhwyd avoid his tragic experience with Ray.

115

Harley and Parker, eds, English Spiders, . Carr, “The Biological Work,” ; Harley and Parker, eds, English Spiders, . 117 Bodleian MS Ashmole , f. r. The letter from Lister to Lhwyd was written on  April . 118 Bodleian MS Ashmole , f. r. 119 Bodleian MS Ashmole , f. r. 116

CHAPTER SIX

“MY DEAR HART”: LISTER’S MARRIAGE TO HANNAH PARKINSON AND HIS MEDICAL PRACTICE IN YORK . Introduction While Lister was negotiating the terms of his friendship with Ray, he was making another more permanent relationship with his own future wife, Hannah Parkinson, as well as establishing a medical practice in Yorkshire. Hannah Parkinson (–) lived in Carleton-in-Craven near Skipton in West Yorkshire. Carleton-in-Craven was approximately five miles from Winterburne where Lister owned the estate of Friar’s Head Hall given to him by his great uncle, Dr Matthew Lister. In the summer of , Lister had to travel there on his father’s behalf, and it was during his visit to this distinctive house standing alone in the Yorkshire Dales that he met his bride-to-be, whom he called “his dear Hart.” The time was a tragic one for his family: Lister’s mother Susanna was dying, and would pass away in November, and his father was poorly and clearly thinking about the hereafter, having a year previously given a magnificent solid-silver chalice and flagon weighing three-and-a half pounds to St Mary’s Parish Church in Thorpe Arnold (Sir Martin died in ).1 So Martin may have felt it was a matter of urgency to marry before his parents’ decease. Perhaps he realized that, without a wife, there would be no more venison pies and female companionship. Although Martin may have encountered Hannah as a result of sheer physical proximity, it is more likely he came to her acquaintance through long-established family ties between the Parkinsons and the Listers. When Martin’s great-uncle Matthew served as a royal physician at the court of Charles I, he had been a close friend and neighbor of John Parkinson (–), a royal herbalist, apothecary, and gardener. Parkinson was best known for his works Paradisi in sole Paradisus terrestris () and Theatrum Botanicum ().2 Matthew 1 2

Banks, Thorpe Arnold, . Parkinson, Nature’s Alchemist, .



chapter six

Lister, along with Sir Theodore de Mayerne, championed Parkinson’s Theatrum at court, one of the most significant books on medicinal plants published in the seventeenth century, which encompassed “the birth of horticulture and systematic public medicine.”3 Mayerne said that Parkinson’s book: “Entered the very marrow of plants and the virtues of each for the good of the public. You reveal the ointment of mortals so skillfully so that your English compatriots . . . will forever after be intimate with the richest part of nature’s treasure chamber.”4 Sir Matthew Lister also provided John Parkinson with seeds of Chinese rhubarb he had obtained from Venice, as the finest medicinal rhubarb came from China, and it was considered one of the best purges, a cornerstone of seventeenth-century medicine.5 Parkinson was one of the first to describe its cultivation, as it was a goal for seventeenth-century European botanists to grow it successfully at home.6 Both Sir Matthew Lister and John Parkinson were ardent royalists during the English Civil War, so it is possible that the Lister and Parkinson families were well acquainted due to their past friendship and political allegiances.7 Hannah would have understood her fiancé’s interests in natural history as they ran in her own family, and it seems they were an especially compatible couple. Lister’s old friend Thomas Briggs congratulated him, commenting “I should not seam to think the ere ever been otherwise [happy] who have as I understand so suitable a Consorte.”8 The Parkinsons were a large clan in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries residing in all the parishes which extend from Kildwick-inCraven to Kirkham in Lancashire, and they were, as a whole, welloff farmers and minor gentry. In Higher Fairsnape on the Bleasdale Moors, Lancashire, a farmhouse survives with the Parkinson crest carved above the door—three stars on a red chevron between three ostrich feathers.9 Hannah’s father, however, was from another branch of the family residing in the West Riding of Yorkshire, the location of Craven, a land that is generally high-lying, hilly, and with a climate not particularly suited for arable crops. But it is excellent land for growing

3

Parkinson, “John Parkinson.” Parkinson, Nature’s Alchemist, . 5 Jardine, Ingenious, –. 6 Parkinson, Nature’s Alchemist, ; Jardine, Ingenious, . 7 Hannah’s father Thomas was John Parkinson’s nephew. See Woodley, “Anne Lister,” , note . 8 Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. 9 Parkinson, Nature’s Alchemist, . 4

“my dear hart”



grass, grazing cattle and establishing large dairy herds, and it appears to have been the source of most of the Parkinson’s wealth.10 Hannah’s father, Thomas Parkinson (–) married Anne Ellis in  at the Priory Church in Bolton Abbey near Skipton, and they settled in Carleton-in-Craven where they had three children, Hannah being the eldest. In , Thomas bought the manor house in the village, Carleton Hall Estate, from the Ferrand family. The Hall’s datestone has survived and been preserved at Harden Grange near Bingley, and it proclaims “This made Willyam Farrand and Elizabeth His Wife iiii April .”11 Although the Hall with its distinctive five-light window, oak beams, and huge diamond-shaped paving stones was long in ruins, in  it was restored sympathetically with the original front doorway in the same style as that of nearby Skipton Castle.12 Ferrand had been Chief Steward to the Cliffords of Cumbria who owned the castle, so it is not surprising that he imitated its architectural style when building the Hall.13 News of Martin’s and Hannah’s relationship apparently traveled back to Burwell, as Lister’s sister Jane wrote to him the last day of August, , teasingly complaining: “Deare Brother—I cannot but chide you that you have forgot your word so much as not to let us know whether you are alive or no. I beleve it is a month sence we heard of you, and you promised to writ to us every week.”14 Jane continued, “I doe not know what to think of it; shure you are bringing of us a nu sister—if that be that which takes up all your thoughts I am satisfied, but nothing else can excuse you.”15 Jane indeed would have a “nu sister,” as Martin and Hannah were married on  August  at Saint Sampson in York, just restored after damage from bombardment from the English Civil War.16 After the wedding, the couple lived for a brief time at Nottingham, and visited John Ray at Willoughby’s impressive estate, Wollaton Hall.

10

Long, “Regional Farming,” . Naylor, Carleton, . Thanks to Ella Hatfield and the Craven Museum and Gallery Cultural Services for providing me with a copy of Naylor’s work. 12 “Historic Building is given a new lease of life.” 13 Parker, “Lister: His Family,” . 14 Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. 15 Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. 16 Family Search Genealogical Index. Batch M, Source , Printout call no . http: //www.familysearch.org; Tillot, A History of the County of York, –. 11



chapter six

Wollaton Hall is a spectacular Tudor building designed by Robert Smythson and completed in  at a cost of £,, an enormous sum in the sixteenth century. The house is still extant and, rather appropriately, houses the Natural History Collections of Nottingham City Museums and Galleries. Smythson was also the architect of Hardwick Hall, and both buildings share the Elizabethan fashion for huge glass windows, a prospect room to look out over the grounds, and elaborate flanking turrets. Both structures also have distinctive mixtures of classical pilasters and columns with Anglo-Flemish strapwork prominent in the silhouetted ornament on the rooflines.17 The effect is one of imposing stability combined with the grace and lightness of all those windows. It is also believed that the first glass house erected in England for the protection of plants was built at Wollaton at the end of the seventeenth century, and it was also then reputed to have one of the finest gardens in the country, perhaps the result of Ray’s and Willoughby’s efforts.18 The newly-weds would certainly have enjoyed strolling through the estate, Martin no doubt taking notes on plant species whilst delighting in Hannah’s company. During his stay in Nottingham in the winter of , Lister made a few field observations of birds, though his research slowed as he was seemingly besotted with his new bride. Correspondence with Ray the next year shows that in a more logical frame of mind, he identified bird species for Willoughby’s forthcoming work on ornithology, particularly “heath throstles” (ring ouzels) that he spotted in Craven.19 Though Wollaton House was lovely to visit, Lister found the damper climate at Nottingham aggravated his asthma, writing Ray that his “fitts” made him “hast[e] to change the aire.”20 The newly married couple thus moved to Carleton Old Hall in Carleton-in-Craven in the spring of  (Figure 13). The green hills that formed the picturesque banks of the Wharfe and Aire could not fail to be attractive to a natural historian, and the house provided a peaceful family retreat for his wife Hannah who was pregnant with their first child. Lister remarked to Ray in March  that he “must carry my wife to ly in at her moth-

17 Lawrence compares the style of Wollaton and Hardwick Halls in Women and Art, –. 18 Whatnall, Links, . See also Girouard, Robert Smythson. 19 Carr, “The biological work,” ; Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. 20 MS Ray , f. , letter b, Natural History Museum, London. The letter is partially printed in Derham, Philosophical Letters, ; Lankester, ed., Correspondence of John Ray, –; Harley and Parker, eds, English Spiders, .

“my dear hart”

Fig. 13



Carleton Old Hall, Carleton-in-Craven. Photograph by the author.

ers in Craven, where I shall be most part of this Summer.”21 Susanna was born at Carleton Hall and baptized on  June . Their joy soon turned to sorrow, as Hannah’s father Thomas died in April or May , leaving Carleton Hall to be co-inherited by Hannah, her mother Ann and her sister Mary, as well as ten shillings to the wet nurse for baby Susanna.22 Their rather unusual partible inheritance when primogeniture was standard can be explained by the rich cache of Parkinson family tombstones that have survived along the east wall of Carleton-in-Craven’s parish church. (Such a survival is fairly typical, as the abolition of sacred images after the English Reformation left a gap in the art market, a gap that soon came to be occupied by funerary monuments).23 The tombs indicate that Hannah’s only brother Stephen had pre-deceased her father in , which was the reason for the hall

21

MS Ray , f. , letter b, Natural History Museum, London. Davies, “A memoir,” –. Thomas Parkinson was buried at Carleton on  May . 23 Scholten, “Review,”–. The tombstone of Stephen and Thomas Parkinson in the church at Carleton-in-Craven reads “Hic Jacet Stephanus Filius Thomas Parkinsoni Septutus XI die Octobens An Dom 1655” or “Here lies Stephen son of Thomas Parkinson, who died the sixth day of October, year of our Lord .” Another tombstone of Anne Parkinson nearly indicates she bore three children—Hannah, Maria, and Stephen. Thomas Parkinson’s grave is also near the east wall of the old portion of the church. 22



chapter six

being shared between the two daughters. As the inheritance was a bit complex, Lister kept among his miscellaneous papers a copy of a deposition by one Thomas Middlebrook of Carleton-in-Craven, an eighteen-year-old servant who stated that Thomas Parkinson had been of sound mind and body when making his will, and that he had observed Thomas signing the document.24 Lister also had a heavily annotated copy of a law tract devoted to reading wills and executors, including some material “written and brought to and approved by [the] testator in his life.”25 Under the process of coverture, whereupon most of a wife’s property passed to her husband upon their marriage, Hannah’s portion of the estate passed to Martin. Via a previous agreement with Thomas Parkinson, Martin also eventually inherited Ann and Mary’s portions as well, so his diligence was rewarded. Thomas also left Lister another legal mess to disentangle, this one involving the Murgatroyd family at nearby East Riddlesden Hall. Before Martin and Hannah had met and married, Thomas was engaging in land speculation. Thomas Parkinson bought £ worth of land in Wadsworth, Yorkshire, from John Murgatroyd, whose estate was riddled with debt after having property seized in the English Civil War.26 John died prematurely in , and it appears that he was selling lands, which may have belonged to his older brother James. After James died in , his daughter, Susannah Murgatroyd, opened a case in Chancery attempting to show that John had unlawfully pretended he would inherit the Murgatroyd lands and acted in collusion with his uncle Henry to disinherit her father, sell off properties and keep the proceeds.27 Susannah Murgatroyd named as defendants Henry Murgatroyd, Martin and Hannah Lister, and Richard and Mary Hartley; as Hannah and Mary were heirs of Thomas Parkinson, via interlocutory decision, they were a party to the action. Unless the Listers challenged the case with a demurrer, they would have had to give back the Wadsworth lands. Thus, they sought to have the case dismissed with costs, providing evidence of an alternate will in which James, Susannah Murgatroyd’s father, had been disinherited. As legal proceedings tend to do, the case in Chancery took a good deal of Martin’s time, necessitating several trips to London; Lister mentioned in a letter 24

Bodleian MS Lister , ff. r-v. Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. 26 Equity Pleadings, Court of Chancery, reference C //, , National Archives, Kew. 27 Equity Pleadings, Court of Chancery, reference C //. 25

“my dear hart”



to Oldenburg on  April , “having a suit depending in Chancery, I did verily believe, it would have brought me up to Town this Term which is at hand: but upon further motions in that Court, it will not.”28 Lister also lamented to Ray: I have had very ill measure and yet I cannot find any remedy in our Law by a company of pitifull men that drive it on by strong corruption and cheating. It hath cost me already much money and time, and it was well for me that of  li [pounds] per annum, which was agreed and figured to be setled upon me at Marriage, one hundred was found my ancient right . . .29

Unfortunately for Lister, the Entry Books for Decrees and Orders for Chancery showed that the demurrer was dismissed as frivolous; the court’s decision was that judgment should be awarded or there should be a retrial, but it is unclear what sort of arrangement was made, as there is no legal record of any further action involving Lister in this case.30 One of Lister’s correspondents, John Brooke (c.–), one of the original Fellows of the Royal Society and a Baronet who lived near York, did mention however in a July  letter to Lister that he was “glad to hear of the good success of your law-Concern,” which seems to indicate Martin ultimately received a favorable outcome.31 The Murgatroyds, on the other hand, were involved in various lawsuits over the inheritance for the next twenty-five years that decimated their family’s fortunes. The diary of Nonconformist minister Oliver Heywood (–), who had a parish in nearby Northowram, West Yorkshire, stated: I being in Bingley parish Aug. ,  at severall times they were discoursing of the decay there is of persons of quality. Mr Fairbank the Minister there said to me there was a rot among the gentry, and I can say since I knew the place there is a decay of these houses and familys . . . Mr Murgatroyd of Riddlesden, Mr Murgatroyd of Greenhill . . . and others—some are in debt, some imprisoned—some rotted out, title, name—some dead, posterity beggars, oh what unthriftiness, wickedness, sloth, and God’s curse for the same, this is a good lesson, John :: Zach. :.32

28 MS L/, Royal Society Library, London, and Hall and Hall, eds, The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, : –, on . 29 MSS Ray , f. , letter , Natural History Museum, London. It is partially printed in Derham, Philosophical Letters, –; Lankester, ed., Correspondence of John Ray, –; Harley and Parker, eds, English Spiders, . 30 C//,  July , National Archives, Kew. 31 Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. 32 Heywood, Oliver Heywood, : .



chapter six

A “company of pitifull men” indeed. While Lister was living in Craven coping with legal matters and experiencing the joys and tribulations of fatherhood, he went on more simpling excursions in Malham Cove to calm his mind. He also had decided where to establish his medical practice, a matter of urgency as Hannah was pregnant with their second child. Craven, as he termed it—“soe remote a corner where I live”—was clearly too rural for an ambitious physician, and so Martin considered a number of locations to establish himself as a doctor, including an unsuccessful attempt at practicing while the couple lived in Nottingham.33 He had also considered Chichester, being in correspondence with one Mr Bayulay in September , who assured him: “we have noe phisitians of any note her[e]. I do not see but one if will intend it might gain considerable practice. You need not come with any resolutions of staying any time, but as upon a visit, you will be better able to imagine when you see the place.”34 Lister traveled there by coach via Southwark to see the town for himself, but ultimately decided against settling there. A note he made in Latin in the margins of Bayulay’s letter indicated he would stand to gain little in the final arrangement.35 . A Doctor in York Martin finally decided to let Carleton Hall and move to York to establish himself there as a physician. York not only had the advantage of being reasonably near his wife’s family, but it was a “faire lardge cittie” of , serving an extensive rural area, with good economic prospects for a doctor’s practice.36 The raw products of York’s surrounding countryside were exchanged for imported or locally manufactured goods and services provided by fifty to sixty craft and trade guilds. Merchants imported hemp, flax, potash, iron, and timber from

33

Harley and Parker, eds, English Spiders, . Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. 35 Lister wrote in the margins of the letter: Nil mihi infinibus attamen ipsius. [however there is nothing for me at the end/conclusion of it.] Bodleian MS Lister , f. v. 36 Aston, “The Journal,” . Aston was a “younger son of the ancient family of Aston of Aston, in Cheshire, who was attached to the suite of Charles I on his expedition through the counties of York, Durham and Northumberland in the first Bishops’ War of ” (“The Journal,” viii). The original journal is BL Additional MS. . One of the best studies of York demographics is Galley, “A Never-ending Succession,” –. 34

“my dear hart”



Europe, and exported lead, skins, and, most of all, cloth, shipped down the river Ouse in York-built ships which had connections to Europe via the Humber. A famous wholesale butter fair took place in Micklegate, and there were occasional horse fairs and racing.37 York was also not only a center of consumption, but a social center of fashion and taste in the North, offering intellectual stimulation and companionship to the young doctor. By , regular hackney coach services linked it with London, and its status as an administrative center with important courts and assizes meant there were a number of ceremonial dinners and the occasional royal visit in the social season. Amongst its medieval half-timbered houses and shops with projecting upper stories in narrow cobbled streets, by  were new coffee-houses, and a number of famous inns including the George in Coney Street and the “very faire” Talbot in Petersgate. Sir Arthur Ingram’s house near the York Minster, now the Treasurer’s House, was also a bit of a tourist attraction with its orchard, gardens, statuary, and fishponds. According to John Aston, a retainer traveling with Charles I in : the inhabitants believe excells for a garden beeing set out with images of lyons, beares, apes and the like, both beasts and birds which, from the topp of the steeple, please the eye, but otherwise are showes onely to delight children, the cheifest pleasure of his gardens beeing the neare adjacency to the towne wall, which affoords him meanes to cast severall mounts and degrees one above another . . .38

York had a thriving arts and literary tradition as well. Local gentry gave their patronage to painters, carvers, and sculptors including Edmond Horsely, Andrew Keane, and the wood carver Grinling Gibbons. Local artisans were also hired to decorate and maintain the magnificent York Minster, described by Aston as “a very goodly edifice and exceeding lardge, and for lightsomenesse much excells [Saint] Pauls . . . The chapter house is a very faire round roome on the north side with faire painted glasse windowes.”39 York indeed had a wellestablished school of glass painting, led in the seventeenth century by

37 For scholarship on early modern York, see Withington, “Views,” –;. Tillot, ed., History of the County of York; Nuttgens, History of York; Jack Binns, Yorkshire in the 17th Century. 38 Aston, “The Journal,” . 39 Aston, “The Journal,” .



chapter six

Edmund and Henry Gyles; the Gyles family had been York glaziers since the fifteenth century. At the time of Lister’s arrival, Henry Gyles (–), addressed as “Honest Harry” by his friends, had established a literary and artistic salon called the “York Virtuosi” at his house in Micklegate. This was a group Lister later joined, along with artists Francis Place, William Lodge, and John Lambert, the antiquaries Ralph Thoresby and Miles Gale, George Plaxton, rector of Barwick-in-Elmet, the mathematician Thomas Kirke, Dr John Place (cousin to Francis), and the publisher and print seller Pierce Tempest.40 Lister’s developing expertise in chemistry and dyes led to collaborations with Gyles regarding pigments and colored glass at the Royal Society, and some of Gyles’s observations were discussed in the Royal Society and published in the Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions.41 Gyles apparently attempted to create a more- intensely vermillion pigment from the husks of kermes insects, as the vibrant pigment made from cochineal insects from Oaxaca was extraordinarily expensive; in the colonial era, cochineal became Mexico’s second most valued export after silver.42 Processes to create a cheap crimson dye were thus amongst the desiderata of the early Royal Society.43 Gyles did several glass paintings for the Oxford and Cambridge Colleges, and Lister wrote of him “I dare be bold to say he is the most Excellent artist in Europe of the kind, and is able to out doe anything was ever yet seen in Oxford or England . . . [he] is a very modest man, and deserves incouragement.”44 The “encouragement” may also have referred to Gyles’s experiments with coloring mezzotints and their transfer to glass, enumerated in a manuscript he owned which is today in the University Library, Cambridge. 45 Francis Place, who had apartments in the King’s Manor in York, was “one of the pioneers of mezzotint,” and he was involved in experiments regarding the chemistry of pottery, the glazing of stoneware and manufacturer of porcelain, so it would be likely that he and

40

Brighton, “Gyles, Henry,” Oxford DNB. Brighton, “Henry Gyles,” . 42 Greenfield, Perfect Red, . 43 My thanks to Vera Keller for this point. 44 Gunther, Early, : –. 45 “Treatise in autograph of Henry Gyles, Glasspainter, colouring Mezzotinto and transferring them to glass,” Add. MS , University College Library, University of Cambridge. 41

“my dear hart”



Gyles exchanged ideas.46 As Place was also was a skilled topographical draughtsman, watercolorist, and copper engraver, and Pierce Tempest was connected to a network of York printers which included John White, royal printer for the northern counties, Lister found ready assistance when he decided to publish his works of natural history during his years at York. Thomas Kirke edited his translation of Jan Goedart’s History of Insects for publication, and Francis Place did fourteen of the delicate copperplate engravings. Conversations with his fellow York virtuosi, particularly Kirke and Thoresby, as well as proximity to York’s ancient walls and ruins also encouraged Lister’s antiquarian interests, and he became the first person to identify the city walls as definitely Roman in construction. Kirke created a fine museum of antiquities and a library at his house at Cookridge (near Leeds); he was interested in prints, glass painting, and surveying, and spoke with Gyles on how to create several sundials of painted glass. Kirke also attended a mathematics club in London; he wrote to Gyles on  June : I have been twice att the mathematicall Clubb which every friday night on friday sennite I mett Mr Moxon there who writt A peece of perspective (which you have of mine) and wee went to Mr Faithorne the graver and drunk a glasse of wine with him and A friend of his A young painter I suppose; and Mr Moxon and Mr Faithorne were att high words whether the true knowledge of perspective was absolutely necessary for A painter or no.47

Mr Moxon was Joseph Moxon, hydrographer to Charles II, printer of mathematical books and maps, and maker of instruments, including sundials; he would become the first tradesman to be elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society. Kirke’s distant relative and neighbor Ralph Thoresby also had an extensive museum of antiquities and curiosities, and he and Lister swapped information about Roman coins and altarpieces. Henry Gyles made drawings of archaeological sites for Thoresby’s museum, including a “Stonehenge in red chalk,” and gave him instructions how to take impressions from his accumulation of coins and medals, something which Lister also did from his own numismatic collection.48 46

Stainton and White, Drawing, . See also Tyler, Francis Place. BL MS Stowe , f. r. The letter is also published in Finberg, ed., Walpole, : –. 48 Brighton, “Henry Gyles,” . 47



chapter six

It was thus fortuitous that Martin, Hannah, and their baby daughter Susanna moved in October  to a house outside Micklegate Bar close to that of Gyles; Micklegate was west of the River Ouse, a smaller and less populous area in York than the region east of the River. Most of York’s larger public buildings, such as the castle, the city and county halls, the King’s Manor, and the Minster and Chapel Close were on the east bank, connecting York to the national organs of church and state.49 Inhabitants in the eastern part of the city were citizen householders and freemen of the city, who had attendant political and economic privileges and responsibilities, as well as professional men and the gentry.50 Hearth tax records from  indicate that nearly all of the households in eastern York had two or three hearths, with a significant amount having four or more hearths, indicating substantive residences and affluence.51 In contrast, the western area of York where Martin lived had more modest homes, and its most prominent feature, other than its council chambers and St Thomas’s hospital which served as an almshouse, was Micklegate Bar itself, a rectangular stone gatehouse guarding one of the most important of York’s gateways (Figure 14). The main road to Leeds from York led south-west through the bar or gate, and it stands close to the site where the Roman Gateway led into Eboracum, the Roman city. Micklegate was a focal point for civic events, such as a royal visit; the tradition was that when the monarch visited York he had to stop at Micklegate Bar to ask permission from the Lord Mayor to enter the city in recognition of its independent civic governance. More gruesome were the heads of traitors displayed on the Bar as a reminder of civic authority. In terms of its wealth, Micklegate was an average parish, and most of the residents were shopkeepers and craftsmen.52 It was a prudent area for a young physician with a young family to begin a new practice with all its attendant business expenses. Lister seems to have been assimilated into professional society quickly, and became part of a corporation of York physicians who banded together to preserve their rights and privileges.53 An examina49

Withington, “Views,” . Withington, “Views,” . 51 Tillot, ed., A History, . 52 Tillot, ed., A History, . 53 “Articuli supradicti, quibus affiguntur nomina sequentium medicorum; scilicet, Stephani Tayleri, M.D., R. Wittye, M.D.; Pet. Vavasor, M.D., Gulielmi Ayscough, M.B, Martini Lister, A.M. Hen. Corbett, M.D., N. Johnstoni, M.D.” BL MS Sloane , f. . 50

“my dear hart”



Fig. 14 Micklegate Bar and the Hospital of St Thomas, York. Engraving by W. Byrne and T. Medland, , after T. Hearne, . Wellcome Library, London.

tion of their corporate articles revealed that they were under the general jurisdiction of the Archbishop of York who granted their licenses. The York Corporation of Physicians also agreed to consult each other on medical matters, and to treat the poor with the same care as more affluent patients. The seven physicians who signed the document had appointed a proctor and held monthly dinners with York apothecaries. These dinners were as much about collegiality as enforcing professional boundaries and privileges. Early modern doctors were in a competitive market in which physicians, surgeons, apothecaries, and

There are also letters in MS Sloane , ff. – discussing the writing and contents of the corporate articles.



chapter six

astrologers contended for business.54 In this competitive marketplace, “licensed physicians were an elite and generally they regarded apothecaries as their inferiors; moreover apothecaries tended to undermine the physicians’ authority and deprive them of fees.”55 In York, apothecaries were mixing medicines at the request of their clients without a doctor’s prescription, and the physicians fought back by prosecuting apothecaries for prescribing medicines, as well as boycotting those practitioners who were prosecuted.56 Five of Lister’s account books for his practice in York and in London survive, which give some indication of how he ran his practice, the nature of his clientele, and his fees. Lister wrote all of his account books in printed yearly almanacs, with a name and fee written next to the date. The  almanac demonstrated that Lister was receiving about five to ten shillings or from one quarter to one half of a guinea per patient (a guinea was worth  shillings in the s and s); this fee was equivalent to about £–£ ($–$) per consultation.57 For an especially difficult case, as that of one Mr Rippon on  January , Lister received  guineas, but such charges was balanced by courtesy consultations for his patients’ servants at a shilling each. He also treated family members and sometimes an “anonymous child” without charge.58 Whether these were children of patients or orphans cannot be determined.59 A “master of a ship” and the “oysterman” also received complementary care.60 Lister’s fees in  were thus approximately the average rate of  shillings for an English physician in the seventeenth century. As a point of comparison, while a top London physician like Richard Mead (–) charged a guinea to see such illustrious patients as Sir Isaac Newton, Lister was in the provinces and at the beginning of his career.61 Lister was seeing approximately – patients per month from January until June; his

54

Wear, “Popularization of Medicine,” . Hunting, “Worshipful Society,” . 56 BL MS Sloane , f. . 57 Bodleian MS Lister *. Carr has also noted the fee amounts in the casebooks, and he has done a good empirical analysis of them from which my discussion is taken. See Carr, “The Biological Work,” . The equivalence in today’s dollars was taken from “Fees,” A Dictionary of the History of Medicine. 58 Bodleian MS Lister *, f. r. Mrs Katherine Lyster and Charles Lyster were treated on  January  without charge. 59 Bodleian MS Lister *, f. r, for “anonymous child” treated without fee. 60 Bodleian MS Lister *, f. r. 61 “Fees,” Dictionary of the History of Medicine, for Mead’s fees. 55

“my dear hart”



business dipped in July by about half most likely due to his summer holidays, usually spent in Craven in the s, and Bath or France in the s. His business returned to a frequency of about a patient a day from August until December. Lister’s income would thus have been approximately £ pounds per year from his practice; Carr has noted that by Gregory King’s tables of  this amount would have given him the same means as a lawyer (£), though not as much as a gentleman (£).62 However, with his additional income from his family’s holdings, he would have been considered to have a gentleman’s means. Although Lister’s casebooks do not describe his patients’ complaints or their specific treatments, eight pages of notes in his  casebook indicate the day-to-day medicaments that he was prescribing. They are largely a mixture of traditional herbal treatments gleaned from his “simpling” expeditions and reading of Greek and Latin authorities in Montpellier—Theophrastus’s De Causis Plantarum, Disocorides’ Materia Medica, and Pliny the Elder—along with some Paracelsian and Van Helmontian chemical doses. Like most learned physicians, Lister bled his patients, following with purges or emetics to drive out evil humors. If these treatments failed, he would concoct more elaborate herbal and chemical medicaments. Lister’s herbal treatments included gallium luteum or Ladies’ Bedstraw which, when infused, was noted in Culpepper’s Herbal to staunch external and internal bleeding, as well as being used to stuff mattresses due to its pleasant smell. The mildly acidic distillation of the plant combined with alum may have served as part of the basis of styptic liquor that Lister invented and sent to the Royal Society for more thorough testing in late . Apparently, he “showed the Expt [experiment]” in York to his fellow physicians, opening an artery of a dog and applying the liquor, claiming “not one only drop of blood fell after the application of the liquour with a single linen dipped in it; soe that it may be said, to staunch blood in a moment.”63 Lister apparently concocted the styptic to compare it with another “Royal Styptic Liquor” prepared by Monsieur Jean Denis (d.) that had been tested in France to great effect and used by the English admiralty 62

Carr, “The Biological Work,” . MS L/, Royal Society Library, London, and Hall and Hall, eds., Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, : –; MS L/, Royal Society Library, London, and Hall and Hall, eds, Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, : –. 63



chapter six

in the Dutch wars.64 In December , he sent a bottle of “the water we used in the staunching of blood,” which the Royal Society also tested on an open crural artery on a dog. It was “found very well, and his wound in a manner quite healed up.”65 Lister’s casebook notes also indicated frequent use of cinquefoil (Potentilla reptans), known as “five fingers” as the leaves are divided into five leaflets. The roots of cinquefoil were used as an astringent and febrifuge, and had been employed medicinally since the time of Hippocrates. Dioscorides stated that one leaf cured a quotidian, three a tertian, and four a quartan ague, although the herbalist and early modern physician Nicholas Culpepper considered him “full of whimsies,” stating “I never stood so much upon the number of the leaves, nor whether I give it in powder or decoction.”66 Culpepper’s Herbal did confirm, however, that it was “an especial herb used in all inflammations and fevers, whether infectious or pestilential or, among other herbs, to cool and temper the blood and humours in the body.”67 Lister also listed “Trachelium” known as Canterbury Bells. When sharpened with a few drops of spirit of vitriol (sulfuric acid) and sweetened with honey, trachelium, also known as “throatwort,” was used as a medicine for sore throats and a gargle; Lister’s contemporary, Sir Thomas Browne, often prescribed it in a cough syrup made with glycerin or honey.68 Lister also included wood spurge and lesser spurge, both used as emetics, and which were claimed by Dioscorides as effective in treating cancer; the roots indeed have antileukemic activity against lymphocytic leukemia in mice.69 The anti-depressant and abortifactant St John’s Wort was employed as a “singular wound herb,” and asperula or woodruff, which when made into an herbal tea is a gentle sedative. Angelica (Archangelica officinalis), which was esteemed for its supposed medicinal virtues and often made into a candy or cordial, also

64

Hall and Hall, eds, Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, : . The anonymous letter from “one of the principal Chirurgions of his Majesties Fleet” was printed in the Philosophical Transactions  ( October ), . 65 Bodleian MS Lister , f. , and Hall and Hall, eds, Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, : –, on . 66 Grieve, “Cinquefoil,” in Botanical.com; Culpepper, “Cinquefoil,” in The Complete Herbal. 67 Culpepper, “Cinquefoil.” 68 Keynes, ed., Letters of Browne, . Browne described to his son Edward his cough syrup prescription for one Mrs Crosse. The original letter is in BL MS Sloane , f. r. 69 Wu, et al., “Antitumor agents,” 823–29.

“my dear hart”



made an appearance in his casebook; seventeenth-century physician John Pechey suggested the candy be “eaten in the morning to prevent infection.”70 Culpepper in his Herbal went so far to suggest “God made it known to man, by the ministry of an angel,” and believed that “it resists poison by defending and comforting the heart, blood and spirits; it doth the like against the plague and all epidemical diseases.”71 Lister also devoted a page in his casebook to a list of “head and horns,” such as those from “raindeer,” harts’ horn and the tusks of the “sea unicorn.” Harts’ horn was the early modern chemist’s source of ammonia, used much like sal volatile to enliven the animal spirits and revive those who had fainted. The beautifully spiraled horn of the “sea unicorn” was actually the elongated tusk of the narwhal (Monodon monocerous), and it was often represented as a horn from an equine unicorn. Unscrupulous apothecaries employed this deception because the horn of the unicorn was highly prized as an antidote to poison, and royal families fearing assassination had bowls and spoons made from it. Although the famous museum owner and natural philosopher Ole Worm had seen a skull of a narwhal in , and exposed the horn’s true origins in a public lecture, by , instruments of “unicorn horn” were still being used to test food at the French Court. Further, despite Worm’s discovery: the rectification of the fantastic in no way mitigated or falsified the traditional medical utility of the horn itself. Worm cited a  experiment conducted at Augsburg, in which a dog was poisoned with arsenic and successfully revived by a preparation of unicorn horn administered as an antidote. He reveals that he participated in a similar experiment at the shop of a Copenhagen apothecary in  this time involving doves and kittens.72

It is little wonder that Lister was apparently still convinced of its medical efficacy. Lister then included four pages of his chemical prescriptions, which show influence from his training at Montpellier. Concoctions including antimony, toxic if taken in large doses, featured several times. Apparently, Lister used antimony as a purge for evil humors, administered as potassium antimonyl tartrate (tartar emetic), and he also prescribed

70 71 72

Pechey, Complete Herbal, . Culpepper, “Angelica,” in The Complete Herbal. Shackelford, “Documenting,” .



chapter six

it as an expectorant. When swallowed, tartar emetic acts directly on the stomach walls producing vomiting, and after absorption continues this effect by its action on the medulla. After ingestion, antimony is excreted, passing out by the bronchial mucous membrane, increasing the amount of secretion and acting as an expectorant. Antimony’s use, as advocated by chemical physicians, had been a matter of controversy since the late sixteenth century, a focal point of debate between Galenist physicians and Paracelsians favoring iatrochemistry.73 With the exception of Basel, Montpellier, and Marburg, many universities had been hostile to its presence in the pharmacopeia; the University of Paris, a bastion of Galenism in fierce rivalry with chemical physicians at Montpellier, forbade their graduates to use antimony until . The ban was, however relatively ineffective, and it had to be repeated many times. The Royal College of Physicians in London, led by Lister’s great-uncle Matthew’s friend Turquet de Mayerne, advocated its use in the first half of the seventeenth century. When treating hydrophobia, Lister combined a chemical remedy of butter of antimony with a traditional Galenic concoction of crayfish eyes.74 Other chemical remedies in his case book included sal prunella, a mixture of refined niter and soda used for sore throats (prunella is a corruption of brunella from the German breune—a sore throat); mercuris dulcis or calomel (mercury compounds with salt, usually mercurious chloride) as a laxative, and vitriol of copper as an emetic, styptic, and escharotic, a corrosive cancer salve. Lister’s casebooks witness his establishment of a successful medical practice in York, partially due to his expert knowledge of herbal and chemical materia medica. Not only could he offer his patients the traditional herbal Galenic cures that they expected, but could also demonstrate his expertise with the more innovative and powerful (if not more efficacious) Paracelsian remedies. And as his reputation in York grew, he attracted a higher-paying clientele. Over time, as his  casebook reveals, his income from his practice increased significantly as his patients became more illustrious and his reputation grew. By the s, when his practice was moved to London, he was receiving nearly nineteen shillings per consultation, and his patients included

73 74

Chevalier, “Antimony War,” –. Lister, “An Observation of Two Boys,” .

“my dear hart”



Elias Ashmole, Lords Mountjoy and Strickland, Lord and Lady Kingston, and the Bishop of Worcester.75 Interspersed among his herbal and chemical medicaments, the casebooks also reveal his interest in basic botany, chemistry and metallurgy. His notes included tests for magnetism, pigments and “the way of painting in fresco by various uses,” lead-and-copper ore casting, and locality notes and detailed botanical descriptions of lilacs, attesting that natural history was never far from his mind.76 His casebooks were thus also small commonplace books to record details of botany, zoology, and the descriptions of crafts and techniques to put Nature to various uses. His dedication to note-taking was typical of early modern natural historians. Due to the vast and varied nature of particular observations that characterized the realm of natural history “lost notes meant lost information.”77 John Ray himself lamented that after Willoughby’s death, the loss of field-notes from their German “simpling” expeditions meant some classification schemes for the fish they observed would be affected.78 Lister’s observations thus not only crowded his regular commonplace books or adversaria, but invaded his medical records as well. Some of his interest can be attributed to his exploratory intellect, but some of it was due to professional ambition. Though we have seen that his assertion of priority in the discovery of ballooning spiders was personally a pyrrhic victory, professionally it established his reputation in the Royal Society. He was keen to continue to demonstrate his prowess in natural history. As the next two chapters will show, throughout the s, Lister would involve himself in two intellectual debates which both considered the taxonomic boundaries between plants and animals. The first analyzed parallels between circulation of sap and circulation of blood. The second considered the nature of sealily or crinoid fossils, called by Lister “rock-plants,” which involved him in the raging arguments of the late seventeenth century about the origin of fossils. The first debate Lister lost to a more able botanist— Nehemiah Grew—but his innovative thoughts about the fossil debate helped establish him as the father of conchology.

75

Bodleian MS Lister , ff. v–v. Bodleian MS Lister , ff. r–v for ore processing; r for frescoes; Bodleian MS Lister , ff. r–v for plant descriptions. 77 Yeo, “Memory and Paperbooks,” . 78 Yeo, “Memory and Paperbooks,” . 76

CHAPTER SEVEN

LISTER AND THE ROYAL SOCIETY’S DEBATES ABOUT PLANT CIRCULATION IN THE s . Introduction Although physically Lister worked in relative isolation to his colleagues in London, his correspondence kept him intellectually at the very center of discourse in natural philosophy in the Royal Society. The importance of peripheries in intellectual revolutions is not surprising. In their studies of scientific networks, Bruno Latour, Hal Cook, and David Lux have all demonstrated that “new information and ideas . . . tend to come from people with many weak social bonds.”1 Cook and Lux in particular have demonstrated that Royal Society virtuosi of the late-seventeenth century collected and verified new “matters of fact” via establishing contacts that created a “minimal level of personal relationship,” yet provided important information.2 A modern equivalent would be the fact that many find out about a new source of employment from casual acquaintances who provide them with crucial inside information, rather than from people in their immediate social circle. Lister utilized a similar strategy when he lived and practiced medicine in York with his far-flung correspondence to collect and interpret information about the natural world. In the early s, Lister used the medium of correspondence as an aid in his research to delineate the flow of sap and other fluids in trees and vegetables. This was a topic that he had been working on with Ray and Willoughby from  until a few months after Willoughby’s death in . The three natural philosophers ligatured different species of trees in different seasons to attempt to find meteorological patterns when the plants “bled” and how their fluids traveled through their bodies and shared their results via the post.3 Ray and Willoughby

1

Lux and Cook, “Closed Circles,” . Lux and Cook, “Closed Circles,” . 3 Lister and Willoughby, “Bleeding of Trees,” –. Lister mentioned doing experiments in Nottingham before he moved to York. 2



chapter seven

noted for example that a frosty night caused an increase in the rate of bleeding from a tree wound.4 Although the writings of Aristotle and Theophrastus claimed that plants only had an insensitive vegetative soul, and thus exhibited only passive responses of nutrition and reproduction, Lister believed that plants were more analogous to animals physiologically and admitted the possibility of plant sensation; his argument resulting from his typical integration of natural history and medicine.5 The burgeoning number of studies in plant and animal anatomy and taxonomy in the seventeenth century suggested such a correspondence, as several species seemed to transverse boundaries between animal, mineral, and vegetable. An example was the discovery in South and Central America of the “sensitive plant,” or mimosa pudica whose compound leaves fold inward and droop when touched, re-opening within minutes; in fact, one of the first tasks given to the Royal Society by King Charles II was to understand why the sensitive plant responded to touch. In  John Wilkins, of the Royal Society and Bishop of Chester, moved that a committee should be appointed to draw up a list of experiments about vegetation to be distributed for making experiments. A publication in the Philosophical Transactions in , entitled “Queries concerning Vegetation, especially the motion of the Juyces of Vegetables, communicated by some curious persons,” resulted from the deliberations of the committee, including the query that the physiology of plants were similar to animals, and the circulation of the blood was parallel to the circulation of the sap.6 Work on the circulation of the blood by William Harvey (– ), and Marcello Malpighi’s (–) experiments with capillaries further encouraged botanists to think along these lines. Johann Daniel Major (–) of Kiel claimed to be the first to publish a circulatory theory of plants, arguing that sap must circulate because plants could not grow “if the motion of sap were only from bottom to top, that is from the root to the top of the stalk, and if it never returned by nervous or fibrous channels analogous to the veins of animals.”7 Thomas Birch’s History of the Royal Society, indicated that Oldenburg had read a letter from John Ray and Francis Willoughby dated  June  4 5 6 7

Carr, “The Biological Work,” . Webster, “Recognition of Plant Sensitivity,” . Thomas, “Presidential Address,” . Major, Dissertatio, ff. C–C, quoted by Barker, “Putting Thought,” .

lister and the royal society’s debates



concerning the circulation of sap in trees. Ray indicated that while it would be difficult to demonstrate such a principle with experiments, perhaps the anatomy of hibernating animals “which lie torpid all the winter and grow no more than vegetables, may give some light.”8 . The Royal Society and the Circulation of Sap It was not surprising therefore that Oldenburg remarked in an  February  letter to Lister that at a Royal Society Meeting, “they were very copious at that time in discoursing upon the motion of Sap in Trees, and amongst other particulars, upon the Question, Whether there by a circulation of their Juyce, as there is of the Bloud of Animals.”9 It was suggested that members make “straight ligatures” with metal rings around the branches to see if, like in a human arm in a tourniquet, there would be a “turgescence on both sides of the ligature.” Oldenburg encouraged Lister to “devise some effectual way to try this experiment effectually,” as “tis your ingenuity, that makes me persist in these important solicitations.”10 Oldenburg was especially interested to get the results of experiments with ligatures as they would have indicated whether plant vessels had valves, a key determinant whether there was true circulation of sap. After all, Harvey had utilized tourniquets to determine the direction of blood flow. Valves would also determine other possibilities for the flow of fluid in plants, such as those indicated by Marcello Malpighi. In a letter published in the Philosophical Transactions, astronomer Giovanni Cassini (–) noted that an “ingenious person” in Italy, namely Malpighi who was engaged in a detailed study of plant anatomy using microscopic evidence, questioned “whether there be a Circulation of Sap in Trees, resembling that of Bloud in Animals.”11

8

Birch, History, : . Bodleian MS Lister , ff. –, and Hall and Hall, eds, The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, : . 10 Bodleian MS Lister , ff. –, and Hall and Hall, eds, The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, : . 11 Cassini, “Intimation,” . In a  July  letter to Oldenburg, Malpighi noted he could not prepare drawings of his microscopic observations of plants quickly, as he could not employ an artist as a collaborator. Malpighi then wrote, “the anatomy of plants is so diffuse a subject and so recondite that it demands enormous labor and great patience. I might therefore spend the rest of my life pursuing it . . .” Hall and Hall, eds, Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, : . 9



chapter seven

Malpighi compared the venation of leaves to a network of blood vessels, and remarked that because plants always put out new branches and leaves, it seemed to “be sufficient for them, that there be a continual and plentiful course and supply of Juyce, to thrust out every way, without any necessity of such a Circulation.”12 However, though he realized that leaves elaborate simple materials into more complex plant substances, he also reasoned that there must be a return, downwards movement of sap to carry these body building substances to other parts of the plants for use. “The movement of sap did not have the regular rhythmic character of blood circulation but was a slower, more uneven process, subject to seasonal change.”13 Malpighi thought the sap moved by means of the dilation and contraction of the air contained in what he called plant’s air vessels. To make this supposition plausible, it was necessary that these tubes be supported with valves. Malpighi believed these air vessels existed, as when observing the broken branch of a chestnut tree, which had fine threads projecting from its surface, he examined these threads under the microscope; seeing they resembled the air tubes in the chitinous exoskeleton of insects, he concluded incorrectly that they served the function of breathing. Lister responded to Oldenburg’s request for ligature experiments, making over forty trials on sycamore trees in the winter of – at Nottingham. He noted that plant bleeding happened only when the wounds were newly cut, but resumed bleeding as the weather warmed; these were results that Ray repeated in his own set of trials.14 In a series of letters, which were published in the Philosophical Transactions, he postulated that plants and animals indeed shared a similar system of vessels, and that plants “manifest Acts of Sense.”15 Not only did the sensitive plant shrink from touch, but poppies could “erect” their heads from a “pendulous posture,” and plants such as pinguicula (butterwort) seemed to excrete spontaneously superfluous moisture just like animals sweated.16 Butterworts do not literally “sweat,” but they do use sticky leaves to trap and digest insects to supplement the poor mineral nutrition they obtain from the soil.

12

Cassini, “Intimation,” . Harré, Method, . See Chapter Eight in this work for theories of sap throughout the ancient and early modern period. 14 Carr, “The Biological Work,” . 15 Lister, “Account of Veins,” . 16 Lister, “Further Account of Veins,” . 13

lister and the royal society’s debates



Lister then stated that “for many years” he thought there had been some sort of circulation of plant fluids because “all the Juyce of a Plant is not extravasate [exuding from or passing through the walls of a vessel into the surrounding tissues] and loose and like Water in a Sponge, but that there are apparent Vessels in Plants, analogous to veins in Animals.”17 For Lister, these veins were most clear in plants that had red-, white- or saffron-colored “juyce” such as Lactuca (lettuce, likely wild lettuces; the name of the genus is derived from lac, the Latin word for milk, which referred to the plant’s milky juice). He also mentioned Atractilis gummifera, a thistle, which after the fruit is ripe exudes yellowish-white latex from the base of the bracts, and Chelidonium majus, greater celandine or tetterwort.18 Tetterwort produces red or yellow latex; a tincture of which was employed in early modern medicine as a mild analgesic. At the behest of Oldenburg, Lister ligatured Cataputia minor lobelia (Euphorbia lathyris or caper spurge in modern taxonomy), with silk thread, and then cut the branch just above or below the tie. The milky juice exuded from both sections, as well as “infinite small holes, besides the made orifice,” demonstrating an interconnected system of veins, but disproving that any of the plant vessels had unidirectional valves, and thus disproving Malpighi’s theory of sap movement.19 Lister’s assertions about plant veins were met with “good acceptance with our Society.”20 Oldenburg wrote, “I received order, not only to returne you their hearty thanks for it, but also to be careful in having it enter’d into their Register book.”21 He also mentioned he would send Lister his copy of Malpighi’s Anatomes plantarum idea, a portion of the Italian’s larger work on Plant Anatomy. This was to “enlarge” Lister’s “thoughts and observations, and confirme them in others. You will meet in this Dissertation not only with Veins, but Arteries, Trachea’s Lungs, Peristaltick motion . . . and what not?” demonstrating Malpighi’s belief that the plants was a “kind of standing and movelesse Animal.”22 Indeed,

17

Lister and Willoughby, “Bleeding of Trees,” . Daniele, et al., “Atractylis gummifera,” . 19 Lister and Willoughby, “Bleeding of Trees,” . 20 Bodleian MS Lister , f. , and Hall and Hall, eds, The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, : . The date was  January /. 21 Bodleian MS Lister , f. , and Hall and Hall, eds, The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, : . 22 Bodleian MS Lister , f. , and Hall and Hall, eds, The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, : . Oldenburg actually sent another transcript of Malpighi’s 18



chapter seven

Malpighi compared the development of wood with that of the teeth and bones of animals, and the enclosed pith of the plant stem to the heart and brains. Lastly, Oldenburg asked Lister to review and repeat his experiments about plant veins, which being “well performed . . . the Doctrine and Philosophy of the vastest part of the Sublunary World, which relateth to Vegetables, is like to be satisfactorily stated.”23 Martin subsequently told Oldenburg he took “great satisfaction” in perusing Malpighi’s work, though he wished it would be published with “scheames” and more illustration to visualize the Italian histologist’s descriptions. Malpighi’s work seemed to confirm for Lister the existence of plant veins, described as special “vessels for milky fluid,” which seemed to be in every species of plant. Lister wrote to Oldenburg, “again that these Veines hold the only vital juices of plants, which I shall confirm by divers reasons and experiments.”24 In other words, Lister thought that plant veins had a special fluid, distinct from sap, which moved about the plant under pressure and which was essential for its life processes. Though the means by which this vital fluid circulated were unknown, they must exist, or, as in the case of animal blood, the sap would clot without constant movement.25 Oldenburg’s letter and his lending of Malpighi’s work to Lister showed his esteem for him and his research program. Lister’s correspondent John Brooke remarked, “my Frend told me yesterday (a member of the Society), Mr Oldenburg, is frequently oblig’d to Dr Lister, for the best Remarks, that his Philosophical Transactions affords.”26 It was not only Lister’s research that was flourishing, but his practice and family were also prospering and undergoing changes. Between January and March /, a change of address on Oldenburg’s letters showed that Lister had moved from his house outside Micklegate into a larger residence in Lendal Street in Stonegate. Stonegate was in more affluent eastern York and among the upper % for hearth taxes in

manuscript to William Petty, which made its way to Lister via his colleague John Brooke who lived in York. See Bodleian MS Lister , ff. –, and Hall and Hall, eds., The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, : . 23 Bodleian MS Lister , f. , and Hall and Hall, eds, The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, : . 24 MS L/, Royal Society Library, London, and Hall and Hall, eds, The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, : . 25 Carr, “The Biological Work,” . 26 Bodleian MS Lister , f. v.

lister and the royal society’s debates



.27 The move was probably necessitated by the birth of his daughter Anna (Nancy to her family) on  October . Though Martin was overjoyed at the birth of Anna, he was distraught a few months later at the loss of his friend Francis Willoughby who (as we have seen above) died in July . Willoughby and Ray had been scheduled to go on another “simpling” expedition in the west of England in June, but the trip was canceled as Willoughby was desperately ill. We have seen also that when Willoughby died, Ray refused Lister’s offer of accommodation at his home at York, which may have been a bit of a blow. Oldenburg wrote to Lister in September , “we all have cause to Joyne with you in the lamentation, as of a losse hardly reparable; but that losse, me thinks, should make the survivors the more vigorous in prosecuting such designs and purposes, as thy friend of ours was upon.”28 Though Ray seemingly took Oldenburg’s advice, whether the result of prompting or inner resolve, and began work on Willoughby’s Ornithology, Lister had several fallow months in his research. The following month, he told Oldenburg: you must excuse my passion for a person I loved as well as admired. I assure you I reckon the correspondence I have with you, an honour to me, & a great pleasure. The true is, this summer has been a sorrowfully time with me & I hve not had the hart & leisure to acquit my selfe, as I fully purposed.29

Martin consoled himself by spending the summer at Craven and subsequently sending Oldenburg a few observations of snails, kermes insects, and of mushrooms “fierce and biting” to the taste he had seen in forests near East Marton and the Drumlins.30 Nonetheless, by November , Lister had composed himself enough to send a rather lengthy “breviate” of his experiments with plant veins, which was later published in an amended form in the Philosophical Transactions.31 Lister noted that when he stripped the

27

History of the County of York, –. Bodleian MS Lister , f. , and Hall and Hall, eds, The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, : . 29 MS L/, Royal Society Library, London, and Hall and Hall, eds, The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, : . 30 MS L/, Royal Society Library, London, and Hall and Hall, eds, The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, : –. 31 Bodleian MS Lister , f. , and Hall and Hall, eds, Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, : –. This letter from Lister to Oldenburg was dated  November . Lister sent another, without any substantive differences to Oldenburg on 28



chapter seven

skin off a plant, including some of the spongy parenchyma, no sign of plant “blood” followed if there was no incision made in a vein, indicating the vein’s role as a carrier of plant juices.32 However, when looking at transverse cuts of plants, Lister found it difficult to trace the “veins,” only seeing “the bloody orifices of dissected Veins” which “disappeare as soon as they have parted with their juice, not unlike the Lacteal Veins in sanguineous Animals.”33 Deprived of an “ocular demonstration,” he decided thus to dissect leaves and observe them under the microscope, claiming that their veins were as membranous as the veins of animals, and when stretched out, “vigorously restored themselves again, just like a Vein, Gut, or any other membranous ductus of an Animal.”34 He noted also his microscopic demonstrations indicated that the “veins” held their fluids, “no otherwise than the blood through our Veins,” and he had argued in a letter to Oldenburg that the “primary use of these veins,” was to carry the plants’ succus nutritius or nutritive juice, because where there were no vessels, there was no vegetation.35 Lister was, however, confronted with the fact that in plants there was nothing analogous to the heart or a pulse and there were no valves. He concluded that if the juices moved through the plant and they “bled” when cut, it must be because “the juice they hold is fermentative” somewhat like intestinal juices.36 He noted that plant “blood” when stored separated into whey and curds, much like fermenting milk. Lister’s assertion that bodily fluids fermented was not without precedent. The famous Leiden physician Sylvius de le Boë believed that the functions of an organism were determined by ferments or effervescences arising from the acidic or alkali character of bodily fluids. Flemish chemist and physician Johann Baptista van Helmont (–) believed matter was created by water and ferment, or seminal origin; “the ferment is an indwelling formative energy which disposes . . . water  January /, which was published in the Philosophical Transactions,  ( January /), –. 32 Bodleian MS Lister , f. , and Hall and Hall, eds, Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, : . 33 Bodleian MS Lister , f. , and Hall and Hall, eds, Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, : –. 34 Martin Lister, “Further Account of Veins,” . 35 MS L/, Royal Society Library, London, and Hall and Hall, eds, The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, : –, on . 36 Bodleian MS Lister , f. , and Hall and Hall, eds, Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, : –.

lister and the royal society’s debates



so that a seed is produced and life, and the mass develops into a stone, plant, or animal.”37 In the body, the “internal efficient cause” or life force was called the Archeus, and van Helmont believed its seat was in the stomach, though archei also existed in the liver and other parts of the body. In these organs, ferments due to chemical processes occurred to bring about digestion and other changes in physiology. As van Helmont’s chemistry and his medicine played such a significant role in seventeenth-century medicine, the peak diffusion of his ideas in England occurring in the s, it is likely that Lister was exposed to their pervasive influence.38 His later work on spa waters, as we will see, was influenced heavily by Helmontian ideas that water was the source of material and mineral formation. Lister also thought that the milky juices of plants, as opposed to clear sap, contained the vital plant juices, because in experiments he did with freezing plants, the milky juices continued to run, while the sap froze; he wrote that the milky vital juice of plants, “hath a fermentative motion within it self, which preserves it from the injuries of the Weather, & that consequently these Vessells are the only proper Veines in Plants.”39 Oldenburg subsequently asked several of his correspondents abroad, such as Salomen Reisel, physician to the Count of Hanau, to repeat Lister’s experiments freezing sap and milky plant juices, as well as to dissect birds killed by frost to see if their “hearts or other organs contain[ed] particles of ice?”40 Although natural philosophers “had not yet here discover(ed) any uniting of veins into one common trunk,” Lister was thus sure that further anatomical research would mean “the analogie betwixt plants and animals be in all things else, as well as the motion of their juice, fully cleared.”41 As plants and animals both had similar systems of vessels, Lister speculated that they both bled freely, regardless of the season; he remarked in an article about his grafting experiments with sycamores that it was “indeed true, there are many sorts of English Plants, which

37

Helmont, Ortus Medicinae, , , , . See Clericuzio, “From van Helmont to Boyle,” . 39 Bodleian MS Lister , f. , and Hall and Hall, eds, Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, : . 40 MS O/, Royal Society Library, London, and Hall and Hall, eds, The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, : . 41 Lister, “A Further Account of Veins,” –, quoted by Barker, “The Motion of their Juice”; see also Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, : – for a discussion of the circulation of fluids in plants, especially . 38



chapter seven

will bleed in Winter; but not also, that such Plants never refuse to do so at any time of the year, not more than a Man, who many bleed a vein when he pleaseth.”42 Though Francis Willoughby would dispute Lister’s assertion, claiming a very sharp Frost stopped plant “bleeding,” he did agree that moderate cold had no effect on the emission of milky juices (Lister’s plant “blood”), and that experiments in which he and Ray poured water through ligatures in cut branches of trees and watched the fluid come out the other end seemed to give further support to an interconnected system of vessels.43 Lister then concluded his articles by noting that plant “blood” would provide “rich furniture of our [apothecary’s] Shops; for from these Veins only it is, that all our Vegetable Drugs are extracted, and infinite more might be had by a diligent enquiry,” demonstrating his continuing interests in dyes, colors, and resins and twin concentrations of effort in physic and natural history.44 Lister had made several medicinal pastilles from clotted plant juices, which he sent to the Society. . The Argument with Nehemiah Grew In the Royal Society itself, Lister seemed to anticipate he would meet with much debate about his theories, and he was concerned about the warrant for them. Allen Gross noted that in the process of establishing facts, early modern scientists were well aware that their statements would likely “receive scrutiny and judgement by an international group of readers with similar interests,” and thus hedged their language to indicate they were carefully weighing the evidence.45 Lister also used this technique. For instance, Lister wrote about the veins: That though we seem to be more certain of the ramifications of the Fibres, wherein those veins are, we yet are not so, that those veins do any where grow less and smaller, though probably it may be so. That which makes us doubt it, is the exceeding smallness of these veins already, even where we might probably expect them to be Trunk veins and of the largest size.46 42 Lister, “Partly to the Bleeding of the Sycamore,” . Lister also writes to Ray of his “bleeding” experiments on trees in an undated letter. See Correspondence of John Ray, . 43 MS W/, Royal Society, London and Hall and Hall, eds, The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, : . 44 Lister, “Ingenious Account of Veins,” . 45 Gross, Harmon, and Reidy, “Argument,” –. 46 Lister, “A Further Account of Veins,” .

lister and the royal society’s debates



Lister’s considered reflections were overall well received and considered in the Society. Certainly his views that there was upward and downward motion of plant fluid would have found favor with Richard Reed, who had declared that it was “a heresy in husbandry obstinately to deny the descent of sap.”47 But there were dissenting voices as well. John Beale (–) had considered that “the main quantity of sap” moved upward only and “is gradually hardened into leaves, blossoms, fruit, timber in such manner as the ossification in young animals.”48 John Wallis (–), Savilian Professor of Geometry at Oxford, also disputed Lister’s ideas about plant juices, as did the botanist Nehemiah Grew (–). Wallis had settled many arguments with fellow natural philosophers publicly in the Philosophical Transactions, such as those with Thomas Hobbes, so it is not surprising he would publish an article in response to Lister’s claims. While Lister argued that plants had vessels analogous to the veins of mammals, carrying a nutritive sap that was usually milky in color, Wallis thought the veins of leaves were analogous to animal nerves and contained a nervous fluid.49 Wallis noted that while veins in leaves were branched, the veins in plant stems were not “ramified,” as were mammalian circulatory vessels, but rather smaller and bundled, resembling animal nerves. To support his argument, Wallis cited De Cerebro (), the work on brain anatomy by the English anatomist and physician Thomas Willis (–). Willis was Sedleian Professor of Natural Sciences at Christ Church College, Oxford, and a Fellow of the Royal Society. He was best known for his work in clinical neuroscience and has been immortalized by the arterial anastomosis at the base of the brain that he described, now known as the Circle of Willis. Concerning the differences between vascular and neural anatomy, Willis wrote: Hence may be noted the difference between the distributions of the blood and animal Spirits [nervous fluid]. That Latex [blood], because it is reduced in a circle [circulates], its Vessels are in the whole passage proportioned as to the bulk of the Trunk and the branchings sent from it, to wit, so that the branches of the great Artery, being carried from the Heart, contain at the least so much of the blood, as the shoots reaching forth from the, onto all the parts. But because the animal Spirits, being once begotten and carried more outwardly, subsist longer there,

47 Read, “Descent of Sap,” . Read was a gentleman from Herefordshire who contributed articles on husbandry to the Royal Society. 48 Beale, “In what sense sap descends,” –. 49 Wallis, “Upon Mr. Lister’s Observation,” .



chapter seven and evaporate very slowly and by little and little, therefore the Vessels carrying them, viz the Nerves, in respect of the fibres receiving them, are made much lesser in proportion.50

After noting Willis’s observations of neural anatomy and blood vessels, Wallis argued that in anatomical dissection of which he had experience, nerves “shrink up” like the veins of plants more than the veins or arteries of animals.51 Finally, Wallis referred to Willis’s careful anatomical studies of the ganglia of the cerebrum, brain stem, and cerebellum which led to Willis’s realization that brain functions derived from the neural activity of each of the parts. Willis had remarked that the nervous spirits “inhabiting the Cerebel perform unperceivedly and silently without our knowledge or care,” and likewise Wallis concluded that nerves from the Cerebellum, “subservient to the Involuntary motions, and of which we are not conscious or sensible . . . seem reducible [to those] which Mr Lister speaks of in Plants.”52 For Wallis, plants were powered by an entirely autonomic nervous system. Nehemiah Grew (–) also had an interest in Lister’s work. Grew was a botanist and secretary to the Royal Society, and he has been subject to extensive scholarly analysis, ranging from his work in plant anatomy and saline chemistry, to his cataloguing of the Royal Society collections, and his philosophy of vitalism.53 At the time of the debate over plant circulation, Grew published his Anatomy of Vegetables () and, in , he would publish his Anatomy of Plants nearly concurrently with Malpighi’s Anatomae Plantarum, both works masterpieces of plant histology using microscopy.54 After Lister’s last article was read to the Royal Society in November , Grew was asked by its members to “peruse and consider it,” and then convey his thoughts.55 Though Grew considered plants and animals to be “contrivances of the same wisdom,” even at one point complaining the

50 Willis, Remaining medical works, . This is the English translation of Cerebri anatome to which Wallis also referred in his article. 51 Wallis, “Upon Mr. Lister’s Observation,” . 52 Willis, The remaining medical works, ; Wallis, “Upon Mr. Lister’s Observation,” . 53 Garrett, “Vitalism and teleology,” –; Hunter, “Early Problems,” –; Bolam, “The Botanical Works of Nehemiah Grew,” –; Sakula, “Grew and Epsom salts,” –; Lefanu, Nehemiah Grew; Roos, “Grew and Saline Chymistry,” –. 54 Arber, “Grew and Malpighi,” –. 55 Bodleian MS Lister , f. –, and Hall and Hall, eds, The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, : .

lister and the royal society’s debates



veins of bean cotyledons could not be dissected out as well as animal vessels, he had serious misgivings against Lister’s claims. Grew first told Oldenburg that he doubted if the lack of “plant blood” resulting from Lister’s stripping of a plant’s skin and spongy parenchyma really was evidence that plants had veins carrying vital juices.56 Lister had himself admitted he had little ocular evidence to follow the route of the plant “veins” he observed in the plant’s pith. Grew did agree that veins existed in plants, and that milky juice did have a “fermentative motion within itself ” more “vigorous and brisk” than in liquid sap. But he wondered if the watery, more “limpid” sap in plants should also not be called vital, as it was “acknowledged to the the Aliment of the Plant; though the Milky Juice may be allow’d to be a higher perfection of it.”57 Just like the blood in the human body was the source of all humors and animal spirits, it was possible the nutritive limpid sap served the same function, being transformed into the vital milky sap. Grew admitted it was true that the fermentative action in milky juice survived freezing, but doubted Lister’s argument that this necessarily led to the conclusion that the milky juice was the “vital Juice” of plants. Grew asked “Whether it be a Conclusive proof of the want of any Vegetable Juices fermentative motion, because it may be frozen; since beer, wine etc will be frozen and yet are fermentative?”58 In other words, substances did not cease to be vital or capable of fermentation when frozen. Grew’s criticism of Lister’s observations may have been because Grew had recently been asked by the Royal Society, “to put in mind to see, what might be discovered of the peristaltic motion in plants,” particularly the motion of sap.59 Lister was clearly stung by Grew’s queries. To save face, he wrote to Oldenburg in January / stating that Grew’s questions were welcome and his diligence admirable, as they would assist him in future research, but he also reminded Oldenburg grumpily, “that I undertooke not the explication of the Oeconomie and use of all the parts in Plants, but only to look up & revise certain remarkes I had made, several yeares agoe, concerning the 56 Bodleian MS Lister , f. –, and Hall and Hall, eds, The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, : . 57 Bodleian MS Lister , f. –, and Hall and Hall, eds, The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, : . 58 Bodleian MS Lister , f. –, and Hall and Hall, eds, The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, : . 59 Birch, History, : . Birch records that the request was made on  July .



chapter seven

Veines in plants analogous to human Veines.”60 Lister then answered Grew’s questions in a rather desultory manner indicating his work was still in progress, ending his letter by stating “And if wee misse of our purpose, we doubt not but the happy genious of Dr Grew will bring much to light,” and offered to “retouch” his next paper about Plant veins.61 It was clear at this point that, despite a bit of wounded pride, Lister knew Grew’s work in plant histology was more significant than his own. In a subsequent letter, Lister stated that he “should be lesse forward in exposing my selfe in such darke and untroden subjects as those of Plants.”62 But he still had “desire of improving, at least hastning & setting an edge on others in the designe of the improvement of usefull Philosophy.”63 Lister accomplished his goal of spurring others onto new research, as Grew’s subsequent experiments, published in An Account of the Vegetation of Trunks (), did clarify plant “bleeding” in a significant manner. Grew demonstrated that while the bleeding of plants could be possible due to the “internal pressure forcing the plant to yield its sap when cut,” the circulation of the sap in plants was not the same as it was in animals.64 Grew repeated Ray’s and Lister’s experiments observing that there were no valves because ‘the Trunk or Branch of any Plant being cut, it always bleeds.” Grew then rejected the idea of fermentation to explain sap movement, instead deciding that the pressure required for the sap to rise needed an explanation. In direct contrast to Lister, he appealed to the parenchyma’s sponge-like quality to explain sap movement: That considering to what height and plenty, the Sap sometimes ascends; it is not intelligible, how it should thus ascend, by virtue of any one Part of the Plant, alone; that is neither by virtue of the Parenchyma, nor by virtue of the Vessels, alone. Not by the Parenchyma alone. For this, as it hath the Nature of a Sponge or Filtre, to suck up the Sap; so likewise, to suck it up but to a certain height, as perhaps, about an Inch, or two, and no more. Nor by the Vessels alone, for the same reason . . . We must

60

Hall and Hall, eds, The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, : . Lister’s paper was printed as “A Further Account Concerning the Existence of Veins,” –. 62 MS L/, Royal Society Library, London, and Hall and Hall, eds, The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, : . 63 MS L/, Royal Society Library, London, and Hall and Hall, eds, The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, : . 64 Garrett, “Vitalism and teleology,” . 61

lister and the royal society’s debates



therefore joyn the Vessels and the Parenchyma both together in this service.65

Grew continued: For the pith and other Parencyhmous Parts of a Plant, upon the reception of Liquor, have always a Conatus to dilate themselves. As is manifest from Sponges, which are a Substance of the same Nature, and have a somewhat like structure . . . I say therefore, that the Parenchyma being fill’d and swell’d with sap, hath thereby a continual Conatus to dilate itself ; and in the same degree to press together or contract the vessels which it surroundeth. And the said vessels being cut, their actual Contraction and the Eruption of the sap, do both immediately follow.66

Rather than relying upon an analogous model of animal and plant structure, Grew’s explanation is partially mechanistic to explain the vessels’ capillary action. He realized, however, that if the vesicles of the parenchyma received their moisture or sap only through suction, there was a point beyond which they could not be moistened any further, and thus could not act any further upon the plant veins. Therefore, Grew could not provide a completely mechanical explanation for the ascent of sap and had to rely on the continual presence of an impulse or “sponge-like conatus” inherent in the matter of the parenchyma itself. Grew’s hypothesis was reflective of an intellectual tension between mechanism and vitalism that existed in late seventeenth-century natural philosophy. Though there was an emerging emphasis on mechanism as an explanation of natural phenomena, Robert Boyle, as did other natural philosophers, often had recourse to non-mechanical explanations of phenomena like seminal principles or a self-perpetuating conatus.67 Grew’s explanation was reflective of the latest trends and limitations of botanical and chemical research. As for Lister, after engaging until August  in a largely fruitless private debate with Grew (patiently mediated by Oldenburg) over the differences and purposes between clear and milky saps, he wrote little else about his theories of plant veins. Lister probably realized that his botanical work was being outclassed by Grew’s excellent histological research into plant anatomy. Lister was also distracted by an increasingly busy medical practice, which called him away into “remote parts”

65 66 67

Grew, Anatomy of Plants,  as quoted by Garrett, “Vitalism and teleology,” . Grew, Anatomy of Plants,  as quoted by Garrett, “Vitalism and teleology,” . See Anstey, “Seminal principles,” . See also Clericuzio, “A redefinition,” –.



chapter seven

including his estate at Embsay, Yorkshire at the edge of Barden Moor where some of his patients were accommodated during convalescence.68 Hannah had recently given birth to their third child and first son Michael in March or April; a letter of  April  from John Brooke notes, “my wife . . . wishes your Lady much comfort of her little one, & a Happy Recovery.”69 In the meanwhile, Brooke faithfully kept Lister appraised of the experiments performed in the Royal Society meetings and mentioned “Mr Oldenburg gives you his humble service: & does civilly reproach You, for being his Debtor.”70 Lister forgot to pay his Royal Society dues. No doubt feeling a bit sheepish from his tardy fees (which he duly paid) and his sterile battles with Grew, Lister sent no more substantive letters to Oldenburg until November . As his botanical research was becoming increasingly unproductive, Lister’s interest shifted from living plants to what he thought were fossilized ones. Fossils of sea-lilies or crinoids were widely considered a plant-like mineral substance, but it was debatable whether they were the remains of living creatures or merely “formed stones.” Just as taxonomic boundaries were being redrawn and redefined between plants and animals, these fossil “rock-plants” also demanded their place in the scheme of nature. Again, as in the spider work, Lister’s research was in response to the influence of John Ray, and both men would be drawn into an even larger controversy in natural philosophy—the origins of fossils.

68 69 70

Parker, “First British Arachnologist,” . Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. Bodleian MS Lister , f. r.

CHAPTER EIGHT

ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, OR MINERAL? LISTER, RAY, CRINOIDS, AND THE FOSSIL DEBATE IN THE ROYAL SOCIETY . Introduction Lindisfarne, or Holy Island, lies just off the coast of north-eastern England, connected picturesquely to the mainland at low tide. A pilgrim on Sunday morning could walk across the causeway for divine services, and in the evening return home dry. As Sir Walter Scott wrote in Marmion (): For, with its flow and ebb, its style Varies from continent to isle; Dry-shod, o’er sands, twice every day, The pilgrims to the shrine find way; Twice every day, the waves efface Of staves and sandaled feet the trace.1

In July , John Ray made a point of trekking there on one of his “simpling” expeditions to gather specimens for his second edition of his Catalogue of English Plants.2 The island’s isolation may have made it a choice place to gather rare plants, but its remote location and spare beauty were also conducive to spiritual practice. In the seventh century, King (later Saint) Oswald of Northumbria invited the Scottish monks who had converted him at Iona (founded earlier by missionaries from Ireland) to build a monastery on Lindisfarne. At the time of Ray’s arrival, Lindisfarne was also famous for its associations with St Cuthbert (c.–). Originally a shepherd boy, Cuthbert became bishop of Lindisfarne, where during his life he was renowned for his holiness and miracles. But it was in circumstances surrounding Cuthbert’s death that he attained his sainthood. According to Bede, the monks exhumed Cuthbert eleven years after his death

1

Scott, Marmion, . Lankester, ed., Memorials, . This chapter is partially drawn from my article, “Lilies,” –. 2



chapter eight

to enshrine his bones for veneration, and found his corpse had not undergone any decay. Cuthbert’s body, kept on display at Holy Island, became a source of popular veneration until repeated Viking raids, beginning in the eighth century, made the monks quit their monastery around . The monks took Cuthbert with them to the mainland, and traveled with his remains for more than a hundred years until he could be laid to rest at Durham Cathedral. Ray delighted not only in these tales, but also in the plants he found on Holy Island, such as German madwort with its hairy leaves and delicate blue flowers.3 When not plant hunting, he spent his time examining the island’s geology. In this he collaborated with his traveling companion, the naturalist Thomas Willisel (–), the Royal Society’s official collector of minerals, flora, and fauna, and probably England’s first professional field naturalist.4 The two men gathered from the “sea-shore under the town, those stones which they call St Cuthbert’s beads.”5 The beads, which ranged in size from a pea to a half-dollar, were the ridged and perforated fossil disks of crinoids or sea-lilies. Ray and Willisel probably found the beads on the north-eastern part of Lindisfarne, amid the limestone quarries which had been mined since the fourteenth century for building material or lime plaster. The base of the island is part of the Carboniferous Middle Limestone Group formed between  and  million years ago.6 At that time the region that would become northern England was near the Earth’s equator, and was covered with warm, shallow seas. The ancient seabed had been thronged with the sea-lilies, echinoderms related to starfish, and sea-urchins. While some crinoids, called “feather stars,” are mobile and freeswimming, a sea-lily’s base was stuck to the seafloor, and from it grew a flexible stem supporting a head or calyx. From its head grew five (or multiples of five) branched and moveable arms, which filtered food particles and tiny organisms from the seawater. Cilia lining grooves on the insides of the arms manipulated the food along the arms down to the mouth, which was situated in the center of a membrane that covered the base of arms (the tegument). The flexible branches and stem 3 4 5 6

Lankester, ed., Memorials, . Boulger, “Willisel, Thomas,” rev. F. Horsman, Oxford DNB. Lankester, ed., Memorials, –. Lane and Ausich, “Legend,” .

animal, vegetable, or mineral?



were made up of wafer-like calcareous plates stacked on each other and strung together by ligaments. In the center of the stem and each arm was a fluid-filled body canal through which a nerve cord passed. When the animals died, their remains accumulated along with shells and other hard parts of corals and brachiopods to create a calcium layer. All those remains, cemented together by carbonate mud and subjected to geothermal heat and pressure, became the consolidated limestone. Crinoid paleontologists William J. Ausich and the late N. Gary Lan have noted that when fossilized, the individual plates of the stem and arms usually separate.7 At the center of each is the hole that once accommodated the nerve, thus creating the impression of a perforated bead much in the shape of a modern-day British POLO® mint or American Life Savers® sweet. Local legend claimed that Cuthbert had made the beads to give to his brethren, to string together for their rosaries. And after his death Cuthbert’s spirit supposedly continued making nocturnal visits to his “forge” on the island to replenish the supply. The shore is still strewn with the beads after a storm, attesting to the saint’s continued ghostly presence—or at least to the continued abundance of fossil sea lilies in the area. In other parts of England, the coin-like “beads” were known as fairy money, and intact cylindrical stems, ringed with ridges, as screw stones. Beads with pentagonal shapes were called star stones (these were pentacrinoids or pentacrinities fossilis). The antiquarian and first keeper of the Ashmolean Museum, Robert Plot, classified and discussed crinoids extensively, reporting that most laypeople thought they were “sent to us from the inferior Heaven, to be generated in the Clouds, and discharged thence in the times of Thunder and violent Showers . . .”8 The sixteenth-century German author, Georges Agricola, in his work De Re Metallica (“Of Metallic Things,” a work also devoted to other minerals or fossils) described the same sorts of stones.9 The Germans called the crinoids “Bonifacius Pfennige,” or St Boniface’s pennies, displaying pride in their own local religious luminary. Bemused by the islanders’ folklore, Ray wondered about the origin of the beads. But he speculated that, rather than being sacred jewelry,

7 8 9

Lane and Ausich, “Legend,” . Plot, Oxfordshire, . Agricola, De re Metallica, .



chapter eight

the small “beads” were “nothing else but a sort of entrochi,” the Latin term for stones in the shape of tiny wheels.10 As Agricola commented in his De Re Metallica: Trochites is so called from a wheel, and is related to lapis judaicus. Nature has indeed given it the shape of a drum . . . the round part is smooth, but on both ends as it were there is a module from which on all sides there extend radio to the outer edge . . . the size of these trochites varies greatly, for the smallest is so little that the largest is ten times as big, and the largest are a digit in length by a third of a digit in thickness.11

The question remained, how were the “entrochi” formed? In the late seventeenth century, several luminaries in the early Royal Society argued over the origins of fossils. Past historiography, particularly the work of Martin Rudwick and Rhoda Rappaport, has sketched the broad outline of the controversy.12 Microscopist Robert Hooke (– ) argued that fossils were remnants of past animal and plant life, although he varied in his opinion of “how fossil-bearing strata had been deposited.”13 However, since the Christian creed taught that all species were created in Genesis, any ideas of their becoming extinct were considered heterodox. On the other hand, investigators such as Robert Plot argued that fossils were not always remains of living creatures, but could be created spontaneously by nature as part of her inherent “generative powers.”14 He represented the views of early modern naturalists who postulated that metals and minerals were spontaneously nurtured and generated in deep mines considered to be Mother Nature’s womb, and stones that resembled living creatures could be generated without any organic origins. In other words, although we think of fossils as remains of living creatures, many seventeenth-century investigators thought these stones could be created spontaneously by nature as part of her inherent “generative powers.” Trilobites and other intriguing stones had been found that did not resemble any existing living creatures, giving weight to the idea that fossils were lapides sui generis or merely “formed stones.” Underground aquifers carrying waters with 10

Lankester, ed., Memorials, . Agricola, De Natura Fossilium, . Lapis Judaicus are sea-urchin spines from Judea, dating from the Jurassic period. 12 Rudwick, Meaning, –, –; Rappaport, Geologists, –. William Poole has recently set the fossil debate in theological debates about the creation of the world. See Poole, The World Makers. 13 Rappaport, Geologists, . 14 For more on Plot, see Gunther, Science, vol. ; MacGregor, Ashmolean Museum; Turner, “Robert Plot,” –; Mendyck, “Robert Plot,” –. 11

animal, vegetable, or mineral?



generative seeds were thought to form rocks and minerals in the heat below ground. Mineral-generating seeds in the atmosphere could also be responsible for fossilization. . Lister and “Rock-plants” In the midst of these conflicting views, Ray subsequently contacted Lister to see what he thought about the matter. Lister had, after all, written about fossils before in response to his old friend and colleague Nicolas Steno whom he had met in Montpellier. As previously mentioned (see Chapter Three), Steno wrote a chorographic work of Tuscany, the Prodromus () which was a bold assertion of the organic origin of fossils and how they came to be enclosed in layers of rock. Traditionally, it is asserted that Steno formulated the first laws of stratigraphy from his observations in Tuscany described in the Prodromus. Birch’s History of the Royal Society made note of: A letter of Mr. Lister to Mr. Oldenburg dated at York  Aug.  . . . adding some notes on . . . Mr. Steno’s Prodromus concerning petrified shells. This letter gave occasion to some of the members to discourse on the subject of petrified shells, some applauding Mr. Lister’s notions of it; but Mr. Hooke endeavouring to maintain his own opinion, that all those shells are the exuviate of animals.15

Birch’s summary concealed Lister’s full argument. Lister not only called into question Steno’s assertion that fossils were purely organic in origin, but his response to Steno took into account chemical processes and morphology, as well as geology, his views proceeding as he said “not from a spirit of contradiction, but from a different view of Nature.”16 Lister’s careful study of English molluscs demonstrated to him that many of the fossilized species had little relation to modern ones. He also noted that the composition of fossils was chemically the same as the stone in which they were embedded, and thus concluded they were stones spontaneously created by nature from mineral solutions.17 In a letter to Lister of  March , Ray remarked, “In one thing I am as yet a different opinion from you, and that is the origin

15

Birch, History, : . MS L/, Royal Society Library, and Hall and Hall, eds, The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, : –. The letter was reprinted as Lister, “Letter on that of M. Steno,” . 17 Lister, “Letter on that of M. Steno,” –. 16



chapter eight

of those stones which we usually call petrified shells, though you want not good ground for what you assert.”18 Spurred by Ray’s remarks, Lister went on to write another paper about crinoids for the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, which was published in  (Figure 15). Lister mentioned having come across St Cuthbert’s beads in the Yorkshire villages of Braughton and Stock near the Craven Fault, finding them in “beds of clay.”19 The Craven Fault is actually a series of geological faults that run along the southern and western edges of the Yorkshire Dales, a region also composed of carboniferous limestone, consisting of the folded and faulted layers of former marine beds and coral atolls. Crinoid fossils abound in the exposed rock. Members of the York virtuosi also sent Lister samples of pentacrinoids or star-stones from Bugthorpe and Leppington, villages fourteen miles from York; these specimens are abundant in the Lower Jurassic rock of the Yorkshire Wolds.20 Most crinoid specimens just consist of the columnar stem—or parts of it—and Lister used vinegar to dissolve some of the limestone and break apart the stem sutures to look at individual beads.21 But a rare whole specimen also has a radix or root structure, and a calyx, or head, which Lister called a “top stone.” In life, the calyx held the soft parts of the animal, from which rose the crown of jointed arms. Quite reasonably, Lister thought the branching nature of the crinoids meant they were plant-like, but, as John C. Thackray has noted, he was “confusing arms with roots, calyx with radix.”22 As we have seen in his comparisons between animal and plant circulation that Lister, like many early modern natural philosophers, had a tendency to make sweeping analogies based on surface observations of structure and function. Wondrous specimens brought from the New World also meant that old classification boundaries were questioned.

18 MS Ray , f. , letter , Natural History Museum, London; it is partially printed in Derham, Philosophical Letters, –; Lankester, ed., Correspondence, –; Gunther, ed., Further Correspondence, –. 19 MS L/, Royal Society Library, London, and Hall and Hall, eds, The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, : –. The letter was reprinted as Lister, “Certain Stones Figured Like Plants,” –. 20 Unwin, “Provincial Man,” . 21 Lister, “Certain Stones Figured Like Plants,” ; Lister may have received his idea to use vinegar from Agricola who noted in his De Natura Fossilium that when the crinoid stems were “immersed in vinegar they make bubbles.” 22 Hall and Hall, eds, The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, : .

animal, vegetable, or mineral?



Fig. a Illustration of crinoid fossils from Martin Lister, “A Description of Certain Stones Figured Like Plants, and by Some Observing Men Esteemed to be Plants Petrified,” Philosophical Transactions, ,  (), p. , Table One. © Royal Society, London.

Fig. b A fossil specimen of crinoid. Geological Collections, The University Museum of Natural History. Specimen number OUMNH E.. University of Oxford.



chapter eight

But in this case, Lister did not think his finds were actually plants, just shaped like them, calling them “rock plants.” His detailed examination of the morphology of the astroites, particularly their joints which he dissolved in vinegar and niter, led him to conclude “no vegetable, either of Land or Sea, that I know of, hath such frequent joints and short or thin internodia,” arguing that they were mere formed stones created by mineral juices surrounding them.23 Treating them as mineral specimens, he speculated that “I doubt not, but they will readily calcine, as the Belemnites, of a very strong and white Lime.”24 Lister was in good company when he considered belemnites of mineral origin. Belemnites, cigar-shaped internal shells of an extinct squid, were regular, crystalline, and widely considered lapides sui generis until the eighteenth century when specimens with surrounding soft parts were found.25 Lister may have obtained some of his ideas about the mineral origins of crinoid “rock-plants” from John Webster’s Metallographia (). Webster claimed, “Metals do grow even like other Vegetables . . . manifest from divers examples,” and argues that the vulgar view that minerals “do not grow in the Earth, but were all at once created by God; and so have no seminary principle to propagate themselves by,” is a “foolish conceit the most part of the learned men have rejected.”26 To support his assertions that rocks and minerals grew like plants, Webster cited works by Robert Boyle, the Polish chemist Michael Sendivogius (–), and Johannes Van Helmont. Webster (–) was a schoolteacher in Clitheroe, Lancashire who had studied chemistry with Hungarian Johannes Banfi Hunyades (–), chemist to the Earl of Pembroke.27 It is entirely possible that Webster may have encountered Lister’s great-uncle Matthew while he was in the Countess of Pembroke’s entourage; as Matthew was responsible for Martin Lister’s education, there may have been a long established connection between Webster and Lister. In the s, Lister was in regular correspondence with Webster about chemical matters, the two natural

23 MS L/, Royal Society Library, London, and Hall and Hall, eds. The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, : –. The letter was reprinted as Lister, “Observations of the Astroities,” . 24 Lister, “Observations of the Astroities,” . 25 Gould, “Father Athanasius,” . 26 Webster, Metallographia, . For more information on the role of seeds in fossil formation, see Roos, “Salient theories.” 27 Clericuzio, “Webster, John,” Oxford DNB.

animal, vegetable, or mineral?



philosophers swapping mineral specimens of antimony, mica, and bismuth, as Lister was preparing works on iron ores and on the chemical composition of spa waters.28 Lister even had used his connections in the Royal Society to help Webster to get his last work to press, The Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft (), which critiqued traditional demonology and incorporated chemical theories of witchcraft based on effluvia.29 The work was published in  with the imprimatur of the society’s vice-president, Sir Jonas Moore. To further his morphological arguments, Lister ensured that his publication on crinoids had the highest standards of scientific illustration, producing the first illustrated paper on fossils in the Philosophical Transactions. To justify his rather extravagant illustrations to Oldenburg, he wrote: Words are but the arbitrary symboles of things, & perhaps I have not used them to the best advantage. Good Design (& such is that I send you, done by that ingenious young Gentleman & excellent Artist, my very good friend Mr. William Lodge), or the things themselves, which I have all by me, would make these particulars much more intelligible and plain to you.30

William Lodge (–) was a local landscape artist with distant family connections, as his sister Mary married John Lister from the Gisburn branch of the family. Lodge’s mother came from a village in the vicinity of the Craven Fault, so it is entirely possible that Lister had known the family since his marriage to Hannah Parkinson. A talented draughtsman who was independently wealthy, Lodge studied at Jesus College, Cambridge, and Lincoln’s Inn, at first painting as a hobby, writing to his mother that “I make painting only a recreation, an hour after dinner and so no hindrance is it but rather a furtherance to things of greater concernment,” though later in the letter he fretted about the coverage of his pigments on the canvas.31 He soon left the legal profession, and, in , he joined the entourage of Lord Bellasis, (Thomas Belasyse) on a diplomatic embassy to Venice. Here Lodge visited public and private art collections for which he admitted

28

See for example, Bodleian MS Lister , f. ; Bodleian MS Lister , f. . Bodleian MS Lister , f. ; Fitzharris, “A Committed Helmontian.” 30 MS L/, Royal Society Library, London, and Hall and Hall, eds, The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, : –, on . 31 BL MS Stowe  f. r. 29



chapter eight

a special penchant, stating to Lister in a letter “I love curiosities.”32 He then published his translation of Giacomo Barri’s Viaggio pittoresco d’Italia, or “The Painter’s Voyage of Italy,” which he illustrated with his own etchings of artists’ portraits.33 Lodge also was a member of the York virtuosi in the s, and bequeathed some of his scientific engravings to Leeds antiquarian Ralph Thoresby for his curiosity cabinet.34 Lodge had previously engraved Martin’s spider specimens for his paper in the Philosophical Transactions. His engravings of St Cuthbert’s beads were also extraordinarily detailed and seem to have included the spines of sea-urchins (also known as Lapis Judaica) intermixed with the crinoids. Lodge’s illustrations in Lister’s crinoid paper were well received, Oldenburg referring to the “elegant figures” within an “excellent account of Plant-like figur’ed Stones; of which kind Mr Hook told us, he had many in the Societies Repository”35 (Figure 15). For his part, Ray commented in an appendix to Lister’s final paper on crinoids in the Philosophical Transactions: Those Roots, that you have observed, are a good argument, that these Stones were originally pieces of vegetables. Wonderful it is, that they [the crinoids] should be all broken, and not one plant found remaining entire: And no less wonderful, that there should not at this day be found the like vegetables growing upon the Sub-marine rocks; unless we will suppose them to grow at great depths under water. And who knows but there may be such bodies growing on the rocks at this day, and that the Fishers for Coral may find of them, tho’ being of no use they neglect and cast them away. Certain it is, there is a sort of Coral joined.36

Alhough privately Ray came to think that fossils were the remains of once-living creatures, for this paper he demurred that they were originally “pieces of vegetables.” Perhaps Ray desired to preserve what remained of his friendship with Lister after the ballooning spider incident.

32

Unwin, “Provincial Man,” . Griffiths, “Lodge, William,” Oxford DNB. 34 Jones, History and Antiquities, . 35 Bodleian MS Lister , f. r., and Hall and Hall, eds, The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, : . 36 The printed appendix was to Lister’s article, “Certain Stones Figured Like Plants,” –. Ray’s comments were excerpted originally from a letter from Ray to Lister, sent  November . The letter is MS Ray , f. , letter , Natural History Museum, London. This piece of correspondence is partially printed in Derham, Philosophical Letters, –; Lankester, ed., Correspondence, –; Gunther, ed., Further Correspondence, . 33

animal, vegetable, or mineral?



Lister continued to collect other types of fossils, comparing them with live specimens to investigate their origins. In March /, Lister’s catalog of living molluscs contained  species of land and freshwater species, as well as a number of fossilized “rock-shells” which he published as comparative tables in the Philosophical Transactions.37 Lister concluded “of the near  species [of fossils] I have by me, found in this County alone, not any one can be sampled by any Sea, FreshWater or Land-Snail, that I have or ever saw.”38 Despite his skepticism, he remarked that on completion of his tables, the reader would be best able to judge their origins. In his use of tables and letting truth find its own argument, Lister was utilizing a common technique of scientific rhetoric in the seventeenth century, whereby “practical evaluation of scientific testimony pervasively relied upon the recognition of integrity and disinterestedness in the source.”39 Through comparative analysis, the reader could literally weigh the evidence about the formation of fossils. He took a similarly equanimous view in his Historiae Animalium () when classifying his specimens, presenting the information clearly, and letting the reader decide about the accuracy of his observations. The Historiae had three books, the first on spiders, the second on terrestrial and river molluscs, the third on marine molluscs, as well as a fourth section he inserted concerning “English conches or on the stones formed towards the likeness of snails.”40 Lister noted in the preface that he had taken “particular care to distinguish genuine species . . . by extremely minute but extremely faithful observations pertaining to the habits and life of these animals,” and he insisted on a high level of scientific illustration from William Lodge.41 Lister noted that he made sure:

37

Lister, “Tables of Snails,” –. Lister, “Tables of Snails,” . 39 Shapin, Social, . 40 Lister, Historiae Animalium, frontispiece to fourth book. [Cochlitarum Angliae Sive Lapidem ad Cochlearum quandam imaginem figuratorum.] 41 Lister, Preface to Historiae Animalium, . [Summam sanè diligentiam adhibui, ut veras species distinguendo, non multiplicando citra necessitatem, singulas, minutissimis licèt, fidissimis tamen Observationibus, quae ad animalium mores vitámque; spectarent, exornarem.] Literally, “I have taken particular care to distinguish genuine species and not to mutliply them beyond necessity: in this way I have set out individual species by extremely minute but extremely faithful observations pertaining to the habits and life of these animals.” 38



chapter eight that practically all the drawings of the animals were carried out in my presence. My aim was to see that the excellent artist did not merely . . . express his own personal conception. To facilitate this I first of all indicated with my finger the characteristics of each species that I most particularly wished to have depicted.42

Though Lodge could be inconsistent in his delivery of the illustrations, their correspondence revealing many frustrating delays in obtaining the copperplates, his talent and good nature led to excellent results.43 Lodge claimed his sojourns to Scotland where he drank to Lister’s health in a “stirring cup” provided him with the artistic inspiration for his beautiful engravings, but Lister just considered him irresponsible.44 On the other hand, so highly considered were Lister’s classifications and illustrations that his rival Nehemiah Grew used the Historiae to compile his catalogue of the Royal Society Repository in which he developed further the description of the species as well as their classification.45 So, in the meanwhile, Lister was patient with Lodge. William Lodge contributed thirteen new and exquisite plates to the work, including engraving fragments of crinoid fossils. In the nineteenth century, the eminent conchologists Férussac and Deshayes, surveying Lister’s work in the Historiae Animalium, remarked that Lister understood the science of conchology in a broader and higher manner that anyone before him.46 It took over  years of study to produce their magisterial Historie Naturelle . . . de Mollusques (), so that was a high complement indeed; they noted also that Lister was the first to describe particular species, later named Pupa, Clasilia, and Helix lapicida.47 Lister also was well ahead of his time in his division of Pecten (scallop bivalves) into groups, based on the equality or inequality of the valves and ears in the shells, as well as their number of ribs.48 Lister’s locality records were equally precise. He

42

Lister, Preface to Historiae Animalium, . [Rursus omnium ferè Animalium figuras coram me delineandas curavi; ut optimus artifex, non suum tantùm conceptum, ut fieri solet, exprimeret; sed, quò faciliùs acciperet, quae uniuscuiusque; speciei maximè depingendae essent Notae, eas primum digito indicavi.] 43 Unwin has noted the protracted delays in Lister receiving his illustrations from Lodge in his article, “Provincial Man,” . 44 Bodleian MS Lister , f. . “Stirring cup” could be a stirrup cup or simply a cup containing liquids that would stir the senses. 45 “Book of the Month: December ,” http://www.royalsociety.org. 46 Ferussac and Deshayes, Histoire, /: . 47 Ferussac and Deshayes, Histoire, /: . 48 Wilkins, Catalogue, .

animal, vegetable, or mineral?



noted in the Historiae that he found a land-snail which he described as “Buccinum parvum sive Trochilius sylvaticus agri Lincolniensis” (the species Euconulus fulvus, or Brown Hive) in some moss at the roots of trees in the woods near Burwell, as well as a snail now known as Cyclostoma elegans.49 When trekking through the part of the woods at Burwell called Grisel Bottom, I also found both molluscs in the manner Lister described; the first, which spans .–. × .–. mm. is not altogether obvious, but he was correct that it has a fondness for dead or decaying wood. The second snail, with its helical shell, was indeed hiding under stones and roots as Lister said it would be. He also classified members of Clausiliidae (the family of snails with a “sliding door” that closes off the aperture of its sinistral shell, an uncommon feature for gastropods), and members of Helix, including Helix pomatia (the edible snail) and Helix aspersa, the common garden snail.50 Linnaeus in his Systema Naturae of  cited Lister’s locality records for varieties of Helix. Lister’s observations of mollusc fossils in the Historiae were also equally noteworthy. Robert Plot in his Natural History of Oxfordshire had described fossilized conches, and Lister utilized twenty of his engravings in the Historiae. Though Lister’s borrowing of drawings was not uncommon, as naturalists with interests in taxonomy plundered domestic or foreign natural histories for specimens, his work was for an entirely different purpose than Plot’s—it was the first attempt to create a comprehensive account of fossilized molluscs.51 The fossils 49 Lister, Historiae Animalium, “Titulus IX,” . Lister described Euconulus fulvus as living “in musco ad grandium arborum radices in sylvis Burwellensibus agri Lincolniensis.” Its small size made it quite difficult to find and it was rare. As Lister indicated “est tamen admodum rara bestiola.” W.D. Averell in his editorial preface to the Conchologist’s Exchange also observed “a notable instance of unchanged habitat is furnished in the case of Cyclostomas elegans. This pretty shell is found to-day in Burwell Wood, Lincolnshire, England in the same locality in which it was found in  by Dr Martin Lister and enthusiastic conchologist who records the fact in his quaint work entitled ‘Historiae Animalium Angliae’.” See Averell, The Conchologists’ Exchange, . Averell however notes that Euconulus fulvus has been considered extinct in this locality, contrary to my own observations. 50 Clausiliidae were called by Lister “Buccinum plullum, opacum, ore compresso, circiter denis spiris fastigiatum” or blackish, dark, with a constricted mouth, and ten high coils. The shells are extremely high-spired, with numerous whorls. See Lister, Historiae Animalium, “Titulus X,” . For his descriptions of Helix, see Titulus  of the Historiae Animalium,  for Helix pomatia, and Titulus II of the Historiae Animalium,  for Helix aspersa. Carr, “The Biological Work,” also includes a species list of the molluscs in Historiae Animalium, –. 51 Arnold, Cabinets, .



chapter eight

in the Historiae are also arranged according to their form rather than their mineralogy, so that his classification for them is similar to those he used for living molluscs; the number and form of valves, position of the hinge, number of turns of the spiral of univalves, and the presence of absence of a spine and umbilicus in ammonites were all identifying traits.52 Such attention to detail meant that Lister could later confront Robert Hooke successfully at a Royal Society meeting concerning what Hooke called “petrified oysters.”53 Hooke claimed the oysters were relatives of living species, but Lister countered that these specimens had “no striae going from the valve to the rim,” as had living species of European oyster.54 Hooke backed down. On the other hand, Lister was honest about how far his data could take him. After claiming fossils were mere “formed stones,” he noted in the Historiae that he did not completely “disregard the fact that these are much like living things of which nature has wearied. Certainly I have thought about these possibilities.”55 Lister followed this comment by stating that he would “stop these ruminations in the presence of the reader; they [the specimens] may speak for themselves. If yet it is able to be judged what these earthly stones are to be, I will consider it, nor will I make rash judgments.”56 He even pointed out that on some fossil specimens, there were worm tubes on the surface or fossilized pearls, which might indicate that their origins could be from living creatures.57 Lister’s equivocal comments led the geologist Charles Lyell in his Principles of Geology () to note that Lister was one of the first to consider the extinction of species, which was true; but then he went on to say: that Lister and other English naturalists should long before have declared in favour of the loss of species, while Scilla and most of his countrymen hesitated, was natural, since the Italian museums were filled with fossil shells, belonging to species of which a great portion did actually exist 52

Carr, “The Biological Work,” . Birch, History : –, as quoted in Carr, “The Fossil Controversy,” unpublished paper, . My thanks to Dr Carr for giving me access to his work. 54 Birch, History : –, as quoted in Carr, “The Fossil Controversy,” . 55 Lister, Preface to section four of Historiae Animalium, . [Non autem ignoro, hac rerum viventium imagines multorum ingenia fatigâsse. At eorum sententiae non utique; examinandas putavi . . . ] 56 Lister, Preface to section four of Historiae Animalium, . [Sed ipsas res coram Lectoribus sisto; ipsae loquantur. Si tamen eorum sententiae qui hos lapides terrigenos esse judicârunt, favere videar, non temerè id facio.] 57 Carr, “The Fossil Controversy,” . 53

animal, vegetable, or mineral?



in the Mediterranean, whereas the English collectors could obtain no recent species from their own strata.58

Lyell somewhat overstated Lister’s argument, confused by the conchologist’s acknowledgement of opposing views. As Shapin has shown, gentlemen-scholars would often couch their opinions in neutral language, maintaining a “disengaged posture” to infer that they were not dogmatists or “vulgar scholars” who published as their trade. Instead: the author of experimental narrative constituted himself as an antiauthor, playing upon, and negating, the egoistical and fame-seeking manner ascribed to the dominant tribe of philosopher authors. The antiauthor secured credibility by confessing his own faults . . . by giving readers and authors (inadequate) grounds freely to without their assent.59

Lister’s remarks were thus part of his usual rhetorical strategy to gain credibility for his views that fossils were formed stones. He addressed his opposition and then he presented his data suggesting his own wellconsidered hypotheses. Lister’s painstaking work on the origins of crinoids and other fossils would continue to be of interest to the early Royal Society, particularly when the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland was “discovered.” Local lore had long said the Irish legendary giant Finn McCool created the causeway as a walkway for Scottish giant Benandonner, but Sir Richard Bulkeley (–) first reported its existence in a letter to Lister printed in the Philosophical Transactions in .60 Bulkeley described the pillar as “perpendicular Cylinders, Hexagones and Pentagons” without joins, which to him appeared to be similar to “Astroites.” Bulkeley’s comments led the Royal Society to think the Causeway might consist of giant forms of these fossils, and Lister wrote excitedly to Edward Lhwyd confirming this conclusion of the “giant pillars.”61 Bulkeley, however, received his report second-hand, and the following year Sir Thomas Molyneux (–) corrected his notions in a letter to Lister, describing the ball-and-socket joining of the columns, and discarding any notion of them being crinoid, asteroids, or bamboo stems. Molyneux visited Lister in York the previous

58

Lyell, Principles of Geology, : . Shapin, Social, . 60 Bulkeley, “Giants Causeway,” –. Their original correspondence about the Causeway is in Bodleian MS Lister , f. r, and Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. 61 Bodleian MS Ashmole , f. r. 59



chapter eight

year, and “in return for the great Civility” of his host, sent a master draughtsman called Mr Sandys to visit the Causeway, to report his findings, and to bring back mineral samples.62 Molyneux was able to identify correctly their composition as basalt, a rock far different from the calcareous limestone of crinoid fossils, whether of organic origins or simply “formed stones.”63 . Chemical Theories of Fossil Formation Dr John Beaumont (d. ), a Somerset physician and naturalist, also did a series of investigations with crinoids, comparing them with coral. Beaumont had created a vast collection of crinoids and fossilized coral from expeditions in the Mendip Hills, a range of carboniferous limestone hills south of Bristol and Bath. His observations were made as part of his proposed Natural History of Somersetshire modeled after the natural histories of Robert Plot.64 In two  letters, also published in the Philosophical Transactions, Beaumont postulated that corals and crinoids were a kind of stone intermediate between the mineral and vegetable kingdoms. Beaumont argued that the crinoids were produced in the same way as the crystallization of cave stalactites and snowflakes. Or, he speculated, perhaps “mineral steams” and smells arising from ores had a potent force that would spontaneously engender these “rock-plants.” Beaumont even wrote that the new “statical baroscope” invented by chemist Robert Boyle could measure any change of atmospheric pressure that these mineral “steams” would produce. Beaumont’s ideas were nothing unusual for the time. Boyle, himself, in his Observations About the Growth of Metals in their Ore Exposed to the Air () speculated about the various effluvia in the atmosphere stemming from planetary and various earthly emanations and the effects they had in minerallogenesis.65 Though, unlike Lister and 62 EL/M/, f. r, Royal Society Library, London. Molyneux wrote the letter to Lister on  March . 63 Tomkeieff, “The basalt lavas,” . 64 Beaumont, “Two Letters,” –. Beaumont later tried to sell his fossil collection to the Ashmolean for £, but he was refused. Edward Lhwyd, the assistant curator, wrote to Lister: “I doubt whether he has many things that we have not.” Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. Beaumont’s proposal, communicated to the Oxford Philosophical Society by Robert Plot is reproduced in Gunther, ed., Early, : –. 65 Boyle, Growth, –.

animal, vegetable, or mineral?



Webster, Boyle stated it was “unnecessary to my present purpose, to examin, whether Metals and Minerals, as if they were a kind of subterraneal Plants, do properly grow as Vegetables do,” he did list a number of instances where metals seemed to generate upon being exposed to the air. Boyle also did a series of experiments with iron pyrites (FeS), examining the seemingly spontaneous growth of vitriolic salts (iron II sulphate) on their surfaces: After what I writ in the th page of the foregoing Discourse, having an opportunity to look again upon the Marchasite there mention’d to have been Hermetically seal’d up after its surface had been freed from the grains of Vitriolate Salt that adher’d to it, I perceiv’d, that, notwithstanding the Glass had been so closely stopp’d, yet there plainly appear’d from the outside of the mass some grains of an Efflorescence, whose colour, between blew and green, argued it to be of a Vitriolate nature. If this be seconded with other trials made with the like success, it may suggest new thoughts about the Growth of Metals and Minerals, especially with reference to the Air.66

Perhaps inspired by Boyle’s musings, Lister himself speculated about effluvia from metallic ores, particularly pyrites, and their possible role in minerallogenesis, the formation of fossils, and other natural phenomena. As early modern miners would use these smells to take them to rich seams of minerals, proponents of the German mining theory of witterung or ore exhalations such as Georgius Agricola in De Re Metallica postulated that the smells themselves could produce the ore.67 “Witterung,” or weathering, was a term “frequently employed in works dealing with mining . . . [and] a term current among German miners” even before the sixteenth century.”68 “Witterung” was described by Christian Berward in his Interpres Phraseologiae Metullarugicae (Frankfurt, ) as the “vapour or exhalation which at times rises out of the earth from rich [ore] veins,” especially at the time of rain storms, and it was associated by Glauber with sulfurous vapors.69 As has been well-established, the early modern period saw an influx of German mining engineers and entrepreneurs into England; Lister

66

Boyle, Growth, . For a discussion of witterung, see Oldroyd, “Phlogistic mineral schemes,” – , as well as Norris, “Early theories,” –. 68 Adams, Birth, . 69 Berward, Interpres, as quoted in Adams, Birth, . 67



chapter eight

himself referred to Conrad Glauber and Georg Agricola extensively in his manuscript and published works.70 Like most early modern mining authors, Johann Rudolph Glauber (–) believed that minerals and metals were found at various stages of maturity, incubating like embryos in underground caves and mines. Bismuth and arsenic were immature metal, base metals like lead were of middling maturity and would, when fully formed, finally become gold. 71 But for Glauber, fools’ gold held special significance; its green vitriolic varnish, he claimed, would hold stubbornly to the metal, protecting it until it reached full maturity. Without it, he argued, a metal would not develop.72 As the next chapter will demonstrate, during the latter part of the s, and the early part of the s, Lister was preparing notes, collecting fossils, working in his own chemical laboratory in York, and obtaining mineral samples to verify these hypotheses in witterung theory. He would also formulate his own ideas about the formation of minerals, mineral salts, and “formed stones” involving pyritic chemistry. Lister collated his observations into several works, particularly an unpublished manuscript “A Method for the History of Iron,” which was the first geological survey of iron deposits in England, and synthesized his ideas in a chemical survey of English mineral waters in two editions of De Fontibus medicatis Angliae Exercitatio [Exercises on the healing springs of England].73

70 Roger Burt, “International diffusion,” –. Burt actually takes issue with traditional historiography that argues that German experts introduced any unknown or radically improved techniques for the mining of non-ferrous metallic ores, but he does acknowledge they were “world leaders in the arts of the industry,” and had extensive technological influence in the copper industry. In chapter six of Bodleian MS Lister , “The Method of the History of Iron,” which is devoted to pyrites (ff. –), Lister refers repeatedly to Glauber’s A description of new philosophical furnaces. 71 Glauber. Works, . See also Merchant, Death, – for a discussion of the maturation of metals. 72 Ahonen, “Johann Rudolph Glauber,” 105. 73 Bodleian MS Lister ; Lister, De Fontibus.

CHAPTER NINE

“ALL THAT GLITTERS”: MARTIN LISTER AND FOOLS’ GOLD, – . Introduction From  to , Lister concentrated on publishing books, rather than contributing papers to the Philosophical Transactions. This turn of events was precipitated by the sudden death of Henry Oldenburg in September  from an unspecified fever, which according to Robert Hooke, left him “speechless and senseless.”1 Oldenburg’s wife died shortly after, leaving two small orphaned children, and as Oldenburg used his office at home to deal with Society business, Royal Society correspondence and publication were in disarray. By December, Robert Hooke and Nehemiah Grew were both appointed secretaries, Hooke was elected to the Council for the first time, and they debated about the future of their journal, the Philosophical Transactions. Hooke had been a bitter enemy of Oldenburg, convinced that the former secretary had leaked news of his discoveries to rival natural philosophers, and he wished to end the journal that he saw as having too much content from foreigners at the expense of the English.2 Grew, as did the majority of subscribers, wished to see the journal continued. As the scholar Marie Boas Hall has noted, in the face of Hooke’s opposition, Grew managed to complete “Oldenburg’s volume XII with six issues, dated / to /, mostly composed of previously unpublished papers which he had found in the archives . . . together with a few up-to-date letters and papers of which there could not be many, since the Society’s correspondence was lacking.”3 Grew needed material, and so he wrote to Lister on  February /: Sir,—After the death of Mr. Oldenburge, at our Anniversary Election of Officers on St. Andrew’s day, the R. Society haveing been pleasd to choose me their Secretary: since then, have likewise given me order, to

1 2 3

Hall, Shaping, . Hall, Shaping, . Hall, Shaping, .



chapter nine acquaint yourself, amongst other Ingenious and Learned Persons, That the continuance of that Correspondence with me, which you began with Mr Oldenburge, will be most acceptable to them, In need not add, as well as to myself: you haveing given all of us so great assurance of your Abilitys to promote our Affaires. Nor shall I be wanting on my part in a reciprocal communication of what is here done amongst us.4

As a sweetener, Grew then went on to describe Antoine van Leeuwenhoek’s reports of seeing in his microscope “ye Animals breed in Water where in Whole Pepper, and other things severally have been infus’d.”5 Hooke chimed in, writing to Lister, “I doubt not but you have heard of the changes that have been made in our Society. It hath Ile [I’ll] assure you very much revived us and put a new Spirit in all our proceeding . . .”6 Despite Grew’s and Hooke’s efforts, Lister did not contribute articles with anything like his usual enthusiasm due to the Society’s internal disruptions. Hooke, for his part, refused to take over the journal, and printed his own publication, the Philosophical Collections, which appeared intermittently between  and ; their irregular appearance led Francis Aston, a friend of Lister’s and fellow of the Society to inform him in January  that “Mr Hook has put out a Collection of Philosophicall matters this week, and intends continue them every month!”7 The Royal Society’s Repository was also in a mess, and Grew was doing his best to sort it out for his catalogue of the collections.8 He wrote to Lister in May : I lately find some things in a little . . . Box, which were sent by you. They were . . . lately layd out of ye way: which I hope may be my excuse that they are not mentioned, as well as other things of yours. The Collection was never in my Custody, and when I came to describe It, I found all things in ye greatest disorder and confusion imaginable.9

Though Lister submitted a paper on millstones with copper plates as well as a piece on Roman urns to Hooke’s Philosophical Collections, he 4 5 6

Bodleian MS Lister , ff. r–v. Bodleian MS Lister , ff. r–v. Bodleian MS Lister , f. . Hooke’s letter is also analyzed in Johns, Nature,

. 7

Bodleian MS Lister , f. v. Grew would publish his catalogue of the Repository in . See Grew, Musaeum. 9 Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. 8

“all that glitters”



did not resume his frequency of contributions until the Philosophical Transactions was resumed in . The Ashmolean museum-keeper, Robert Plot, revived the journal, and he and Lister became good friends. Aston assured Lister that his articles “will be better looked on by my brother [Aston was referring to Plot, as Aston and he were great friends] who will get them printed at Oxford.”10 In the interim, Lister continued work on his books. These included the Historiae Animalium published with the Royal Society’s imprimatur and typeset by its printer, John Martyn; a translation and annotation of Johannes Goedaert’s work On Insects (), the engravings done by his friend Francis Place and printed with Grew’s assistance; Letters and other mixt discourses () which was a reprint of papers published in the Philosophical Transactions and Philosophical Collections; and two editions of De Fontibus medicatis Angliae Exercitatio [Exercises on the healing springs of England], which was published in , with a revised edition in . A particular focus of Lister’s research during this time period was mineral ores and metallogenesis, particularly his attempts to establish connections between chemistry and natural history. Some of this work was inspired by his previous investigations of crinoid fossils. In the last part of his Historiae Animalium (), Lister noted that many of the crinoids and other molluscan fossils he had encountered appeared pyritic in their composition, made of fools’ gold [iron (II) disulfide, or FeS]. He also cited the work of the Danish natural historian and famous museum owner Ole Worm who noticed much the same thing.11 Worm noted Ostreas (oysters) fossils from England, particularly on the Isle of Sheppey, were a blackish color, “and with their sulfurous scent of pyrite dust, they exude vitriol and brimstone.”12 In one of Lister’s manuscripts, he noted that Worm discussed “Islebian fishstones” made of pyrites in Germany which “so lively expresses all the lineaments of a Barbel in golden colour, that the scales, the fins, the

10

Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. Lister cited Worm’s Musei Wormiani. 12 Lister, Preface to Book IV of the Historiae Animalium, –. [. . . colore nigricante, odore sulphureo, vel pulveris pyrii, ex illarum corpore vitrioli et sulphuris quasi flos quidam exsudavit . . . Ad Littus septentrionale Insulae Sheppey in Cantio Angliae reperiuntur.] Lister referred Worm’s Musei Wormiani Historia, . Iron (II) Sulfide or FeS is a black color. 11



chapter nine

tayl, the head and could not possibly by any artist be better painted.”13 Lister confirmed Worm’s observations in the Historiae, and speculated that vitriolic petrifying juices could fill extant shells, and some could be easily recognized from the remains of earthly conches.14 Large ammonite fossils, that had no equivalent in living species, were characterized as “like hoplites,” (ancient Greek citizen-soldiers) as their armor is also equipped with “shining copper,” sharing in the nature of pyrites.15 But at this point in his research work, Lister could not explain the presence of pyrites in the fossils. He realized that he had to understand better the chemistry as well as the mineralogy of iron, beginning a manuscript, entitled appropriately, the “Method for the History of Iron.”16 In this work he classified about  types of iron ores, including hematite, and included excerpts from accounts of chemical and mining processes and techniques, such as the production of pig iron as well as that of oil of vitriol (sulfuric acid) from the mixing of water with crushed iron pyrites. To compile his “History of Iron,” Lister required a large variety of mineral samples and cultivated a large network of friends and acquaintances who sent him parcels of ore in the post. As mentioned, his contacts through which he obtained ore samples included John Webster; John Sturdy in Lancashire, from whom he obtained lead and iron ores; Francis Bedford of Falmouth, who was a mineralogist and vicar; Francis Jessop of Sheffield, who had been with Lister in Montpellier and was a student at Trinity College with John Ray; Nathaniel Johnston (–) of Pontefract and then London, an antiquary, naturalist, and member of the York Corporation of Physicians; and William Lodge.17 Francis Place, an amateur artist who engraved illustrations for Lister, and who became a fellow member of the circle of

13 Bodleian MS Ashmole , f. r. Lister also notes Worm’s observations of pyritic fossils in Bodleian MS Lister , f. . 14 Lister, Preface to Book IV of the Historiae Animalium, . [Inter omnes sanè succos lapidescentes . . . ille qui è pyrite sive vitriolicus, et cochleas et universa tanquam in suam naturam convertere potes est.] 15 Lister, Historiae Animalium, . [In his quoque; lapidibus et articulos soliaceâ quâdam picturâ conspicuos, et alios plurimos Hoplitas, h. e. velut armaturâ coloris auricalei ornatos, sc. eatenus pyritae participantes.] Lister’s reference to copper was a reference to the fact that Chalcopyrite or copper pyrite (CuFeS) looks like and is easily confused with pyrite. 16 Bodleian MS Lister . 17 Francis Bedford wrote Lister on  January / about tin mining in Cornwall, Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. Bedford’s work as a vicar is mentioned in Miscellanea Genealogica, .

“all that glitters”



York Virtuosi, also had connections to mining through marriage. His sister Ann Place married Stonier Parrott who was engaged in coalmining in Coventry; Parrott was something of an industrial reformer and pioneer, introducing new machinery into the mines at a very early date.18 John Ray even got into the act, writing to Lister in , “I have according to your desire written both into Sussex and Cornwall for tin and iron-ore; and I have advice, that out to Sussex there is a bag of the latter already come up to London and delivered in to Mr Lodge, according to your direction.”19 Francis Bedford sent parcels containing Cornish tin, a contaminant rock called “mundick” and some Cornish diamonds which he supposed “one or two of them might be good . . . I know some of them that were very handsomely in rings.”20 Francis Jessop was in contact with one “Captain Wain,” a merchant seaman, described as “an ingenious person and one who his own cost hath had as great experience in mines as any one I know” who was sending Lister samples of Lancashire and Yorkshire ore.21 Nathaniel Johnson sent him “vitriolic marcasites” as well as experimental observations that he did with them, testing them for iron content with gall water and examining the growth of vitriolic salts under the microscope.22 Lister’s interest in metals was also because his family owned mines in Yorkshire. Concerned for the miners’ safety, as well as interested in the exhalations from pyritic stones, he exchanged several letters with Francis Jessop in the s about mine “damps.”23 Damps could come in different varieties: suffocating mixtures of gases, such as nitrogen and carbon dioxide (choke damp), or explosive vapors (fire damps).24 As we have seen in the last chapter, Robert Boyle speculated that various effluvia could cause metallogenesis. Jessop’s reports on subterranean

18 Moorman, “Newly Discovered Drawings,” . Moorman also indicates that Anastasia Plaxton, daughter of George Plaxton, rector of Barwick-in-Elmet and a member of the York virtuosi, married into the Parrott family. 19 MS Ray , f. , letter , Natural History Museum, London. The letter is also partially printed in Lankester, ed., Correspondence, , and Gunther, ed., Further Correspondence, –. 20 Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. 21 Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. 22 Bodleian MS Lister , ff. –. 23 For example, see Bodleian MS Lister , ff. –, and Bodleian MS Lister , f. . See also MS L/, Royal Society Library, London. The latter letter was reprinted as Lister, “Observations about Damps,” –. 24 Raven, John Ray, . Lister, “Observations about Damps ,” . Jessop also wrote an article for the Philosophical Transactions: “A Further Account of Damps,” –.



chapter nine

vapors and Boyle’s work on effluvia would lead Lister to synthesize his ideas about mineral vapors, pyrites, and natural phenomena in his De Fontibus medicatis Angliae Exercitatio. In , he also published a series of papers in the Philosophical Transactions, which connected the exhalations of pyrites with the incidence of volcanoes and earthquakes.25 This chapter will examine his chemical investigations into fools’ gold which have been relatively neglected in the literature; for Lister, as for many early modern natural philosophers, chemistry proved a “basic analytical tool” in natural history.26 . The Chemistry of Pyrites Today, fools’ gold or iron pyrites is best known for its ability to trick gullible miners into believing they have hit a rich seam of gold. But in the early modern period, pyrites were precious for very different reasons that had little to do with their shiny veneer. They were used instead of flints to light the gunpowder in Spanish wheel lock pistols. Scratching them resulted in a sharp sulfurous smell or witterung associated with fertile mines.27 Left in a slightly damp environment, pyrites also produced a green vitriolic varnish and at times spectacular green crystals of vitriolic salt [iron (II) sulfate, or FeSO]. Fools’ gold could be crushed, mixed with water and allowed to steep in the sun to make oil of vitriol—sulfuric acid—that was used in industrial processes and as a panacea in medicine.28 The production of bright sparks, pungent smells, salts from the air, and powerful acids from water led many early modern natural philosophers to believe that pyrites were the source of a universal salt which could take on “different forms according to the metals and minerals with which it came into contact.”29 In early modern chemistry, salts were considered the embodiments of a generative seed and spirit, a form of prime matter, and were thought responsible for the creation of metals.30 Before Dmitri Mendeleev’s Periodic Table, medieval

25

Lister, “Three Papers of Martyn Lister,” –. Cook, “Natural History,” . 27 For an explanation of witterung, see chapter eight. 28 Much of this material on pyrites is taken from my articles “ Fools’ Gold,” –, and “All that glitters,” –. 29 Coley, “Cures without care,” . 30 Emerton, Scientific, , and Roos, Salt, chapter two and three, passim. 26

“all that glitters”



alchemists had a different conception of chemical “elements.” Some adhered to Aristotle’s idea that mixtures of earth, air, fire, and water made up everything, but other theorists like Paracelsus (–) saw salt itself as one of the elements (along with sulfur and mercury). Paracelsus’s conception of salt was a fairly vague one, but usually encompassed a group of solid, soluble, non-flammable substances with characteristic tastes and a crystalline structure. The regular structure of salt caused many other early chemists such as Joseph Duchesne (–) to think it was not just an element, but also the main substance responsible for the formation of matter. Niter (potassium nitrate) seemed to grow of its own accord on limestone walls, and vitriolic salts (ferrous sulfate) appeared on pyrites seemingly out of the air. Perhaps, these chemists reasoned, salt was inherently generative with a vital force of its own. The cubic crystalline structure of pyrites possessed regularity and corresponded to one of the Pythagorean solids, which suggested to early modern chemists that they might be building blocks of matter and worthy of study. Pyrites, thus, figured strongly in the seventeenth-century chemical debate about the formation of minerals. This debate involved French chemists, like Duchesne and Nicaise Le Févre (–), who claimed that there was a formative salt responsible for minerallogenesis.31 There were several contenders for this salt’s identity including niter and sal ammoniac, but many early modern chemists postulated that the vitriolic salt produced by pyrites was the true “universal salt” responsible for generating all minerals.32 The vitriolic liquid or spirit of vitriol (sulfuric acid) was thought by Glauber and other early modern mining authors to be the generative and creamy metallic juice of gur or bur, as well as a sign of the presence of mineral ores, “with which sulfurous exhalations were also associated.”33 As mentioned above, these exhalations, according to the theory of witterung, were likewise thought to be the operative cause of the formation of minerals.

31 Duchesne was a physician to the Duke d’Anjou, and his best-known work delineating his ideas about salts was The Practice of Chymicall and Hermeticall Physicke. Le Févre was Royal Professor of Chemistry at the court of Charles II of England, and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and his work on salts was published as the Traicté de la chymie. The English translation was entitled A Compleat Body of Chemistry. 32 Debus, “Aerial Niter,” –. 33 Emerton, Scientific, .



chapter nine

Taking his cue from the witterung theory and Jessop’s ideas about the power of mine damps, Lister thought that the volatile exhalations of pyrites and its vitriol in the air were important in the transformation of matter.34 Scratching or crushing pyrites does result in a sulfurous smell, and Lister claimed pyrites and its vitriol gave off a “warm vapour” that was “largely sulfurous, pungent, and inflammable,” identifying vitriol as volatile. In his theory, Lister realized he was in directly opposition to Johann van Helmont, the most influential theorist in English medicinal chemistry. Robert Boyle was a Helmontian, as were several of his protégés in the Royal Society, such as the physician and chemist Daniel Coxe (–), so Lister knew he had to present a strong argument.35 Van Helmont thought that “Water was the matrix of all other matter through the power of specific seeds implanted in it by God,” and thus advocated a liquid theory of metallogenesis.36 As a result, in a series of experiments done in the s, which he published eventually in De Fontibus, Lister made an extensive analysis of salts in English mineral waters to prove witterung and disprove van Helmont. Lister concluded from isolation by dehydration and from crystal analysis that only two types of salt were present in waters in England: nitrum calcarium derived from limestone (calcium carbonate) and common sea salt. Lister thought that the presence of sea salts in English mineral springs was easily explained by the run-off of seawater inland, but niter of lime or what he called nitrum calcarium was a different case. Lister commented that nitrum calcarium was produced by the exposure of limestone to air. This was firstly because “where there is niter of lime, there is always limestone to be found,” and secondly because Lister observed that: no salt whatever grows from limestone immediately after it has been slaked by the application of heat, but the same stone produces an abundance of salt, whether it [the stone] has been untreated or heated, whilst forming the walls or roof of some house; it then grows together to form crystals of its own kind.37

34

See Oldroyd, “Phlogistic Mineral Schemes,”  for an explanation of witterung. For an analysis of Coxe’s work, see Clericuzio, Elements, –. 36 Debus, “Thomas Sherley,” . 37 Lister, De Fontibus, , . [At ubi Nitrum Calcarium, ibi perpetuò Lapis Calcarius adest] and [. . . cùm è lapide calcario, statim ab ipsâ coctione macerato, omnino nihil salis concrescit, idem tamen lapis, sive crudus, sive coctus iu Parietibus aedis alicujus, aut tectoriis usurpatus, abundè Salem suum edit, et qui in crystallos sui generis, ut suprà descriptum est, concrescit.] 35

“all that glitters”



Most likely, Lister was observing the formation of potassium carbonate or nitrate crystals on walls that had been whitened by limestone, similar to the formation of niter crystals in limestone saltpeter caves. Lister noted also that steeping limestone in water did not form nitrum calcarium and indeed nitrate crystals will not form in areas of excess humidity. Lister was not only interested in delineating the chemistry of English mineral waters for its own sake and for medical applications, but he wished to utilize the formation of nitrum calcarium as a model for the formation of vitriol from pyrites. Lister argued that vitriol, like limestone salts, was formed by the exposure of pyrites to air— that niter of lime was produced “one and the same way as vitriol.”38 He noted: The creation of vitriol makes the whole matter clear. Its first eruption from pyrites is exceedingly premature, if it occurs in contact with air; but, as time proceeds, it becomes a little more mature. And yet fullyformed vitriol is not produced from any ferrous stone until after its due maturity which it finally reaches after a continuous period of development . . . If however it [a pyrite] kept perpetually under water I am not yet convinced that it will be productive of any salt. Certainly no vitriol whatever will be generated.39

In his assertion, Lister not only wished to prove the efficacy of air or exhalations as the source of chemical reactions and effects for reasons which will be enumerated below, but argued against the Helmontian belief that vitriol and its acid, the “hungry” or “hermaphroditical salt,” was the “seminal constituent of mineral waters and metal ores.”40 Lister first cited van Helmont’s Oriatricke or Physick Refined which stated that “the most excellent Vitriol, grows naturally in Mines, wherein Nature hath brought forth that hungry Salt, corroding a fertile vein [of brassy marcasite] and being dissolved in the liquor of a licking Fountain, which afterward Cauldrons do boyl into Vitriol.”41 Lister then continued:

38 Lister, De Fontibus, . [Cùm autem uno eodemque modo Nitrum calcarium nascatur, atque Vitriolum.] 39 Lister, De Fontibus,  and . [Rem itaque totam Vitrioli nativitas illustrat. Ejus autem à Pyrita prima eruptio, si in aëre sit, admodum Immatura est; procedente verò tempore, paulò perfectius est: At è nullo lapide Ferreo Consummatum Vitriolum gignitur, nisi post debitam maturitatem, ad quam, continentèr quidem germinando, tandem pervenit.] and [. . . si tamen perpetuò sub aqua servetur, mihi nondum constat, eum salis ullius foecundum esse; certè omnino nihil Vitrioli generabitur.] 40 Emerton, Scientific, . 41 Lister, De Fontibus, . Lister cited Johann van Helmont, Oriatrike, .



chapter nine I am unhappy with Helmontius’ explanation of the generation of vitriol. He would have it that salt is formed naturally in water itself, this salt being variously known as ‘juice,’ ‘a certain universal spirit,’ ‘the embryonate,’ ‘the corrosive,’ ‘the hermaphroditic’ (for it is by these and other names that he calls it).42

Lister countered van Helmont’s claims with his typically detailed empirical evidence. First, he believed it was “pointless to state that corrosive salt exist[ed] anywhere” since “up to this point it has no characteristics and is not even recognizable.”43 His observations of pyrites indicated that no vitriol was produced when marcasites were in water.44 Further, Lister did a series of experiments in which he failed to see corrosion when he subjected many types of iron, including hematite, the “softest” form of iron ore, to corrosive saline or acidic solutions such as aqua fortis or spirit of niter.45 His refutation of van Helmont’s theory that vitriol was formed in water was also influenced by the work of French physician-in-ordinary Samuel Cottereau Du Clos, the Observations on the Mineral Waters of France, which was translated into English in .46 Du Clos’s work was a systematic evaluation of the chemical content of all spa waters in France under the auspices of the French Académie Royale des Sciences, part of a larger project of chemical research which began in  to “determine rigorously the ‘true principles of mixts [chemical compound]’ by analyzing such bodies and by generating them and observing their properties.”47 As his study in Montpellier coincided

42 Lister, De Fontibus, . [Vitrioli autem generatio, ut ab Helmontio explicata est, mihi quidem non arridet. Is verò vult, ipsis aquis naturalitèr duci Salem, sive Succum, sive Spiritum quendam universalem, Embryonatum, essurinum, Hermaphroditicum (nam his et aliis nominibus ipsum idem appellat).] 43 Lister, De Fontibus, . [Ipsum ejus salem esurinum, (ut pote nullius adhuc qualitatis participem, atque adeo non cognoscibilem) uspiam existere, esse gratis dictum.] 44 Lister, De Fontibus, . [Pyriten Vitriolum suum sub aquis perficere minimè posse, ex rationibus suprà positis manifestum est.] 45 Lister, De Fontibus, . 46 For Lister’s mention of “Parisian Philosophers”, see De Fontibus, . The review of Lister’s De Fontibus in the Weekly Memorials for the Ingenious also mentioned the influence of the Royal Parisian Academy and Samuel Du Clos on Lister’s De Fontibus. Weekly Memorials,  (London,  January /), . 47 Holmes, “Analysis by Fire,” . Du Clos explained to his readers in his Observations that “the Royal Academy of the Sciences has determined to employ themselves in the Enquiry of the Qualities of those [waters] in this Kingdom, which are most considerable. And till favourable occasion may offer to make Observations at their Springs, they have caused these Waters to be brought from several Provinces, with much care, to examine them in the usual Assemblies of the Naturalists of this Academy,” .

“all that glitters”



with the beginning of the Academy’s chemical trials, it is entirely possible that Lister was familiar with their work. Lister’s De Fontibus was also advertised in the endpapers of the English edition of Du Clos’s work, leading to the possibility that Lister was the translator or had something to do with its publication. . Pyrites and the Quarrel over Spa Waters Lister’s theories and those of Du Clos were not without their detractors. Lister remarked in De Fontibus that: it is not stated that mature vitriol can be drawn from any of our mineral springs as far as I know. The Philosophers of Paris [the French Academy] quite rightly marvel at this after a careful examination of about one hundred mineral springs in France. This has partly been the reason why my fellow-countrymen have quarreled in such a rude manner. . .48

This “quarrel” was not only about the mechanism behind the formation of minerals, but a debate among English physicians in the latter part of the seventeenth century about which particular salt was the most effective active ingredient in healing. Just as French chemists argued about the identity of the “hermaphroditical salt,” English doctors debated the medical efficacy of saline substances. In –, Dr William Simpson, a self-described “chemical physician” and graduate of Leiden, wrote the Hydrologia Chymica. Simpson’s work “sought to identify the ‘cures’ associated with a plethora of ‘Sanative Waters’ in England and Europe” and sparked a number of publications about spa waters in the Philosophical Transactions by other doctors such as Robert Wittie (–) and Nathaniel Highmore (–).49 Simpson believed the active ingredient in the waters was niter, something Wittie strenuously denied, and the two engaged in a protracted and bitter debate in print. In his work Scarborough Spaw (), Wittie argued that rather than alum, vitriol was “useful in moist diseases”, its

48 Lister, De Fontibus, . [Vitriolum autem maturum ab ullis aquis nostris medicatis, quod scio, elici non perhibetur. Id quod etiam jure mirantur Philosophi Parisienses, post diligens examen centum ferè Fontium medicatorum Galliae. Idem ex parte in causa fuit, cur nostri homines tam inurbanas lites inter se moverunt.] 49 For these debates, see Eddy, “The ‘Doctrine of Salts’,” –, and Coley, “Cures without Care,” –. Simpson, Hydrologia, .



chapter nine

hot and biting nature drying superfluous humidity.50 Agreeing with Lister’s and Wittie’s views, Nathaniel Highmore in the Philosophical Transactions suggested that the healing properties of spa waters were primarily due to pyrite salts, the spring “impregnated principally from the Vitriol or Salt of Iron, which is very volatile.”51 As Lister and Wittie were friends, colleagues and both members of the York Corporation of Physicians, they, with Highmore, were allied against Simpson. The research and ensuing debates about spa waters also influenced circles of patronage within the Royal Society. Simpson was particularly interested in water analysis and was a devoted follower of the physician and chemist Johann van Helmont, who thought that water was the source of metallogenesis. Daniel Coxe and William Petty supported Simpson’s views. Petty was one of the original fellows of the Society, a physician, and one of the first epidemiologists. Daniel Coxe was a physician, disciple of Robert Boyle, and chemist who specialized in extracting volatile salts out of plants; Oldenburg had written to Lister a few years earlier about Coxe’s work and described him as a “very ingenious and searching young Naturalist,” and evidently thought highly of him.52 As Coxe was a close friend of Boyle, it was possible that Simpson may have enjoyed his support for a time. Simpson’s book about chemical fermentation, the Zymologia physica (), which was Helmontian in inspiration, had also received a favorable review in the Philosophical Transactions. The work itself displays an impressive understanding of techniques of analysis of spa waters, as well as a unique theory of metallogenesis involving the fermentation of mixtures of salts and sulfurs.53 Shortly after, he wrote a short pamphlet about the chemistry of Knaresborough Spa, on which Lister’s group had been working, again rejecting the concept of witterung.54 Van Helmont claimed there was a universal “essurine salt” in waters responsible for the creation of matter, and Simpson had thought this 50 Wittie, Scarborough, . The north Yorkshire coast was also known for its alum mines in the seventeenth century, particularly around Cleveland and Boulby Cliffs, which may have influenced Wittie’s arguments. See Weston, Yorkshire, . 51 Highmore, “Some Considerations,”–. 52 Bodleian MS Lister, f. r. See Coxe, “A Continuation,” –. Coxe’s friendship with Boyle is also seen in a letter from Henry Stubbe to Robert Boyle in ; Stubbe reported to Boyle “except Dr Sydenham, and young Coxe, I believe that not one [physician] lives, that does not condemn your experimental philosophy.” See Boyle, Works, : xcv. 53 For an analysis of Simpson’s chemistry, see Roos, Salt, –. 54 Simpson, Sulfur-Bath.

“all that glitters”



“Essence of Scarborough Spaw, is a kind of alumino-nitrous Salt” or “Salt hermeticum.”55 Simpson also postulated that niter (saltpeter) was the source of the alkahest, a universal dissolvent. As niter could form nitric acid, this acidic spirit in water could react with sulfurous matter to ferment and produce the “formations and transformations of Bodies,” and this fermentative heat made the springs warm. Also, he rejected explicitly the premise of witterung, stating it was impossible for any metal or salt to release vapors to water and heat it. Only the sun, he wrote could “resolve the Vitriol into a vapour,” and “that Vitriol may dissolve in simple Water, we have before granted, but that it should give a vapour to the Water, I understand not.”56 Simpson also thought that an acid essurine or universal salt dissolved in water, met with copper not iron, producing vitriol in its reaction. Given Lister’s emphasis on the role of iron in natural phenomena, this was a major challenge to his De Fontibus, which was as yet only in manuscript. Simpson seemed in the ascendant. Lister then received a stroke of luck. About the same time Simpson’s Zymologia was published, Lister received a disparaging letter about Simpson from John Webster ( March ): For your newes (which would be newes indeed, if true) that Dr Simpson professeth him selfe master of the Alkahest, or Philosophers mercury, I shall be bold to trouble you with a little inlargement of it. A good many yeares agoe I have had his company in Yorke, with one Mr. Sturdy, who since was Schoolmasters at East Bradford, who hath often com’d to visit me, and for some time held correspondency with me by letters, which whom I have been very open and free in discoursing of that subject, but now I am informed is turned a Popish priest, and is somewhere neer York, of whome I pray you inquire, and certified me. And if you have any friend that useth Dr Simpsons company, pray put those troo questions unto him—Whether ever any . . . did openly profess that they were maisters of the Alkahest. . That the Philosophers have three mercuryes, and therefore desire to know which of them the Alkahest is? I will trouble you no further, but onley tell you, that I have a piece written of the Philosophers Universal Dissolvent that hath laid by me above this five yeares, being unwilling to make it publicke, until I had by assured practice verified the virtues and effects of the same. Of which I will not yet declare much, though I am sure (as Lully speaketh) that I

55 56

Simpson, Hydrologia, . Simpson, Hydrologia, .



chapter nine understand it perfectly, but the speculation of an intellective virtue, but of this enough.57

Not only was Simpson apparently keeping questionable company with recusants, but also he was openly boasting about his ability as an alchemical adept. In doing so, he was violating several of the unspoken norms of the gentleman-scientists of the Royal Society regarding trustworthiness and gentlemanly behavior. As Shapin has indicated in his study of the evolution of scientific evidence, in post-Reformation England “there was widespread sentiment that the truth-telling of recusant Catholics might be questionable . . .” the spectre of the casuistical Jesuit calling into question the empirical observations of Continental natural philosophers.58 On the other hand, English courtesy manuals of the period intimated that proponents of the Protestant word did not dissemble in their communications. By associating with recusants, Simpson was bringing doubt upon his own veracity. To compound matters, Simpson was openly broadcasting his laboratory secrets. Although transparency about experimental practice was a precept of the Royal Society, alchemy was a bit of a special case, as “alchemy as a discipline supported practices of concealment.”59 Questions of trade secrecy, apprehension about economic disaster should the Philosopher’s Stone become common knowledge, and the belief that alchemists received their insights through divine revelation made the broadcasting of its secrets a questionable practice.60 Alchemical adepts like John Webster, Robert Boyle, and Isaac Newton defended their practices of secrecy in chemical matters, showing “separate attitudes concerning dissemination attached to separate kinds of philosophical activity.”61 Like his colleagues, Lister published several papers on iatrochemistry, including De Fontibus. To ensure his priority over his discovery before he published, however, he cautioned Oldenburg in , “I am willing to entertain you with my thoughts upon the analysis of mineral waters; but desire nothing of this nature from me may be

57 58 59 60 61

Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. Shapin, Social, . Long, Openness, . Newman and Principe, Alchemy, . Long, Openness, .

“all that glitters”



made publick by the press for quiet sake.”62 In a “ritualized restriction on chemical communication,” carried out by correspondence, Lister had other chemical secrets that he did not want publicized before he could profit by them, either monetarily or as assets to his reputation.63 Though increasingly chemical procedures were made more available to larger audiences, in the second half of the seventeenth century, remnants of the secrecy and rituals of the alchemical adepts still survived. Chemical literature often displayed a tension between secret and shared, and private and public knowledge. In , Lister wrote to Oldenburg stating that he created an impermeable black resin out of plant material, the result of which was examined by Robert Boyle and discussed at a Royal Society meeting.64 Oldenburg informed Lister the following year that Prince Rupert of Bavaria also became intrigued by the black dye, as he was interested in the mezzotint processes as well as “painting upon Marble; which he said he could bring yet to greater perfection if he could be furnisht with a good black.”65 Lister, however, never did reveal his procedure for making the black dye to Boyle or to the Prince, as he was contemplating commercial ventures with his discovery. So, by the s, Lister was well known for his chemical work amongst the English virtuosi, though he still kept some of his discoveries to himself, revealing their details incompletely. Simpson was much less circumspect. Simpson’s claim that he had discovered the alkahest not only violated alchemy’s secrets, but his boasts were also contrary to codes of gentlemanly modesty and circumspection. He was self-made, the son of a brewer, and hence it is likely he was not privy to these unspoken rules of behavior; unfortunately, this would be to his peril. Lister wrote Oldenburg on  August  of his concerns about Simpson as well as about Jessop’s observations of “fulminating damps” which bolstered his own ideas about witterung. The letter is no longer extant, but we can surmise what he said by the nature of Oldenburg’s response a week later. Oldenburg wrote:

62 MS L/, Royal Society Library, London, and Hall and Hall, eds, Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, : –, as quoted in Golinski, “Chemistry,” . 63 Golinski, “Chemistry,” . 64 See for instance, Birch, History, :  for a November  entry about the resin. 65 Bodleian MS Lister , f. , and Hall and Hall, eds, The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, : –.



chapter nine as to the above Doctor [Simpson], I shall not faile to doe you that justice which you desire of me, in reference to his indiscreet quotation. The man stands Candidat for a member of the R. Society; which he procured when he was at London, and busy in getting his book printed; though he be not yet elected, because since he was proposed by Sr William Petty and seconded by Dr Daniel Cox, there hath not been a number sufficient for election, which is .66

Because Simpson’s nominees were such luminaries, Oldenburg continued: this occasions the greater discomposure in me, because I would not wittingly give my ball [vote] for a person noted with such a character, as meet with in your letter, and yet, after by his faire carriage here amongst us, he hathe gained some reputation. I see, by a fresh instance, all is not gold that glistens.67

Simpson was inferred to be much like the pyrites that were the subject of his disputes with Lister, and he never was elected to the Royal Society. Whether for justifiable questions about his character, or because Lister feared a rival that challenged his cherished ideas, Simpson was blackballed. Lister, for the moment, had carried the day, leaving the field unchallenged. Lister began work on his second edition of the De Fontibus and continued publishing his thoughts connecting pyrite chemistry to natural history. . Pyrites and Natural History In the second edition of De Fontibus, Lister compiled his many years of observations about pyrites and linked their witterung or vitriolic emanations to a diverse array of natural phenomena, including the heating of mineral springs, and the production of rainstorms, earthquakes, and volcanoes. Lister hypothesized first that the cause of heat of hot springs was “derived from salts produced by pyrites . . . or acti-

66 Bodleian MS Lister , ff. –, and Hall and Hall, eds, The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, : –, on . Oldenburg was referring to the Statutes of the Royal Society of  that had to do with the Election of Fellows. Candidates were to be propounded at one meeting and put to the vote at some other meeting at which twenty-one fellows were present. See “Notes on the Statutes of the Society,” in Record of the Royal Society, . 67 Bodleian MS Lister , ff. – and Hall and Hall, eds, The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, : –, on .

“all that glitters”



vated by pyrites itself.”68 As nitrum calcarium was also produced from limestone through exposure to the air, much in the same way as vitriolic salts from pyrites, he thought lime salts could also contribute heating vapors to hot springs. The abundance of limestone around pyrite minerals, as well as mists around the springs also led him to this conclusion.69 In asserting the centrality of pyrites in heating mineral springs, Lister first claimed that the warm sulfurous gases produced by vitriolic salts from pyrites were evidenced by mine explosions in which gases would accumulate, and the fact that mineshafts and underground tunnels of hot springs were “very warm” in the “whole of winter.”70 There was also no other substance prevalent around mineral springs of which he knew of apart from volatile salts from pyrites and limestone that gave off a vapor.71 Lister also believed that in “wet, moist and chilly places,” the activation of pyrite salts was “particularly promoted,” probably due to his observation of the increased oxidation of pyrites in humid and oxygen-rich air.72 Lister then again turned to the work of Du Clos to support his assertions. In speculating about the effects of spa waters, Du Clos had written “it may be that some Mineral Vapours or Exhalations do mix with common Waters . . . and that these Waters are impregnated with their Qualities, and of some other Volatile Salts not Concrete, elevated in 68 Lister, De Fontibus, . [Thermarum ratio, è salibus Pyritae et lapidis Calcarii nascentibus, sive ipsae Pyritis et lapide Calcario vegetantibus deducitur.] 69 On page  of De Fontibus, Lister wrote: “I can prove that a warm gas is produced in like manner from active limestone in the following way. Almost all springs and wells (for most of them are considered medicinal to the extent to which they contain this or that salt) are especially warm at times of fairly severe frost, and are particularly noticeable for the way in which they give off an exhalation consisting of a very dense moist vapour, just like hot springs.” [Halitum quoque calidum à lapide calcario Vegetante, similitèr ferri, sic probo. Universos ferè Fontes, puteosque (nam plerique, eatenus medicati existimati sunt, quatenus hoc vel ille sale, copiosiùs imbuuntur) praecipuè vehementioris gelu tempore tepidos esse, atque admodum copiosè etiam conspicuos, densissimo vapore humido, Thermarum instar, halitus emittere.] 70 Lister, De Fontibus, . [Item illud universo consensu testantur Metallarii, puteos subterraneos, totâ hyeme, geluque praecipuè tempore, admodum tepidos esse.] 71 Lister, De Fontibus, . [At praeter Pyriten et lapidem Calcarium nihil, quòd scio, halituosum emittit vaporem: atque adeo vel ambobus, vel eorum altero iste halitus calefactionis attribuendus est.] 72 Lister, De Fontibus, . “In order to prove that the activation of pyrites . . . involves vapour I shall add to these arguments that in wet, moist and chilly places the activation of those salts is particularly promoted.” [His addo, ut Pyritae et lapidis Calcarii vegitationem halituosam esse probem: nimirùm, in udis et humidis, algidisque locis Salium eorum vegitationem maximè promoveri.]



chapter nine

these dry Exhalations of humid Vapours.”73 Du Clos argued also that hot springs grew warm specifically from hot moist vapours volatilizing from substances like pyritic vitriol, and not from the substances being combusted themselves.74 Paraphrasing Du Clos, Lister continued in the De Fontibus: “The water of the hot springs, when placed on a fire, also required the same time to boil as ordinary cold water: from this it is clear that the hot springs were not heated by some underground fire.”75 Additionally, Lister also cited Du Clos’s conclusion that when water from hot springs was: taken into the mouth they do not burn it as much as ordinary water which has been heated over a stove to the same degree of heat. This seems to be due to the thinness of the substance [the exhalations] by which hot springs are heated; just as the flame produced by brandy does not burn the hand as much as a burning coal placed on it.76

Lister then turned to proving the activation of pyrites in the presence of moisture by analyzing their role in the cause of rainstorms. According to the De Fontibus, thunderstorms occurred not only because of the evaporation of the waters by sunlight, but primarily because of a partnership between moist vapors engendered by animal and plant breath and sulfurous exhalations from the volatile salts of pyrites and limestone. To understand this mechanism of thunderstorms more thoroughly, Lister drew upon his beliefs, formulated earlier, that plants and animals were physiologically analogous, claiming in the De Fontibus “as plants

73

Du Clos, Observations, . Du Clos, Observations, –; Lister, De Fontibus, . 75 Lister, De Fontibus, . [Quòd Thermarum aqua in ignem imposita, idem temporis spatium ad effervescendum requiret, ac ipsa aqua communi frigida: unde liquet Thermas ab igne aliquo subterraneo non callefactas fuisse.] Du Clos, Observations, –. Du Clos writes “That Hot Mineral Waters have no more Disposition to Boyl on the Fire than Common Cold Waters, there being as much time requir’d to cause the one to boyl as the other. Which clearly shews that the Heat which Mineral Waters contract in the Earth, proceeds not from a Motion of their Particles excited by any Subterraneous Fire.” 76 Lister, De Fontibus, . [Quòd in os sumptae, haud aequè id adurunt, ac aqua communis, ad eundem caloris gradum igne culinari calefacta: Id quod à materiae tenuitate, à qua Thermae incalescunt, oriri videtur; Siquidem Spiritus Vini dicti flamma, manum haud aequè adurit, ac pruna ei imposita.] Du Clos writes in the Observations: “That these hot Mineral waters burn not the Mouth and tongue of those who drink of them at their coming forth from their Springs, as Common Water heated by Fire to a like Degree would do. Which seems to proceed from the Subtlety of the Substances which produceth this Heat in the Water” (). 74

“all that glitters”



live they breathe just like animals.”77 As support, he cited a June  experiment on plant transpiration performed by John Wills, a fellow of Trinity College, Oxford in which botanical specimens were placed in glass vials “in order to find in what measure Herbs might perspire.”78 Convinced that plants “expired” a good deal of moist breath, Lister then went on to claim their breath was also responsible for wind. In an essay in the Philosophical Transactions, Lister wrote: Among the known Sea Plants the Sargosse or Lenticula Marina [Sea Lentil] is not to be forgot; this grows in vast quantities from  to  degrees Northern Latitude, and elsewhere upon the deepest Seas. And I think . . . from the daily and constant breath of that Plant, the Trade or Tropic Winds do in great part arise.79

He hypothesized also that plant breath was primarily moist; Lister used as evidence that night dews and mists from springs, rivers, and the sea arose largely from the condensed breath of plants.80 The moisture of plant breath combined with Pyrites created rain. Although Lister acknowledged that rains were “exhaled as a result of the heat of the Sun” on the ocean, he considered the condensations of the moist “vapour both of Pyrites and limestone” found underground in mines as well as that from “especially the vegetation growing on Pyrites and limestone” to be the “greatest material for rain.”81 Lister commented

77 Lister, De Fontibus, . [. . . quòd autem Plantarum vita holituosa sit, perinde ut animalium.] 78 Lister specifically cited Plot’s The Natural History of Oxfordshire, – that discussed Wills’s experiments. See Lister, De Fontibus, . 79 Lister, “Certain Observations,” . Sea Lentil or Sargasso weed, is prolific brown seaweed of the genus Sargassum, and was described in the Philosophical Transactions by Hans Sloane (–). This lush plant covers an area of Sargasso Sea that is at the heart of the Bermuda Triangle often having floating layers – feet thick. The plant has small bladders in the form of empty sea pods, which allow it to float on the sea surface. For a seventeenth-century description of the plant, please see Gerarde, Herbal, –, and Sloane, “Four Sorts of Strange Beans,” . 80 Lister, De Fontibus, –. “Likewise nocturnal dew for the most part arises when the breath of plants is condensed.” [Item ipse ros nocturnus è plantarum spiritu densato maximè oritur . . . ] 81 Lister, De Fontibus, . “But it may be well that by far the greatest amount of the material of rain water arises from the underground salts of pyrites and limestone and of course by these the waters of springs, rivers and marshes and the sea itself are driven off to form mists. [At fortè longè maxima pluviarum materia à salibus Metallorum subterraneis, et praecipuè Pyritae et lapidis Calcarii vegetantibus oritur; scilicet à quibus Fontium, Fluminum, Paludumque aquae, imò ipsum Mare in nebulas copiose exiguntur.]



chapter nine

further that violent rain occurred when the vapor of pyrites and their vitriolic salts were mixed: in tiny amounts with some moist vapour, then if at any time and for any reason it happens to be set on fire [by lightning or friction] little droplets of water are necessarily forced together and thrown down, when the draught by whose movement and stirring alone they are borne up into the atmosphere is driven away.82

In other words, the force of sparked vapor pushed water droplets together and downwards. Lister also believed thunder and lightning “owed their matter from the sole [sulfurous] breath of the Pyrites.”83 In the De Fontibus, as support for his assertions, Lister cited Pliny’s Natural History: “Pliny says that thunder and lightning burn with sulfur, and the actual light they produce is sulfurous.”84 Lightning does result in a smell of sulfur in the atmosphere, sulfur is in fact an excellent insulator, and static electricity accumulated on it discharges in electrical sparks towards proximate objects, effects which may have given Lister his idea. Further, in early modern German mining literature, ore exhalations due to witterung were implicated in meteorological effects such as thunder and lightning.85 Lister also enumerated several recorded instances by Aristotelian scholar Julius Scaliger (–) and Giordano Cardano (–) of “Iron to have fallen in great masses, and also in powder after the manner of rain, out of the Air” indicating by analogy that because iron pyrites were involved in meteor showers, they would be involved in rain showers as well.86 He noted in William Gilbert’s De Magnete () that presumably these pyrite-rich meteors, which were “very hard and of the color of iron,” were never accompanied by showers of “gold or silver ore, or tin or Lead”; therefore this “ferrum were composed of the breath of pyrites.”87

82

Lister, De Fontibus, . [Cùm autem id vapore aliquo humido per minima miscetur, si quando quacunque de causa, incendi contingat aqueas particulas simul cogi, dejicique necesse est; scilicet Spiritu, cuius solius motu et agitatione in aura feruntur, exploso.] 83 Lister, “The Third Paper,” . 84 Lister, De Fontibus, . 85 Magnus, Historia, /. 86 Lister, “The Third Paper,” . For information about Giordano Cardano and Julius Scalinger, please see William Eamon, Secrets, –. 87 Lister, “The Third Paper,” –.

“all that glitters”



Lister claimed iron pyrites were involved in rainstorms because “lightning was magnetic.”88 He again cited an article in the Philosophical Transactions, in which an Irish sea-captain on a voyage to Bermuda found himself caught in a storm in which a “terrible clap of Thunder tore his sayles, and did some damage to his rigging.”89 The lightning apparently magnetized his compass, “the North and South points having changed positions . . . which strange and sudden accident he could impute to nothing else but the operation of the Lightning or Thunder newly mentioned.”90 Lister’s opinion about lightning and thunder was apparently somewhat influential, as fifty years later, Benjamin Franklin wrote about it in the Pennsylvania Gazette in December .91 In De Fontibus, Lister mentioned also that earthquakes were primarily due to the firing of the “inflammable breath of Pyrites . . . underground,” and could occur “if by chance the fire [from pyrites] is contained in subterranean hollows, and hot springs” or “if it is transported in abundance among water channels, even if it is not set on fire.”92 The possible involvement of pyrites in earthquakes also continued to provide fodder for Royal Society experiments by Stephen Hales (–) into the s. In , Hales performed: an experiment of putting some pyrites stone, with some aqua fortis [concentrated nitric acid, or HNO], into a vessel set in water, and covered with a large glass, whose mouth must be immersed in the water. A brisk fermentation arises, a black cloud, and a destruction of some quantity of air . . . Then suddenly taking up the glass out of the water, and letting in fresh air, a new ebullition arises . . . From this experiment the doctor apprehends that the cause of earthquakes is much illustrated. He says sulfureous vapour arises out of the earth generated probably by the pyrites abounding therein . . . through cracks and chinks of the gaping earth . . . and cause a prodigious tumult above . . . These concussions in the air act upon the surface of the earth and cause earthquakes.93

88

Lister, “The Third Paper,” . In fact, Lister is correct that lightning can magnetize a ship; a lightning strike can magnetize a keel or other metal fittings, rendering the compass useless. 89 Anonymous, “Effect of Thunder,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –, on . 90 “Effect of Thunder,” . 91 Aldridge, “Benjamin Franklin,” . 92 Lister, De Fontibus, –. [Pyritae autem halitus effectus sunt Fulmina et Fulgura, si in caelo accendatur; Terrae motus, si forte cavis subterraneis accensus contineatur: Thermae si per aquarum ductus subterraneos copiose feratur, etiamsi non accendatur.] 93 Family memoirs of Stukeley, : –, as quoted in Cohen, “Neglected Sources.” –. Hales indeed would have observed an exothermic reaction (brisk fermentation).



chapter nine

In a like fashion, Lister mentioned in an article in the Philosophical Transactions that volcanoes were “Mountains made up in great part of Pyrites” because of the “quantities of Sulfur thence sublimed, and the Application of the Load-stone to the ejected Cinder.”94 He may have received this notion from Athanasius Kircher’s Mundus Subterraneus. Kircher explained that “sulfureous . . . spirits, which lodged there [in subterranean caves] . . . at length ends in a new food and nourishment of the fire.”95 Kircher also claimed that “sulfur . . . insinuated into the pores of the Calx [limestone] or Calcined Lime . . . administers that perpetual and everlasting fuel and food of Fire”; he also speculated that vitriol and sal ammoniac might play a role in the production of lava.96 We have seen earlier that Lister thought limestone might play a role in concert with pyrites to produce the heat of hot springs. Finally, to answer objections that England had a good quantity of pyrites but little volcanic activity, Lister claimed that in areas such as Mount Vesuvius experienced more volcanic eruptions because “the Pyrites of the Vulcano’s or burning Mountains may be more Sulfurious then ours. And indeed it is plain, that some of ours in England are very lean.”97 Though England had little volcanic activity, Lister thought its abundance of pyrites was also responsible for other processes in the natural world, namely petrifaction. He began book two, chapter three of De Fontibus, with his claim that it was an “an unfailing truth” that both of these minerals are the “unique causes of petrifaction in every case.”98 To support his argument, he delineated first the chemical mechanism behind the production of fossils. In “Method for the History of Iron,” Lister mentioned that pyrites were not only found near mineral baths, but also often occurred in Yorkshire limestone, mineralized with fossils. He thought that all fossils contained iron marcasites, proven by

The sulfurous vapors he reported were most likely sulfur dioxide produced from the reaction of pyrites with oxygen. 94 Lister, “The Second Paper,” . 95 Kircher, The Vulcano’s, . 96 Kircher, The Vulcano’s, , . 97 Lister, “The Second Paper,” . 98 Lister, De Fontibus, part II, . [Imprimis autem illud perpetuum esse duco, utraque; metalla, jam nunc nominata, Petrificationis ubique; loci.] Each of the two parts of Lister’s  edition of the De Fontibus is paginated separately, the second part having its own separate title page: De Fontibus medicatis Anglicae, exerctiatio altera. Like the first part, it was also published by Walter Kettilby in London. All previous references to De Fontibus were to part I, and I will indicate part numbers in subsequent footnotes.

“all that glitters”



running a magnet over them, and that pyrites could be detected in a like manner. As mentioned previously, Lister had noted in the work of Ole Worm that many fossils were composed of fools’ gold. Van Helmont argued that in the case of fossils, a petrifying and germinating seed in mineral waters produced shells “clothed in a crust as a result of rancid material from the depths.”99 Again, Lister denied Van Helmont’s belief about matter formation from water, claiming instead in his De Fontibus that the origin of fossils is: propagated not so much by sexual union [of the seeds] as by the actual rancidity from the depths and therefore succeeding generations of shells are produced outside of themselves. The layers of rock are produced under the earth from rancid stink arising from the rocks. I am not here enquiring how layers of rock are produced, but if we suppose that they have existed from the creation of the world the question is posed as to the source of the petrifaction of plants, animals and now even the rocks themselves. I declare that we are generally deceived by what has a similar appearance to certain germinating rocks, as though all other kinds of rocks were produced today from one and the same cause as was once the case. Yet as far as I have been able to observe everything that petrifies is either pyrites or some kind of limestone and nothing else . . . [These two petrifiers] produced by the continual germination of salt are after their own fashion volatile, and when admitted into intermediary substances, dead as well as alive, they combine and are compacted of their own nature, and generally even preserve the shapes of the animals, and their qualities, at least to some extent.100

In other words, the “stink” coming from the rocks was the sulfurous vapor arising from the “continual germination” of salts of vitriol from the pyrites and calcareous niter arising from the limestone. These volatile salts combined with intermediary substances, which could be dead

99 Lister, De Fontibus, part II, . [. . . oborto semine petrifico, conchylia crustâ loricantur.] 100 Lister, De Fontibus, part II, –. [. . . quàm per ipsam fundi fracedinem propagatur, et conchis ideo foris adnascitur posteritas—ipsaque; strata saxea subterram oriuntur ab odore fracido saxeo. Non equidem hìc quaero, quomodo nata sint strate Terrae saxea; sed suppositâ eorum ab ipsâ mundi origine creatione, quaestio est, unde plantae, animalia, imò ipsa saxa jam nun lapidescant? Et affirmo, nos à germinantium quorundam saxorum similitudine ferè decepi, ac si aliorum omnium generum saxorum ab unâ eâdemque; causâ aequè hodie, ut olim, gignerentur; cum tamen, certè quantùm ipse observavi, quae jam lapidescunt omnia, vel Pyrites vel saxum aliquod calcarium tantùm sunt; . . . ex salium assiduâ germanatione, ut superiore exercitatione expositum est orti, suo modo volatiles sunt, medisque; rebus tàm vivis, quàm mortuis recepti, ex suâ naturâ coëunt constringunturque; etiam plerorumque; animalium formâ, eorumque.]



chapter nine

plants or animals, or just dead neighboring substances to form different petrified shapes, forming substances like the rock plants or crinoids he discussed earlier. Lister thought “what the vitriol does to the iron is pure petrifaction.”101 Finally, he had arrived at what he thought was the solution to the process of fossilization. Lister also claimed, concerning his observation of petrified wood, that: “pyrites and limestone (for as far as my own observations are concerned no other substances in Britain turn to stone) . . . easily penetrate even the densest wood, and wooden pyrites have for the most part stony insides.”102 As an example, Lister claimed that the wood of the holly petrified quickly into a pyretic stone when immersed in mineral springs or lakes like Lough Neagh in Northern Ireland. Local legend, repeated by the philosopher Boethius in his “History of Stones and Gems,” had it that if a stake of holly wood were driven down into the bottom of the lake and left there for seven years, the part that was sunk into the ground would turn into iron, the part in the water would turn to stone, and the part above the water would be in its original state.103 Indeed, bits of petrified wood washed up on the shore were used by the Irish as razor hones, reputed to get a blade sharp enough to shave a mouse that was asleep. Intrigued by the Irish legend, Lister wanted to see some samples for himself, so in , he requested some petrified wood to be sent to him via post from his colleague Joseph Wilkins in Dublin.104 Wilkins wrote that he could “never yet find that [the lake water] did turn any sort of wood into iron, or that there was ever any iron found or cast up about the Lough,” and indeed the Lough Neagh hones are petrified by silicates in the water rather than iron.105 Petrified holly wood can, however, contain pyrites. Inventor Denis Papin (–) did a series of experiments recorded in the Royal Society’s registry book to indicate that petrified holly wood when heated attracted a magnet, which suggested it was composed

101 Lister, De Fontibus, part II, . [Illud autem vitrioli in ferrum Phaenomenon esse meram petrificationem . . .] 102 Lister, De Fontibus, part I, . [Unde quodvis crassum lignum facilè penetrant; et lignei quidem Pyritae ex maximè interna parte lapidescunt.] Again Lister is claiming that witterung or vaporous exhalations from minerals promote material change, in this case petrifaction. 103 Joyce, The Wonders of Ireland, . 104 Bodleian MS Lister , f. v. 105 Bodleian MS Lister , f. v.

“all that glitters”



of iron pyrites.106 Petrifaction can occur as iron dissolves in ground water when there is no oxygen present. The ground water becomes re-oxygenated as it moves though the tree trunks causing oxygen to bond with the iron. The iron then precipitates to produce hematite, a solid form of iron oxide, which is incorporated into the cell walls of the wood.107 Sometimes the wood can be affected further as hydrogen sulfide from decaying organic matter interacts with iron in the cell walls, forming pyrite. . Petrifaction Within the Body: The Production of Gall and Bladder Stones Lister claimed also that petrifaction formed inside the body in a similar manner to fossilization, and that pyrites and nitrum calcarium composed bladder and gallstones. Preventing gallstones or bladder stones in the body was a topic of great interest to early modern physicians, as medications such as distilled bean water, Rhenish wine, or chamomile tea were ineffective, and the operation to remove the stone was horrific. Claire Tomalin in her biography of the diarist Samuel Pepys described the procedure: The surgeon got to work. First he inserted a thin silver instrument, the itinerarium, through the penis into the bladder to help position the stone. Then he made the incision, about three inches long and a finger’s breadth from the line running between scrotum and anus, and into the neck of the bladder, or just below it. The patient’s face was sponged as the incision was made. The stone was sought, found and grasped with pincers; the more speedily it could be got out the better. Once out, the wound was not stitched—it was thought best to let it drain and cicatrize itself—but simply washed and covered with a dressing, or even kept open at first with a small roll of soft cloth known as a tent, dipped in egg white. A plaster of egg yolk, rose vinegar and anointing oils was then applied.108

This was the Marian method, named after Mariano, a Renaissance Italian physician. Trauma to the bladder neck and prostate was intense, there was usually severe hemorrhaging, and it was difficult to extract

106

Birch, History : . National Park Service, “Petrified Wood Colors and Petrification,” http:// scienceviews.com/parks/woodcolors.html. 108 Tomalin, Samuel Pepys, –. 107



chapter nine

large stones through the urethra.109 Incontinence, erectile dysfunction, if not death, frequently resulted. It was not until Jacques de Beaulieu (–) developed a procedure, which led to the modern lateral or perineal surgery that survival rates increased. Pepys was lucky—his bladder stone, which was the size of a tennis ball (two inches), came out intact, and the proud survivor had it set in a case that cost him twenty-four shillings. The Royal Society Repository, as well as museums like the Ashmolean, had numerous donations of bodily stones from grateful survivors. As mentioned previously, Lister himself suffered from one underneath his tongue, the surgeon taking out one “as bigg as a bean,” and in his sixties and seventies, he had kidney stones so painful he could not ride in a coach.110 In his typical investigatory fashion, he agreed the account of his eight-year long suffering from his tongue-stone could be published in the Philosophical Transactions and to donate his stone to the Repository, as long as he was not identified as the patient.111 Lister thus had good reason to speculate about the cause of “the stone.” In a letter he sent to Francis Aston, secretary of the Royal Society, on  December , which was read to the Society later that year, he asserted: In the second part of . . . [De Fontibus], I have briefly endeavoured to shew, that as there but two lapidescent juices in nature without us: for these two are the only material causes of the stone, whenever it shall happen to be bred within us: For that the ways to distinguish them without us, will serve also to demonstrate their existence, when found in our bodies, as if vitriolic, the application of the lodestone, &c.112

His claim was a large departure from both Galenic medicine, which stated stones were a form of hardened phlegm, and from Paracelsianism, which saw them as akin to the passive sedimentation of the tartar of wine in the wine cask. His rejection of Galen was common

109

Herr, “ ‘Cutting for the stone,’ ” . MS L/, Royal Society Library, London, and Hall and Hall, eds, The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, : –, on . 111 Lister, “A Stone Cut Out,” –. 112 Birch, History : . Frances Aston was a friend and co-investigator of Robert Plot, Keeper of the Ashmolean, and he was chemically testing Lister’s observation on spa waters. He wrote to Lister on  April , “What you guesse of Dr. Plot and myself is very true, wee are very friends, and shall continue unaminous in our small imployment.” Aston also sent Lister one of Borelli’s anatomical works. See Bodleian MS Lister , ff.  and . 110

“all that glitters”



among other chemically-oriented physicians such as Frederick Slare (–), who stated in a paper he read before the Royal Society in : “Nor is it necessary to derive the materiall Cause from such a Shiny and Roapy or Mucilaginous Indisposition of the humours, that may perhaps coagulate and harden into a Stone. Such a Viscous Urine being less apt to precipitate this gritty matter then more thin and limpid Urine.”113 Skepticism about the stone being tartar also grew when gall and kidney stones were calcined and chemically analyzed as part of a series of experiments done on materia medica by the Royal Society in the s and s by physicians such as Slare and Nehemiah Grew, now keeper of the Royal Society Repository, its first museum of objects from the natural world. Simply, Slare and Grew discovered that the specific gravity and reactions to acid and alkalis differed between tartar and bodily stones.114 Grew studied medicine in Leiden under the tutelage of Franciscus de le Böe (Sylvius) (–), his dissertation concerning acid-alkali iatrochemistry, so it is not entirely surprising he would employ the same analytical methods to test gallstones. Elias Ashmole also participated in this new chemical role for the Royal Society. Ashmole hoped to create a chemistry professorship at his museum to emphasize the relationships between medicine and chemistry.115 Grew duly had a section in his catalogue of the Royal Society Repository entitled “of things related to chymistry,” which included an exhibit of the distillation of human blood revealing its “phlegm, oil, spirit, volatile and fixed salts.”116 Lister’s claims about “the stone” went even further, however, as they were a conscious refutation of van Helmont’s treatise on gallstones, De Lithiasi (). Van Helmont replaced the Paracelsian idea of tartar with a seminal fermentation and chemical transmutation of urine. The formation of the stone involved two agents or spirits—the spirit of wine and the spirit of urine producing a substance he called duelech, as it was dependent on the interaction of two different substances. This fermentation also operated independently of bodily heat or cold, and Galenic physicians saw it as important in the concoction of the stone

113 Slare, “A Discourse about the Calculus Humanus”,  December , RBO.., f. v, Royal Society Library, London. 114 Slare, “A Discourse about the Calculus Humanus,” f. v. 115 Arnold, Cabinets, . 116 Grew, Musaeum, .



chapter nine

and other bodily fluids. When van Helmont attempted to recreate the formation of the stone in vitro, he mixed the volatile salt of urine with alcohol, obtaining a white precipitate which he called an offa (a morsel or cake). Lister pointedly rejected Helmont’s theories concerning offa, stating “the white pellet Helmontius mentions . . . is no explanation of petrifaction, which is usually accomplished without any urine-like spirit . . . from nothing other than limestone or . . . vitriol.”117 Citing Galen, who claimed it was “impossible for bodies with a solid and compact substance, like stones, to decay,” Lister claimed that since nitrum calcarium and vitriol were stone-like in nature, they were not susceptible to “decay” or digestion in the stomach.118 Unlike van Helmont, Lister also considered bodily heat to play a role in the formation of the stone because boiled water containing nitrum calcarium “petrifies into solid layers.”119 Lister also noted that on a fragment of stone cut from the uterus of a cow, there were a number of “elegantly shaped little shells” that resembled fossils, suggesting their common origins.120 He concluded in De Fontibus: I consider that tufa and other stones which are produced in humans and other animals are largely metallic, because there is general agreement that wooden and animal substances, and likewise the other metals, petrify on account of the same substance. Sea shells of various kinds, and most sea-grasses, genuinely petrify naturally at least to some extent, and this would not happen unless some common substance in the stone were present in all waters.121

Lister had empirical evidence that suggested gall and bladder stones consisted of iron pyrites. According to Birch’s History of the Royal

117 Lister, De Fontibus, part II, –. [Offa autem alba Helmontii . . . et minimè quidem petrificationem explicat, quae sine ullo, aut spiritu urinoso . . . ex solo saxo calcario aut vitriolo abortivo.] 118 Lister, De Fontibus, part II, . 119 Lister, De Fontibus, part II, . [. . . succus inter coquendum in solidas laminas lapidescat.]. 120 Lister, De Fontibus, part II, . [Imò ipse conchylas vidi eleganter figuratas, in quodam calculi.] 121 Lister, De Fontibus, part II, . [Tophos autem calculosque; in nobis aliisque; animalibus natos, ex magnâ parte metallicos esse existimo, quòd non aliâ materiâ ligna, animalia, item ipsa reliqua metalla extra nos uspiam lapidescant, satis constat; nimirum variorum generum Conchae, item herbae plurimae marinae, naturalitèr ex sui certè aliquâ parte verè lapidescunt; quod non fieret, nisi aquis omnibus inesset calculi communis quaedam materia.]

“all that glitters”



Society, Lister had been present at a Royal Society meeting in  in which a paper was read by Dr Slare claiming there were “five or six small stones shining like marcasites taken out of the bladder of an ox.”122 Lister apparently affirmed these finding, as he “had divers times observed the like in an ox’s bladder: that he had taken out of one ox about ; and that he had formerly sent several of them to the Society.”123 He had also corresponded with the antiquarian scholar Charles César Baudelot de Dairval, author of De l’utilité des voyages (), who, besides collecting coins and medals, “owned a two-pound stone recovered from a dissected horse.”124 In a letter to Lister, Baudelot noted that, according to Pliny’s Natural History, horses have nearly the same diseases as men and thought animal and human stones were the same in their composition.125 Pliny had advocated for the stone a medicinal preparation of bony calculi that appeared on horses’ legs dissolved in honeyed wine, and as Baudelot had noted the cure was efficacious, he speculated to Lister that the power of sympathetic medicine would indicate animal and human calculi were similar in composition.126 Lister also claimed that human urine had pyrites in it. He observed that urine colored silver objects deeply (most likely silver chamber pots used by the wealthy) a “splendour like that of gold, just as if it were truly pyrites”; further, “wherever men habitually urinate”, was “deeply coloured” by a gold color (most likely due to the urea and bile salts present in the urine).127 Lister then reasoned that “a kind of magnetic force best explains the cause of petrifaction,” as he believed petrified materials which had as their source iron pyrites were magnetic in nature. As Birch noted, a box of iron ores from Lister was presented to the Royal Society in a  meeting, all of which were “examined by a good magnet.” “Gur . . . golden pyrites . . . petrified wood . . . and pyrites” were all reported to “cleave to the lodestone”; Francis Aston, the secretary of the Royal Society, also affirmed in a letter to Robert Pitt, a professor

122

Birch, History : . Birch, History : . 124 Stroup, Company, . 125 MS B/, f. v., Royal Society Library, London. The letter is undated. 126 MS B/, f. v. 127 Lister, De Fontibus, part II, . [ispâ urinâ argentum tingi quodam aureo splendore haud secus quàm si vere Pyrites esset.] For information about silver chamberpots, see Kravetz, “A Look Back,” –. The less well-to-do had to content themselves with chamberpots of pewter, copper, or ceramic. 123



chapter nine

of anatomy at Wadham College, Oxford, that “Wee examined about  Calcinations of Mr Lister’s that were more or less magnetical.”128 The next step was to see if human stones were as magnetic as pyrites, which became the subject of a meeting later that year. Slare read his treatise on the stone and showed the offa of van Helmont to the audience. After Slare’s presentation, Lister asserted that a series of distillations of bodily stones demonstrated that the caput mortuum (distillation dregs) were magnetic after being calcined or subject to intense heat; in his standard reference work, De Re Metallica, Georges Agricola claimed that calcinations of ironstone were a means of identifying magnetic iron, and Lister was following his method to identify magnetic gallstones. The minutes of the meeting show that Lister noted subsequently that he had seen “two sorts of calculi urinae, one opake, and another transparent, which had been brought in by Dr Grew, and was very like the shooting of the pyrites.”129 Although the similarity in naked-eye crystalline structure may seem a superficial comparison to make, it was standard procedure at the time for identifying different salts in spa waters. Late seventeenth-century chemists considered the macroscopic and microscopic examination of crystalline structures important, as their regularity seemed to suggest an innate formative power in chemical transformation. As we have seen, Lister had met and studied with Nicolas Steno in Montpellier, and as Steno’s Prodromus () was one of the pioneering works on crystalline structure, it is not surprising that Lister would be sensitive to such structural consonances.130 Steno had ascribed the formation of strata to the gradual deposition of sediment in the sea, an idea which may have inspired Lister to present a paper to the Royal Society for a “Proposal for a new Sort of Maps of Counties, with Tables of Sands and Clays, such chiefly as are found in the North Parts of England.”131 Lister remarked that by having such a map, “we shall then be better able to judge of the make of the Earth, and of many Phaenomena belonging thereto, when we have well and duely examined it . . . beginning from the outside downwards. As for the more inward and Central parts thereof, I think we shall never be able to confute Gilbert’s opinion thereof, who will, not without reason

128 129 130 131

Birch, History : . Birch, History : . Steno, Prodromus. Lister, “A New Sort of Maps,” –.

“all that glitters”



have it altogether Iron.” He also proposed that the soil types would be represented by different colors and contour lines, and noted that the variety of sands and clays he saw in England varied according to height. The eminent geologist Charles Lyell noted in his Principles of Geology that Lister “appeared to have been the first who was aware of the continuity over large districts of the principal groups of strata in the British series, and who proposed the construction of regular geological maps.”132 Lister was considered such an expert on rocks, minerals, and their structures that he was put in charge of designing the cabinetry to hold these specimens in the Royal Society repository, and requested “to give his pains in reducing the minerals into such order and method, as might facilitate the understanding [of] them, and also preserve them, that they might be readily had at any time for inspection, and other uses, that may happen.”133 Further, Tancred Robinson, in a letter to Lister on  April , remarked that Robert Boyle, “shew’d mee this day the severall crystallisations of those salts, which you have describd and figur’d; and hee says hee is very fearfull to propound anything to a person of your piercing sagacity.”134 . Formation of Magnetic Stones in the Body After his evidence in vitro that bodily stones were magnetic in nature, Lister offered next evidence in vivo. In , he presented an account to the Royal Society, accompanied by a drawing he had commissioned of a “Stone Grown to an Iron Bodkin in the Bladder of a Boy,” and the report was published in the Philosophical Transactions later that year.135 Apparently a young Parisian child had inserted an iron nail or needle in his urethra, it had made its way into its bladder, and a bladder stone had grown around it (Figure 16). After the lad was cut for the stone, this curiosity was presented to the French king for his cabinet of curiosities. Lister, as did Christopher Wren and Tancred Robinson, attributed the “sudden growth of the stone to the magnetism of the iron.”136

132 133 134 135 136

Lyell, Principles, : . Birch, History : . Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. Lister, “An Account of a Stone,” . Birch, History : .



chapter nine

Fig.  Bladder stone from “An Account of a Stone Grown to an Iron Bodkin in the Bladder of a Boy Communicated by Dr. Lister Fellow of the Royal Society,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), pp. –, on p. . © Royal Society, London.

Lister later reproduced this phenomenon by wrapping an iron nail in a cow’s bladder and immersing it in “Hungarian vitriol” [usually iron (II) sulfate, FeSO but also used for copper sulfate CuSO].137 After a period of time, “facing the nail but on the outside of the bladder, some pure, bright copper adhered, in balls ranging from fairly large to very small, giving the appearance of being arranged like a chain, as far as the nail extended.”138 Lister concluded that: 137 Ecklund, The Incompleat Chymist, s.v. “hungarian vitriol.” http://dbhs.wvusd. k.ca.us/ChemHistory/ ObsoleteChem TermsTOC.html. 138 Lister, De Humoribus, –. Although this work was published later (), it summarizes Lister’s research of petrifaction in the s. [Verùm illud singulare exemplum de virtute ferri magnetica, à me olim vulgatum, hîc non tacebo; nempe vit-

“all that glitters”



in this experiment the following singular and specific conclusions were manifest, that the copper was attracted and separated from its own salt through the magnetic influence of the iron, whilst the physical barrier of the bladder failed to prevent the collection and combination of the copper.139

Lister thought thus that he verified experimentally that magnetism was behind the chemical formation of bladder stones, and saw their petrifaction processes in the body as equivalent to formation of pyrites in the earth’s crust. In the absence of conveniently introduced iron nails, where and how did stones form in the body via magnetic forces? Other than the usual places of the kidneys and bladder, Lister claimed stones could form in the womb, intestines, and the glands beneath the tongue. He then noted that “almost all the stones are produced outside the area where the blood circulates, where sluggishness and the looseness and weakness of the parts that contain them offer an opportunity for the development of these miseries; I refer of course to the innards and glands.”140 It was “only rarely is anything petrified in the blood itself, on account of the speed of its flow, except in the case of the aged where from time to time even the arteries themselves harden into stony bones.”141 Lister’s description of arteriosclerosis was based on the theory of tonus and insensible perspiration developed by Sanctorius, (– ), a Paduan physician. Lister published a series of commentaries on Sanctorius in , including more recent and “considerable discoveries in Anatomy and Philosophy”, so he was quite familiar with his work.142 Inspired by physicians of antiquity who discussed suppressed or obstructed perspiration, Sanctorius wrote that perspiration

riolum nativum Hungaricum aqua dissolvi; cui clavum majusculum praelongum, vesica bubula inclusum, immisi; processu temporis, contra clavum, vesica bubulae extrinsecus adhaerebat purum putum cuprum, majusculis et minimis globulis.] 139 Lister, De Humoribus, . [In hoc autem experimento illa singularia et specifica manifesta sunt; cuprum esse attractum, et à suo sale divisum, aura magnetica ferri, vesicae interpositione nihil accretioni et cohaerentiae cupri prohibente.] 140 Lister, De Humoribus, . [Illud verò singulare est, omnes ferè calculos extra sanguinis circulum nasci; ubi mora, et quies, et partium continentium laxitas atque imbecillitas his miseriis opportunitatem dant; nempe in visceribus et glandulis, renibus putà . . .] 141 Lister, De Humoribus, –. [sed in ipso sanguine rarò aliquid, propter velocitatem fluminis, petrificatur, nisi in senibus, ubi interdum vel ipsae arteriae in offa lapidea indurantur.] 142 Lister’s commentary on Sanctorius was enthusiastically reviewed in the Philosophical Transactions  (–), –, on .



chapter nine

was “absolutely necessary to the well being of a Human Body. [Its production was] occasion’d by the constant Circulations of the Animal Fluids, and the forcible Contractions and Attritions of the Solids.”143 Those parts of the fluids and solids that were not necessary for the nourishment of the body flew out of the body through the pores of the skin and mouth, meaning that it was necessary there be a “proportionate Recruit by daily food.”144 By measuring the amount of insensible perspiration in the body and regulating one’s diet, and keeping the out-flowing of sweat and consumption of food at a constant level, one could regulate and preserve one’s health. Sanctorius then argued that as the body aged, the solids and fibres of the body grew hard, contractions in the tissues slowed and stopped, perspiration halted, and death resulted. In other words, the bodily tissues and organs would lose their tonic motion. Tonus was a wide-ranging concept in early modern medicine, originally postulated by the Stoics and Galen, and a theory held not only by Sanctorius but also by other later physicians such as Boerhaave and George Stahl.145 Tonic motion: referred to the mechanism in which the blood circulation . . . delivered harmful matters to the excretory organs, and . . . the colatory structure of the organs that filtered out those matters. As the body’s putrefaction [and aging] continued, tonic motion worked to hold it in check.146

Lister reasoned that as the body aged, blood circulation slowed, and tonus decreased, the body was more susceptible to petrifaction processes and to the formation of the stone. Thus, as he stated, he was “not then denying the existence of magnetic force in the systems of animals, but am demonstrating its necessity in the case of some actions, and in particular the problems it causes.”147

143 Sanctorius, Medicina Statica, Aphorism , . For the history of insensible perspiration, including its classical origins, see Renbourn, “The Natural History,” –. 144 Sanctorius, Medicina Statica, Aphorism , . 145 Bylebyl, “The Medical Side,” –; See also Hermann Boerhaave, Institutio in Physick, xvi; Boerhaave wrote “Therefore these two kinds of Motion, viz. a Pulse which exerts its Power in the Vessels and the Heart, and drives from the Centre to the Circumference, and the Tone which is seated in all the Fibres, membranous and muscular Parts . . . ; if these are in a right State and in due Strength, Equality and Temperament, the Blood is received into the Parts equally and without Impediment, and from the same, a due Quantity is expell’d in due time, the Secretions naturally follow, and so the Business of Health is perform’d.” 146 Chang, “Motus Tonicus,” . 147 Lister, De Humoribus, .

“all that glitters”



Lister’s work demonstrated the essential connection between studies of medicine and natural history. By combining studies of chemistry, magnetism, medicine, natural history, and mineralogy, Lister saw the body as a rigorously metallic-magnetic entity. His devotion and important contributions to so many fields of endeavor led him to conceive of the body in a similarly interdisciplinary and unique manner. Lister’s research thus brought together historical literatures we would normally consider distinct. In an intriguing blend of analogical thinking and empirical observation, the boundaries between early modern concepts of geology, conchology, mineralogy, and medicine proved porous indeed, more like a semi-permeable membrane of a cell than discrete points of separation. His investigations into so many branches of natural history during his years at York demonstrated their interconnections in the early modern period; natural history encompassed “investigation into all res naturae—the things of nature.”148

148

Cook, “Natural history,” .

CHAPTER TEN

A SPECULUM OF CHEMICAL PRACTICE: LISTER, NEWTON, AND TELESCOPIC MIRRORS . Introduction Lister’s work in chemistry in the s and s not only involved pyrites, but also a variety of other investigations into metallurgy.1 He had a home laboratory in York where he experimented with a variety of ores found in his mines, and in  he published a paper in the Philosophical Transactions that described a new way of fluxing antimony with a material called Derbyshire cawk.2 On  January , Nathaniel Johnston, a member of the York Virtuosi, wrote to Lister requesting some mineral samples.3 Johnston had provided several samples of ore to him for his investigations of iron ore, and he was asking Lister to return the favor. Such a request of Lister was the expression of a norm in the Republic of Letters, in which fulfilling social obligations, bartering intellectual property, and returning favors and sending presents was a means of a mutual paying of respect that enhanced a reputation as a gentleman and a scholar.4 Johnston asked whether Lister could send samples of his cawk and chemical products by post to Cambridge. He explained that the materials were not for him but for “Mr Newton,” who was interested in them for their chemical properties and to create the mirrors for his reflecting telescopes. Lister’s preparation of the “glass of antimony,” and antimonial compounds in general are of recent historiographic interest. Lawrence Principe’s work demonstrated that the making of the glass of antimony was central to discussions of the role of impurities of reactants in the identification and clarification of early modern chemical

1 The author is not unaware of the historiographic debate discussed in Newman and Principe’s article “Alchemy vs. chemistry,” –. For the purposes of this more general biographical work, however, the more familiar term “chemistry” will be used throughout. This chapter is based on her article: “Speculum,” –. 2 Lister, “Some Observations and Experiments,” –. 3 Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. 4 Goldgar’s Impolite Learning analyses these norms in erudite detail.



chapter ten

processes.5 This chapter will begin with a close examination of Lister’s method to demonstrate the importance of considering these impurities when attempting to interpret early chemical procedures. Secondly, the extent to which antimony was significant to Newton’s creation of alloys to make telescopic specula remains relatively unexplored, and we will analyze to what extent Lister’s procedure informed Newton’s creation of telescopic mirrors.6 Lastly, recent work by William Newman has demonstrated the centrality of the properties of ores to Newton’s theories about the transmutation of matter and metallogenesis.7 Lister’s discovery of cawk ore and its interaction with antimony may have informed Newton’s ideas about the formation of minerals. Lister’s paper about antimony, just as his previous work with black resin, was secretive, and had incomplete information about the chemical reactions involved. The paper contained a miscellany of observations that reflected his virtuosic interests—the efflorescence of particular minerals, the “flower and seeds” of mushrooms, a discourse on fossilized sharks’ teeth, and a final section elucidating the “speedy vitrifying of the whole Body of Antimony by Cawk.”8 In his treatise, Lister described the process of making the “vitrum” or glass of antimony, which was commonly used as an emetic, a medicament and process with which he would have been familiar. Basil Valentine’s The Triumphal Chariot of Antimony () popularized the use of antimony in the treatment of disease, the famous patent medicine Lockyer’s Pill was antimonial in composition, and Lister’s great-uncle Matthew Lister, the court physician who was the driving force behind his great-nephew’s medical education, left recipes for glass of antimony in his manuscript notes.9 In this case, however, Lister was interested in the glass’s chemical properties rather than its medicinal ones, and he considered the discovery significant enough to make it public, at least partially. 5

Principe, “Chemical Translation,” –. King, The History of the Telescope does not mention Newton’s work with antimony and telescopic mirrors, nor does Westfall in his magisterial Never at rest. It is not mentioned in Lesley Murdin’s Under Newton’s Shadow, in Hall and Simpson’s “An account of the Newton telescope,” or in Allen’s “Problems Connected with the Development of the Telescope.” 7 Newman, “Newton’s theory,” –. 8 Lister, “Some Observations and Experiments,” –. 9 George Wilson gives Lockyer’s recipe for his Pilula Radiis Solis Extracta in his Compleat Course, –; Dr Matthew Lister, “Collectanea medica et chemica,” BL Sloane MS , ff. –b. 6

a speculum of chemical practice



. The Chemistry of the Glass of Antimony Glass, or vitrum of antimony, was traditionally created using what Lister referred to as “crude antimony” or stibnite [SbS, antimony (III) sulfide], which was ground and then slowly calcined at high heat. The remaining antimony calx or oxide was then vitrified in a wind furnace, and it was poured into a wide, flat dish of metal, generally copper or brass where it quickly cooled, resulting in the “glass.” A dish of brass or copper with high heat conductivity ensured rapid cooling, the retention of the unchanged sulfide hindering the crystallization of the pure oxide sufficiently to allow glass formation; Rawson has noted that antimony (III) oxide is considered difficult to obtain in the glassy phase other than through quenching or rapid cooling.10 Principe has described the chemical process that Basil Valentine used in modern chemical terms, noting “when antimony trisulfide is roasted slowly in the air, the oxides of antimony are formed and sulfur dioxide is released.”11 Antimony oxides, together with residual trisulfide, compose a white ash, which upon heating to fusion, should produce a yellow or golden transparent glass of antimony:  SbS +  O

 SO + SbO•SbO

However, if the stibnite is too purified, no glass will form, and later chemists such as Caspar Neumann, (–), a chemist from Berlin and follower of George Stahl, and J.W. Mellor (–), author of A Comprehensive Treatise on Theoretical and Inorganic Chemistry, recommended adding sulfur, antimony sulfide, or antimony trisulfide to the ash to make vitrification occur.12 Although these chemists

10 Rawson, Inorganic, –. Thanks to Martin Horsley at Pilkington Glass for this reference. The heat conductivity of copper is  and brass  (in Watts per meter per Kelvin). That of Austenitic Stainless steel, of which most laboratory ware is made, is . So, if the modern chemist were to attempt to recreate Valentine’s process with a stainless steel mortar, he might not achieve the rapid cooling necessary to make the glass. See Kaye and Laby, Tables, http://www.kayelaby.npl.co.uk/ general_physics/_/ __.html. 11 Principe, “Chemical Translation,” . 12 Principe, “Chemical Translation,” –. Neumann and Mellor were not the only chemists who published their methods. Over thirty methods of preparation were published throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including a procedure in the British Pharmacopoeia until , and a method described by Gay-Lussac. See Thorneycroft, Inorganic, .



chapter ten

believed by adding sulfur they were making the alchemists’ glass of antimony, Principe has found that they were mistaken; their product was a deep red or violet glass, rather than the golden one of Basil Valentine.13 The addition of silica to the ash does, however, cause the reaction Valentine described to occur. Valentine was probably using unrefined stibnite that contained silica, and the alchemist’s crucible would likely have had an “easily-dissolvable silica based glaze,” so an impurity that was not mentioned in Valentine’s original account was necessary for the formation of the glass.14 Whether a red vitrum or a golden glass of antimony was created, the poisonous antimony powder, noxious sulfurous fumes, and long heating process made these reactions dangerous and tedious. Lister’s method using cawk stone seemed to solve some of these problems. He stated, “the several vitrifications of Antimony are either opaque or transparent. To the first kind I shall add one, which is in itself very curious, and that these advantages about the rest, that it is done with great ease and Speed.”15 He fluxed antimony “clear”, and while that occurred, heated up “an ounce or two of Cawk-stone” redhot which had been gathered in Derbyshire lead mines, and placed it in the crucible with the antimony, continuing the flux for a few minutes.16 The product was then cast into a clean mortar, and the melted liquor was decanted from the cawk, resulting in a substance, “like polish’d steel” and as “bright as the most refined quicksilver.”17 Lister then noted that the cawk itself did not incorporate with the antimony, so it served purely as a flux.18 He concluded by stating that he had reacted a variety of substances with antimony, such as lapis calaminaris (calamine or zinc carbonate), stone sulfur (native sulfur), galactites (natrolite, a milky white semiprecious stone), marcasites, alum, and “divers sparrs,” but none of these minerals had “any such effect on Antimony.”19 Lister then promised “another time” to discuss the spirit of the cawk that resulted from distillation, but he never did

13

Principe, “Chemical Translation,” . Principe, “Chemical Translation,” . 15 Lister, “Some Observations and Experiments,” . 16 Lister, “Some Observations and Experiments,” . 17 Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. 18 Barite today is used as a flux, oxidizer, and decolorizer in glass-making, as well as a pigment brightener and filler. 19 Lister, “Some Observations and Experiments,” . 14

a speculum of chemical practice



manage to publish any more about the topic, perhaps wanting to keep all details about it to himself. From his brief account and his chemical manuscripts, we can deduce from the literature what was happening chemically.20 Lister’s description of the cawk-stone, which he termed a “very odd mineral,” as ponderous, white, with a smooth shining grain is that of barite (barium sulfate), otherwise termed by the miners “heavy spar.”21 In his unpublished manuscript dedicated to minerals or “fossils” in Northern England, Lister listed a series of experiments with the cawk, noting it was “very full of Sulfur,” so much so when he calcined it in his home laboratory in York, it “smelt soe strongly sulfureous, that the fume of the Furnace infected all the neighbourhood.”22 He noted that a lixivium of the cawk also tinged silver yellow, indicating its sulfurous content.23 In his Medicinal Experiments, Robert Boyle mentioned a “Tegument” of the Veins of Lead, “which the Diggers name Cawk, which is white and opacous,” so the term was a commonly known one, and later mineral guides clearly identify Derbyshire cawk as barite.24 When barium sulfate was added to the antimony and the mixture was heated in the furnace, the resultant melt would contain some sulfides and sulfates.25 Just as in Valentine’s case of impure stibnite promoting vitrification, Lister’s more complex melt would more easily form a stable glass, and lead oxide impurities in the barium sulfate which originated from lead mines would also be a definite help in this regard.26 Heaton and Moore () observed the glass of antimony was more stable in the presence of lead oxide.27 As in Principe’s description of Valentine’s crucibles, the crucibles that Lister used in his work would probably be fire clay or sillimanite (AlSiO), and 20 The author is currently working to reconstruct the experiment in the laboratory with Dr Andrea Sella of the Chemistry Department at University College, London. 21 Brobst, “Barium and Strontium,” . 22 Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. 23 Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. 24 Boyle, Medicinal experiments, . Adam, Gem, – mentions its use of cawk or barite as a pigment, and Mawe’s Mineralogy, – gives a rather fuller account of cawk. Thanks to Monica Price, Assistant Curator of Minerals, Natural History Museum, Oxford, who confirmed the use of the term Derbyshire cawk for barite and alerted me to these sources. 25 Dr David Martlew formerly of Pilkington Glass and presently chair of the History of Glass committee of the Society for Glass Technology, email message to author,  June . 26 Dr David Martlew, email message to author,  June . 27 Heaton and Moore, “A study of glasses,” –.



chapter ten

during melting the pot would be likely to suffer attack. Alumina would find its way into the melt by dissolution of the pot material, and again this would help to stabilize the glass and make the production of the glass easier.28 . Antimony, the Royal Society, and Newton’s Mirrors Birch’s History of the Royal Society noted that after Lister’s paper was read, it was ordered to be entered into the Letter Book and published in the Transactions, and on  January /, the Society requested: observing the sample, you were pleas’d to transmit, to be of an extraordinary polish, which some of the company thought might be good use for perspectives, especially of such are of Mr Newtons invention, they would desire you, to oblige them further with sending some more of that Cawk, by which that substance is made, that so they may give order to some of their body to prepare some quantity of it for further tryall.29

His experimental claims verified, Lister subsequently promised that he would soon furnish the Royal Society “with a sufficient quantetie of Cawk, I daily expecting a parcel from the Mines.”30 He reported that: [the] vitrum was here judged to serve well the businesse of perspective, & espeacially Concave speculums of which we cast some. There is some difficulty in the exceeding tendernesse of the mettal, but we have in part corrected that; the mould we use to cast them on, is a Christal-glasse.31

In the next month, Lister then informed the Society that he sent a “bagg of Cawk, according to your desires”, and noted that contaminating his metal with any others would make it “loose its lustre & grain.”32 The cawk was indeed produced at the Society’s meeting on  February “for the vitrifying the whole body of antimony.”33 This exchange of letters and samples was an example of “epistolatory calibration,” a term coined by Adam Moseley in his study of the role

28

Thanks to Dr David Martlew for making this point. Birch, History : , . Bodleian MS Lister , ff. –, and Hall and Hall, eds, Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, : –. 30 MS L/, Royal Society Library, London, and Hall and Hall, eds, The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, : –. 31 MS L/. 32 Royal Society Library, MS L/, and Hall and Hall, eds, The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, : –, on . 33 Birch, History of the Royal Society, : . 29

a speculum of chemical practice



of Tycho Brahe’s correspondence in the development of early modern astronomy. Moseley describes how epistolary exchange led to a finetuning or calibration of astronomical instruments as well as increased accuracy in the plotting of planetary and stellar positions.34 Rather than fine-tuning instruments or locating stars, however, Lister and his correspondents were calibrating procedures for casting specula. We do not know with whom Lister was casting mirrors, but it could have been several of the members of the York Virtuosi proficient in mineralogy or chemistry, a clear nexus of expertise outside the Royal Society. Henry Gyles had discussed enamel-making with Lister. Francis Place created his own pottery works and had familial connections to mining.35 The most likely candidate, however, was Francis Jessop. Not only did he write to Lister about mine damps, but also he was a keen chemist who in  reported to the Royal Society some experiments he was making with Samuel and John Fisher, two Sheffield physicians, in distilling formic acid from ants.36 In a  letter to Lister, he wrote of the spontaneous growth of pebbles and spars in lead ore and the cawk, stating “this commonly fills the interstices of the rocks betwixt which the ore lyes, & by its vicinity to the ore, may perhaps be impregnated with some of those [qualities] that you mention.”37 Jessop was also apparently casting specula himself, as in the late summer of , Lister mentioned in a letter to the Royal Society that: I shall transcribe for you a letter I had very lately from Mr. Jessop, who has not writt to me this  months before, by reason of some domestic affliction. In the first place (says he) I give . . . many thanks for the offer of a better receipt for the mixture of Metalls for speculums, but I shall have noe occasion to trespass upon his civilitie, for I find my workmen here able to doe soe little, that the receipt he favoured me with already is much to good for them. However if he thinkes I can serve him any way in these parts I . . . will endeavour to give him the best satisfaction I can.38

Jessop and Lister were probably casting specula in response to the work of Newton, the reports of whose telescope were causing a

34

Moseley, Bearing, . Place made a form of marbled and salt-glazed agate stoneware in the s in Dinsdale, of which four samples survive. See Tyler, Francis Place, –. 36 Armytage, “Francis Jessop,” . 37 Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. 38 MS L/, Royal Society Library, London, and Hall and Hall, eds, The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, : . The Royal Society noted the letter was received on  September . 35



chapter ten

sensation both within the Royal Society and without, as news spread to Cassini, Auzout, and Denis in Paris, Hevelius in Danzig, and via the Philosophical Transactions to the York virtuosi.39 Since  when he made a miniature reflecting telescope, Newton had been experimenting with making mirrors for his instruments, presenting the second telescope to the Royal Society for its inspection in December . Newton commented several years later that the speculum was “two inches broad” and about one-third of an inch thick, and he ground the mirrors to their spherically concave profile and polished them with the assistance of John Wickins, his “chamber fellow” at Trinity College, Cambridge.40 In , Newton had asked Henry Oldenburg, secretary of the Royal Society, for samples of the “steely matter” composing the speculum of a four-foot telescope which the lens-grinder Christopher Cock had in hand, having recently given his first paper on his own telescope, which utilized a “concave reflecting glass”, a mirror made with copper covered with speculum metal—a mixture of tin, copper, and silver.41 As the silver tended to cause bubbles within the casting, leading to aberrations in the mirror, Newton performed a good number of experiments to perfect the speculum’s reflective surface by substituting arsenic for the silver. Although arsenic makes the “polished surface a little less reflective than some other alloys, the resultant finish is more stable.”42 In the process, he discovered the proportions for a good metal alloy, which was used for the next two hundred years: arsenic copper tin

 oz  oz  oz43

Despite making a good alloy, metal mirrors were notorious for tarnishing in England’s damp climate, and highly porous, and this porosity was accentuated from re-polishing with fine sand and putty to renew their reflectivity. In , Newton had indicated to Oldenburg the necessity of getting a metal without pores visible in the microscope,

39 Westfall, Never at Rest, . For more on the reception of Newton’s instrument, see Dupré, “Newton’s Telescope in Print,” –. 40 Hall and Simpson, “Account of the Newton Telescope,” . 41 Newton, The Correspondence, : ; Newton, “An Accompt,” –. For more on Christopher Cock, see Simpson, “Richard Reeve,” –. 42 Hall and Simpson, “Account of the Newton Telescope,” . 43 Allen, “Problems,” .

a speculum of chemical practice



and rubbing the specula with gentle leather, “but not with putty or anything that will wear out the metal.”44 Because his speculum tended to tarnish and weaken the reflection by the mirror, “the transmission efficiency of the mirror Newton used was only about  per cent.”45 Better alloys would increase telescopic efficiency and magnification, so Lister’s “quick and speedy” means of attaining glass of antimony would have been of interest to Newton. When Newton measured the refractive indices of materials, eventually compiling them into a table for his Opticks, he realized that besides diamonds, glass of antimony had the highest index of all, which also may have sparked his interest in the material.46 Newton had also mentioned to Oldenburg in a letter of  January / that when making his mirrors, “what the stellate Regulus of Mars (which I have sometimes used) or other such like substance will doe, deserves particular examination.”47 The stellate Regulus of Mars is metallic antimony that has been reduced from stibnite with iron and niter (saltpeter) or tartar and allowed to cool slowly under a thick slag or scoria to give a crystalline star pattern.48 It was clear he was intrigued about antimony’s properties for specula in the early s. As Lister’s paper about the cawk appeared in the same  edition of the Philosophical Transactions as the Jesuit Francis Linus’s refutation of Newton’s theory of color, it is more than likely that Newton saw it. Newton enquired subsequently for samples of the cawk and the “prepared Antimony” through an intermediary at Cambridge. Johnston’s letter to Lister indicates his son Cudworth, who was a student of St John’s College, would serve in that capacity.49 Cudworth Johnston, being young, obedient, fairly innocent, and desirous of future 44

Newton, Correspondence, : . Nakajima, “Robert Hooke,” . 46 Thanks to Professor Michael Cable of the University of Sheffield for this material. See Newton, Opticks, book ,  for the table of refractive indices. Because the papers for his early work on thick plates have been lost, Westfall speculates that Newton’s research on thick plates in which he would have considered refractive indices of different materials may have coincided with his unsuccessful attempts to construct a reflecting telescope with a glass mirror silvered on the back side. This work took place in the early s, when Newton did much of his systematic alchemical work with antimony. The fact that this article has shown that Newton was experimenting in the s with antimony and mirrors may suggest that he was interested in its refractive index earlier. See Westfall, Never, , and Shapiro, Fits, . 47 Newton, Correspondence, : . 48 For more on the star regulus, see Newman, Gehennical, . 49 Linus, “Letter,” –. Newton responded to Linus with “An Answer,” . 45



chapter ten

patronage, would be an ideal carrier of this desired cawk for adding to antimony. Lister was not the only one desirous of preserving his chemical secrets. Newton was experimenting with antimony not only to make telescopic mirrors, but in chrysopoetic processes which he wished to keep confidential as he was in “fearful awe of the immense power of alchemy.”50 As Lister was a former fellow of St John’s and still kept in contact about elections of college officers, any packages that he sent by Cudworth would not arouse suspicion. In the mid s, Newton, a copious note-taker, compiled some manuscript notes about lead, and extracted the following passage about cawk from John Webster’s Metallographia perhaps in reaction to Lister’s work: The lead ores that are commonly gotten in England lie either dispersedly . . . In Darby Shire these commonly ly neare the Lead, Cauk, bastar Cauk, black Chert, Wheat stone, Sheafe. In these parts most usually in spar or in Cauk or in flints slates & other kinds of stones of divers colours, but most what of a grey or ash colour. The spar is somewhat transparent the Cauk not so but more ponderous and both help the fluxing of the ore.51

Webster’s passage thus confirmed Lister’s use of the barite as a flux and identified the mineral. Newton continued to experiment with combining the copper ore with arsenic and antimony, his manuscript laboratory notebook ( to ) including a section entitled “De metallo ad conficiendum speculum componendo & fundendo” [On compounding and casting a metal for making a mirror]. Newton noted that: copper can be purified before it is mixed with the tin, by melting and adding to every  ounces of molten copper, first, one ounce of arsenic and two or three ounces of crude antimony, then three or four ounces of salt of niter at a time, until all the salt has burnt away.52

In a  paper concerning the making of a helioscope to observe the sun, Robert Hooke had suggested that vitrum of antimony could serve

50

Principe, “Alchemies,” . Newton, “Notes on the mining, preparation and properties of ‘Saturn’ [i.e. lead],” The Chymistry of Isaac Newton. http://www.dlib.indiana.edu/collections/newton. Thanks to Professor Newman for providing me a copy of the transcription of this manuscript pre-publication. The passage Newton cites in his notes is from Webster, Metallographia, /: . 52 Newton, Correspondence, : . 51

a speculum of chemical practice



as a component for a telescopic mirror, “capable of receiving a very curious and exact polish, and qualified sufficiently to keep and retain it, without receiving injury from the Air, or ordinary wiping,” so perhaps that was another influence in Newton himself considering various forms of antimony, as components for his own mirrors.53 After all, Hooke and Newton had a notorious rivalry over the efficacy of Newton’s reflecting telescope, Hooke criticizing harshly its observational ability in favor of a refracting telescope with longer focal length.54 Newton’s laboratory notebook on casting mirrors subsequently noted that: A metal can be composed from Copper, thus purged with Arsenic, and . . . Tin as above: but the composition will be rendered more strongly reflecting and (so far as I conjecture) more resistant to corrosion if, instead of the Arsenic, first one part of Zinc or white Marchasite and one part of Regulus of Antimony . . . be added to twelve parts of liquefied Copper, then four parts of tin as above. The sign of the best composition is that the metal appear smooth like glass where it is broken.55

By November , Newton was still casting specula; he wrote to Hooke, “Mr. Cock has cast two pieces of Metal for me in order to a further attempt about the reflecting tube which I was the last year inclined to by the instigation of some of our Fellows.”56 Though we do not know who some “of our Fellows” were, Hooke had in fact created a committee in the Royal Society to alloy speculum metals with antimony, including lead and iron.57 On  March , Hooke recorded in the “Hooke folio”, which contained extracts from the Royal Society’s Journal Books and meeting minutes during his tenure as secretary, that: we made a Regulus of equall parts of Antimony & Iron . . . This part we melted with aequall parts of tin the graine of which was exceeding fine and close and smooth and whiter then Both metall. we polished it and found that It held a very good polish, which gave a strong reflection. Its

53

Hooke, Helioscopes, . See Nakajima, “Robert Hooke,” –. 55 Newton, “Portsmouth Collection Add. MS. ,” The Chymistry of Isaac Newton. http://www.dlib.indiana.edu/collections/newton. 56 Newton, Correspondence, : . As the footnotes to this transcription indicate, we do not know who these “fellows” in the Royal Society were that gave Newton impetus to cast specula. 57 Because various alloys of molten antimony expand as they solidify, they were commonly combined with molten lead to produce finely cast objects, such as lead printer’s type. 54



chapter ten weight in Air was  / in water  /. whence Its Specifique gravity is as /—we conceive it may be very use full for making specular glasses for Mr Newtons Expt.58

. Antimony, Cawk, and Newtonian Alchemy Newton’s interest in Lister’s process of vitrification may have extended beyond telescopic mirrors to a consideration of the cawk itself. In his article on cawk, Lister mentioned also another point that may have been intriguing to Newton, as apparently it was to Robert Boyle. Lister stated of the cawk “that it is a very odd Mineral, and I always looked upon it to be much akin to the white milky Mineral Juyces, I formerly sent you a Specimen of & this experiment is demonstrative that I was not mistaken, for the milkie juice of the lead mines vitrifyes the whole body Antimonie in like manner.”59 This white milky juice, which Lister had sent to the Royal Society the year before, was what he believed to be a sample of gur or bur, sometimes called the “butter of minerals”; Lister had received the specimen of gur from his friend Francis Jessop.60 Gur for many mineralogists and chemists seemed to be particularly connected to iron and lead mines, Lister’s colleague John Webster in his Metallographia claiming to have possessed several pounds of this metallic juice from lead mines, and chemist John Sherley (–), wrote in his Philosophical Essay (): about eighteen years past, having made a Visit to a Friend, who dwelt upon the Borders of Derby-shire; and who had at that time newly discover’d a Lead-Mine in his Ground: I remember, that being at the said Mine I saw upon the Work-man’s breaking a stone of Lead-Ore, a bright shineing Liquor spurt forth; which in a little while did coagulate, and become solid.61

The Royal Society informed Lister that “Mr Boyle . . . desires very much . . . a litle of that White liquor, resembling cream” and asked him to send a sample for him.62 Boyle indicated in his General heads for

58 Entry for  March , Hooke Folio, http://webapps.qmul.ac.uk/cell/Hooke/ Hooke.html. 59 Lister, “Some Observations and Experiments,” . 60 Hall and Hall, eds, The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, : . Lister sent the letter to Oldenburg on  January /. 61 Sherley, Philosophical, . 62 Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. The letter was sent on  January /.

a speculum of chemical practice



the natural history of a country that one of the questions he had about the natural history of an area was “Whether there be Mineral Juices that harden into Stones or Metals, upon the touch of the Air, called Gur; of this Helmont relates an Observation.”63 Newton also seemed intrigued with gur, formulating a theory of metallic generation that mentions the substance in another manuscript written in the first half of the s entitled Of Natures obvious laws & processes in vegetation.64 As Newman indicates, Newton’s manuscript contained his “belief that the metals must undergo a continual process of generation that offsets their corruption at the hands of subterranean corrosive liquors and vapors.”65 Newton begins with the observation that metals are dissolved by acidic liquors, whereupon they become “vitriols” (corresponding to modern sulfates) or salts, or they could make gur or “stony juices” that created mineral substances like coral or petrified wood. Newman has noted that Newton’s theory of metallogenesis was influenced by the Arca arcani of the chemist, Johann Grasseus.66 After discussing the process of metallic generation that inspired Newton’s work, Grasseus included a passage about gur from the author Johann Mathesius, a sixteenth-century German writer on mineralogy. The passage stated: The Matter of Metals before it be Coagulated into a Metalline form, is like Butter made of the Cream of Milk, which may be clam’d, or spread as Butter, which he [he meaneth Mathesius] calleth Gur, which I also [saith the Author] have found in the Mines, where Nature hath produced Lead.67

If Lister’s cawk was indeed akin to gur found in lead mines, Newton may have speculated that the cawk contained within it a transformative element important to metallogenesis. Grasseus also placed particular emphasis on the “imitation of nature’s generative methods within the earth and on the necessity of using unrefined metallic ores

63 Boyle, General Heads, . Boyle first published his “General Heads for a Natural History of a Country, Great or Small,” in Philosophical Transactions  (–), –. 64 Newton, “Of Natures obvious laws,” The Chymistry of Isaac Newton. http://www .dlib.indiana.edu/collections/newton. See also Newman, “Newton’s Theory,” –. 65 Newman, “Introduction” in “Of Natures obvious laws.” 66 Newman, “Introduction” in “Of Natures obvious laws.”; Newman, “Newton’s Theory,” . 67 Sherley, Philosophical, .



chapter ten

in the alchemical process.68 Unlike his other contemporaries interested in alchemy who worked with refined metals, Newton, like Grasseus, showed an abiding interest in working with unrefined ores of metals.69 Lister’s cawk was apparently one of these ores.70 Lister’s correspondence network resulted in his performing experiments in York that inspired chymical work by more exalted peers in Oxford or in London. This state of affairs is not surprising. Goldgar has demonstrated that in the early modern period, a reputation for virtue was accumulated through one’s status as a man of learning, and the farther afield one was known, the greater one’s personal credit at home.71 Although some traveled distances to establish their reputations in the “commerce” of scholarship where exchange of information was paramount, others, like Lister, wrote many letters. . The Move to London Lister’s successful establishment as a respected doctor and naturalist in York and beyond was satisfying, but exhausting. Controversies over priority of discovery, private quarrels, an ever-growing family, and the death of his parents and friend Willoughby made these challenging years. His casebooks indicated that his practice was spread over a large area of central and eastern Yorkshire, from Whitby to Doncaster and Pocklington, so he was traveling a good deal.72 There was also stress at home. In , he and Hannah lost their second son Michael, and two years later, in the preface to the Historiae Animalium, he mentioned he was in constant ill health.73 Throughout his life, Lister suffered from the stone and from asthma that worsened gradually as he aged, and he made several journeys to convalesce. In July , he was granted a passport to travel to France with Francis Place, one of his scientific illustrators, his younger sister Jane, now Mrs Jane Allington, and Thomas Kirke (–), a natural historian, fellow of the Royal Society, and one of his frequent cor-

68

Grasseus, Arca, : –. See Newman, “Newton’s Theory,” . Newman, “Newton’s Theory,” . 70 Newman, “Newton’s Theory,” . 71 Goldgar, Impolite, . 72 Carr, “The Biological Work,” . 73 Lister, “Preface,” Historiae Animalium, . “As I see, health will not be allowed to me at any time.” [Nec per valetudinem, ut video, mihi unquam libebit.] 69

a speculum of chemical practice



respondents. The warmer climate and sunshine seemed to improve Lister’s health and revisiting his old student haunts improved his mood; visiting with his lively sister was also a delight. In July  Lister made another trip, this time to Bath to convalesce, pleading with his wife Hannah, his “poor Dear Hart” to “be merry, make mad of thy self & barnes [children],” promising that he should “like home twice as well at my returne, and I hope I shall be more healthfull for it. He closed his letter by writing, “I prithee again be merry . . . for I doe it to gain my health and ease my spirits, over tired with my calling and thoughts . . .”74 Along the way to Bath, he stayed with his brother Matthew in London, the extension of his time away apparently causing some marital discord. Lister wrote to Hannah, “My dear I admire you can be soe hard harted as not have given me a line all this time. This is my fourth letter. And the nd week of my journey.”75 Hannah may have been hard-hearted because her husband was talking to his brother about making a permanent move to the capital, and she may have worried about leaving everything familiar behind. It seems that for a number of years Lister had resolved to leave his over-busy medical practice in York for London, where the fees were higher and the workload potentially less. He may have reasoned also that he would be nearer to the Royal Society. In , his old friend from St John’s, Robert Grove (c.–), now the rector of St Andrew Undershaft in London, wrote in the midst of a letter seeking medical advice about a cure for scrofula: I hope you will continue your purpose of settling in London, I am confident you canot want incouragement here when you shall come to bee known. If I can bee anyway serviceable to you, in the choice of the place of your abode, or anything else, you shall have my most hearty assistance . . . . I hope you will settle somewhere in these partes of the citty; your neighborhood would make it a great deal more pleasant than it is.76

Lister, however, needed more than his friend’s help to make his move a success. The increasing influence of consumer culture in the lateseventeenth and early eighteenth centuries meant that London was a competitive medical market in which physicians, surgeons, apothecaries, astrologers, and purveyors of patent medicines contended for

74 75 76

Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. Bodleian MS Lister , f. r.



chapter ten

business. Lister realized that the publication of his De Fontibus in  might help attract wealthy clients, and that his use of the language of the new science was a commercially and professionally effective tool. Richard Mead, Newton’s physician, even went so far to advise a young colleague: Should you have an itching to make your name known by writing a book on physic, yet so customary, I will advise you to choose the subject by which you think you will get most money, or that will bring you the most general business . . . . The method of writing, if in your frontispiece you address not your book to some great man, is to club with some other physicians; and thus by way of letters to commend each other’s good practice and to support and make each other favour. But above all things, take particular care, let the subject be what it will, that the words be well chosen, so to make up an elegant and fervid speech; since you have ten to one that mind the language more than the ideas.77

While Lister was not that cynical, his “elegant speech” legitimately containing novel ideas, he did go to the trouble to present the book to a number of notables in London, including Robert Boyle. Lister’s friend and fellow physician Tancred Robinson, upon receiving a copy, informed him: This comes to return you my hearty thanks for the kindness, and honour of your letter, and book, and alsoe Mr Boyle’s, who was wonderfully pleas’d with your present, and your notions about salts. hee is extremely concern’d for his misfortune of missing you at London, and is very angry with his servants for their neglect, hee having always express’d a particular esteem for you, and if your modesty would not chide mee, I could tell you of a comparison he made this day between Dr Lister, Redi, and Malpighi, in a company of men very considerable for quality, and real worth; hee tells me since you have now given him an opportunity, he will bee sure to improve it to his own advantage in sending now and then some Quaeries to you. The faculties of physick and philosophy doe begin to murmur of you, saying that you Tantalize them, for they know not how to purchase any of your books; I am very confident that if you had printed  of them, they would have presently gone off, severall great Booksellers complaining that they want them both for their forreign, and domestick customers.78

77 78

Nichols, Literary, : . Bodleian MS Lister , f. r.

a speculum of chemical practice



Dr Robert Plot also praised De Fontibus, calling it an “esteemed present,” and his words carried weight.79 He was the curator at the Ashmolean Museum, a fellow collector of curiosities and natural historian, and, as mentioned, the Royal Society’s second secretary from  November  until  November . During the same period, he also edited the Philosophical Transactions, thus reviving this journal after four years of intermittent publication. Plot passed along news of Lister’s book to the Society, and Francis Aston, the secretary of the Royal Society, subsequently noted in a letter to Lister, “Your Book de aquis medicalis etc according to a laudable custome of the Society was put into the hands of a learned & Ingenious member be read out and give an account of it, which he had done with great . . . encomiums of the many new discoverys you have made.”80 Plot himself was interested in mineral springs and shortly afterwards published De origine fontium (); Plot’s text was on the origins of springs and rivers including summaries of the work of other authors.81 In , Lister also collected several of his past contributions to the Philosophical Transactions, compiling them into his Letters and divers other Mixt Discourses in Natural Philosophy. Either in gratitude or in the hope of further patronage, he dedicated his work to “the most noble and truly vertuous Robert Boile, Esq.”82 A later version published that same year added  plates of his studies on conch shells. To drive the point home of his twin commitment to natural philosophy and medicine, the frontispiece contained the following quote from the Greek Celsus, “Although the contemplation of natural history [the things of nature] does not create the doctor, Medicine depends on the return to their study.”83 Plot requested Lister send him a dozen copies for the Royal Society and members of the Oxford colleges, as well as some iron ore samples.84

79

Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. 81 Gunther, Early, : –. 82 The text is in two editions. The first edition is in the Huntington Library, in San Marino California. It does not appear in Fulton’s Bibliography of the Honorable Robert Boyle. The second edition was reissued in the same year with reset title page, the addition of  shell plates, and lacks the dedication to Robert Boyle. 83 The Latin phrase is Rerum naturae contemplatio, quamvis non faciat medicum, aptiorem tamen Medicinae reddit. 84 Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. 80



chapter ten

Despite the esteem Lister had among his colleagues and his medical and scientific studies, he still faced a stumbling block to his ambitions—he lacked a recognized doctoral degree in medicine. Though his studies at Montpellier qualified him to practice in York, his lack of an M.D. meant he did not have formal licensure to practice in London, a prerequisite to becoming a member of the College of Royal Physicians and thus establishing a lucrative practice among the great and good. Apparently, Lister approached the College in  or  concerning his qualifications. A later publication about a candidate for the College by John Badger revealed indirectly what the College required Lister to accomplish in his quest for a medical degree. Badger was a practicing pharmacist with a bachelor’s degree in medicine, and he was finishing his doctorate at Cambridge. When Badger applied to the College for licensure, he was: by then examined Three several times in Latine, according to the Form of the Statues in that Case provided; and was approved by them, and had leave given by the President and Censors, after Examination to visit the Fellows, and did accordingly visit all the Fellows, in order to be admitted Licentiate, and at the same time was requested and desired by them, in the behalf of the whole Colledge; and withal complemented, how extreamly I should oblidge and highly honour that Society, if I would be pleased to suspend my Admission of Licentiate . . . till such time as I had . . . compleated my Degree . . . of Doctor in the University; and that then, without any farther trouble of visiting the Fellows or other Examinations, and for the very same Fees . . . I might be admitted Candidate, the more honourable station in their Society, and which I better deserved, and they did then propose to me Doctor Lister’s Case, as a President [sic] for the same thing.85

Lister’s application for licensure to the College was apparently withheld until he too completed a doctoral degree, whereupon he would be admitted as a Candidate for membership. With the attendant responsibilities of a family and his professional experience, his best hopes were to be found in gaining an honorary M.D. He set his sights on Oxford with that goal in mind, in the s strategically making a number of notable donations to the early Ashmolean Museum. When he relocated to London, Lister would become one of the most significant benefactors for England’s first museum of natural history, an officer in the Royal Society, and a member of the Royal College of

85

Badger, Case, –.

a speculum of chemical practice



Physicians. He would also resume his frequent publication program in the Philosophical Transactions, combining his awareness of the need of visual presentation in natural history with his keen empiricism to formulate new means of modeling scientific data. In the meanwhile, he had the mundane logistics of the move to consider. Patients in York continued to besiege him for treatment. Miles Gale, the rector of Keighley and a peripheral member of the York Virtuosi, hoped to catch Lister on his way back from London, “hearing of your beeing at Carleton I sent a Messinger, but you were gone that Morning; I thanck you for the Stomach electuary.”86 Gale had been taking hoglice and millipedes that caused his stomach pain to cease; in Culpepper’s Herbal these insects were a traditional treatment for jaundice and they were also prescribed for scrofulous diseases and obstructions of the digestive organs.87 The London College of Physicians directed that the “creatures should be prepared by suspending them in a thin canvas bag placed within a covered vessel over the steam of hot spirit or wine, so that being killed by the spirit they might become friable,” but Gale took them live.88 There was a precedent, as hoglice were put down the throats of cows to promote the restoration of their cud, hence their name of “cud-worm.”89 As Lister was interested in the ability of insects to cure disease, devoting chapter eight in his Historiae Animalium to “medicaments from spiders” (used mostly to promote or staunch blood flow, as the venom is an anticoagulant), it was not surprising he kept Gale’s letter. By August , Lister had returned to York, and with a reluctant Hannah, two teenagers and his growing family now consisting of Susanna, Anna, Frances, Dorothy, Alexander, and Barbara, busily set about organizing his belongings for shipment to London in a vessel called the “Alice Bacon.”90 After a protracted series of negotiations on the rate, he let out his house as well as his stables “with room for three horses” in York to a Mr Abraham Danby.91 Lister recorded the details of his move in the pages of his  casebook, scribbling on the back cover the London address of his old Cambridge friend Thomas Briggs

86 87 88 89 90 91

Bodleian MS Lister , f. . Bodleian MS Lister , f. . Webb and Sillem, Woodlice, ; Bodleian MS Lister , f. . Webb and Sillem, Woodlice, . The packing lists can be found in his casebook for , Bodleian MS Lister . Bodleian MS Lister , f. r.



chapter ten

“in Southampton street next the Square Bloomsbury,” and annotating a detailed packing list for his substantive household.92 (Briggs would the next year receive the vicarage of Thorpe Arnold, and it seems likely Lister may have had a role in his election, as his father was such a generous benefactor to the church.)93 Alderman Tompsons the Goldsmith was to receive for safekeeping, “these things in plate [silver]”:  Salvers  Can  cupps, one having a cover, & the other none  sugar caster  pepper caster  large spoons  little sweet meat spoons  salts  tumblers  Ladle  dozen buttons a broaken spoon94

This was in addition to, among other things, three dozen chairs, a “long couch wth cover,” a “criket stool,” (footstool), numerous feather beds, and an easel, “scriven,” and “rolling presse” likely for illustrating and publishing his books. Another seven packing crates were devoted to books organized by subject, the majority unsurprisingly in natural philosophy, natural history, and medicine, with “philology and classics” and chemistry not far behind. Though Lister had donated a good number of his books to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford in preparation for his move to London, he still had approximately  volumes in his personal library—a substantive number for a physician,

92 Bodleian MS Lister . In a series of letters from – in Bodleian MS Lister , f. –, Briggs reminded Lister about a debt that he owed him—one bond for  shillings and the other for £.; Briggs was involved in a legal tangle involving his wife’s estates and so needed the money, remarking “I have not wasted my small fortune I hope by marrying but I have now more occuasion for money than before & does therefore entreate you to excuse the remembrance as to that particular.” Lister may have traveled to see him to clear the debt and make amends. 93 Thomas Briggs M.A. is listed as vicar of St Mary’s Church Thorpe Arnold from  until , and he installed a schoolmaster at the church in  who taught wealthy pupils enough Latin in preparation to send them to grammar school. See Banks, Thorpe Arnold. 94 Bodleian MS Lister , f, r. Bodleian MS Lister , ff. – lists the  books that he donated to Oxford for “Lister’s study” in the Ashmolean. See Chapter Eleven for a discussion of Lister’s benefactions.

a speculum of chemical practice



even a wealthy one.95 The library of Thomas Kincaid, a seventeenthcentury Scottish surgeon who was a bit further down the social scale, consisted of  books; and John Flamsteed, the Astronomer Royale between  and , although self-made without Lister’s monetary resources and bibliophilia, owned  books.96 Lister also sold off his weaponry and armor inherited from his father—a “crosse bow & arrow,” musket, and bandoliers—leaving his fusil and sword in York with the glass painter Henry Gyles.97 It was indeed in using his pen, not his sword, that he rose to the top ranks of London medical and scientific society.

95 Bodleian MS Lister . Lister had  books in natural history, botany, chemistry natural philosophy, as well as  in physic.  were in philology and classics, with  books devoted to mathematics,  to divinity, and the rest were legal books, maps, papers, and unspecified works in French, Spanish, and Italian. Carr also noted this. See Carr, “The Biological Work,” . 96 Stott, “Library of Kincaid,” ; Forbes, “Library of Flamsteed,” –. 97 After he had “lain two or three nights,” in his new house in the “old palace yard in Westminster,” Lister wrote Gyles to ask him to send some other items that he left with him, including the “jack in the kitchen,” the “long red chair,” and the “Hen coope.” See BL MS Additional , f. .

PART THREE

AT THE WEB’S CENTER: LISTER IN LONDON, THE ROYAL SOCIETY, AND THE PRODUCTION OF MASTERWORKS: –

CHAPTER ELEVEN

LISTER’S LONDON BEGINNINGS: VIRTUOSO, ANTIQUARIAN, AND BENEFACTOR . Introduction In September , Lister and his family arrived at their new townhouse in London in Old Palace Yard, Westminster, where their neighbor was Lord William Paget (–).1 Old Palace Yard was at the southern end of Westminster Hall and occupied the space between the Houses of Parliament and the Abbey. The Old Palace Yard was anciently bounded on the north by the south gate in St. Margaret’s Lane; on the west by the Abbey; on the east by some of the inferior offices of the Palace, with a little court, in which . . . was the king’s fishmonger’s house; and on the south by a gateway at the north end of the present Abingdon Street, then called Lindsay Lane (Figure ).2

Old Palace Yard was a public space of civic authority, the center of the London universe. It was the execution site for Sir Walter Raleigh and for Guy Fawkes and his fellow conspirators in the Gunpowder Plot, complete with a permanent pillory, and it was where the “hand of the common hangman” burned seditious books by Parliamentary order.3 Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory were even within the Yard’s confines. On the north end of Lindsay Lane, upon the site of the Committee-rooms of the House of Commons, was a tavern called “Heaven,” and, standing next to it, another pub called “Hell,” frequented by lawyer’s clerks.4 Hell had been an ancient debtor’s prison as was an area in the yard called “Purgatory,” where the ducking stools for scolds were kept.5 The chair was fastened to an iron pivot to the end of a long pole, the scold dunked in the Thames.

1 Robert Plot’s letter to Martin Lister is addressed to “his house in the Old Palace Yard next doore to ye Lord Paget, Westminster.” See Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. 2 Walford, London, : . 3 Walford, London, : . 4 Timbs, Club, : –. 5 Walford, London, : .



chapter eleven

Fig.  Thomas Malton, Junior (–), Old Palace Yard, Westminster. Courtesy of The Palace of Westminster Collection.

The Old Palace Yard was thus a busy, bustling place. The minutes of the House of Lords recorded in  that: there was such an Interruption, by Hackney Coaches, Carts, and Drays, in King’s-Street, and the Passages in The Old Palace Yard, in Westminster, that the Lords and others are frequently hindered from coming to this House, to the great Inconveniency of the Members of both Houses that coaches were forbidden there in the afternoons Parliament sat.6

The legislation was reiterated each year through the first quarter of the eighteenth century, which probably meant it was being generally ignored. Contemporary engravings of the eastern side of the Yard show that the gardens of Lister’s house and the other fine residences were surrounded by high walls to keep out the noise, but it still would

6

“House of Lords Journal,” : .

lister’s london beginnings



have been a far cry from his former home on Lendall Street in York.7 On the other hand the formal gardens on College Street and St James’s Park were nearby, and the location was excellent for building a clientele among the elite of London. Lister quickly entered those elite circles. The antiquarian Elias Ashmole recorded that on  September , after taking a sweat and leeches, “all wrought very well,” he “first saw Dr Lister, at my Lord Archbishop of Canterbury’s at Dinner.”8 He must have found Lister’s company amenable, as, the following evening, Lister dined with him; the other guests were the secretary of the Prince Elector of the Rhine and a nobleman from Nuremburg. Ashmole was also particularly happy to see Lister as he was in the process of making a number of donations of Roman artifacts to the Ashmolean Museum, becoming one of its most significant benefactors. His generosity was not completely altruistic, as he hoped for an honorary medical degree from Oxford in exchange so he could practice in London. Despite his rather mercenary motivations, Lister as an antiquarian did have a genuine interest in Roman artifacts. He applied his skills in the detailed observation and taxonomic cataloging of specimens in natural history to his studies of antiquities, setting a new tone in what we could recognize today as archaeology. This chapter will show that his proposal for the first stratigraphic map was inspired by his interest in mineralogy and his knowledge of different clay types acquired when excavating archaeological findings. In November  when Lister was elected to the Council of the Royal Society, his research became a central concern of their experimental program due to a combination of its novelty and timeliness. Of particular interest to the Society were Lister’s interests in scientific illustration not only of living specimens, but also his innovative graphical interfaces to model scientific data—namely the histogram. When early modern observations were displayed graphically, they were often in the form of tables and lists inspired by Ramus, or chronologies such as astronomical observations in almanacs. In the seventeenth century, however, the fear of epidemics as well as the Hippocratic revival which linked mortality to the environment inspired physicians to study 7

See Colvin, “Views,” –. Ashmole, Memoirs, . Carr also notes these dinner engagements. Carr, “The Biological Work,” . 8



chapter eleven

the effects of weather on health.9 Their studies of medical meteorology meant that they required new means of analyzing quantitative information. Lister’s histogram was received very positively, and it was used with great enthusiasm by a variety of scientific societies, adopted for its pioneering representation of scientific data.10 The significance of Lister’s histogram has probably been relatively neglected because many historians of early modern science display an intellectual bias towards analysis of verbal data—considering “the text.”11 The prolix literary style of natural philosophers like Robert Boyle to communicate observations, and John Wilkins’s and other natural philosophers’ efforts to create a “philosophical language” that would perfectly represent reality and avoid the Baconian idols of false description and bias, have been analyzed extensively.12 Even when Shapin and Schaffer discussed Boyle’s illustrations of his air pump, other than some basic iconographic analysis, the illustrations were in the context of the instruments’ role in “virtual witnessing,” the literary recreation of experiment.13 As a result, there has been little analysis of the use of scientific (as opposed to navigational) cartography or graphs in the early modern period. Just like his proposed stratigraphic map, this chapter will show that Lister’s histogram marked the conceptual beginnings of the plotting of data points with the goal of investigating significant patterns in natural phenomena. . Medical Meteorology and the Histogram The winter of – was one of the coldest on record, the diarist John Evelyn recording that the ice split trees “as if lighteningstrock,” the icy seas “locked up” stopping maritime travel, the fumes

9

Rusnock, Vital, . For more on medical meteorology, see Hannaway, “Environment and Miasmata,” : –. For the Hippocratic revival in this period, see Riley, Campaign. 10 Wainer and Velleman, “Statistical Graphs,” . 11 As this book was going to press, Brant Vogel presented a paper entitled “Notation in Action: The Transmission of Martin Lister’s Barometric Graph through the London-Oxford-Dublin Network,” Circulating Ideas in Seventeenth-Century Europe: Networks, Knowledge, and Forms Conference, The Royal Society, London,  July . At last report, his work will be published in the  edition of Osiris. 12 See for instance, Principe, “Virtuous Romance,” –. The best recent study of the artificial language movement is Lewis, Language. 13 Shapin and Schaffer, Leviathan, chapter two, passim.

lister’s london beginnings



from citizens burning sea-coal to keep warm, so thick “that hardly could one see crosse the streete, and this filling the lungs with its grosse particles exceedingly obstructed the breast, so as one could scarce breathe.”14 The frost was a low point in the “Little Ice Age,” a period of low temperatures and few solar flares that were pronounced between the mid-sixteenth and the late-nineteenth centuries, with the period between  and  bringing exceptionally cold weather to Europe.15 By the end of January, despite no doubt wheezing asthmatically from the pollution, Lister would have seen the icy expanses of the Thames filling with merchants who were setting up a double row of booths on the river ice for a frost fair; the first of these had been held in  whenever it was cold enough and the ice thick enough. London tradesmen, deprived of their usual living by the severe weather, took advantage of the relaxation of normal trading regulations and social norms on the icy expanse to provide a spectacle. Their booths ran from Temple Stairs along to the south bank, and on the surrounding ice was fox-hunting, football, bear baiting, ox-roasting, and “the first Tavern built in Freezeland street” with an itinerant seller offering hot gingerbread (Figure ).16 Lister could have bought a souvenir miniature ale mug engraved inscribed on its metal mount with the words “Bought on the Thames ice Janu: the  /.”17 An enterprising printer with the surname of Croom also sold commemorative cards from the fair for six pence which included the customer’s name, the date, and the fact that the card was printed on the Thames. Coaches plied from near Lister’s home in Westminster to the Temple and from: several other staires too and froo, as in the streetes; also on sleds, sliding with skeetes [skates]; There was likewise Bull baiting, Horse and Coach races, Pupet-plays and interludes, Cookes and Tipling and lewder places; so that it seem’d to be a bacchanalia, Triumph or Carnoval on Water.18

Moralists took the opportunity to warn unwary punters of the inherent dangers of the hustle and bustle of different classes and sexes mingling unchaperoned on the frozen Thames, one opining: 14

Evelyn, Diary, . Snider, “Hard Frost, ,” . 16 Anonymous, Wonder. 17 Frost Fair Mug, Objects in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. http:// www.vam.ac.uk/ collections/glass/stories/frost_fair/index.html. 18 Evelyn, Diary, . 15

Fig. 

Frost Fair Broadsheet. Shelfmark: C..f. (). © The British Library Board.

 chapter eleven

lister’s london beginnings



All you that are warm both in Body and Purse I give you this warning for better or worse, Be not there in the Moonshine, pray take my advice For slippery things have bin done on the ice.19

When the ice melted on  February , the fair vanished with the frost, but it remained a topic for continued intellectual discussion. Extremely cold weather had long prompted medical investigation into the connections between climatic conditions and human ailments. The Hippocratic emphasis on the non-naturals, elucidated in Airs, Waters, Places, investigated the effects of the environment on health; air, diet, sleep, exercise, evacuation, and passions of the soul were all believed to affect the bodily constitution and temperament. Hippocrates’s theories were revived in early modern England due to the work of physician Thomas Sydenham (–), the “English Hippocrates.” Sydenham instituted a new observational approach to study the correlations between disease and weather based on Baconian empirical induction and the experimental program of natural philosophers such as Robert Boyle.20 According to Sydenham, atmospheric changes and climatic change created specific epidemic “constitutions.”21 He thought that there were five phenomena worthy of sustained attention: “heat, cold, moisture, dryness, and emanations from the earth or from living bodies. The first four factors represented the atmospheric constitution, the fifth factor the environmental constitution”22 Plague was linked to the “environmental constitution,” and other diseases like fever to an “atmospheric constitution.”23 Lister broadly agreed with the precepts of neo-Hippocratic revival, having done his own investigations into the effects of the exceptionally cold weather on health. In March , he presented a preliminary paper to the Royal Society investigating the effects of the severe cold on health, particularly the beneficial effects that Hippocrates postulated.24 Previously, Lister had gratified Henry Oldenburg’s rather morbid interest in people who lived exceptionally long lives and obligingly sent him data about the several centenarians he encountered in his

19 20 21 22 23 24

Anonymous, Blanket-Fair, . Riley, Campaign, . Heymann, “Evolution of climate,” . Heymann, “Evolution of climate,” . Riley, Campaign, . Lister, “Concerning the rising and falling,” –.



chapter eleven

medical practice in Carleton in Craven and the Yorkshire Dales; many reportedly were still able to go fishing, spin cloth, and were of “perfect memory.”25 Some of their longevity, Lister speculated, was from their simple diet, “the Food of this mountainous Country is exceeding course, as salted and dried Beef, and sower-leavened Oat bread.”26 From his observations, Lister also speculated that “cold is healthful” due to the “vast number of Old men and women to be found upon the Mountains of England, comparatively to what are found elsewhere;” although cold weather promoted bodily hardiness, a “Green Christmas made a fat Church-yard.”27 Lister also looked at the evidence given by the barometer to support his arguments. Investigations of the atmosphere had long been an obsession in the Society, particularly after Robert Boyle’s discovery of the “spring in the air” or atmospheric pressure and his invention of instruments to measure it, such as the air pump; in  Boyle also coined the name “barometer,” meaning “weight measurer.” Though Boyle postulated that the “spring” of the air was the explanation for the barometric mercury’s movement in changing weather, there was still discussion in the Society about what propelled the quicksilver upwards or downwards. The Cambridge Platonist philosopher Henry More (–), on the other hand, proposed the air had a self-propelling conatus or hylarchic principle, something which Boyle suggested was more properly a theological hypothesis and outside the remit of experimental philosophy.28 A few years later Nehemiah Grew argued that barometric variations were not due “not so much with the meer Weight of the air,” but were chemical in nature, affected by the changing concentrations of saline bodies in the air which affected atmospheric pressure; higher concentrations of aerial nitrous salts in the air was thought to precipitate storms.29 Grew’s idea was not unusual, as we have seen previously that Lister himself thought sulfurous emanations from pyrites into the atmosphere caused thunderstorms. In his paper on weather and health, however, Lister did not look at the chemistry of the air so much as he did the chemistry and behavior

25

Lister, “A Letter written to Mr. H.O.,” –. Lister, “A Letter written to Mr. H.O.,” . 27 Lister, “Concerning the rising and falling,” . 28 Shapin and Schaffer, Leviathan, –. 29 Grew, Anatomy, . His larger discussion of salts and weather is analyzed in Roos, “Nehemiah Grew,” –. 26

lister’s london beginnings



of the mercury of the barometer. He observed that in violent storms, the quicksilver “fretted,” the “tip of the quicksilver” fluttering and breaking “like yeast in a vat, sticking in little atoms against the side of the glass.”30 As the quicksilver also had a concave meniscus, Lister concluded it was compressed: its parts contracted and closer put together [leading to its descent] which seems probably, for that for Example, the Quicksilver then omits, and squeezes out fresh particles of Air into the Tube, which increasing the Bulk of the Air, and consequently its Elasticity, the Quicksilver is necessarily depressed thereby.31

But when the mercury rose in frosty weather, it was in its “Natural State, free open and expanded like it self.” Many substances seemed to be in their “natural state” in the cold. Lister’s work with salts in spa waters demonstrated that when they were liquefied they would “coagulate or Cristallize, that is, will return to their own proper Natures . . . in Cold,” and he cited the Danish chemist Olaus Borrichius (–) who argued the natural state of Water is ice.32 Lister presented another paper in which he compared the ice crystals in vials of fresh and seawater placed outside in the frosty weather to understand their basic chemical nature.33 Using some analogical thinking, Lister then speculated that because liquids are “nearest their own natures, and have less Violence done to them, in very cold . . . seasons, the Humours of our Bodies, as liquids, in all probability must in some measure accordingly affected.”34 Thus in extreme cold bodily humors are less constricted, leading to a healthier bodily state. After all, Lister’s studies with insects had shown him the predominance of cold-blooded species, there being “in all probability . . . above a hundred Species of these creatures whose Vital juice is cold, to one [warm-blooded animal].”35 His experiments with hexapode worms (grubs produced from the eggs of beetles) and flies in hibernation demonstrated the preserving effects of the cold; insects “hard frozen in the winter” when “set before the fire . . . would nimbly creep about.”36

30 31 32 33 34 35 36

Birch, The History, : . Lister, “Concerning the rising and falling,” –. Lister, “Concerning the rising and falling,” –. Lister, “Some Experiments about Freezing,” –. Lister, “Concerning the rising and falling,” . Lister, “Concerning the rising and falling,” . Lister, “Concerning the rising and falling,” .



chapter eleven

Not everyone agreed with Lister. Cambridge physician John Peter in his Philosophical Account of this Hard Frost, published shortly after Lister’s paper, used iatrochemical theories and traditional beliefs about smallpox to counter his arguments. Peter posited that the minute particles of cold stopped up the pores in the skin, preventing transpiration. The inward ferments in the bodily humors therefore became more pronounced, evidenced by increased appetite. Too much cold also resulted in these ferments in the blood, particularly its sulfurous particles, becoming too strong, laying the foundation for fiery fevers and smallpox. Even when the cold abated, the influence of the frosty particles would continue, “imprinted on our Bodies such Morbifick predispositions (like seeds of various Diseases),” so that outbreaks of disease would ensue in the succeeding months.37 Peter’s views about smallpox were a chemical adaptation of Galenic opinion about the pathogenesis of fevers, generally thought to be blood inflammation, caused by putrefaction of certain substances such as residual menstrual blood or undigested food.38 Indeed, Lister admitted severe plague had broken out in London in  after severe weather, and that smallpox was raging after the hard frost of . But he dismissed these epidemics as “forreign Diseases,” and argued “we are not to Judg or Prognosticate of the Salubrity or Sickliness of a year,” from such “exotic” Plagues, but “by the raging of such that are Natural to the men of our Climate.”39 He had recently received detailed reports in the post from naturalist James Petiver (–) in Maryland about the decimation of Native Americans exposed to the disease by colonists. For Lister, their lack of immunity showed that the disease was not “communicated to individuals from some internal bodily cause or defect of character . . . but by some contagion externally applied.”40 Just as climate could affect the bodily constitution of a nation, it dictated which maladies a people would suffer; as foreign soldiers disrupted the natural function of a country, a foreign disease also did not play by Hippocratic rules. Lister’s interdisciplinary interests that led to his making daily readings of barometric pressure in the cold weather also led to his invention

37 38 39 40

Peter, Philosophical, . Lonie, “Fever pathology,” –. Lister, “Concerning the rising and falling,” . Lister, “Concerning the rising and falling,” .

lister’s london beginnings



of the histogram for easier interpretation of his data. In a November  meeting of the Royal Society, Lister: shewed the way, which he had made use of, of the keeping his account of the barometer, which was approved of as very easy and convenient. He shewed likewise the book containing three or four years account. Every table containing a month’s account was printed off upon a copper–plate. The upper line contained the inches from  to  inclusive, each inch divided by lines into ten parts. The lines by the sides shewed the days of the month to thirty one. The account was kept by drawing a red line at the hight of the quick silver such a time of the day. The account for the whole month was but one red line bending as the quick-silver rises or falls.41

Lister indicated that by consulting the red line, he could tell what weather had been at any time, and claimed that he was able to predict weather “four days before it happened.”42 Where did his idea originate? Lister did not possess a mathematical mind. He admitted later in his life that he found the equations of Newtonian physicians such as Archibald Pitcairne about bodily hydraulics incomprehensible and of little use to medicine.43 On the other hand, his work in taxonomy made him see the value in comparative analysis of discrete sets of observations. We have seen that he had a commitment to the visual presentation of specimens, employing artists and engravers to illustrate his books. Lister’s manuscript notes also show he collected intaglios for his own cabinet of curiosities and his attendance at meetings of the York virtuosi put him into contact with artisans and instrument makers, including those who constructed barometers.44 Lister was familiar also with the visual presentation of ideas, using diagrams to demonstrate hierarchies in animal taxonomy, and he was well aware of the Baconian injunction to create lists of data from which to draw inductive conclusions. Lister owned Sprat’s History of the Royal Society () which contained Robert Hooke’s seven-page proposal for making a history of the weather. Hooke advocated the use of a table to record observations “for explicitly

41

Birch, History, : . Birch, History, : . 43 See for instance his letter of  to Thomas Smith in Bodleian MS Smith , ff. –, and his undated letter to Edward Lhwyd, Bodleian MS Ashmole , f. . 44 See Bodleian MS Lister , ff. – for a list of French intaglios or “Taillesdouces” along with their prices and the total amount he purchased. 42



chapter eleven

methodological reasons that he framed in Baconian terms.”45 Lister had also been taking weather and barometric readings since the s when he explored temperature’s effects on the circulation in sap in trees, and so all the elements were in place that led to his invention of his weather graph. The topic of barometric readings was of great interest to many Royal Society fellows and continental scholars like Rasmus Bartholin (–) who made observations of the winds and the sun every day for .46 Not only did weather observations appeal to the Royal Society’s platform of Baconian induction and empiricism, but their fellows and colleagues also hoped it would lead to other discoveries in natural history. Hooke indicated barometric observations could determine the “putrefactions or other changes are produc’d in other bodies; as the sweating of Marble, the burning blew of a Candle, the blasting of Trees and corn.”47 As Golinski has indicated, “in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries . . . the weather came to be viewed less as a vehicle of providential intervention through singular events and more as a natural process accessible to human knowledge.”48 Rather than record unusual occurrences like comets or eclipses as divine prodigies, the collection of everyday observations would reveal patterns of nature. One investigator, the inveterate John Goad, was even creating vast tables of barometric readings and trying to establish a relationship between weather and astrological phenomena observed over two decades.49 Robert Plot, the curator of the Ashmolean Museum, recorded his observations of the exceptional winter weather in – using Lister’s methods and included the histograms in his paper for the Philosophical Transactions.50 Lister’s method meant that it would be possible to: be enabled with some grounds to examine not only the castings, breadth and bounds of the winds themselves, but of the weather they bring with them; and probably in time thereby learn, to be forewarned certainly,

45

Rusnock, Vital, . Sprat, History, –. Skydsgaard, “It’s probably in the Air,” . A survey of medical meteorology from the late sixteenth century to the early nineteenth century in Denmark appears in Wendt, “Bidrag til meteorologiske,” –. 47 Sprat, History, –. 48 Golinski, “Barometers of Change,” . 49 Goad, Astro-meteorologica. 50 Plot, “Observations of the Wind,” –. 46

lister’s london beginnings



of divers emergencies (such as heats, colds, dearths, plague and other epidemical distempers) which are now unaccountable to us; and by their causes be instructed for prevention, or remedies; thence too in time we may hope to be inform’d how far the positions of the planets in relation to one another, and to the fix’d starrs, are concerned in the alterations of the weather, and in bringing and preventing diseases, or other calamities. We shall certainly obtain more real and useful knowledge in matters in a few years, than we have yet arrived to, in many centuries.51

Members of the newly formed Dublin Philosophical Society were so impressed by Lister’s method that they asked the Royal Society to “transmit to us Mr Lister’s compendious way of observing the barometer, if come to their hands.”52 In a meeting on  April , Lister’s method was “exposed, and highly approved of,” so William Molyneux (–), Irish natural philosopher, writer on politics, and inaugural member of the Dublin Society, had an engraving made of Lister’s blank histogram.53 Molyneux, and then St George Ashe (–), a Church of Ireland cleric, faithfully conveyed a “weather diary” monthly to the Royal Society (Figure ).54 In a letter of  May , William described the method used in a letter to his brother Thomas: At whatever station of division my mercury stands in the tube, I mark in the paper on the correspondent tenth of an inch, over against the day of the month, with a small stroke; and under the column of winds mark down the point and strength it blows at; and going to bed I put down the general constitution of the day in short words.55

Robert Boyle was also quite taken with Lister’s method, possessing histogram engravings among his papers (Figure ).56 Boyle also reported the barometric observations in the Salisbury Cathedral-Church at Sarum of a London instrument-maker named John Warner, who rather enterprisingly advertised in his broadsheet, entitled “Aeroscopium,”

51

Plot, “Observations of the Wind,” –. BL Additional MS  f.  r–v., comprises the minutes of the Dublin Philsoophical Society for  March /. For a published edition of the minutes and correspondence of the Dublin Philosophical Society, see Hoppen, Papers. 53 BL MS Additional , f.  r–v, Hoppen, Papers, : . 54 Wainer and Velleman, “Statistical Graphics,” . The only surviving example of the weather diary for May  may be seen in Bodleian MS Ashmole , f. . 55 Hoppen, Papers, : , note . The original letters are lost, only extant in an anonymous four-part article in the Dublin University Magazine, xviii (), –, –, –, –. This particular letter is on . 56 MS Boyle Papers, , ff.  and , Royal Society Library, London. My thanks to Michael Hunter for alerting me to this manuscript. 52



chapter eleven

Fig.  William Molyneax’s record of the weather using Lister’s histogram. Shelfmark: MS Ashmole , f. r. The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.

Fig. 

Fig. b

Lister’s method in the Boyle Papers, vol. , ff.  and . © Royal Society, London.

Fig. a

lister’s london beginnings 



chapter eleven

printed sheets of a weather-table based on Lister’s method.57 The tables, created in , were designed to keep “a Diary or Weatherjournall by observing the station of the Mercury in the Baroscope,” as well as the points and strength of the wind and temperature. Warner sold these tables for three shillings per dozen along with barometers and thermometers in Portugal Row near Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and he claimed he took care “as directed by Mr Boyle” to “adjust all my thermometers truly to give the same degree.”58 Warner later incorporated the blank grid on his trading card, his leitmotif that lasted until the second decade of the eighteenth century.59 “Lister’s method” of recording the weather was mentioned in the minutes of the Royal Society’s meetings until the turn of the eighteenth century, and the York Virtuosi participated in their own “Weather-glasse register.”60 Though Christian Huygens had done basic graphs to present statistics about mortality in , Lister’s histogram was clearly recognized by his peers as a pioneering representation of scientific data.61 . Lister’s Quest for Medical Qualifications and his Antiquarian Enterprise Although his innovations put him at the center of Royal Society business, Lister also had to attend to the practical matter of his livelihood. As we have seen, to be licensed in London, he needed the formal qualification of a medical degree. To attain his doctorate and admission to candidacy, Lister worked upon establishing relationships of patronage with the University of Oxford by making donations to the nascent Ashmolean Museum. From , Lister put his treasures into the hands of the capable Dr Robert Plot, without whose flair for organization and interest in natural history, “the Ashmolean Museum might well never have come to Oxford.”62 Discussion about a building to hold Elias Ashmole’s collections of exotica and natural history, particularly 57

Boyle, General History, . Gunther, Early, : –, . John Goad mentions Warner’s shop in his Astro-meterologica,  in an advertisement, and Warner’s Mathematical Exercises was published in . 59 Golinski, “Barometers of Change,” . 60 BL MS Stowe , f. r. This is a letter from Francis Place to Thomas Kirke,  February /. 61 Wainer and Velleman, “Statistical Graphics,” . 62 Arnold, Cabinets, . 58

lister’s london beginnings



the rarities of the Tradescants, began formally in  when Oxford accepted the donation to the university. Ashmole, a former student at Brasenose College, also offered to give the university his own coins, medals, and manuscripts for its museum; his generosity to his alma mater was probably due to the fact that he himself received an honorary Doctorate of Medicine from the University in “recognition of his task in preparing a catalogue of the consular and imperial Roman coins in the Bodleian Library between  and .”63 Lister’s plan to gain an honorary M.D., therefore, was not without precedent. Plot, a member of University College, Oxford, presented himself to Ashmole on  December  bearing a letter of recommendation from the diarist John Evelyn.64 Plot hoped to get Ashmole’s support to be elected the first reader of the “Philosophical Lecture upon naturall things” at Oxford, a post that also included being the keeper or curator of the Museum.65 Under the guidance of Plot, the final edifice was completed and the museum opened in ; as historian Mordechai Feingold noted, the “university had disbursed the staggering sum of £, in total costs,” an enormous intellectual and financial commitment to experimental studies and natural history at Oxford.66 While curating Ashmole’s collections, which amounted to “ boxes some of the  others  foot long, a yard over & two foot deep, all fill[e]d,” Plot was busy soliciting other donations from virtuosi.67 The first indication we have that Lister was giving the museum specimens from his own cabinet of antiquities was in September . After mentioning to Lister that he was busy “sending the Ray-grass or plants that I promised to take care of for you here,” Plot wrote: In the meantime I hope you have also taken good care about sending us the Altar stone which you promised to add to that noble collection we have already, nor have you (I dare say) been unmindfull of laying aside

63 Welch, “Foundation of the Ashmolean,” . See also Hunter, Science and the Shape, –, esp. –. 64 Bodleian MS Ashmole , f. v, as quoted in Welch, “Foundation of the Ashmolean,” . 65 Bodleian MS Ashmole , f. v, as quoted in Welch, “Foundation of the Ashmolean,” . 66 Feingold, “Mathematical Sciences,” . 67 Bodleian MS Lister , f. v. Plot’s letters is appended to a letter from Francis Aston to Lister which begins on f. r.



chapter eleven such things as you can spare towards the better furniture of my poore Cabinet [my italics].68

Plot as custos of the collection, was already feeling a bit of owner’s pride about the Ashmolean’s repository. Lister donated two altarpieces, as well as a large collection of Roman coins, urns, and pottery, which were the subject of several articles he wrote for the Philosophical Transactions.69 Antiquarians like Lister and Plot developed an objectoriented approach to the past as they went along, with an emphasis on the preservation and excavation of its material remains. As Woolf has shown, two impulses or practices were at the heart of early modern English antiquarianism.70 The first stemmed from the humanist tradition, inherited from Continental philologists like Guillaume Budé (–) and their Italian predecessors such as Lorenzo Valla (–). English intellectuals in this group, such as John Leland, (–), analyzed the etymology of words and sought linguistic and verbal remains to understand the historical record. The second form of antiquarianism, which became more prevalent by the end of the seventeenth century, consisted of those scholars who considered the landscape in their analysis of ancient objects and buried artifacts. Though he certainly used philology in his works about Roman urns or altar-pieces, Lister was among the second group of antiquaries who took a more “archaeological” approach. It was not unusual for physicians like Lister to double as antiquaries in this period, just as they also served as natural historians. As Peter Burke notes, “Among these antiquary-medics were Liceto, Chifflet, the Frenchmen Patin and Spon, the Danes Worm, Bartholin, and Rhode, the Englishmen Browne, Charleton, and Lister, and the Scotsman Sir Robert Sibbald.”71 The physicians’ habit of interpreting symptoms seems to have made them sensitive to visual evidence; after all, “like artists, they were trained observers.”72 Reading clues to make diagnoses also ripened early modern physicians’ ability to understand and contextualize the empirical details of ancient artifacts and how they were created. Antiquarianism and nascent archaeology were essen-

68

Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. Lister, “Roman Monument,” –. 70 Woofe, Social, –. For other studies of early modern English antiquarianism see Evans, Society; Vine, Defiance. 71 Burke, “Images as Evidence,” . 72 Burke, “Images as Evidence,” . 69

lister’s london beginnings



tially bound up with an appreciation of the classics, but the empiricism of the physician represents a fundamentally different set of skills from those used in philology.73 Historian Rosemary Sweet has also noted the contribution of eighteenth-century antiquarians and classicists to the development of archaeology, but it seems that we have look amongst the seventeenth-century doctors to trace the discipline’s origins.74 Lister’s skills in natural history also informed his antiquarianism. Just as he plotted barometric observations, he contextualized scattered archeological data into a significant pattern. Alhough he considered fossils as made spontaneously by nature, he did realize others saw them as part of the record of nature; his antiquarian studies were a further manifestation of his skills in collecting, observing, and debating the origins of specimens, whether natural or man-made. Lister’s description of the “large and fair” Roman Altar of “one entire Stone” found near the Arbeia Fort on Hadrian’s Wall in South Shields near Newcastle upon Tyne is representative of this “new tone” of archeological work that moved from incidental description to keen empiricism (Figures  and ).75 Lister was frustrated at the condition of this votive gift, finding “its Inscription very ill defaced, that much of it is not legible,” but he still formulated a reasonably accurate epigraphic interpretation of the damaged carving.76 He noted correctly the altar-piece was a votive offering, but he misinterpreted it as an expression of gratitude for a safe return from battle against troublesome Caledonian tribes. The inscription really expressed a hope for the safe return of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (Caracalla) and Geta, his brother, to Rome. After their father Septimus Severus died, the two brothers became co-Emperors and had to get back to Rome, taking their father’s ashes with them.77 One year later, Caracalla killed his brother to become sole Emperor, and Geta’s name was removed from

73

Hanson, Virtuoso, chapter three, passim. Sweet, Antiquaries. 75 Hunter, Science and the Shape, . 76 Lister, “Roman Monument,” . 77 My thanks to Alex Croom, Keeper of Archaeology, Arbeia Roman Fort and Museum, Tyne and Wear Archives and Museum, for clarifying this inscription for me. The translation from the restored altar is “To the Spirits of Conservation for the well-being of Imperator Caesar Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus, greatest in Britain, [and Imperator Caesar Publius Septimius Geta, . . .] rens on his return, fulfilled his vow.” See Collingwood and Wright, The Roman Inscriptions, : . The altar is now on loan from the Ashmolean to the Arbeia Roman Fort and Museum in South Shields. An exhibition of the altar took place at the Arbeia Roman For and Museum 74



chapter eleven

Fig.  Lister’s engraving of the South Shield’s Altar in the Philosophical Transactions ,  (), Table One. © Royal Society, London.

all public inscriptions, which is why two lines were removed deliberately, and Lister described the altar as “ill defaced.” Lister did note that there had been deliberate vandalism, and he knew that this was done to “persons executed,” though he did not make the connection to Caracalla’s murder of Geta. He went then beyond epigraphy in his analysis of the altar, noting its panel carvings of a pole-axe and knives as typical motifs for altars from May to October , and Bjorn Brecht and Bruno Kessler used digital imaging to date the altar more precisely. See Wilson, “Experts,” .

Fig. 

Fig. b

The Roman Altar donated by Lister to the Ashmolean. Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford. Photographer: Alex Croom.

Fig. a

lister’s london beginnings 



chapter eleven

involving animal sacrifice, as well as comparing the altar’s stone reliefs of a pitcher and a patera, a type of flat dish with a handle used in ritual libation, with other known specimens. Lister remarked that the “very same utensil I have seen and noted on the Ilkley Altar . . . is yet extant at Middleton Grange near that Town.”78 Antiquarian William Camden described the Ilkley Altar in his Britannia, mistakenly identifying the patera on the Ilkley altar-piece as a mallet, a misapprehension that Lister gently corrected in his treatise. Lister also noted a “flower-pot” was carved into the back of the Arbeia altar, and in his typical naturalist fashion tried to identify the flowers the Roman artisan carved. He thought that the plants were: what pleased the Stone-cutter, for these men neede not to be more curious than the Priests themselves, who were wont to make use of Herbs next hand to adorn the Altars, and therefore Verbenae is put for any kind of herb. Yet if we will have it resemble any thing with us, I think it most like, if not truly Nymphaea [water-lily], a known and common River Plant.79

Lister was correct that “verbena” was the generic name in ancient Rome for herbs used in sacrifices, and his identification of the water lily, though he did not realize it, had some interesting implications. The water-lily was the symbol of the lost goddess Conventina, a water goddess from northern Britain whose shrine was at Carrawburgh Fort near Hadrian’s Wall, proximal to Arbeia where the altar was found. A few months later, in February /, Plot reminded Lister about his promised donation of the altars: Our Repository is now finisht and in a condition to receive those Natural Curiosities you were pleased to tell me in one of your last letters you should willingly deposit there, whereof I have acquainted Mr ViceChancellor & my Lord Bishop [of Oxford] who hereby sends you their privat thanks at present, but upon receipt of the things I perceive there are publick ones intended you. I acquainted them also with the two Altars which I believe they will place by themselves under the Wall of the new Repository with your name over them as the other Marbles have . . . If the collection of things you send by anything large, or you intend to make them so hereafter, the had best be put in a Cabinet by

78 Lister, “Roman Monument,” . The Ilkley Altar once stood at Myddleton Lodge, on the north side of Ilkley, and has been recently returned to Ilkley’s Manor House Museum in a long-term loan from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Leeds. Ilkley is in West Yorkshire. 79 Lister, “Roman Monument,” .

lister’s london beginnings



themselves an placed in one of the little Side Rooms which may in time be called the Musaeum Listerianum.80

Plot apparently thought better of naming the room the Lister Museum, as this passage was struck out by another pen.81 Perhaps Ashmole registered his objections to a rival “museum-within-a-museum,” but Plot certainly created a Scrinium Listerianum or “Lister Cabinet” housing all his treasures in a small upper room. Ralph Thoresby visited it in Oxford in , remarking in his diary: the skeletons and stuffed human in the Anatomy School suited my melancholy temper. Nor ought the Museum Ashmoleanum to be forgotten . . . the Scrinium Listerium was the more pleasing, because of a Yorkshire benefactor, my father’s friend, the learned Dr Lister, afterwards my correspondent. These were shown us by the famous Dr Plott, who was very obliging.82

The altar-pieces were either placed in the cellar of the Museum, or against Wren’s Wall along with the other antiquities.83 Lister received a formal letter of thanks in April  from the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford, John Lloyd, “which by more solemn waies, and more proportional to your obligation be here recorded,” along with a public acknowledgment of his generosity in the Philosophical Transactions.84 Plot as secretary of the Society had put in an advertisement in the journal that read: Since the Printing the first sheet of this Transaction, the Altar there Engraven and Explained, together with another ancient Roman one, both the Gift of the learned and judicious Interpreter Martin Lister Esquire, are safely arrived at Oxford, where they will speedily be set up, together with some others of the Worshipful Elias Ashmole Esquire, in the Court before the Musaeum by Him lately furnished.85

Lister followed the altar-pieces with gifts of forty-six Roman imperial coins, rings and seals, duly catalogued by the Ashmolean; his donation was followed with a more modest number of small artifacts in , some of which were illustrated in a paper for the Philosophical

80 81 82 83 84 85

Bodleian MS Lister , ff. r and v. Ovenell, Ashmolean, . Thoresby, Diary, : . Gunther, Early, ; –. Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. “Advertisement,” Philosophical Transactions,  (March  /).



chapter eleven

Transactions; these included priapi worn by Roman children against the evil eye, Roman keys, dice, and earrings, as well as an Egyptian brass serapis.86 In the s, Lister was corresponding with John Briercliffe (bap. ?–), a numismatist, antiquarian, and apothecary from Halifax, West Yorkshire. Briercliffe provided Lister regularly with details of his current acquisitions of coins and offered to buy any of his duplicates.87 Coin collecting was a common pastime among early modern virtuosi; Ashmole himself collected nearly , coins, and, as Hunter noted, “coins and medals were the most characteristic of all the items that the cognoscenti coveted for their cabinets, combining the thrill of rarity and lure of collectability with a genuine utility and capacity for instruction—or so virtuoso handbooks of the time averred.”88 As the seventeenth century progressed, numismatics became more accessible lower down the social scale; as virtuoso Henry Peacham (–) noted, although coins were not cheap, they were cheaper and more portable for collecting than statues and inscriptions.89 Coins, therefore, would be within the reach of someone like Briercliffe or his acquaintance Ralph Thoresby, and there was a growth in the numbers of dealers. In the last part of his life, Lister’s correspondence indicates that dealers approached him with lengthy printed lists of specimens on offer. Lister also donated books to the Ashmolean Museum, in particular several copies of his second edition of his De Fontibus (). The first edition had carried no dedication, but in his annotated copy of it, Lister apparently considered including an inscription to Sir John Hoskins, nd Baronet, and president of the Royal Society from  to .90 Ultimately however, in his quest to get his honorary doctorate, he decided that Oxford itself would be honored in the dedication in his

86 Lister, “Explanation of the Figures,” –. This work was illustrated by Lister’s daughter, so it is likely of his authorship; Bodleian MS AMS , “The Book of the Vice-Chancellor.” 87 Bodleian MS Lister , f.r. See also McConnell, “Briercliffe, John,” Oxford DNB. Briercliffe’s papers are in MS Calderdale (MISC ), West Yorkshire Archives, Leeds. 88 Hunter, Science and the Shape, . 89 Arnold, Cabinets, . 90 Lister, De Fontibus. Lister’s dedication to Hoskins appears on the folio after the titlepage. It read: Illustri admodum atque Ornatissimo Viro D. Johannis Hoskins, Baronetto nec non S. R. Lond., describing the Baronet in the typical language of prefactory dedications as an illustrious and a very honorable and accomplished man, noting his membership in the Royal Society.

lister’s london beginnings



second edition. Lister was particularly careful to mention the antique marbles scattered around the new Ashmolean, as well as Oxford’s commitment to “rebus Naturae,” [natural history] and experimental philosophy demonstrated by its museum, the most “magnificent in all of Europe.” Lister’s praise and elegant Latinity had the required effect, as he was granted the degree of Doctor of Physic on  March /, the Chancellor himself recommending him as “a person of exemplary loyalty, of high esteem among the most eminent of his profession; of singular merit to that university in particular, having enriched their museum and library with presents of valuable books, both printed and in manuscript, and of general merit in the literary world by several learned books which he had published.”91 Plot wrote to him the following month: I have rec’d the five Books you sent, and presented one to the ViceChancellor, another to the Bishop, a third to the Publick Library, and would have given the next to your friends at Magdalen College, had you sent  or  more that I might have given every one of your friends there, one. You would doe well to give one to the Library at University College where your Country-men were very zealous in your behalf . . . The Dedication is liked very well, and I am commanded to thank you in the name of the University, and you have hereby the thanks of this University, therefore pray let the Dedication be printed and sold with every book . . . the st instant the Bp [Bishop of Oxford] will be at Westminster at the election at the Schole, perhaps it may not be amiss if you wait on him and give him thanks [for your honorary doctorate].92

Lister duly took Plot’s advice, as he would make several donations to University College throughout his lifetime, forming a friendship with its master Arthur Charlett (–), who was also a coin collector and antiquarian. Though he was known for his care in courting the influential, Charlett’s remark to Lister that “I am sure no Gentleman in the Nation more often, or more acceptably, obliges this University,” was heartfelt.93 The final step for Lister was to submit his application for candidature to the Royal College of Physicians. With his new doctorate in hand, Dr Lister was admitted on  June . Members of the

91

Munk, et al., “Martin Lister,” Munks Roll Online. Munk cited Wood, Fasti Oxonienses, : . 92 Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. 93 Bodleian MS Lister , f. r.



chapter eleven

London elite became quickly his patients, Elias Ashmole in his diary recording in December  that “Dr Chamberlain proposed to me to bring Dr Lister to my wife, that he might undertake her,” and on  December , “They both came to my house and Dr Lister did undertake her.”94 Ashmole’s recollections are corroborated in Lister’s casebook, though Lister had seen Madame Ashmole in a medical capacity as early as April , as well as her servant as a courtesy for an extra shilling in fees.95 James Pearse, one of the king’s surgeons, summoned Lister to Windsor to attend one of the court ladies suffering from periodic fits, remarking “I am commanded to let you know his Majestie desires to speake with you.”96 As part of his new official duties, Lister also attended one of the Charles II’s levées in which “ Models were brought him to choose one of, in order to make his Statue for the Court at Windsor.”97 As Charles II chose that he should be portrayed as a Roman centurion, Lister subsequently wondered about the propriety of having a living Prince presented with “naked Arms and Legs.”98 Charles II also took Lister into his Whitehall laboratory to show him the secret method of distilling “Goddard’s drops,” a volatile salt thought to be effective in curing epilepsy, amongst other diseases.99 Physicians who were followers of the chemical theories of the Belgian chemist van Helmont based “their physiological theories on the notion of vital spirits, which they conceived as a volatile alkaline salt.”100 Thomas Willis (–) believed this spirit was particulate, having “specific chemical properties,” and argued that a “volatile salt, produced by the action of a local ferment situated in the brain, as the actual matter of animal spirits.”101 Influenced by van Helmont’s belief that the breath of man and animals contained volatile salts, Robert Boyle administered volatile salts to restore weakened constitutions. He distilled the spirit of blood, which he believed was “fully satiated with saline and spirituous parts,” and thus had the therapeutic quality of a

94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101

Ashmole, Diary and Will, . Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. Lister, Journey, . Lister, Journey, . Lister, Journey, . Clericuzio, “Internal Laboratory,” . Clericuzio, “Internal Laboratory,” .

lister’s london beginnings



restorative.102 It was not surprising that the process to make such salts (Charles used tincture of human skull; later physicians used a distillation of raw silk), was secret and highly prized. William Chiffinch, Charles’s Page of the Bedchamber and master of backstairs intrigue, put “his master’s salutiferous drops” into the wineglasses of guests to his apartments at Whitehall in the belief that combined with copious amounts of alcohol he could better “fish out secrets . . . and discover men’s characters, which the king could never have obtained the knowledge of by any other means.”103 Sadly, such medicaments did not help the King when he fell ill. The following February, Lister was ordered to attend the autopsy of Charles II at “Mr Chiffinch Lodgings” at Whitehall, instructed to come “by water to the Privy Stairs, to land there and to knock at the first door, which is Mr Chiffinch’s, on the left hand in that lobby.”104 Charles had died due to a stroke he had while shaving, as well as the subsequent overenthusiastic and then probably panicked treatment by the Royal Physicians.105 They first tried traditional Galenic remedies of phlebotomy to correct humoral imbalance, emetics, and cauteries, but when those failed, each of the fourteen doctors in attendance attempted their own specific treatments they used in stubborn cases. As a result, after being bled numerous times, Charles was given fiftyeight drugs in a five-day period, including Spanish fly, black cherry julep, and various emetics. Lister was among those who recommended “a sacred tincture every six hours” as well as smelling salts in milk “as often as exhaustion seemed to demand,” his consultation lasting most of the five days.106 Charles bore all with usual cynical humor, making apologies to those surrounding his bed for being “such an unconscionable time a-dying.” An autopsy was performed to determine if the King had been poisoned, but other than a swelling and fluid in the

102 Clericuzio, “From Van Helmont to Boyle,” . For more analysis of Boyle’s interest in blood, see Knight and Hunter, “Robert Boyle’s Memoirs,” –. 103 North, Lives, : –, as quoted by Allen, “Political Function,” . Cf. North, Notes, . 104 Bodleian MS Lister , f. r.; Allen, “Political Function,” . 105 The circumstances surrounding Charles II’s death were described in a manuscript by Charles Scarburgh, his first physician. The manuscript is held by the Society of Antiquaries, London. See “Transcript of an account of the last illness of Charles II,” MS , item . The mansucript is reproduced and translated in its entirety in Crawford, Last Days. 106 Crawford, Last, .



chapter eleven

ventricles of the brain, it appeared his demise was above suspicion.107 The “effects of the physicians were applauded as courageous and exhaustive,” Charles’s death occurring “in spite of every kind of treatment attempted by Physicians of the greatest loyalty and skill.”108 By being invited to attend on the King’s body, Lister had been symbolically accepted into the uppermost echelons of the medical profession. It may seem Lister’s donations to achieve that end were purely selfserving, Carr claiming that the naturalist essentially bought his doctorate.109 The language of the Book of Benefactors in the Ashmolean adds to our suspicions. The scribe noted that Lister “was awarded a Doctorate in Medicine for which he had not himself supplicated by which was spontaneously conferred on him by the University of Oxford; he had no foreknowledge of this, but amply deserved it.”110 The claim that Lister had no foreknowledge of the possibility of attaining an honorary doctorate and had not supplicated it was dubious. Lister’s contemporaries also condemned his manner of obtaining antiquities to donate to the museum. In a description of the antiquities of York, Noah Hodgson wrote to his fellow antiquarian Dr Thomas Gale (?–), master of St Paul’s School in London: There were two Roman figures which were set in the wall on each side of the gate as you go into the court before Buckingham House, in York, which were placed there by Lord Fairfax . . . but I viewed all the walls of the court . . . and could find none. I heard since that Dr Lister, a physician who lived formerly at York, but somewhere about White-hall, stole away those figures, and whatsoever was moveable he could lye his hands on, and send them to Oxford, a little before he took his degree. There have been several urns digged up at the brick-kilns a little without Bowtham bar, not far from the river, where I judge the Romans’ burying place was . . . There were also found some glass ampullae, which the mourners put their tears in, several of which Dr Lister sent to Oxford. This I take to be one reason why many things are awanting . . . the covetousness of this Dr Lister, who was not content to see things where he found them, without taking of them away.111

107

Crawford, Last, . Furdell, Royal, ; Crawford, Last, . 109 Carr, “The biological work,” . 110 The Book of Benefactors is translated and transcribed in MacGregor, Mendonca, and White, Ashmolean, –. 111 Family Memoirs of Stukeley, : –. 108

lister’s london beginnings



Despite Hodgson’s seemingly justified (or perhaps jealous) censure of Lister’s greedy actions, it cannot be denied that Lister did make significant contributions to the university and to the museum, both materially and intellectually. Lister donated over a thousand books, which still form a significant part of the early modern library collections at Oxford, as well as shells, minerals, and other antiquities throughout his lifetime.112 He was a member of the Society of Antiquaries and had given the museum some specimens that were of little monetary value, but were scientifically invaluable.113 He wrote to Plot in , “I have sent you a Small present to make in my name . . . It is a Collection of Certain English Things belonging to the Histories of Nature . . . There are many Things indeed in my Present which seem common, but yet those would take up much Time to collect.”114 These “things” were iron ores, and over , shells classified and described, including marine conches, sea snails, shells of English river mussels, fossil shells, and specimens described in his earlier publication, the Historiae Animalium and his Historia Conchyliorum. He also gave the museum for safekeeping the plates that William Lodge had engraved for his crinoids paper for the Philosophical Transactions. Lister placed the specimens in a small cabinet with drawers, their numbers corresponding to a catalogue which he created; the cabinet remained on show in the Scrinium Listerianum until  when the keeper William Sheffield removed it. Arthur MacGregor noted that Lister’s donation of “common things” set the “scholarly tone of the new institution that had been founded on the basis of the Tradescant collection in which, by contrast, singularity had been estimated above any other consideration.”115 His detailed locality descriptions and taxonomic classification, which accompanied his gifts, were of greater import than the uniqueness or wondrousness

112

Lister donated c., volumes, mostly consisting of seventeenth-century works on medicine, anatomy, natural philosophy, botany, and voyages and travels to the Ashmolean Museum, which were transferred to the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford in . A small number of Lister’s books are in the Bodleian Library’s collection shelfmarked Ashmole A-H. See Gunther, “Ashmole printed books,” – and Macray, Annals, . 113 Strype, Survey, /:. 114 “Viri Clarissimi Martinus Lister M.D. Conchae et Fossillia Quae in Historia Animalium Anglicarum Describuntur” [Shells and fossils which are described in the Historiae Animalium Angliae of that distinguished man, Martin Lister, MD.] Bodleian MS Ashmole , reprinted in MacGregor, Mendonca, and White, Ashmolean, –. 115 MacGregor, Mendonca, and White, Ashmolean, .



chapter eleven

of the specimens he donated. In making observations, Lister took the study of plants and animals beyond their confinement in museums or herbariums as specimens, a characteristic of Renaissance natural history. Instead, he made detailed field studies that gave a sense of the associations between the flora and fauna which comprised the ecological landscape. Lister was certainly not the only one to create written descriptions the natural environs, as Robert Plot’s natural histories of Staffordshire and Oxfordshire also had some keen empirical observations. Plot regarded the countryside as a vast collection of places, people, and specimens that needed organization to reveal their meaning, mixing antiquarian legend and empiricism to catalogue nature including objects of human and natural artifice in his description of the landscape.116 Plot’s objects of study were still objects in a curiosity cabinet, not creatures in an ecological niche. Apart from his treasure hunting, Lister’s empirically detailed descriptions of material objects, natural or man-made, continued in a series of important archaeological discoveries. As Hunter has noted, in a paper presented to the Royal Society in  and subsequently published, Lister was the first to identify the multangular tower in York as Roman.117 Alhough all the stone was from local limestone quarries, only the central section of the tower, a corner bastion, with its saxa quadrata (building stone cut to order), small rectangular ashlars (dressed stone), and brick bonding course is Roman; the rest is medieval.118 The Roman brick was made of clay that was rolled out on sand, cut, and transferred into shallow frames or moulds, in which they were pressed out, dried, and fired.119 Lister made his identification by a close reading of the architectural treatises of Vitruvius and Pliny, which dictated the size and pattern of Roman brick construction, and then measured the stones and bricks in the tower and wall itself. He noted that the bricks: about seventeen Inches . . . long and about eleven Inches broad . . . agree very well with the notion of the Roman foot,” and that any deviance in size was due to unequal shrinkage due to the different clays in their manufacture, an observation to which modern archeologists adhere.120

116 117 118 119 120

Mancall, “Robert Plot,” –. Hunter, Science and the Shape, . Buckland, “Stones of Roman York,” . Ward, Romano-British, . Lister, “Ruins of a Roman Wall,” .

lister’s london beginnings



Fig.  Francis Place’s engraving of the Multiangular Tower at York. Shelfmark: MS//. © Royal Society, London.

Lister’s survey of brick sizes, including the “Jew’s Wall” in Leicester and Roman walls in St Albans, revealed that although Vitruvius had claimed the Roman brick called a didoron was a foot and one-half long, this was a copyist’s mistake. He concluded his treatise noting that “proportion, and a plain uniformity, even in the minutest parts of building, is to be observed, as this miserable ruin of Roman workmanship show,” and indeed in Roman construction facing stones were nearly always squared properly.121 Accompanying his paper was an engraving by Francis Place of the tower, the original drawing acquired by Ralph Thoresby for his museum at Leeds (Figure ).122 Lister’s observations were noted at a subsequent meeting of the Royal Society, the minutes recording that “upon mentioning the printing of Mr Lister’s 121 Lister, “Ruins of a Roman Wall,” . See also Harris, “John Leland,” –, esp. . 122 Place, “A sketch of the Roman wall,” MS Thoresby , Yorkshire Archaeological Society, Leeds. Another version of the drawing is in MS /, Royal Society Library, London.



chapter eleven

observations about the Roman wall at York, it was suggested, that a note should be added signifying that a manuscript of Vitruvius in the Norfolcian library agreed with Mr Lister’s opinion about the measure of the didoron.”123 Lister’s measurements of the Roman bricks were reflective of the close ties between antiquarian expertise and architectural practice in the early modern period, as well as demonstrating that “mensuration was an important weapon in the antiquary’s armory.”124 Just as Stonehenge was mapped and measured by William Camden in the Britannia () and described later in detail by John Aubrey, Lister tackled the multangular tower with a radius and a measuring rod, combining his empirical observations with philological analysis. His attention to geographical location, geology, and empirical detail also informed his studies of other Roman altar-pieces and urns, his paper on them published in Hooke’s ill-fated Philosophical Collections.125 Lister speculated upon the origins of another altar-piece he had observed in the collection of Lord Henry Fairfax, realizing that its stone came from quarries in Malton, North Yorkshire, as the Corallian limestone had fossil imprints of “lapides Judaici” (sea-urchin fossils, called Jew-stones or Palestinian olives) in the texture of it.126 His classification of the urns he saw in northeastern England was based upon his knowledge of clays and minerals, and thus was one of first papers on archaeological geology. In March , Lister had presented to the Royal Society a paper that was a proposal for a “new sort of Maps of Countrys, together with Tables of Sands and Clays, such cheifly as are found in the North parts of England.”127 John Aubrey (–), the antiquary and writer, sent his “Chorographia,” or soil and land studies of Wiltshire, to Lister in connection with this paper that advocated a geological survey of Britain.128 But, although Aubrey was interested primarily in antiquarianism, Lister was “interested in geology for its own sake.”129 Lister had

123 Birch, History, : . Birch was referring to the library of Henry Howard, Duke of Norfolk. 124 Vine, Defiance, . 125 The paper was reprinted in Lister’s Mixt Discourses, –. 126 Lister, Mixt Discourses, –. Lister and Ralph Thoresby were friends of Lord Fairfax, and the altar-piece was placed in the wall of his home in York. 127 Lister, “Ingenious proposal,” –. 128 MS LBO//–, Royal Society Library, London. Aubrey’s gift to Lister is also mentioned in Hunter, John Aubrey, , , and Mendyk, Speculum, . 129 Hunter, Aubrey, .

lister’s london beginnings



created his table of sands and clays ten years previously, and now proposed a stratigraphic map in which “the soil might either be coloured, by variety of Lines, or Etchings,” because: Something more might be comprehended from the whole, and from every part, then I can possibly forsee, which would make such a labour very well worth the pains. For I am of the opinion, such upper Soiles, if natural, infallibly produce such under Minerals, and for the most part in such order. But I leave this to the industry of future times.130

In his table of clays, Lister mentioned a “blew clay” from “Bugthorp Beck” [East Yorkshire] that was harsh and dusty when dried, as well as a grey or bluish tobacco-pipe clay in Halifax with flat or thin sand, glittering with Mica. In his paper on Roman urns, he realized that these clays corresponded to two of his categories of urns; the first urns of a bluish-grey color “having a great quantity of coarse Sand wrought in with the Clay,” and the second types of urns, also bluish-grey, “having . . . a very fine sand mixt with it full of Mica.”131 Lister noted that the first type of urns came from an area around York, near Barmby Moor, “where now the Warren [sandpit] is,” and here he found “widely up and down broken pieces of Urnes, Slagg, and Cinders.”132 These urns may have been crafted from clay used to make Dales or Dales-type ware, a range of grey sandy wares widely distributed across northern Britain in the rd and th centuries AD and produced in Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, and Humberside.133 He found the second type of urn, another type of grey ware, in Lincolnshire close to the town of Brigg; the urn was probably from the Messingham pottery kiln site near Scunthorpe, which was excavated in  by R.H. Arrand.134 Lister noted evidence of the furnaces hidden by the sand hillocks, and that both sites were less than a mile from Roman roads.135 Cartographic evidence confirmed his observations as the furnaces are close to Ermine Street, the major Roman road that ran from London (Londinium) to Lincoln (Lindum Colonia) and York (Eboracum).136 The third type of “red urns of fine 130 131

Lister, “Ingenious proposal,” . Lister, “Ingenious proposal,” –. Lister, Letters and Other Mixt Discourses,

. 132

Lister, Mixt Discourses, . Tyers, “Dales-ware,” Potsherd: Atlas of Roman Pottery, http://www.potsherd .uklinux.net/atlas/Ware/DALES. 134 Lister, Mixt Discourses, . Anonymous, “Roman Britain in ,” . 135 Lister, Mixt Discourses, –. 136 Margary, Roads, . 133



chapter eleven

clay” he found at Aldborough, Yorkshire, which was later shown to be the capital of the Romanised Brigantes, the largest tribe in Britain, and then a Roman administrative center.137 These urns could have been either Samian ware, a type of pottery made in Gaul which was vivid red with very intricate designs, as Michael Hunter suggested, or lower-quality copies of Samian tableware that were made in Britain in the second century using the seleniferous clays of Lincolnshire which turns red upon firing; Lister took a potsherd and found that “baked over again in our Ovens, it would become red.”138 His fellow York virtuoso, Francis Place, was also experimenting with pottery, and it is possible Place’s work was interrelated with Lister’s interests in clays, soils, and stratigraphy.139 Place had been engaged in stoneware pottery glazing and the manufacture of porcelain at furnaces near his home in Dinsdale from about  until .140 Place’s self-portrait c. depicts him in Dutch costume holding one of his pieces of salt-glazed agateware with marbling of pale brown clay.141 In making his thrown agateware, which uses two or more slips—liquid clays—to create a marbled effect on the surface, Place had to understand not only clay color, but clay compatibility. To create the illusion of agate striations, different color clays had to be obtained naturally or by modification. When the clays were mixed, their shrinkage rates, firing temperatures, plasticity, elasticity and strength were all important.142 With the help of Lister and Thomas Kirke, Place tried to enlist the Royal

137

Lister, Mixt Discourses, . Lister, Mixt Discourses, ; Hunter, Science and the Shape, . Lister’s knowledge of the local stones and clays also helped him correct William Camden’s misapprehensions about the Boroughbridge Roman Obelisks or “Devils Arrows,” which stood about a mile and a half from Aldborough. Camden visited Yorkshire in , and thought the obelisks were compositions of sand, lime, and small pebbles cemented together, as he did not think it was possible for the Romans to have brought such large stone masses from any large distance. Lister, on the other hand, realized they were made of mill-stone grit, and they were indeed quarried from such a bed at Knaresborough about fifteen miles away. Further, Lister noted that at “Redstone near Burlington in the Yorkshire Wolds, full forty miles wide of these Quarries, is an obelisk of the very same Stone,” showing Camden’s idea of artificial stone was fallacious. See Lister, Mixt Discourses, . 139 For material on Place, see Julia Nurse, “Place, Francis,” Oxford DNB; Tyler, Francis Place, –, and Tyler, “Francis Place’s Pottery,” –; Sloan, A Noble Art. 140 Tyler, Francis Place, . Tyler includes illustrations of the surviving pots attributed to Place. 141 Tyler, Francis Place, , and . The original portrait may be seen in the Hospitalfield Centre for Art and Culture, Arbroath, Scotland. 142 Erickson and Hunter, “Swirls and Whirls,” . 138

lister’s london beginnings



Society’s assistance with his “Pot Trade.”143 The laborious nature of experimentation, however, paid few dividends for the artist. Thoresby received a fine mug from Place to put into his museum, but the potter John Dwight of Dinsdale soon overtook Place in technological innovations, defending his own patents against the Wedgwoods.144 By , Place mentioned in a letter to Thomas Kirke that “the disappointment of . . . my Pot Trade makes me more than half weary of projects.”145 Despite his failures, Place’s work was reflective of a growing national interest in ceramic discoveries, which would blossom into the English ceramic industry of the eighteenth century. In his  memoirs of his trip to Paris, it was little wonder that in an attempt to guess at its process of manufacture, Lister compared the French porcelain manufactured at Chicanneau near Saint-Cloud with Gombroon ware, a form of Chinese porcelain.146 He wrote of the small vases, chocolate cups, and teacups of exquisite design: “I confess I could not distinguish betwixt the Pots made there, and the finest China Ware I ever saw.”147 Shortly after he returned to England and published his memoirs, Lister received a visitor (probably John Dwight) bearing a letter from Francis Willoughby’s son Thomas.148 Willoughby wrote: the bearer of this is one that has brought pottery to very great perfection in our Country; I have shew’d him what you are pleased to say about that work at Cloud’s, and if you will be pleas’d to shew him some of the potts you brought over and acquaint him with some of your observations in that matter it will be a very great obligation.149

Dwight may have been responsible for two pieces of porcelain known as the “Buckingham” vases in Burghley House, Lincolnshire, and

143 Tyler, Francis Place, . Lister, Mixt Discourses, ; This point was also made by Hunter, Science and the Shape, . MS Thoresby  and  in the York Archaeological Society in Leeds contain letters from Place to Thomas Kirke concerning his attempts at pottery. 144 Tyler, Francis Place, . 145 BL MS Stowe , f. r. This is a letter from Francis Place to Thomas Kirke, February  /. 146 Lister, Journey, – for a discussion of porcelain. See also Wylde, “Fitzhenry’s Collection,” –. 147 Lister, Journey, . 148 Thomas Willoughby was First Baron Middleton (–), and the second son of Lister’s friend Francis Willoughby. Thomas succeeded to the baronetcy on in  upon the early death of his elder brother, Francis. By , he was High Sherriff of Nottinghamshire and of Lincolnshire. 149 Bodleian MS Lister , f. .



chapter eleven

Willoughby was clearly hoping to encourage him in further efforts.150 Who better for Dwight to contact than a virtuoso who understood geology, types of clay, the archaeology and manufacture of pottery and ceramics, as well as aesthetics? Lister’s work transcended the boundaries between archaeology, antiquarianism, natural history, and the fine arts. As such he was emblematic of the virtuosic sensibility of the late seventeenth century, in which his empirical approach to art, natural history, and medicine were intertwined. His understanding of how to present scientific data visually was also innovative and far-reaching. In the next chapter, we will analyze to what extent Lister’s aesthetic and practical appreciation of the potential of scientific illustration influenced the production of his most significant work, the first systematic publication on shells, the Historiae Conchyliorum (–). We will also ascertain to what extent his expertise informed the creation of the visual components of Francis Willoughby’s posthumous Historia Piscium (), the magnificent ichthyological volume published by the Royal Society.

150

See Spataro, Meeks, Bimson, Dawson, and Ambers, “Early porcelain,” –.

CHAPTER TWELVE

THE ART OF SCIENCE: THE HISTORIAE CONCHYLIORUM AND THE HISTORIA PISCIUM . Introduction To accompany his research into material culture, his comparative studies in taxonomy, and to portray data trends using graphs and tables, Lister regularly required good illustrations. Scientific illustration was a novel genre with few artists able to combine into one image attention to empirical detail, accurate perspective views of the object, and the scientist’s aesthetic judgments. The illustrator, by reductionist objectification, needed to focus the viewers’ attention onto the essentials of the specimen without losing its context, scale, or dimensions. Difficulties in attaining illustrations were compounded by the fact that engravings were expensive to produce. Lister’s sustained aesthetic and financial commitment to visual portrayals of living creatures came to its most pronounced fruition with the publication of his first edition of the Historiae Conchyliorum in . This was his seminal work on molluscs, which by  encompassed over , copperplate engravings, but the seeds of his lavish visual presentation of species were sown much earlier. In November , Lister had written to Henry Oldenburg about the necessity for visual, not just verbal, epistemology, claiming: Words are but the arbitrary symboles of things, and perhaps I have not used them to the best advantage. Good Design (and such is that I send you, done by that ingenious young Gentleman & excellent Artist, my very good friend Mr William Lodge), or the things themselves, which I have all by me, would make these particulars much more intelligible and plain to you.1

1

Hall and Hall, eds, The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, : . The original letter is is MS/L/, Royal Society Library, London, and his letter was reprinted in Philosophical Transactions  ( February /), –. See Unwin, “Provincial Man,” –.



chapter twelve

By the s, his manifesto of the importance of scientific illustration resulted in several obstacles to finishing the Historiae, not least that William Lodge had moved onto other interests. There were also the practical realities of obtaining accurate engravings and printing his works. But throughout, Lister’s cultivated a close relationship between his own practice as a natural philosopher and the artists he engaged. These illustrators included his teenage daughters who were taught to “see” in a scientific manner and who created some of the first holotypes of molluscan specimens. Lister would also use his expertise attained while creating his book on molluscs to play a pivotal role in the publication of the Royal Society’s infamous Historia Piscium () based on the work of Ray and Willoughby. Though the costs of the lavish copperplate engravings in this volume nearly bankrupted the Royal Society and ended Lister’s tenure as its vice-president, the work ultimately was a triumph in natural history. . The Path to the Historiae Conchyliorum When Lister was in York, the engravings made for his papers in the Philosophical Transactions and for his Historiae Animalium were done by William Lodge. At first, the arrangement worked out well. Lodge assured that his “utmost ambition is do you any service within the performance of my talents,” and York virtuoso, John Brooke affirmed: “‘Tis very desirable, that Mr Lodge, should give you his Assistance; that nothing may be omitted to satisfy your own Inclinacions so studious, of what is accurate and choice.”2 Although we have seen that Lodge’s drawings for Lister’s paper about crinoids were received enthusiastically, other ventures were not so successful. Lister’s attempt to have his table of snails illustrated by Lodge for a  publication was ridden with delays, and when Lodge finally submitted the engravings, they were incomplete.3 On  July , Oldenburg wrote to Lister in some panic: Reading over again your Tables of Snailes in order to print them this month, I find, that in the Figures of them there are wanting No. , , , viz. Limax cinereus maximus, Limax cinereas alter, and Limax alter.

2

Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. The incomplete engravings may be seen in: Martin Lister, “Tables of Snails,” –. 3

the art of science



I pray let me know with all possible speed, whether it be an oversight, or not; and if it be, be pleased to supply this defect, if conveniently you can, by the first post, that thee Graver, who hath undertaken to grave the rest, may not be stopped too long from finishing the plate. The defect is most certain, and I doubt not of your favor of supplying it.4

It was too late for Lister to rectify the mistake, and the finished paper on snails published in Philosophical Transactions had the shells numbered from  to , and then from  to . Lister made the best of it, describing the numbered figures in the tables and integrating the text and the “lively figure of each Shell for illustration, done by Mr Lodge.”5 Lodge’s residence in the remote hamlet of Arnoldsbiggin, Yorkshire made it increasingly difficult for Lister to contact him, particularly after he moved to London. Also, Lodge was often away on sketching tours with his friend Francis Place that lasted three to four months.6 On one holiday to Wales in , they crossed the Severn into Wales and journeyed along the south coast through Swansea and Cardiff, taking a detour to Llanelli, Carmarthen, and Haverfordwest to Pembroke and Tenby.7 Their random itinerary and frequent stops to draw landscapes brought them under the suspicion of the authorities, particularly as it was the year of the Popish Plot. Place and Lodge were imprisoned as suspected Jesuit spies.8 Needless to say, Lodge was often incommunicado and unable to fulfill Lister’s requests. In , Francis Place took over from Lodge, and did the insect engravings for Lister’s annotated version of Johann Goedart’s On Insects. In July of that year, Lister showed the fourteen plates depicting  insects to the Royal Society when he passed through London on his way to France.9 On Insects was based on observations that Lister made in the s, and it represented an extension of his interests in insect parasitism and the possibility of spontaneous generation. Lister’s refinement of Goedart was one of the first treatises accurately describing insect life cycles, the other works being Marcello Malpighi’s treatise on the silkworm, De Bombyce (), and Swammerdam’s

4 5 6 7 8 9

Bodleian MS Lister , f. , as quoted in Unwin, “Provincial Man,” . Lister, “Tables of Snails,” . Sloan, Noble Art, . Tyler, Francis Place, . Nurse, “Place, Francis,” Oxford DNB. Birch, History, : .



chapter twelve

Historiae Insectis ().10 Earlier entomologists, such as Thomas Moufet, adhered to the concept of metamorphosis, the idea that different life stages of an insect represented a sudden change from one type of animal to another. He described butterfly larvae as “worms,” different animals from the pupae and the butterflies, rather than conceptualizing them as three stages of the insect’s life cycle.11 Moufet thought that each animal owed its existence to the death and corruption of the earlier stages or to spontaneous generation from leaves or dew: An Aurelia [chrysalis or pupa] is no Egge, and it ought not to be called a Generation, but a transformation of a Caterpillar into this, and of this into a Butterfly . . . they have their original from the death of Caterpillars, which as they do waste by degrees in certain dayes, so by degrees their covering become continually more hard, and changeth into an Aurelia. These again the next Spring or Autumn, by degrees losing their life a Butterflie comes forth of them that is bred by the like metamorphosis . . . [Butterflies] appear in the Spring-time out of the Canker-worms Aureliae, growing by the heat of the Sun.12

As Carr indicated, “the aurelia was, for Moufet, a living thing, which must die before its flesh can be transformed,” its senescent state merely an indication of hibernation. Moufet also mentioned what are clearly “ichneumons . . . as evidence that the corruption of an aurelia does not always produce the same result . . . a strong argument for the distinct natures of pupa and imago and the corruptive nature of the change from one to another.”13 Because Moufet thought that caterpillar, aurelia, and butterflies were distinct animals, he put them in separate chapters in his book, a practice that was continued to some degree by Goedart. Lister, saddled with Goedart’s organizational structure and a poor translation from the Latin, made the best of it, adding commentaries at the end of each sub-chapter to correct his fellow entomologist. In his commentary on the caterpillar chapters for instance, Lister wrote: Thus far the smooth and not hairy Catterpillars whose Histories are more perfect, that is having both the Disguises [Chrysalis] Figured and

10 For a discussion of Malpighi’s and Swammerdam’s pioneering works, see Cobb, “Malpighi, Swammerdam,” –. 11 Carr, “The Biological Work,” . 12 Moufet, Insectorum, , and  as quoted by Carr, “The Biological Work,” . 13 Carr, “The Biological Work,” .

the art of science



the Butterfly two [too]. Here follow the less perfect History (those in which the Figures of the Aurelias are only omitted) of the large sort of smooth Caterpillars.14

He corrected Goedart’s classification system when necessary, putting tables of insects together when he perceived they were one species, confirming his ideas by doing dissections of the mouth parts or chrysalis of his specimens.15 Lister also disagreed with Goedart’s claim that caterpillars were spontaneously generated of “corrupt Wood by heate, as other Animalls, which are spontaneously begot,” and noted that Goedart’s claims that caterpillars gave birth to other “wormes” were likely the result of parasitic wasps or maggots.16 Lastly, with Place’s help, he improved the standard of scientific illustration in the work, explaining in the preface: “I have taken great care of the Designes, in transferring them upon Copper Plates, which I dare promise are Exquisitly performed, by the best of our English Artists which was my expence.”17 He took such care because he thought “Naturall History is much injured, through the little incouragement, which is given to the Artist, whose Noble performances can never be enough rewarded; being not only necessary, but the very beauty, and life of this kind of learning.”18 Although Malpighi was using the microscope to dissect insects and to display their anatomical structure and thus “abstracting the animal from the environment,” Lister thought it necessary to have the insect portrayed as much as possible in its ecological niche.19 In particular, he noted “how necessary it is, in order to the compleating of Naturall History, that our Naturallist shou’d be well skilled in Plants: Viz the Food of most Insects.”20 As Goedart had “left us in the darke” about the food sources of some of the insects, for “want of a more particular Title of this Plant,” where the plants could be specifically identified, he instructed Place to portray the butterflies with the caterpillar

14

Lister, Godartius, . Lister, Godartius, . 16 Lister, Godartius, –. 17 Lister, “To the Reader,” Godartius, f. A verso. 18 Lister, “To the Reader,” Godartius, f. A verso. 19 Cobb, “Malpighi, Swammerdam,” . Cobb argues that Swammerdam would eventually follow Malpighi’s approach as well, moving from a naturalistic to a more diagrammatic portrayal of entomological specimens. 20 Lister, Godartius, . 15



chapter twelve

feeding on its favored food source (Figure ).21 Not only did the illustration provide a more complete natural history of insects, but Lister also regarded it as an exercise in identifying which caterpillars infested which types of wood, as well as the determination of “what kind of Wood is best, for Sheathing of Ships.”22 Lister thought it would be

Fig.  Engravings by Francis Place demonstrating caterpillars and their food sources, as well as their metamorphoses. From Johannes Goedaert, Of insects Johannes Goedaert; done into English and methodized with the addition of notes; the figures etched upon copper by Mr. Fr Place . . . (York, ), p. . © Royal Society, London.

21 22

Lister, Godartius, . Lister, Godartius, .

the art of science



possible to “essay certain published pieces thereof like Tallies tyed to a Buoy in the Waters and streames much infested by the Worm” to see which species of tree they preferred. He speculated, “as the Indies are stored with greater variety of Timber, then Europe, so that it would be very probable there may be some found, which that kind of River Worme will absolutely refuse to eat.”23 Detailed illustrations of insect life cycles could help this early venture in economic botany. Pleased with Place’s illustrations for Goedart, Lister had him engrave “a strange monster” spewed up by a York Baker, the subject of a paper read to the Royal Society in .24 The glass painter Henry Gyles alerted Lister to the baker’s plight, and upon examination of the creature, Lister was convinced that his patient had accidentally swallowed the “spawn or embryo of a Toad or Newt” while drinking pond water.25 Arguing again against the doctrine of spontaneous generation, Lister noted “admirable instances there are of Animals living within Animals; of which in the Insect kind, the Royal Society shall ere long received some notes of mine upon Goedartius” making reference to his work with insect “by-births” and parasites. So “exceeding pleas’d” was the Royal Society by Lister’s findings that Robert Hooke subsequently wrote him a personal letter, stating his hypothesis: soe perfectly agree with the truth and usuall method of nature in such kind of extraordinary or monstrous production that I could not . . . but . . . defend the doctrine against some very materiall objections alledged against it. I urged in favour of it that seemed to me that all seed what ever Receiv’d a qualification or modification from the womb in which it was soften’d, from the egge or seed till it become a Creature sufficient to subsist in itself.26

Hooke then asked if the paper could be published in his Philosophical Collections, whereupon Lister provided Place’s engraving, describing it as: the true and exact shape of a Worm . . . curiously and regularly shaped in all its members, as is fully exprest by the pains of a most excellent Artist,

23

Lister, Godartius, . The paper was published in Hooke’s Philosophical Collections, number , and reprinted in Lister’s Mixt Discourses, –. Only a scribal copy of Lister’s letter is still extant in the Royal Society’s Letter Book, MS LBO//, Royal Society Library, London. 25 Lister, Mixt Discourses, . 26 Bodleian MS Lister , f.  r. 24



chapter twelve who Limned it by the thing itself, not two hours after I had it under my eye, that nothing might be added, but what was very true and natural.27

As representation and circumstance abstracted the animal from its environment, Lister emphasized the illustration’s “true and natural” qualities. Lister subsequently preserved the creature for posterity in spirit of wine, but admitted that his method of preservation changed the specimen’s color.28 Luckily, Place’s original drawing is still extant, showing a tadpole or immature-newt like creature that looks ready to wriggle off the page (Figure ). By this time, Place apparently had a press of his own to produce the figure, for in  he wrote to Henry

Fig.  Drawing by Francis Place for Lister’s “An Account of a Monstrous Animal cast out of the Stomach by Vomit,” Philosophical Collections, number , reprinted in Lister’s Letters and Mixed Discourses, pp. –. Shelfmark Letter Book Original, Volume , f. r. LBO//. © Royal Society, London. 27 28

Lister, Mixt Discourses, . Lister, Mixt Discourses, .

the art of science



Gyles, “I pray at the retorne of the Dr [Lister] lett him not have my Oyle for Printing.”29 As time went on, it was not only Place’s printing “oyle” which became less available for Lister, as the artist’s aesthetic attention shifted away from portraying the naturalist’s specimens. Place’s interests always had been eclectic, shifting from horse racing to angling to the pursuit of good company, he jokingly told his friend Thomas Kirke, “We trudge here on at the old rate never inquiring after anything but where the best ale is.”30 Under the influence of his Czech colleague Wenceslaus Hollar (–), Place indeed changed artistic genres, and began doing topographical mezzotints and ink drawings of ruined buildings in landscapes such as Bamburgh Castle on the Northumberland Coast, a reflection of the antiquarian bent of the Yorkshire Virtuosi and of Hollar’s extensive oeuvre which included a variety of antiquarian projects.31 Like Hollar, Place’s ink drawings resemble etchings and many were tinted with pale color washes to clarify or decorate the drawing, “just as colors were used to identify geology or political regions on a map.”32 Before the development of landscape painting, landscapes were background settings, portraits of a gentleman’s estate, or pastoral ideals that were imaginary and decorative.33 Place’s landscapes, on the other hand, anticipate romantic conventions, evident in his illustrations for Ralph Thoresby’s Ducatus Leodiensis (), a natural history of Leeds.34 Place also continued with his pottery project, experimented with oil portraiture, and copied Dutch genre portraits. Furthermore, on his father’s death in , Place inherited £ and an annual income of £.35 So it is not surprising that illustrations for Lister’s scientific papers became less of a priority as Place pursued his own artistic vision. If Place would not engrave Lister’s specimens, who else was available? Michael Burghers (/–), who did most of the engraving 29

BL MS Stowe , f. r. Brighton, “Henry Gyles,” . 31 For more on Hollar, see Hanson, Virtuoso, –. Place’s ink drawing on paper, “Gateway, Bamburgh Castle ” is in the Tyne and Wear Museum, Newcastleupon-Tyne, accession number: TWCMS: B. 32 MacEvoy, “handprint,” http://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/artist.html. See also Sloan, Noble, . 33 For a comprehensive work on this genre, see Büttner, Landscape Painting. See also Sloan, Noble, –. 34 Thoresby, Ducatus Leodiensis. 35 Sloan, Noble, . 30



chapter twelve

for Oxford University Press, was an obvious choice. Burghers had engraved sixteen plates of fossils for Plot’s Natural Histories, as well as depictions of ancient Saxon coins for Edward Thwaites (–), the Oxford don and “Anglo-Saxon preceptor” of Queens College.36 He portrayed Lister’s specimen of a bladder stone impaled with an iron bodkin for a short paper for the Philosophical Transactions, as Robert Plot as secretary of the Society had moved the printing of the Philosophical Transactions to Oxford.37 Burghers “was looked upon as the best general engraver in England” and had “a vast deal of business,” leaving behind substantial wealth at his death, but that also meant Burghers was very busy and expensive, as portraying natural history specimens, archaeological finds, and scientific instruments was a fairly novel and specialized skill.38 Even Francis Place, who had made twelve excellent topographic etchings of the completion of the Greenwich Observatory in , made some fairly elementary mistakes when portraying the astronomical instruments; a careful examination of his engraving of the observatory’s sextant demonstrates that “the artist did not understand how the various parts were interconnected or what turned about which axis.”39 Accurate representations of natural philosophy were thus not something that could be taken for granted. Johns has pointed out that despite the fact the Royal Society portrayed its experimental scene in minute literary detail, there was no illustration of the Society in action, its Repository collections, nor its instruments in use.40 Then, once he had the engravings, Lister faced the laborious task of negotiating with the printers. Natural history publications often required specialized fonts, knowledge of Latin, and sensitivity to the proper placement of figures, and many printers were not capable of the job. Printing houses were often reluctant to take on books of natural philosophy because their “elaborate images were expensive to produce,” and their markets small.41 In , Nehemiah Grew, in his role as secretary, did the leg-work to print some of Lister’s illustrations for Philosophical Transactions, recommending a particular printer, 36 Hearne, Remarks, : ; For information about Edward Thwaites, see Levine, Battle, –, –. 37 Lister, “Account of a Stone,” . 38 Griffiths, “Burghers, Michael,” Oxford DNB. 39 Dewhirst, “Review,” . 40 Johns, Nature, . 41 Johns, Nature, .

the art of science



“the best of  or  whome I tryd.”42 Unfortunately, the printer was not cheap, though Grew related that he promised he would print the plates “for eight pence per hundred, with as good Ink as any, & very fair . . . much cheaper than I can find els where.”43 The projected costs of engraving the images and printing the edition of Goedart’s On Insects were so high that Lister delayed its publication. Francis Aston wrote subsequently that “the [Royal] Society is concerned that you seem to be at a stand in the putting out your book, and I perceive are willing to take of  copies if that would be an Inducement to you to goe forward, nor do I doubt but the University will take of a greater Number.”44 Lister replied that Aston’s offer was “very obliging,” and he indeed “went forward,” engaging John White of York (active – ), a “typographer of renown” for his edition, though “there were only  bokes printed for the curious.”45 As Lister received £ s d from the Society for “forty seven books for the Society’s use,” it is little wonder the print run was so small. As a comparison, the Society paid Michael Wicks, their clerk and amanuensis of twenty years standing “fifteen pounds for a year and a half’s salary.”46 In his reply to Aston’s offer, Lister also indicated that while he was grateful to the Society, his “own papers were but trifles in consideration of those excellent manuscripts Mr Willoughby had left behind him; wishing, that the Royal Society would interest themselves in promoting the printing of those manuscripts.”47 In particular, he mentioned Willoughby’s history of fishes, which “to his knowledge” was “made ready for the press four years before by Mr Ray, and put into the hand of Mr [Josiah] Child, the merchant in London, who married Mr Willoughby’s widow, and who had all the rest of his papers.”48 Lister was referring to Ray’s preparation of Willoughby’s notes for a natural history of fish for publication in the s. In a letter to Lister written in , Ray mentioned that it would be a while before Willoughby’s History of Insects would be “fitted for the press, I being at

42

Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. 44 Bodleian MS Lister , f.  r. 45 “Preface,” Godartius, sig A. For information about White, see Keynes, Lister: A Bibliography, . 46 Birch, History, :  (January /). 47 Birch, History, : . 48 MS LBO//, Royal Society Library, London. Lister’s letter to Aston is dated  February / and is in the Royal Society’s Letter Book. 43



chapter twelve

present upon the History of Fishes, which will take up still a year or two’s time.”49 Ray had also added his own observations to Willoughby’s, as well as those of his colleagues, and relevant material from the works of Guillaume Rondelet (–) and Conrad Gesner. Sir John Lowther, nd Baronet (–) was asked subsequently to speak to Child about the manuscript. Thus, on Lister’s instigation, began the saga of the notorious Historia Piscium, a sumptuous folio volume, the costs of which nearly bankrupted the Society in , making it difficult for them to publish Newton’s Principia a year later. Though scholars, with the advantage of hindsight, have often ridiculed the expense that the Society incurred by publishing a work with hundreds of folio-sized copperplate engravings of fish, Kusukawa has noted the “fish-book” was an expensive virtuosic undertaking with a purpose.50 The work was fundamentally a reflection of “Ray’s quest to recover the knowledge and language lost in the Fall.”51 When compiling his catalogue of plants, Ray was part of John Wilkins’s committee to create a universal language. While Ray was on that committee, his “biblical belief in the corruption of human language and knowledge” was reinforced, giving impetus to his reform program in natural history.52 For Ray, natural history would be reformed by discerning the “characteristic marks” of specimens; in the case of the fish, he sought to “define, classify and depict fishes through their external features, which when matched up, would yield the same nature, and thus allow humans to identify and give a name to a fish.”53 The engravings (which numbered over ) therefore had to be extremely accurate, created under the watchful eye of a natural historian who had the expertise and connections with artists and potential patrons to see the project through, and Lister was the man to do it. He created some unique strategies for the procurement and the funding and organizing of the program of scientific illustration for the Historia Piscium, as well as for his own heavily illustrated publications such as the elaborate Historiae Conchyliorum, and his articles for the Philosophical Transactions. As part of the committee created to 49 MS Ray, f. , number , Natural History Museum Library, London, and Lankester, ed., Correspondence, . The letter from Ray to Lister was written on  July . 50 Kusukawa, “Historia Piscium,” . 51 Kusukawa, “Historia Piscium,” . 52 Kusukawa, “Historia Piscium,” . 53 Kusukawa, “Historia Piscium,” .

the art of science



publish the Piscium, Lister also learned valuable financial lessons that dictated how he would have images for his own works produced. Just as modern scholars are often expected to furnish images and provide permission costs for journal articles, Lister was expected to furnish the plates for the articles that he wrote for the Transactions. Thus, he turned to a literal “in-house” press for the copperplate engravings, teaching his two teenage daughters, Susanna and Anna, how to limn and engrave images. Lister claimed later their engravings of nearly , images for the Historiae Conchyliorum “could not have been performed by an Person else for less than  l. Sterling; of which Sum yet a great share it stood me in, out of my Private Purse.”54 The home press, turning out images on the same thin and watermarked paper that Lister used for his correspondence, allowed for the creation of his masterpiece.55 . Slugs, Fishes, and Snails, but no Puppy Dog Tails: The Making of Masterworks in Conchology and Ichthyology From  until , Lister was preparing the four books and two appendices of the Historiae sive Synopsis Methodica Conchyliorum. He had published already a small tract on molluscs in his Historiae animalium (), his interest in the topic probably engendered by Edward Wotton’s early classification and anatomical description of molluscs, De differentiis animalium (Paris, ). Soon after the first book of the Historiae was published in , Lister sent a copy of it to the explorer and naturalist John Banister (–), and they mutually encouraged each other’s work in matters molluscan. Banister was engaged in a natural history expedition in Virginia and Maryland for fourteen years before he was accidentally shot and killed by a hunter while collecting plant specimens along the Roanoke riverside in a verdant Virginia May.56 The magistrate in Henrico County, Virginia, bailed the hunter, one very 54

Lister, Journey, . The watermark is extant on several pages of the – edition of the Historiae Conchyliorum, Shelfmark Gough Nat. Hist. , Bodleian Library, as well as in several pages of Lister’s letters. The watermark’s three circles, Griffins, Cross and Crown and Arms of Genoa is similar to ARMS.. from the Thomas Gravell Watermark Archive. http://www.gravell.org. The source of the Gravell watermark was a  London imprint from the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C., shelfmark L.F. WM Coll . 56 Ewan and Ewan, John Banister, . 55



chapter twelve

remorseful James Coulson. Later accounts of Banister glossed over the circumstances of his demise, one source merely stating that he “fell victim to the fatigue of gathering plants.”57 Banister’s original letters were sent to the Royal Society where they were lost, but Lister seemed to have received most of Banister’s other catalogues and observations after his death.58 They had been given for safekeeping to John Fell (–), the Bishop of Oxford, who hoped that the newly formed Oxford University Press would publish a “history of Insects, more perfect than any yet Extant.”59 Lister published excerpts from Banister’s surviving correspondence in the Philosophical Transactions as a tribute to his friend. The letters indicate that he sent Lister his American specimens and drawings as well as a copy of his catalogue, which Lister incorporated into the Historiae.60 Thus, Lister became the first naturalist to publish a figure of an American fossil shell, Ecphora quadricostata, which came from the Miocene deposits of Maryland.61 By , his work, which had been enriched by observations from a variety of collectors and naturalists, had grown to  plates of shells, slugs, and molluscan anatomy. The four books were arranged and dated as follows:

Book

Date

Pages

Content

Book I Book II

 

– –

Book III Appendix Book IV

  

– – –

Appendix Appendix

 

– –

Exotic Land Shells and Slugs Freshwater shells, snails [turbinates] and Bivalves Marine Bivalves Fossil [lapidus] bivalves Marine Molluscs, Marine snails [buccinis], molluscan anatomy Fossil snails [buccinis] Minor addition to text [mantissa] and synopses

57

Mitchill, “A Discourse,” . See BL Sloane MS  for Banister’s papers. This manuscript infers Lister received the papers from the Bishop at some point. 59 Hunter, Science and the Shape, . 60 Ewan and Ewan, John Banister, . The correspondence is extracted in “The Extracts of Four Letters from Mr John Banister to Dr Lister,” –. 61 Vokes, “Miocene Fossils.” 62 Turbinate—having a broadly conical spire and a convex base. 58

the art of science



Lister’s Historiae Conchyliorum was divided into Books, Sections, and Headings, which approximate to some degree the Orders, Families, and Genera that Linnaeus employed years later.63 Despite the richness of the visual illustrations, there was no text other than sectional headings and specific descriptions engraved on the plates. Lister had intended to follow his volume of plates with anatomical descriptions of every family in the proper order, but he did not carry out this plan. To assemble this vast work, Lister employed his daughters as the primary draftswomen (the frontispiece reads Susanna et Anna Lister figuras pin), but it seems that he also engaged different artists to engrave species when necessary. The first recorded indication that Lister was encouraging his daughters’ artistic interests was from a letter to his wife Hannah in July . He wrote: “I did send home a Box of Colours in oil for Susan and Nancy to paint with. As for the pencills sent with them, and the colours in shells, which are for Limning, I would have thee Lock them carefully up, tell I return, for they know nott yet the use of them.”64 “Susan and Nancy” were his oldest daughters Susanna and Anna, who were eleven and nine years old at the time. The term “limning” has its source in the word “illumination,” or the medieval technique of painting on parchment. By the sixteenth century, the miniaturist Nicholas Hilliard’s A Treatise on the Art of Limning, explained his manner of work. Portraits or figures were painted in watercolor, made by mixing finely ground pigments and gum arabic to the proper consistency.65 Typical colors included vermillion, ultramarine, indigo, white lead, ceruse, and black made out of deer horn. The limner’s surface was usually vellum, a very thin calfskin parchment, or rag paper; for miniature portraits, the vellum was applied to a playing card with flour paste. The painting was laid in with “pencills,” which were small sable or squirrel-hair brushes. As Sloan indicated, limning was used “mainly in the seventeenth century for heraldry, maps, birdseye views, miniature portraits, and copies of old master paintings,” and it was considered a suitable pastime for young ladies, being generally a “sedentary, clean and quiet occupation which employed rich materials and resulted in decorative works.”66

63

Wilkins, Catalogue, . Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. Woodley also discusses the girls’ artistic development in Woodley, “Anne Lister,” –. 65 Roos, “Limnings of Love,” –. 66 Sloan, Noble,  and . 64



chapter twelve

From the manner in which Lister worked with William Lodge, guiding his illustrations by pointing out with his finger the features of his specimens he wished illustrated, it is easy to imagine his guiding Susanna and Anna likewise. Lister’s fellow York Virtuoso and travelling companion Thomas Kirke also wrote a manuscript entitled the “Art of Limning,” so perhaps this work was a source of instruction, and there were several drawing manuals published as “companions” for the “ingenious of either sex.”67 Though both girls turned out to be quite artistically talented, it is not known who gave them drawing lessons as there is no manuscript evidence of a limning tutor, though Lodge, or Place, or even Henry Gyles were possibilities due to their proximity when Lister lived in York. We do know that Susanna and Anna were painting items from Lister’s shell collection by the time they were teenagers, as their initials appear on the title page of the first book of the Historiae Conchyliorum, entitled De cochleis (), which was devoted to exotic land shells. Susanna had been illustrating papers for the Philosophical Transactions for some time, both for her father and for the Royal Society more generally. Her services were called upon because, in the early s, Francis Aston, one of the Royal Society’s secretaries, was experiencing regular trouble in getting the Transactions printed accurately and in a timely fashion. He even suggested to Plot that in one case they were so “fast printed,” that he was “not satisfied that they should be made publick.”68 To compound his problems, Aston was in protracted negotiations to procure a good financial deal with the London booksellers who sold the journal to make the Transactions a viable concern for the Royal Society.69 As Lister provided the engravings and Susanna’s labor to the Society gratis, and under her father’s control she was likely a reasonably fast and accurate worker, she was an attractive choice as an illustrator.70 67 Kirke, “The Art of Limning,” MS Thoresby , York Archaeological Society, Leeds. 68 Bodleian MS Ashmole , f. r. 69 Bodleian MS Ashmole , f. r. 70 I am surmising that Lister received no payment from the Royal Society for the engravings, as he donated a number of “cuts” to the Society and to the Ashmolean, and there is no record of payment to him in the Royal Society Account Books. See Bodleian MS Ashmole , f. r for Aston’s remark to Plot that Lister gave a “cut” of a Roman altar-piece to the Society, and donated it to Sir John Hoskins. The Royal Society Account Books are in the Royal Society Library, their reference numbers AB///, , and  for this time period.

the art of science



On  June , the secretary of the Royal Society, Francis Aston, remarked in a letter to Plot that he had a “long letter from Lewenhoek” about “wood with  or  Microsc[opic] cutts which Lewenhoek enquires after the printing of, and we must think of doing it for it deserves it.”71 From  to , Susanna engraved the Dutch natural philosopher’s drawings of cross and transverse sections of wood, as well as his discovery of wine salts and the nematode worm, her characteristic signature appearing below the illustrations.72 A comparison of her engravings and Leeuwenhoek’s original drawings of the wood samples demonstrates that Susanna faithfully and professionally reproduced his illustrations, adjusting only their size to conform to the page size of the journal (Figure ). Lister had also written extensively on plant circulation and showed in his earlier disputes with Nehemiah Grew (see Chapter Seven) that he was familiar with wood histology, so it is possible that he guided her in her work. In the case of the salts paper, Leeuwenhoek remarked of his observations, “These I at first drew roughly, and afterwards got a good Artist to draw them again, from the Objects themselves with a good Microscope.”73 There were indeed eleven plates of drawings (now lost) which had been done by a series of skilled Delft artists who “intervened to specify and clarify the detail as they recorded on paper what they mutually agreed had been seen.”74 Aston remarked that the illustrations should go “into one ordinary plate, or if you have more Figures I would have you make  plates, for we ought never to make a plate too big.”75 The drawings were transferred to Susanna to reproduce on two plates, and here again her father was certainly qualified to help her, having published his De Fontibus concerning salts in mineral springs

71

Bodleian MS Ashmole , f. v. Leeuwenhoek, “Appearances of several woods,” –; Leeuwenhoek, “An Extract,” –. 73 Leeuwenhoek, “An Extract,” . 74 Jardine, Ingenious, . 75 Gunther, ed., Early, : –. The letter was written on  March . Lister and Musgrave corresponded about their work about digestion and the lymphatic system, both working on the passage of digestive fluids through the lacteals, which Musgrave demonstrated first. Lister remarked to Musgrave in a letter of  November , “you have made this experiment perfectlie your owne . . . I most willinglie yeild it up to you,” and “I keep your paper till the next Post, that the R.S. may be regaled by it.” Evidently, they enjoyed a warm professional relationship, so it would not be surprising if Musgrave passed along Leeuwenhoek’s drawings to Lister and his daughters. See Gunther, ed., Early : –. 72

Fig. a Original drawings for Anthony von Leewenhoek, “An Abstract of a Letter from Mr. Anthony Leewenhoeck of Delft to Mr. R.H. concerning the appearances of several woods and their Vessels as observed in a Microscope,” Philosophical Transactions ,  (), p. . © Royal Society, London.

Fig. b Susanna Lister’s engravings of the Leewenhoek drawings of wood. Shelfmark: EL/L/. © Royal Society, London.

 chapter twelve

the art of science



the year before (Figure ). In fact, Lister had critiqued Leeuwenhoek’s paper when it was read at the Royal Society in January , stating “there were figures of common salt and alum among the salts of wormwood and some others; and that it was to be wished, that Mr Leewenhoeck had prepared all his salts himself;” in the printed version, the salts are correctly identified.76 Appropriately enough, William Sherard, a conchologist who took notes on Banister’s catalogue, noted Susanna’s drawing of the “salts in wine” were “like the concha Veneris,” shaped like a turbinate shell. Leeuwenhoek in his paper had said that they were in the form of conches.77 As Lister had postulated

Fig.  Susanna Lister’s engravings of salt crystals for Anthony von Leewenhoek, “An Extract of a Letter from Mr. Anthony Leewenhoeck F. or the R.S. to a S. of the R. Society,” Philosophical Transactions ,  (), p. . © Royal Society, London.

76

Birch, History : . Bodleian MS Sherard , f. ; Leeuwenhoek, “An Extract,” . One Dr Pierce had also described a turbinated shell found in the kidney of a woman in the Philosophical Transactions,  (), , a point noted by Ewan and Ewan, John Banister, . 77



chapter twelve

salts and bodily stones were created in the same manner as shells (see Chapter Eleven), it was an apt analogy. Inspired by Leeuwenhoek’s study of salts, in a series of chemical experiments, Lister also attempted some years later to prepare salt extracts from fossils and the body juices of snails, painting them over the surface of shells to see if there was an increase in weight; and tried to grow pearls from snail juices.78 Bernard Palissy and Giordano Cardano had also argued that shells consisted primarily of a salt extracted by the mollusc from the sea and were thus easily petrified, so Lister was attempting to recreate this process.79 In a  publication, Lister also attempted to verify his hypothesis of petrifaction by performing microscopic and chemical analysis of the salt crystals both of fossilized shells and the shells of living molluscs.80 Burning the shells resulted in a calx that was identical to calcareous lime, partially bearing out his assertion in his De Fontibus that witterung from limestone formed calcareous fossils.81 Lister also cited Leeuwenhoek’s examination of the calx of burned mollusc shells, which when examined under the microscope, revealed six-sided crystals shaped like “twigs of trees without the leaves.” The crystalline structure matched that of calcareous lime, and Lister confirmed these observations.82 From at least , Lister and his daughters were regularly using a microscope to create scientific illustrations. In the preface of his Exercitatio Anatomica in qua de Cochleis (), Lister mentioned that to aid the “dissection of minute animalcules . . . I am now for the first time, owing to defective vision, compelled to use a microscope, I rejoice greatly that I can by its aid again enjoy the same studies which were long denied to unassisted eyes.”83 Though simple microscopes based on Leeuwenhoek’s design with their tiny bead-like spherical lenses “surpassed all others in both distinctness and magnification,” magnifying – diameters, their use was only viable to those “whose

78

Lister, Historiae Animalium, , as quoted in Carr, “The Fossil Controversy,” . Newman, Promethean, –. See also Duhem, “Leonard de Vinci,” –. 80 Lister, Conchyliorum Bivalvium, –. 81 Lister, Conchyliorum Bivalvium, . 82 Lister, Conchyliorum Bivalvium, . 83 Martin Lister, preface to Exercitatio Anatomica, . [Et cùm jam primùm microscopio, ex visûs defectu uti cogar, eisdem ope me rursus iisdem studiis frui, quae diu nudis oculis denegata sunt, magnopere gaudio.] 79

the art of science



eyes could well endure it.”84 The simple microscope had to be brought very close to the object it was viewing, and it provided a very constricted field of view.85 From , pocket microscopes, “flea glasses,” and compound instruments were widely available, and by the early eighteenth century, many of Lister’s colleagues throughout Europe used the more “comfortable compound instrument for observations at medium and lower magnification, turning to the simple microscope to explore smaller realms.”86 As Wilson has indicated: between  and , the compound instrument was also subject to notable improvements and design variations: these included interchangeable lenses of various powers, the introduction of a substage mirror and diaphragm, focusing mechanisms, and fitting it with mica “sliders” containing mounted specimens. The microscope acquired its stable tabletop design, which left the arms free for maneuvering the specimen.87

Compound instruments with two or more lenses magnified with good resolution from ten to fifty times, but above this range, “illumination became a serious problem,” as the light transmitted by a lens decreases with its power.88 To solve this issue, Robert Hooke illuminated his microscopic specimens illustrated in the Micrographia () by a candle and a condenser.89 However, because Lister utilized microscopes as aids to dissection of molluscs and his poor vision obviated using a simple microscope, an early compound instrument in conjunction with a hand lens would have been more than sufficient for his purposes. Lister’s daughters also had younger and sharper eyes for sustained microscopic observations. Susanna’s younger sister Anna was certainly using a microscope in the early s, her notebook with her original drawings for the Historiae Conchyliorum, including a depiction of a brachiopod gill and dissected mollusc penises, is labeled “ex microscopio.”90 The printed work also carried the label indicating her

84 Ruestow, Microscope, . See also Bracegirdle, “Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Microscopes,” –; Fournier, Fabric. Wilson, Invisible. 85 Ruestow, Microscope, . 86 Ruestow, Microscope, . 87 Wilson, “Microscopy,” . 88 Wilson, “Microscopy,” . 89 Wilson, “Microscopy,” . 90 Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. Brachiopods are a phylum or marine animals with hard shells on the upper and lower surfaces. They differ from bivalve molluscs (like scallops or clams) that have shells on the left and right.



chapter twelve

use of the instrument, and it is possible that the sisters were some of the first women, and certainly among the youngest women, doing scientific illustrations using microscopes (Figure ).91 At the least, Susanna and Anna were certainly capable of drawing and engraving from actual specimens, having done so throughout the s and s. Susanna illustrated a paper for Philosophical Transactions about a honeycomb sent to the Royal Society by Lister’s friend, Monsieur Cabart de Villermont, a geographer posted in the West Indies, “care . . . being taken, for the designing, and engraving.”92 For the same issue, she engraved images of a hygroscope sent by William Molyneux from Dublin to Lister, an asbestos cloth, a bird specimen that her father sent to Ray, and several antiquities.93 Her work in fact comprised most of the illustrations of volume  of the Philosophical Transactions published in . As Robert Plot had to move the printing of the journal from Henry Hunt at Gresham College to the printers at Oxford University Press during his tenure as secretary of the Royal Society, it is likely that Susanna’s talents may have been used as a stop-gap measure during the transition period or when Michael Burghers was otherwise engaged with other commissions.94 In  when Lister was assembling the first book De Cochleis [land molluscs] of the Historiae Conchyliorum, Susanna was already producing engravings of high quality. Although Woodley suggested that William Lodge probably engraved some of the early plates of shells from the girls’ drawings for this first edition, it seems just as likely that the girls may have done the engravings themselves.95 The De Cochleis was a fairly modest octavo volume, originally intended to be complete in itself, and described by Lister as “my small and scanty offering for the

91 Maria Sibylla Merian (–) has been proffered as the first woman to use a microscope, but Natalie Zemon Davis has indicated that Merian was only using a magnifying glass to do her works with insects. See Davis, Women, . 92 Lister, “Strange Sort of Bees,” . 93 Molyneux, “Concerning a new Hygroscope,” –. Hygroscopes measure the humidity in the air. Plot, “A Discourse,” –; Lister, “A Letter of Dr Lister’s to Mr Ray,” –; Lister, “An Explanation of the Figures,” –. 94 After he became secretary in , Plot had number  of the Philosophical Transactions printed by Henry Hunt in London and sold by him at the Repository at Gresham College. He then transferred the business to Leonard Lichfield, the Printer to the University of Oxford, which printed numbers  to , with Michael Burghers doing most of the plates, and Susanna and Anna contributing their illustrations. 95 Woodley, “Anne Lister,” .

Fig. a “Table Four” or illustrations of the molluscan reproductive system from Martin Lister’s Historiae Conchyliorum.

Fig. b

The figure legend for Table Four. The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.

the art of science 



chapter twelve

advantage and increase of learning, especially in natural history, for which I have the greatest enthusiasm.”96 It was not too ambitious a project at this stage to be a family production. Most of the plates were unsigned, but the illustrations are obviously the work of more than one hand. The few that are signed show variations of “A,” a conjoined “AL or SL,” and “S. Sculp.” Anna Lister, despite her youth, appears to be the stronger artist, with a direct method of graduated lines in opposition to her sister’s more fussy use of crosshatching.97 Lister wrote to Henry Gyles in  asking him to “pray get Mr Massenger to make me  etching sticks as formerlie & putt good and fine needles in them, neatlie after his fashion, & send them by the Carrier,” indicating that some sort of engraving was being done at his London home.98 It also seems that the printing of De Cochleis may also have been done at Lister’s place of residence. There was not a single line of movable type, as all the written content was engraved with the figures on the copper plate. The paper was thin, and, as mentioned, the watermarks showed that it was the same that Lister used for his correspondence. An examination of the copperplates of the baroque frames around the shells confirms Wilkins’ supposition that “borders of all sizes and designs were run off in quantity, to be over-printed with plates of figures, and varied at will” (Figure ).99 As the sheets were run through the home press twice, the strain on the thin paper meant it was sometimes cut through the surface, and strips had to be pasted onto the back of the sheets. Though this inefficient technique made additions and corrections difficult, it also avoided the difficulties of dealing with printers and allowed for frequent revision, as Lister’s illustrators were literally “in-house.” Lister also seemed to have “drawn on” his friends at this stage for sample illustrations to make his book complete, particularly Francis Place. As mentioned, Place had been a colleague of Wenceslas Hollar, and, in his correspondence, Place mentioned his fellow artist was a person whom he was “intimately acquainted withal.”100 His friendship

96

Lister, preface to De cochleis, . Women’s Work, Linda Hall Library of Science and Engineering, http://www .lindahall.org/events_exhib/exhibit/exhibits/womenswork/lister.shtml. This point is also made by Woodley, “Anne Lister,” . 98 BL MSS Stowe , f. r. 99 Wilkins, “Notes,” . 100 BL Additional MSS , f. r. The letters was from Francis Place to George Vertue, a biographer of Hollar. 97

the art of science



Fig.  Page from the Historiae Conchyliorum showing an engraving after Wenceslaus Hollar’s depiction of the Bear Paw Clam (Hippopus hippopus). Martin Lister, Historiae sive Synposis Methodicae Conchyliorum . . . (London: by the author, –). Collection and photograph of the author.



chapter twelve

with Hollar began when he was a young student at Gray’s Inn in London in the s, and Hollar was in his fifties. Place decided to leave the study of law and took art lessons from Hollar who “engraved some of Place’s drawings of grotesque heads.”101 Place probably learned the technique of etching in Hollar’s studio, and Hollar gave Place a portion of his commissions as well, particularly John Ogilby’s English edition of Jan Nieuhof’s popular book on China which had many illustrations.102 The two artists also had stylistic parallels, both etching specimens of natural history—birds, butterflies, moths, beetles, and, more importantly for the purpose of our analysis, shells.103 Before Hollar met Place, he had moved to Antwerp under the patronage of the Earl of Arundel, where, in , he produced  etchings of shells from the Earl’s collection. Arundel planned to make a “paper museum,” disseminating his collection to the public by employing artists like Hollar to make engravings and etchings of the original objects for the purposes of circulation and documentation.104 The shells were prized specimens, all tropical species, from the Caribbean, south-east Asia and Australia, most likely brought back to the Netherlands by explorers and traders.105 Certainly, shells were coming into artistic fashion in the early to mid-seventeenth century, particularly in the Netherlands where wealthy merchants saw the contemplation of shells as part of an exalted humanist enterprise in appreciating the plenitude and wondrous creations of God.106 Not only did their complex designs offer proofs of divine artifice, but the rotation of turbinate shells into themselves suggested a spiritual lesson, as the Calvinist poet Spankhuysen remarked:

101 Tyler, Francis Place, . In  and , Hollar etched fourteen such heads from Place’s drawings; eight are extant in the Department of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum, London. See Pennington, Catalogue, numbers , , , , , , , . 102 Tyler, Francis Place, . Sloan has also noted that although Place never apprenticed with Hollar, he did work with him “copying plates for illustrated books,” so he was clearly influenced by Hollar’s style and aesthetic interests. See Sloan, Noble, . 103 Vertue, Description, –. In addition to the engravings of insects that he did for Lister, Place did a series of engravings of birds after Barlow’s designs, as well as a series of copies of Hollar’s engravings of raptors and water birds. See Hake, “Some contemporary records,” –. 104 Erickson, “Review,” –. 105 “Amazing Rare Things: Natural History in the Age of Discovery,” The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, London,  March– September , http://www .royalcollection.org.uk/ microsites/amazingrarethings/. 106 See Prosperetti, “Conchas Legere,” .

the art of science



“It would be a good thing if man would turn into his own shell and think to himself: What was I before I was born?”107 If collected merely for their beauty, the lifelessness and fragility of shells could also be symbols of vanitas. The rich merchant Jan Govertsz of Haarlem (c.) appears with his shells in his portraits, and Dutch artists Adriaen Coorte (–) and Ambrosius Bosschaert (–) introduced shells into their allegorical composition.108 In England, the Tradescants had an exotic shell collection at Lambeth as part of their curiosity cabinet, which Ashmole later acquired for his museum. Hollar’s representations of shells, however, were not part of allegorical compositions or solely set pieces in a curiosity cabinet. They were instead keenly empirical illustrations of specimens of natural history. Although Hollar’s portrayals of butterflies and caterpillars for the Earl were probably copied from Dutch paintings, the shells appear to be limned from an actual collection that the Earl possessed.109 Hollar’s biographer George Vertue claimed that Arundel collected shells, and John Evelyn, a friend of Arundel, was also interested in shells and brought some when in Amsterdam in August . Arundel became Hollar’s patron, whereupon, according to Place: [Hollar’s] first coming into England was with the Lord Arrondel who was sent ambassador to the Emperor . . . he Lighting of Mr Hollar as they came down the Rhyne took him into the boat he drew several designs for his Lordship who was the first nobleman that ever pretended to a Collection in England.110

Hollar’s shell illustrations have been described as “marvels of accurate drawing . . . little known even to conchologists,” and George Vertue remarked of them that they were a “most curious Book of Shells . . . Many Collectors of Hollar’s works have them not, nor are they to be met with in the most numerous Collections, except Two or where they are esteemed as Great Rarities.”111 Despite their rarity, it seems that Lister was quite familiar with these sets of plates, obtaining

107 Stoett, “In zyn schulp kruipen,” number , as quoted in Prosperetti, “Conchas Legere,” . 108 Prosperetti, “Conchas Legere,” , . 109 Pennington, Catalogue, xxxi. 110 BL Additional Manuscripts , f. r. This manuscript is comprised of “Collections of George Vertue, containing notes relating to artists and their works, made between –.” 111 Pennington, Catalogue, .



chapter twelve

them from Place or his friend William Courten (–). Place had bought several of Hollar’s works from his widow and may have lent them to Lister for his daughter to copy.112 As for Courten, he was a naturalist and obsessive collector who was nonetheless generous with his acquisitions, housing Old Master drawings, large numbers of prints and botanical paintings, medals, natural specimens and other curiosities in a public museum in a suite of ten rooms in the Middle Temple in London.113 Lister recorded visiting him, scribbling in his casebook for  that “I saw in Mr Charlton’s collection of prints about  single  ° plates of Turben shells very large and most elegantlie done by Hollar, whish he bought at Paris.”114 Lister was thus able to use these plates by Hollar for his Historiae conchyliorum (–); and in the De Cochleis there are five shells with the label ad examplar Holleri [from the example of Hollar]. Among them are an unidentified striated trochus (number ), a telescope shell (Telescopium telescopium number ), and a bear paw clam (Hippopus hippopus number ) (Figure ).115 The bear paw clam and telescope shell are identical to Hollar’s engravings in the Arundel Collection (Figure ). Perhaps in gratitude for his assistance, in , Lister proposed Courten for membership of the Royal Society.116 He also dedicated the Tables of the first part of his Historiae Conchyliorum to “That illustrious and excellent man William Courten, of the Middle Temple, London.”117 In the  edition of that work, Lister referred to Courten’s “remarkable kindness in giving easy access to myself and other research workers in natural history, and in affording the opportunity of drawing and describing these and objects of the same kind from his abundant resources.”118 112

Tyler, Francis Place, . Gibson-Wood, “Classification and Value,” . “Courten, William (–),” Oxford DNB. 114 Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. Lister marked his comment n.b. or nota bene, indicating his interest in the shell drawings. 115 According to Pennington, five of Hollar’s shells were copied in the  edition of the Historiae Conchyliorum, including in book four, numbers  and  in section VIII; number  in section X, and numbers  and  in section xi. See Pennington, Catalogue, . 116 Birch, History : –, , as noted by Gibson-Wood, “Classification and Value,” . Courten was ultimately not elected to the Royal Society. 117 Gibson-Wood, “Classification and Value,” . The original Latin of the dedication is “Martinus Lister has ludentis otius Tabulas illustra admodum Viro D. Gulielmo C. medius Templi. Londini.” 118 Gibson-Wood, “Classification and Value,” . 113

the art of science



Fig. a Etching of Bear Paw Clam (Hippopus hippopus), c. by Wenceslaus Hollar (–). The Royal Collection © , Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, RCIN .

Fig. b The original copperplate that Anna Lister engraved of the Bear Paw Clam. Lister Copperplates  (plate ). The Bodleian Library, Oxford.



chapter twelve

In the course of completing the Historiae Conchyliorum, Lister not only used his own collection, described as “not deficient, either in number or perfection of species,” but also he was able to borrow many specimens of shells from a variety of collectors to complete his book.119 These included Courten, as well as John Banister, Edward Lhwyd (–), James Petiver (–), Hans Sloane (–), and even John Woodward (–), who as we shall see would, towards the end of Lister’s life, become one of his worst enemies. In the Historiae Conchyliorum, there are seemingly endless illustrations of mollusc shells, their descriptions using visually apprehensible information as the basis of their classification. By placing each shell into an elaborate baroque printed “frame,” it could be argued that Anna and Susanna (with their father’s guidance) were simply highlighting the shell’s beauty as a self-referential curiosity taken out of nature. After all, for most collectors and early modern natural historians, the living mollusc played a secondary role to its visually pleasing casing. In this manner, the sisters were demonstrating an aesthetic impulse that drove an older Renaissance tradition of natural history. At the same time, a closer look reveals that something quite new was going on. As with Lodge, Lister sat with his daughters while they drew the specimens, and pointed out the features they were to record. One of their notebooks containing drawings for De Cochleis featured Anna’s illustration of a sea-urchin marked by Lister’s annotations and directions in correcting its shape. For instance, he wrote “the plates between the subluxis a:b:c:d * are somewhat less at the bottom than they are in the life”120 (Figure ). With such detailed guidance, he taught his daughters an “ontology of perceptual habit,” which was reinforced by an evident pleasure of skillful perception Susanna and Anna experienced that manifested on the page as they gained experience.121 As each book came out between  and , his daughters’ skills as illustrators grew keener, supporting Lorraine Daston’s point that in scientific observation there is “seeing well which may be inextricably intertwined with the acquired ability to see as.”122

119

Maton and Rackett, “An historical account,” . “Original Drawings for Lister’s Conchology ca. ,” MS , f. v. Science Museum Archives, Wroughton, Sussex. 121 Daston, “On Scientific Observation,” . 122 Daston, “On Scientific Observation,” . 120

the art of science



Fig.  Lister’s corrections of his daughters’ depictions of sea urchins. Original Drawings for Lister’s Conchology c.. Shelfmark: MS , ff. r–r. © Science Museum at Wroughton, Swindon.



chapter twelve

The first book of the Historiae Conchyliorum was also one of the first publications to recognize that the chirality of shells was important, portraying their symmetry as they appeared in nature. Although most organisms are bilaterally symmetrical, with the left and right halves as mirror images, most gastropod shells are not.123 Earlier illustrators had often reversed the images of gastropod shells. Sometimes this was done by mistake as for “the printed image of an object is to be accurate, the plate must be a mirror image of the object to be illustrated.”124 To save time, the illustrators would carve the shell as it appeared, which produced a reversed image when printed. But sometimes images were reversed arbitrarily to create aesthetically pleasing patterns. Rembrandt selected the most interesting angle for his only etching of a shell, a depiction of a specimen from the Indian Ocean, conus marmoreus, portraying the opening at the side and the spiral at the top (Figure ).125 The impression in the picture, however, is reversed, as the whorl of the shell is counter-clockwise in the etching, and it is not a sinistral shell. For him the reversal was an aesthetic choice, as Rembrandt remembered to sign and date the work in mirror image on the plate. As Leonhard has shown, Lister’s daughter Anna was well aware of Rembrandt’s tricks.126 Though Anna reproduced Rembrandt’s engraving in her notebook as part of her artistic training, showing it, as Rembrandt did, as a mirror image, the shell was portrayed correctly when she engraved it for her father’s publication.127 She also identified it in the caption as after the example of the Dutch master (Figure ).128 As the original copperplate illustrates, Anna probably engraved it simply by copying the print of the Rembrandt engraving, which would give

123

This point is made by Allmon, “The evolution of accuracy,” –. Allmon, “The evolution of accuracy,” . 125 Museum Het Rembrandthuis, Amsterdam. The shell (Conus Marmoreus), , etching, drypoint and burin, state II (),  ×  mm. 126 Leonhard, “Shell Collecting,” –. 127 Leonhard, “Shell Collecting,” . Leonhard thinks the image in Anna’s notebook is a fresh print of the original Rembrandt engraving, and she may be right. However, as both girls were keen copyists, it could be a replica that Anna created. Tellingly, the image of Rembrandt’s shell in Anna’s notebook is not signed. 128 Anna’s drawing after Rembrandt may be seen in Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. Her correct orientation of the shell is seen in Lister, Historiae Conchyliorum, figure  and here in Figure c. 124

the art of science

Fig. a



Rembrandt van Rijn, The Shell, an etching, . © British Museum, London.

Fig. b Conus Marmoreus. © Natural History Museum, London.



chapter twelve

Fig. c Anna Lister’s drawing of the shell in her father’s Historiae sive Synopsis Conchyliorum (London, ), figure . © Royal Society, London.

Fig. d The original copperplate that Anna Lister engraved of the conus marmoreus. Shelfmark: Lister Copperplates  (plate ). The Bodleian Library, Oxford.

the art of science



the correct orientation.129 Lister had written his first scientific paper on rare left-handed or “sinistral” shells that appear as mutations, mirror-images unable to mate with their dextral cousins, so he would be sensitive to such symmetries and convey them to his daughters (See Chapter Five). Allmon noted also that Lister’s Historiae “appears to be the first to note explicitly and illustrate the existence of actual sinistrally coiled shells.”130 After engraving over , plates, it was not surprising that Susanna and Anna were able to see the shells well, in an expert manner representing each one as the essence of a species or an entire genus. Even in their initial book of exotic land shells, Susanna’s and Anna’s keen observations meant that the varieties of Concha veneris—) unicoloured, ) black streaked, ) transversely waved, ) ringed or banded, ) black spotted . . . “were correctly identified rather than being seen as separate species.”131 Lister’s daughters also noted the subtle differences between the two species of Viviparus, freshwater river snails—a more ventricose type with a thinner shell and more rounded whorls which Lister reported as being in the river Cam—and a more common species with a narrower, thicker shell and more angular aperture.132 Although Linnaeus used Lister’s classification of the narrower species in his taxonomy, in  taxonomists were still confused about the two species’ different traits until they began again by going back to Lister’s original publication.133 As the Historiae progressed and went through subsequent editions, more of the molluscs appeared along with their shells. A comparison of the  edition with the posthumous  edition reprinted from the final plates Anna Lister engraved shows that she added images of living snails.134 To set her achievement in context, it was not until  that Adanson’s Histoire naturelle du Sénégal and d’Argenville’s

129

Copperplate , Historiae Conchyliorum, Rare Books Room, Bodleian. All plates for the Historiae are still extant. 130 Allmon, “The evolution of accuracy,” . 131 Dietz, “Mobile objects,” ; Carr, “The Biological Work,” . 132 Watson, “Names of the Two Common Species,” –; Lister, Exercitatio Anatomica, –, –, plate . 133 Watson, “Names of the Two Common Species,” . Lister’s Historiae sive Synopsis methodicae Conchyliorum, figure  on plate  portrays the narrower species, and figure  of plate  shows the more ventricose species—the “Cochlea altera vivipara.” Linnaeus cited Lister’s figure of the narrower species in his own taxonomy. 134 Women’s Work, Linda Hall Library of Science and Engineering. http://www .lindahall.org/ events_exhib/exhibit/exhibits/womenswork/lister.shtml.



chapter twelve

Conchyliologie were devoted to any study of the mollusc itself; until that point, the natural historian’s eyes were firmly riveted to the shell.135 Much like Place’s portrayal of the butterfly with its caterpillar, chrysalis, and preferred food source in Lister’s edition of Goedart, Anna’s image of the living snail with its shell also was an attempt to capture the essence of a species in a single image. Susanna’s and Anna’s engravings were often the results of the distillations of many individual molluscs. Guy Wilkins’s studies of Hans Sloane’s collection of shells correlated several of these still extant specimens with engravings in Lister’s Historiae Conchyliorum. When engraving the shells, Anna and Susanna based their portrayals, when they could, on observations of several adult and juvenile specimens in Sloane’s collection, as well as already extant figures and descriptions of the species in question. The young women’s creation of type specimens was quite different from recording one rare or wondrous representative of the natural world as was done in the Renaissance. Their engravings meant that their father was able to classify molluscs in the Historiae Conchyliorum according to specific criteria. These criteria set a new standard for conchology, so that the Historiae ended up in constant use by taxonomists of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. The Historiae’s plates and principles of classification were utilized by (among others) the explorer, botanist, and entomologist James Petiver (–); Scottish physician and antiquarian Sir Robert Sibbald (–); Sir Hans Sloane, founder of the British Library; Belgian humanist and natural historian Carolus Langius (–); John Morton, the eighteenth-century natural historian of Northamptonshire; and Linnaeus. Even when F. W. Martini and J.H. Cheanitz published their Conchyliorum Cabinet between  and , which became the standard text in the field, it was still seen in  as useful to publish an index to Lister’s Historiae. The editor remarked that it was a work “which has been so long and universally referred to by every naturalist who has published on either recent or fossil shells . . .”136 In addition to the visual evidence provided by his daughters, Lister’s practices of processing and creating written information in the Historiae Conchyliorum shaped his conceptions of a natural order. In his works, particularly in the Linnean Society’s copy of his De Cochleis,

135 136

Dietz, “Mobile objects,” . Dillwyn, “Preface,” in Index, .

the art of science



Lister published results for future revision, blurring the boundaries between printed works and manuscripts.137 He literally cut and pasted his working copy with additional engravings, annotations, and corrections to accommodate new species of molluscs he observed or borrowed from other collectors, his printed book serving as a filing system to order animals taxonomically (Figure ). Recent scholarship by Scharf has noted that Linnaeus was an innovator in his means of

Fig.  Working copy of Martin Lister’s De Cochleis, tam terrestribus, quam fluviatilibus exoticas, item de ijs quae etiam in Anglia inveniantur Libri II. (Conchyliorum Marinorum Liber III . . . [&] Buccinorum Marinorum Liber IV); De Cochleis (London: the Author, –). By Permission of the Linnean Society of London.

137 Working copy of Martin Lister’s De Cochleis. MS , Case c, Linnean Society, London. The cutting and pasting of drawings of specimens to order them is indicated clearly throughout.



chapter twelve

information, organization, and retrieval, in his use of index slips, and in cutting and pasting his printed books and manuscripts to order species.138 It seems Lister may have pre-empted him in some of these techniques. Lister scrawled on one of the endpapers of his grangerized Historiae that the “imposition of names on things is the highest part of wisdom.”139 With the constant accumulation of new mollusc species from his international contacts, his improvised filing system allowed him to gain taxonomical sagacity. In his molluscan work, Lister arguably anticipated taxonomic schemes more advanced than those of Linnaeus. Whereas Linnaeus systematized names and grouped species according to shared physical characteristics, Lister realized in his spider work that behavioral characteristics were just as important as morphological characteristics. With snails, however, he utilized features that we would recognize as comprising a biological definition of species, of interbreeding natural populations.140 For instance, in his Historiae Animalium, he recognized that his large and small grey slugs, Limax cinereus maximus and Limax cinereus parvus, were distinct species, each mating with only their own kind.141 They were not just the big and little varieties within a species type. Unfortunately, Lister was not always so consistent in his taxonomy. For example, he “distinguished two very similar marine nerites . . . on the similar grounds that copulation does not occur between them,” but he admitted he had never observed them mating.142 Indeed the two nerites were merely color variations of the same species. . The Historia Piscium At the same time that Lister was engaged in producing De Cochleis, he also found himself in charge of the engravings for the Royal Society’s publication of Ray’s and Willoughby’s Historia Piscium. Lister had

138

Müller-Wille and Scharf “Indexing nature,” –. Working copy of Martin Lister’s De Cochleis. Lister’s inscription is in the front of the work, in the first endpaper. 140 This is a point first made by Jeff Carr in his dissertation “The Biological Work,” . My thanks to Dr Carr for our discussion of this issue. 141 Lister, Historiae Animalium, , as noted by Carr, “The Biological Work,” . 142 Lister, Historiae Animalium, , as noted by Carr, “The Biological Work,” –. 139

the art of science



been elected vice-president of the Society in January , often chairing meetings when president Samuel Pepys was away on business. As vice-presidents often do, Lister found himself saddled with a good deal of administrative business, the “fish-book” being one of his tasks. Two years previously, Sir Josiah Child (–) had relinquished Willoughby’s fish manuscripts to the Society. As mentioned, Child had married Willoughby’s widow Emma in  and thereby gained control of all of his papers. In many ways he was a very “problem Child,” an extremely wealthy and rapacious merchant, who attempted to cheat Willoughby’s three children out of their estate, misappropriating nearly £, for his own use. The normally mild John Evelyn characterized him as “sordidly acquisitive.”143 As one of the newly rich, he used possessions and money to identify himself as a gentleman, and he understood the power of conspicuous consumption in blurring lines of social rank. As director of the East India Company, he formulated shrewd market strategies that spawned the “calico craze” during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, selling the material to middling and lower orders as a substitute for “brocades and flowered silks favored by the aristocracy.”144 Soon even the aristocracy favored its bright colors and intricate patterns, one pamphleteer proclaiming calicoes were “the ornaments of our greatest Gallants.”145 As a colleague of Pepys who had recommended him to the victualling syndicate for the admiralty, Child had connections to the Royal Society.146 Lister’s correspondence shows that several members of the Royal Society were acquainted with Child and approached him for the insect and fish papers. In June , Francis Aston wrote to Lister, “Mr Jessop of Broomhal thincks he could be instrumental to get Mr Willoughby’s papers about Insects & fishes out of Sir Josiah Childs hands. I wish you would write a line to him, for I believe it would induce him to goe about it.”147 As we have seen in Chapter Three, Jessop was a great friend of Willoughby’s and Ray’s in the s and s, having met them in Montpellier. When Willoughby wrote his Observations and the Insects and Cartrages, which was read by Dr Edmund King

143

“Child, Sir Josiah,” Oxford DNB. Hunter, Purchasing, . See also Lemire, Dress, –, and Lemire, Fashion’s Favorite, chapters one and three. 145 Hunter, Purchasing, . 146 “Child, Sir Josiah,” Oxford DNB. 147 Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. 144



chapter twelve

before the Royal Society on  July , he utilized one of Jessop’s observations of a bee tribe wrapped up in leaves.148 Willoughby, in his preface to his Ornithologiae (), mentioned Jessop’s assistance as well, stating he “sent us descriptions and cases of many rare birds, and discovered and gave us notices of many species thereabouts [near Broomhall], which he knew not before to be natives of England.”149 These species included the Linnet as well as a Cormorant, Jessop having sent Ray “the skins of this among other birds stuffed from Sheffield.”150 Ray also visited Broomhall for several months, writing Lister of the pleasure he had working in matters of mathematics and natural history with Jessop.151 Jessop was an executor of Willoughby’s will, along with Ray and Philip Skippon, so it was evident that Jessop thus had a very personal stake in seeing some of Willoughby’s papers published. Perhaps Jessop thought he could make a personal appeal to Child, or even to Child’s wife Emma concerning the preservation of the memory of her former husband. Unfortunately, Emma failed to share Francis Willoughby’s approval of John Ray. After Willoughby had died, there was a complete break between her and Ray.152 Some of this state of affairs was because one of Willoughby’s sons had sued Child in  for wasting the family estate, and he was not allowed to remove his father’s goods or books from Middleton Hall without a degree in Chancery. Ray, who had once been the children’s tutor, was incensed at Child’s behavior. Furthermore, four years after Emma married Child, Sir Henry Baynard, the “most active” of the executors of Willoughby’s will had died, giving Child the opportunity to attempt (unsuccessfully) to remove Ray as trustee.153 Ray complained in one of his letters in July  that Child was “sordidly covet[ous]” and “will scarce let his wife part with mony to engrave Hist of Fishes.”154

148 Gunther, ed., Further Correspondence, , as quoted by Armytage, “Francis Jessop,” . 149 Armytage, “Francis Jessop,” . 150 Lankester, ed., Correspondence, . Jessop wrote to Ray on  November . 151 See for instance MS Ray, f. , letter , Natural History Museum, London, and Lankester, ed., Correspondence, –. 152 Willoughby, Book, . 153 Willoughby, Book, , note . 154 Gunther, ed., Further Correspondence, . Gunther quotes from Derham’s abstract of original correspondence, now apparently lost. This point is also made in Willoughby, Book, .

the art of science



As Child refused to pay for the engravings, John Fell, the Bishop of Oxford and founder of the University Press, agreed to finance the work provided “that the book were intire as to the matter and to the figures,” and if the Society would purchase  copies.155 In March , Robert Plot informed the Royal Society of this arrangement. Lister was asked to “give some instructions concerning the number of figures that would be necessary, and out of what books they might best be had.”156 Lister subsequently contacted his friend, the Yorkshire physician and naturalist, Tancred Robinson (–) and asked him to write to Ray and request his drawings and figure references; Robinson had a new medical practice in London, was highly regarded by Robert Boyle, and, most importantly, he had not been privy to the earlier disputes between Ray and Lister over ballooning spiders. He was, thus, a neutral party and useful go-between to ensure Ray’s papers reached the Society. After conferring with Robinson, Ray informed the Royal Society a week later that his classification and illustration of cetaceous fish was wanting and that previous written accounts of the “unicorn-fish” were false. Ray defined cetaceans or whales as fish, though he noted, “their internal structure resembled viviparous quadrupeds,” and said he had “little hopes of getting any good information of them.”157 He also assured the society, “for this History of Fishes, I can warrant it to be as full and perfect as to the number and species, and their descriptions (excepting only the cetaceous kind), as was the history of birds,” a reference to Willougbhy’s previous publication on Ornithology.158 As to the “designs for the cuts,” Ray claimed he had “several drawn by hand from the life, and have already, for every species, made a reference to the place where the best figure of it is extant in Gesner, Aldrovandi, Rondeletius, Salvianus, etc.”159 Some plates of fish that had belonged to Dr Wilkins were also “rolled off against the next meeting, in order that the Society might judge, whether they would be useful to

155 Birch, History, : . For more on Fell’s career, see Keene, “John Fell,” –. Hunter also discusses the early history of Oxford University Press in Science and the Shape, –. 156 Birch, History, : . 157 Kusukawa, “Historia Piscium,” ; Lankester, ed., Correspondence, . Ray was writing to Robinson on  March . 158 Lankester, ed., Correspondence, . 159 Lankester, ed., Correspondence, .



chapter twelve

the book.”160 In using both life drawings and cuts from other books, Ray was following a time-honored tradition in natural history, but was not compiling a bestiary or Renaissance encyclopedia; instead he was choosing the “best figure” to indicate the morphology of fish for his taxonomic scheme. As for his part, Lister contributed a classification of Orbes or porcupine fish, made suggestions for the description of the species of Raia radiata (species of ray), and seemingly discovered a new species of Scardinius or Rudd, though it turned out it had been noted before by other natural historians such as Plot.161 The following November, in the absence of Pepys, Lister licensed formally the second half of the book with the Royal Society’s imprimatur; the second part of the book consisted of the illustrations and Willoughby’s Appendix to the Natural History of Fishes [Appendix ad Historian Naturalem piscium Domini Willughbii].162 The first part, entitled the Historia Piscium, was the textual introduction, supervised by John Fell. Though Pepys was not present, he did contribute fifty pounds to the Society, which was used to pay for fish illustrations in the book,  plates carrying his name.163 Things seemed to be progressing well, until Robert Plot dropped a spanner into the works. In a letter to Aston, Plot revealed that it had been presumed that Willoughby had taken all the drawings of fish “from the life, where as it was now found, that the cuts must be picked up here and there out of books.”164 In fact, he avowed that Willoughby’s History of Birds contained several inaccurate illustrations that were “so unlike” the actual specimens in Staffordshire that Plot himself had concluded that “he thought now to have some of them engraven anew.”165 As historian Adrian Johns has noted, Plot and Aston had agreed a few years previously about the need for live models for the drawings in works of natural history; Aston had mentioned that he “even preferred 160

Birch, History, : . Gunther, ed., Further Correspondence, , , . The original letters are in the Natural History Museum, London. They are: MS Ray, f. , number , (reference to orbs, written from Tancred Robinson to John Ray on  September ); MS Ray, f. , number , (species of ray, written from Robinson to Ray on  April ); MS Ray, f. , number , (reference to rudds, written from John Ray to Tancred Robinson). 162 Birch, History, : . 163 Birch, History, : ; Kusakawa, “Historia Piscium,” . 164 Birch, History, : . 165 Birch, History, : . 161

the art of science



that Ray’s History of plants be printed with no images at all rather than permit ‘old figures’ to be re-used.”166 The work to which Aston referred was the Historia plantarum that Ray had begun in ; it was Ray’s plan to catalog and describe all the world’s plants, so Aston and Plot had high standards indeed.167 At the time, Ray remarked in a letter to Robinson, “I am so teased about cuts for my History of Plants all my friends condemning wooden, and telling me I had better print it without any; that I am almost unsettled again in my resolutions, and if your judgment concur, I will print it without any indeed.”168 Plot then remarked in this letter to the Royal Society about the Historia Piscium that John Fell refused to go ahead with the book until all the ichthyologic drawings were sent to Oxford for him to peruse; in the Bishop’s opinion, only “one hand should be employed in the engravings of the plates.”169 Other than scientific scruples, Plot’s motivations for sending this message to the Society were unclear. As the Philosophical Transactions had been printed in Oxford previously, with the engraving of its illustrations largely under Plot’s supervision, it is possible he wanted more administrative control over this significant publishing venture of the Society. Also, he may have surmised rightly that the book would be representative of the Society’s achievements to date. After the delays in extracting the manuscripts from Child, however, the Society simply decided to pay for the entire book itself; Bishop Fell would arrange for the printing of the text, and the Royal Society for the illustrations. The Royal Society created a committee including Lister, as well as Robinson, Ray, and Aston (amongst others) to accomplish the task of providing the plates.170 The book was published by subscription, each subscriber sponsored an illustration of a fish at a guinea each, their names engraved on the plate to recognize their contribution.171 As he was experienced in commissioning engravers for his scientific works, apparently Lister was in charge of negotiating the prices for the illustrations as well as ordering and seeing the

166

Johns, “Science and the book,” . Raven, John Ray, . 168 Gunther, ed., Further Correspondence, . The original letter is in MS Ray , f. , Natural History Museum, London. 169 Birch, History, : . 170 Birch, History, : . 171 Birch, History, : . 167



chapter twelve

completion of all the plates.172 Common to other wealthy physicians and virtuosi such as Richard Mead, he was a connoisseur of engravings, primarily French, which he cataloged in his adversaria; his list of French art books, and engravings by Charles le Brun, Nicolas Poussin (Aaron’s Rod Changed into a Serpent), Noël Coypel, and Veronese (Noah after the Flood), as well as his portrait collection (over ) were worth in his estimation £.s.173 Lister’s friendship with Place and Lodge also made him familiar with many of the leading English artists of his day, and he commissioned eighteen illustrators to complete the History of Fishes.174 Kusukawa identified sixteen of the artists from the account books in the Royal Society archives, but as some of the plates were printed in Oxford, it is possible that Michael Burghers may have engraved some of them and Plot paid him separately.175 Lister contacted Paul van Somer II (fl. –), a French Huguenot refugee and pioneer of mezzotint, to do the elaborate frontispiece, as well as the Dutch artist Jan Drapentier (f. –), better known for his commemorative medals.176 Lister also engaged the expertise of Pierce Tempest, a print seller and active publisher of mezzotints between  and . As Tempest’s most famous publications were mezzotints of birds painted by Francis Place, this may have been the personal connection with Lister that secured his services.177 In the midst of procuring the illustrations, Lister actively canvassed colleagues to subscribe to the book’s publication.178 Henry Paman, his old tutor at Cambridge, sponsored an engraving of a striped bonito (Sarda orientalis or, as was identified in the fish-book, Pelamys Salviani). Samuel Fuller (–), a former fellow at St John’s College, chaplain-in-ordinary to Charles II and Mary II, and future Dean of Lincoln assured Lister, “I have sent a Ginny for the plate in Mr Wiloughby’s booke of Fishes, which I promised when I was with you in London.”179 Fuller’s nephew went cap in hand to Lister’s Westmin172

Birch, History, : . Bodleian MS Lister , ff. r–v. 174 Kusukawa, “Historia Piscium,” . 175 Kusukawa, “Historia Piscium,” . 176 “Drapentier, Jan,” Oxford DNB. 177 O’Donoghue, “Tempest, Pierce,” Oxford DNB. As Kusukawa has indicated, the Royal Society’s account books show payment to Tempest with regard to the Historia Piscium, and as O’Donoghue noted, Tempest’s “most important publications were the six sets of bird and animal designs engraved by Francis Place and Griffier.” 178 Birch, History, : . 179 Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. 173

the art of science



ster residence to deliver the subscription fee to sponsor the engraving of the halibut. Although Fuller was not a member of the Royal Society, his past connection with Lister at Cambridge apparently persuaded him to contribute. Lister himself contributed funds for the copperplate of a bulgy-eyed haddock drawn from life. In , the Society laid out “on the table all the figures of the History of Fishes, ordered and completed by the great care of Dr Lister, together with sixty sheets of the history.”180 Over  folio-sized engravings carpeted the meeting table, their empirical intricacy and graphic delights unfurled for the gentlemen assembled. The lampreys looked ready to wiggle, and the engraver had lovingly etched with his burin, stroke-by-stroke, the striped bonito’s distinctive markings. One can imagine Lister tracing the details of the engravings with his finger, pointing out to his colleagues the external characters that were the very definition of the species type. As a special touch, van Somer portrayed on the frontispiece one of Neptune’s attendants blowing a large conch shell to trumpet visually the work’s importance, a motif of which Lister no doubt would have approved (Figure ). In his shellbooks, Lister portrayed a conch used to make musical horns, Strombus pugilis, and identified the holotype of a related large conch species, Strombus listeri; the specimen of Strombus listeri originally was part of the Tradescant Museum and the early Ashmolean, and was named in his honor.181 The frontispiece also showed a ship bringing in the day’s catch; other than the obvious maritime allusions, van Somer may have had a more famous allegorical ship in mind, the one illustrated in the frontispiece of Francis Bacon’s Instauratio magna and his Novum Organum ().182 It is well known that Bacon was the philosopher-king of the nascent Royal Society and that Baconian allusions appeared in much of its early iconography, including Sprat’s frontispiece to the History of the Royal Society (), engraved by Wenceslaus Hollar and designed by John Evelyn.183 It is not surprising the Historia Piscium seemingly had a visual nod to his influence. Bacon’s work

180

Birch, History : . Hancock, “Accidental damage,” . 182 For a brief analysis of the emblematic title-page of the Novum Organum, see Corbett and Lightbown, Comely, –. 183 For an in-depth analysis of Sprat’s frontispiece, see Shapin and Schaffer, Leviathan, –. 181

Fig. a Frontispiece to Francis Bacon, Instauratio magna (London: Joannem Billium, ). © British Museum, London.

Fig. b Frontispiece to Francis Willoughby, De historia piscium libri quatuor (Oxford: Sheldonian Theatre, ). © Royal Society, London.

 chapter twelve

the art of science



depicted a galleon passing through the Pillars of Hercules that were said to have stood either side of the Strait of Gibraltar, symbolizing the journey into unknown waters and new knowledge (Figure ). His frontispiece “was a brilliant adaptation of the emblem of the Emperor Charles V . . . to symbolize his rule, which extended from Spain over the vast unknown territories in the New World beyond the Atlantic Ocean.”184 A second galleon can be seen returning in the distance, coming back from the “new world” of scientific endeavor laden with treasure, reinforced by the Latin tag “Many will travel and knowledge will be increased” from Daniel , . In the frontispiece of the Historia Piscium, van Somer’s ship was also bringing back great treasures of natural history from the New World: about  of the fish, or ten to fifteen percent of the species in the Historia Piscium were from the Americas.185 Van Somer illustrated also a demigod who was drawing the latest specimen in his sketchpad, a huge fish hauled out of the ship that served as the central point of the composition. Not only did van Somer suggest emblematically the keen empirical detail in the portrayal of the specimens within, but this detail also was as a gentle iconographic jibe to Plot and the Bishop of Oxford who worried about the fish illustrations being copied from books. To make the point even further, the frontispiece noted that specimens drawn from life were indicated within by a cross symbol.186 The fish’s toothy mouth imaginatively served as a border for the announcement that the Royal Society printed the book. The visual conceit was an unintentionally apt one as the Historia Piscium did devour the organization’s funds. All that remained was for the book’s copies to be printed, and Lister was asked by the Society to have  copies made. As the plates were printed in London, and the text of the book was printed in Oxford under the supervision of John Fell, the coordination of labor caused some problems and suspicions. In the Royal Society meeting of  February /, the minutes read: The debate about the History of Fishes being entered upon, it was alleged by Mr Aston, that the book being printed at Oxford and the plates in London, as likewise the Appendix, that there could be no fraud in the

184 185 186

Corbett and Lightbown, Comely, . de Asúa and French, New, . This is also a point made by Kusukawa in her article about the Historia Piscium.



chapter twelve printer at Oxford. Against which it was objected, that the cuts being designed for a book apart, any number of the books that might be in the printer’s hands might by that means be made complete. The council then agreed . . . that they could not proceed to make any disposal of the History of Fishes, till they should hear from Dr Plot, and have security from Mr Hall the printer, that he had printed no more than the number, which the Society paid for.187

Subsequently, Francis Aston fussed to William Musgrave in March : Dear Brother, I have writ Dr Plot about sending up the History of Fishes, for yesterday a bill was sent us for the pay the charges of it, and wee were desird to lay the book perfect before the Society. I desire you to take all possible care that the number of  be compleat because our reputation is concerned in it.188

The books were delivered, and all seemed well. Ray was thrilled with the results, sure that the excellence of the illustrations would guarantee the book would sell, and the “reputation” of the Society seemed assured. Lister, Robinson, and Aston were thanked by their fellows for their “pains and trouble” in a subsequent meeting189 Sadly, this proud moment was ephemeral for the Society, and especially for Lister. The £ cost for printing was never recovered by sales to the public. The expenses nearly bankrupted the Society, and in  they paid salaries to secretaries Edmund Halley and Robert Hooke with fish books. Lister’s reputation in the Society took a nosedive; though he had the approval of the Society’s council, he was the one who had licensed the book for publication, giving it the Society’s imprimatur.190 He was re-elected as vice-president in December  and occupied the chair in the January  meeting, but, by  February, Sir J. Williamson had taken over the office.191 Four days later, Robert Plot wrote to Lister a quite revealing letter: Good Dr I most heartily thank you for your last letter, tho it brought the ill tidings of the Frenzie of the Society, pray be not troubled at it, for the shame at last will turn upon their heads. I have acquainted my Lord Bishop with

187 188 189 190 191

Birch, History, : . Gunther, ed., Early, : –. Birch, History, : . Birch, History, : . Carr, “The Biological Work,” .

the art of science



the whole business, who together with his Officers of the Press, can and will justify us, whenever there is occasion. I’ll assure you I am so very little troubled at it, that the joy I have contrived of the honour you doe us here, in desiring to be admitted of our Society has quite overbalanced it. I hope Mr Aston, Mr Flamsteed, Dr Tyson, Dr Robinson and some other good friends will follow your example upon this occasion; if so, my Lord Bishop has thought of a good designe of advancing the reputation of this Society beyond what can be imagined, but of this say nothing, but bring in those men to follow if you can, and you shall know all in good time. Nevertheless I could not have you or any of the rest, throw yourselves out of the Royal Society, for we may live to have a pluck with them for the Authority there too another time. However we are sure to outdoe them in all other matters. Next Tuesday I shall propose you to be admitted a member of this [Oxford Philosophical] Society, which as soon as done you shall certainly hear again from Your faithfull Friend, Robert Plot.192

Plot indeed had created a Philosophical Society in Oxford in , which until this point had been nothing but cordial with the Royal Society; after all, Plot had been secretary of the Royal Society and saw their roles as complementary. But his attitude may have changed when the Society accused the printer at Oxford of possible fraud. Plot had been involved heavily in the printing venture, having written to the Society about the “character to be employed” in the publication, and recommending, “that there might be a border with the Society’s arms.”193 He was probably deeply insulted. This state of affairs is confirmed by another letter by Plot, which was read to the Society on  March, relating “to the History of Fishes”; although the correspondence has been lost, the Royal Society minutes recorded: “it seeming to the council, that the answer of Dr Plot argued some discontent in him, they thought for to order a letter to be written to him, to satisfy him of the respects of the Society, and to remove from him all jealousies and misunderstandings about the affair of that book.”194 By , it was clear that he was perturbed by the Royal Society’s fish book debacle and saw an opportunity to take advantage of their weakness and compete with them by encouraging a sort of defection to his own philosophical group.

192 193 194

Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. Birch, History, : . Birch, History, : .



chapter twelve

So, the problems with the expense of printing the Historia Piscium were likely the source of the “frenzy” in the Society, but there were other troubles. Aston and Robinson had abruptly resigned as secretaries in December , perhaps peeved at the Society’s problems. As for Lister, “at the desire of the council,” he was asked to declare that his committee gave the order for the  copies, and that it was he who had “agreed for the price of ingraving.”195 Aston had to explain why the paper cost not seven shillings per ream as had been agreed, but “that parcel of paper not holding out, it had been supplied with a better sort,” that cost eight shillings and six pence.196 This rather humiliating task completed, the accounts were audited, Lister presenting them to the Society on  March /; tellingly, he was not re-elected to the Council that year. Lister was quite angry that he had been held to exacting standards for having the engravings done, and then was blamed for their expense. The fish-book debacle was also arguably not the legacy that he wanted to give to its author and his friend Francis Willoughby. After , Lister stayed away from the Royal Society, remarking in  to Edward Lhwyd that he had attended Gresham College “not five times in twenty years.”197 None of Lister’s subsequent books bore the imprimatur of the Society, although he published sixteen papers in the Transactions in the s.198 Ten years later, apparently still nursing a grievance, he wrote to Lhwyd, who had taken over from Plot the keepership at the Ashmolean, saying that “mean & invidious spirits reigns amongst even Societies founded purposlie for the promoting of learning in all its parts.”199 He also remarked to Tancred Robinson that “The R. Society may have great men in their Number, but alass, very little Souls and narrow Minds.”200 Lister was prickly and one to hold grudges. He was not communicating with Ray due to the ballooning-spider incident, and now had cut himself off from his fellows at Gresham College. His only contact with other natural historians was by correspondence and by his occasional attendance at the botanical

195 196 197 198 199 200

Birch, History, : . Birch, History, : . Bodleian MS Ashmole , f. . Carr, “The Biological Work,” . Bodleian MS Ashmole , f. . Bodleian MS Lister , f. r.

the art of science



club at the Temple Coffee House in London, an informal gathering of virtuosi that was active between  and .201 We hope, at the least, that Lister received some satisfaction from sending his copies of the fish book to his “honourd friend Mr Banister,” as well as to Richard Bulkeley, a colleague in the Dublin Philosophical Society and witness, while visiting London to the whole debacle.202 Bulkeley, knowing his friend’s feelings were hurt, thanked him no less than three times for the book in his letters, complimenting Lister on his contributions to natural history. Lister also learned a valuable financial lesson from it when doing his own Historiae Conchyliorum. The cost of engraving the  plates for the fish book was £ s d alone without considering printing costs or paper. As he had over , shells to portray in , plates, and he suspected that like the Historia Piscium, his book would not sell well, it was little wonder he employed his daughters to engrave the shells. Lister also did several editions on his home press, adding specimens as they were discovered. His daughters engraved the accompanying text, which was a moneysaving venture but only of course in relative terms. The entire production of the Historia he estimated still cost him £ “out of his Private Purse.”203 Nonetheless, his method of publication did save dealing with the booksellers, whom he commented were “inraged at o[u]r printing for o[u]rselves & by subscription but no not how to helpe themselves, and dare not venture to reprint, we having had the top of the market . . . ”204 This state of affairs may also have been a source of personal satisfaction after his experiences with the fish book. Though he continued to write about natural history in the s, Lister turned more and more to medical subjects. Some of this was sheer interest, as he had previously presented medical papers on rabies and smallpox to the Royal Society. However, to compete effectively in the medical marketplace, it was necessary for Lister as a member of the Royal College of Physicians to present his medical theories to a fee-paying audience. As we will see in the next chapter, some of his publication of medical work was in a rather cantankerous response to

201

Riley, “Temple Coffee House,” . The copy of the Historia Piscium is annotated by Banister, and described in Ewan and Ewan, John Banister, . 203 Lister, Journey, . 204 Bodleian MS Ashmole , ff. –. This is a letter from Lister to Edward Lhwyd. 202



chapter twelve

satirists like William King (–) who publicly and systematically lampooned his interests in natural history as trivial and unbefitting a physician. Virtuosi had always been targets of satirists in print and on the stage by writers such as Thomas Shadwell; Boyle’s air pump experiments were, for example, lampooned as the mere “weighing of air.”205 But King waged a deliberate campaign specifically against Lister, writing satires of his commentaries on the cookbook of Apicius, as well as his Parisian travel memoir. Lister had a professional reputation to protect, and protect it he did with a stream of publications in the s. These works described a variety of innovative observations of medical phenomena, new surgical techniques, and discourse about the theory of disease involving one of the first discussions of insect vectors.

205

See, for instance, the classic study, Lloyd, “Shadwell,” –.

PART FOUR

TIME SPINS AWAY: 

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

PUBLICATION AND PRESTIGE: THE SEX EXERCITATIONES MEDICINALES AND THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS . Introduction By the early s, Lister had many reasons to feel satisfied at the outcome of his professional life. His casebooks burgeoned with important clients from the beau monde of London, figures such as Edward Stillingfleet, Bishop of Worcester, and the Lords and Ladies Belmont, Carbury, Kingston, Montjoy, Strickland, and Thanet.1 Lister’s niece, Sarah Churchill and her husband John, Duke of Marlborough were also listed, as were Lord Brouncker, President of the Royal Society, and the Earl of Tirconnell, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and husband of Lister’s niece Frances. Lister was elected to the office of censor in the Royal College of Physicians in , keeping an active role as an examiner of candidates until well into his old age.2 Lister had largely completed his Historiae Conchyliorum, which was critically acclaimed. He accompanied it with a work dedicated to the anatomical dissection of conches, the Exercitatio Anatomica in qua de Cochleis (), which also received a fine review in the Philosophical Transactions. The review noted his description of the hermaphroditic reproductive system of snails, and its “exact and curious figures, designed by the Life.”3 He had clearly kept his daughters Anna and Susanna busy limning and engraving for many years. In  Edward Lhwyd wrote to Lister “I do not wonder your workw[omen] begin to be tired, you have held them so long to it.”4 Despite all of his achievements, Lister was still concerned with his professional reputation. Although he had been called to court several

1

Bodleian MS Lister , passim. This work is Lister’s casebook for . “Letters testimonial,”  January , Order no VX IA//, Lambeth Palace Library, London. 3 Anonymous, “Account,” . 4 Bodleian MS Lister , f. . The letter is also printed in Gunther, ed., Early, : . 2



chapter thirteen

times by Charles II for medical consultations, he was still not officially a royal physician. His attempts to become one in the reign of James II and William III were also not successful, even with the influence of his niece Sarah Churchill and plenty of money for bribes. Sarah used her friendship with Princess and then Queen Anne to advance her own family materially, and she dutifully and respectfully wrote to her Uncle Martin: Tho’ you have not heard from mee I have not been negligent in your business, but I doubt I can’t make an interest enough to get you one of the fore [four] physicians to the King beca[u]se I believe hee will take the same that ware [were] to the last King . . . as to the money . . . my coson [cousin] Hartopp tells me you would be willing to give to anybody that mought [might] oppose you, if it is my power to doe it there is noe need of that.5

She ended the letter by admitting that getting Lister a place in the royal household would help her own career.6 Despite Sarah’s efforts, Lister did not become a royal physician until Anne became Queen. Lister’s concern about his status also revealed an underlying tension between his roles as a natural philosopher and as a physician. These competing interests were often a topic expressed in his letters to his friend Edward or “Ned” Lhwyd, the new keeper of the Ashmolean Museum who succeeded Robert Plot. Lhwyd “arrived in Oxford as a student in  after his father, an impoverished member of the Welsh gentry, died leaving young Ned nothing but his linen.”7 Though Lhwyd was short on funds, he was long on knowledge, intelligence, and ability; he received a thorough training in botany from his father’s gardener, Edward Morgan, who had been a student of Robert Morrison, the Professor of Botany at Oxford.8 Lhwyd attended Jesus College, Oxford, but he did not take a degree because of lack of financial support and subsequently served as assistant keeper of the Ashmolean Museum under Plot’s supervision for six long years. Lhwyd’s correspondence revealed that his preparation of innumerable tedious inventories was often punctuated with an impatience to travel so he could study natural history and topography. Lister had come into contact with Lhwyd in the course of his further donations of specimens and 5 6 7 8

Bodleian MS Lister , ff. r–r. Field, Favourite, . Hellyer, “Pocket Museum,” . Hellyer, “Pocket Museum,” .

publication and prestige



books to the Ashmolean. Lister mentioned in one of his typical notes to Lhwyd that he had sent “by the barge man Rush a box of Bookes, such as [I] judge proper for the Museum, they will make in all a tolerable collection of journalls of voyages . . . I think I have almost cleered my studdie of them.”9 Along with the books, he sent a “fine Copper Plate . . . of a Tyger,” which he bought from a Dutch captain; Lister’s purchase was inspired by his visits to the Tower of London to see the hyena brought there by the East India Company, which he characterized as “a verie rare beest.”10 Recognizing that the young Welshman was also a “very rare beest” in his abilities, Lister served as Lhwyd’s mentor and convinced Ashmole to appoint Lhwyd to the post of keeper in .11 Lister subsequently encouraged Lhwyd’s composition of his catalogue and the first field guide of English fossils (Lithophylacci Britannici Ichnographia), and lobbied colleagues such as Isaac Newton and Hans Sloane to get the book published by subscription.12 Lister and Lhwyd soon became close friends, Lhwyd sending him species of shells and live snails in strawberry baskets, which Lister kept and bred in his “little garden” at Westminster for “Observation and dissection.”13 They also swapped fossils, locality records, and other observations in the post, mutually commiserating about their suffering with asthma and migraines, as well as sharing confidences and gossip. There are  letters between Lister and Lhwyd surviving, and Lister later entrusted Lhwyd to keep an eye on his eldest son Alexander when he attended Oxford.14 The historian Joseph Levine remarked that Lhwyd resembled John Ray in character and temperament, both “unselfish and ascetic spirits in a world of self-seeking of ambitious men.”15 As Lister was by now permanently estranged from Ray, perhaps Lhwyd’s good nature and lack of pride helped replace the affection of a friend whose presence in his

9

Bodleian MS Ashmole , f. . Bodleian MS Ashmole , f. . 11 Bodleian MS Ashmole , f. r. 12 Hellyer, “Pocket Museum,” . There were ten subscribers whom Lister contacted. The other members of the group included three peers: Charles Sackville, Earl of Dorset; Charles Montague, Earl of Halifax, and Baron John Sommers. Lister’s friends Tancred Robinson and Francis Aston also subscribed, as did Étienne François Geoffroy, a chemical physician and correspondent. 13 Bodleian MS Ashmole , f. . The letter was dated  October . 14 There are  letters extant between Lister and Lhwyd in the Bodleian Library, and the bulk are in Bodleian MS Ashmole  and Bodleian MS Lister –. 15 Levine, Shield, . 10



chapter thirteen

life he undoubtedly missed. As Ray mentored Lister, so Lister could mentor Lhwyd. In a  letter to Lhwyd or “Mr Floid,” as he generally wrote the name phonetically, Lister announced that his next book, the Sex Exercitationes Medicinales [Six Medical Exercises] was in press. He explained that it was composed of “small tracts of the most common cronical deseases in London,” but did not see its publication as a moment for personal celebration. He told Lhwyd that he parted with it unwillingly, “because it will come out before its time as belonging to a greater bodie of Phisic,” referring to a larger masterwork on the bodily humors he had been preparing for some years.16 Nonetheless, Lister simply found himself: necessitated to it, to stop the censorious mouthes who think and say a man that writes on Insects can be but a trifler in Phisic. After this small essay I hope they will let me alone to pursue Philosophie amongst the inferiour sort of beings.17

In the preface to his Exercitatio Anatomica in qua de Cochleis (), a comprehensive anatomical guide to land-shells and slugs, he was also aware his work might “provoke the laughter of spectators,” but declared that these “exercises which long ago in the days of my youth were a pleasure and delight to me, they, now that I am old, are my solace.”18 Lister’s interest in insects and the “inferiour sorts of beings” were well known to “censorious mouths,” namely the theatre-going and reading public in London. His penchant for studying spiders and ants had already been satirized in  by Thomas Shadwell in his play “The Virtuoso.”19 Lister was certainly not the only virtuoso who suffered due to Shadwell’s jokes; Robert Hooke wrote in his diary after seeing the play for himself, “Damned Doggs, Vindica me deus [God grant me revenge] People almost pointed.”20 The audience would have pointed at Lister too, as in a marked reference to his spider chart in 16

Bodleian MS Ashmole , f. . The letter is undated. Bodleian MS Ashmole , f. . He also expressed much the same sentiment in Bodleian MS Ashmole , f. . 18 Martin Lister, Preface to Exercitatio Anatomica, . [Etenim hae exercitationes mihi olim juveni voluptati et in deliciis fuêre; eaedémque jam in senectute solatio sunt.] 19 Shadwell, Virtuoso. See also Lloyd, “Shadwell,” –. 20 Hooke, Diary, , as quote by Jardine, Curious, . While I agree with Professor Jardine that there were elements of Hooke in the character of Gimcrack, I cannot dismiss Shadwell’s specific reference to spider research. 17

publication and prestige



his Historiae Animalium, the main character of Sir Nicholas Gimcrack remarked: I think I have found out more Phoenomena’s or Appearance . . . of Nature in Spiders, than any Man breathing: Wou’d you think it? there are in England six and thirty several sorts of Spiders; there’s your Hound, Grey-hound, Lurcher, Spaniel Spider.21

Shadwell then characterized Lister as one of the virtuosi who “has stud’d these twenty years to [sort] out the several sorts of Spiders, and never cares for understanding Mankind.”22 To make such a comment about a physician was damning indeed, so part of the reason Lister reluctantly wrote his Sex Exercitationes Medicinales was to silence the satirists. He groused to Lhwyd, “it goes against the grain to publish in a man’s lifetime and practical[ly] push Phisic bookes,” a “base” endeavor “beneath the dignitie of Phisic.”23 Because of remarks like these, and his penchant in his last years for writing commentaries on medical classicists like Hippocrates, Lister has traditionally been portrayed by scholars as retreating into medical conservatism and withdrawing from studies in natural history.24 In fact, Lister’s work was part of the fashionable revival of Hippocrates’s theories of environmental determinism in early modern medicine, and his medical works continued to converge with his interests in natural history, producing novel results. Lister’s research involved not only taxonomic classification of plants and animals, but also the subsequent reclassification of disease and drug types. These reclassifications included his consideration of the role of insect vectors in disease and new pharmaceuticals based on discoveries of materia medica in colonial outposts. Lister’s subsequent and most mature work resulted thus, in the words of Foucault, in a novel ontological understanding of these “collective entities” of medicine and natural history.25 For practical and political reasons, Lister’s publications were also not expressions of medical conservatism. To retain his reputation among the London élite who were his patients, he needed to show he was familiar with the latest medical theories and developments in natural philosophy.

21 22 23 24 25

Shadwell, Virtuoso, –. Shadwell, Virtuoso, . Bodleian MS Ashmole , f. . Carr, “The Biological Work,” –. Foucault, Birth, .



chapter thirteen

Further, as a fellow, he was apparently under some pressure from the Royal College of Physicians to publish works showing his familiarity with the latest theories of iatrochemistry to bolster the College’s medical reputation.26 Lister also did not retreat from the most pointed debates of the day involving natural history. He crossed swords, literally and figuratively, with the young naturalist and physician John Woodward over his controversial geological theories and ideas about the formation of fossils. Woodward’s “diluvial theory” which implicated the Great Biblical Flood in the formation of the earth’s crust was savagely attacked in the anonymous and heterodox Two Essays Sent in a Letter from Oxford, to a Nobleman in London.27 As we will see later in the Chapter, Lister’s correspondence with Lhwyd reveals the distinct possibility that he was involved in the anonymous work’s publication. . Professional Prestige and New Ontologies of Medicine and Natural History In the mid-seventeenth century, the Royal College of Physicians found itself under increasing attack from apothecaries and competition from empirics in a crowded medical marketplace. It was as an institution trying to find ways to distinguish itself professionally: the monopoly of the College undermined its own desire to limit the licensing and supply of doctors in London, which was a market with an expanding appetite for medical information.28 Empirics and apothecaries published material about anatomy, disease, and cures to satisfy public demand, and the College physicians were simply in danger of being overshadowed. The College therefore started a conscious campaign that integrated medicine with the latest developments in corpuscularianism and iatrochemistry in order to distinguish itself from its less-educated competitors. By mid century, the College established a chemical laboratory at

26 For the pressure on the College to accept iatromechanism, see Brown, “The College of Physicians,” –. 27 Levine summarized the publication of the Two Essays and their reception in Shield, –. Rappaport speculated upon the identity of “L.P.” in Rappaport, “Questions of Evidence,” –. 28 See Furdell, Publishing, chapter four. See also Cook, “Good Advice,” –; Cook, “Society of Chemical Physicians,” –; Cook, “Rose Case,” –.

publication and prestige



its Physic Garden in Chelsea.29 Sir Thomas Browne included the writings of iatrochemists such as Jean Beguin, Daniel Sennert, and Heinrich Crollius in his “list of essential writings for the medical student.”30 Thomas Willis’s Diatribe duae medico-philosophicae (), however, was the English work largely responsible for introducing iatromechanism to medicine.31 Willis’s book was accepted readily by the College of Physicians. His work provided an innovative explanation of fever as “the mutual mechanical action of the corpuscular constituents of chemical matter,” yet suggested traditional Galenic treatments of vomits and purges, which members of the college favored and patients anticipated.32 Willis’s work put an iatromechanical gloss on collegiate medicine, distinguishing it from the practices of “unschooled” empirics and apothecaries. The adoption of his theories worked brilliantly, bolstering the College’s professional reputation, and its adoption of iatrochemistry had as much to do with economic and social factors as scientific ones. By the s and s, a group within the College led by writer and physician Walter Charleton (–) attempted to get colleagues to adopt a less-defensive posture, refashioning the College as a powerful entity and intellectual authority.33 On the accession of James II, a new College charter, aggressive in tone, was published which gave the college the authority to supervise the printing of all new medical books, and which employed new regulations against unlicensed empirics or apothecaries practicing medicine in London. The College opened a free medical dispensary for the poor to undercut the apothecaries’ business. At the same time, the apothecaries retaliated and the physicians were ordered to write directions for the apothecaries in English rather than Latin, so the patients could read the prescriptions. Some members of the College who were admitted after  favored working with the apothecaries to mutual advantage, leading to bitter disagreements within the institution.34 At the same time,

29

Cameron, History, . Dickson, “Thomas Vaughan,” . 31 For more on Willis, see Dewhurst, Thomas Willis. 32 Brown, “The College of Physicians,” . 33 Brown, “The Mechanical Philosophy,” . For more on Charleton, see Booth, Subtle. 34 I have taken this factual account of the disagreements in the college largely from Clark, History, chapter , passim, as well as from Carr, “The Biological Work,” –, and Cook, “Rose Case,” –. 30



chapter thirteen

iatrochemistry enjoyed even greater favor in the world of natural philosophy. To present, at the least, a united intellectual front, the College under Charleton’s leadership in the s began “conscientiously to affix their official Imprimatur to all [iatrochemical] treatises written by those members of the College who publicly exhibited the fellows as both skilled physicians and competent scientists.”35 Lister had long been known for his chemical work, having done analysis of spa waters in his De Fontibus (), and his correspondence shows he was often asked to identify contents of salt spring and the minerals found around them. In August , Charles Montague, the Earl of Halifax, even took time from his duties as a member of the privy council to write to Lister, stating “this which I send you is a piece of Rock found upon digging for a salt spring in Cheshire. I desire your opinion what is the best way of using it.”36 Lister was thus an obvious fellow to ask to pen an iatrochemical treatise. He had long prescribed chemical medicines, following in the footsteps of his great-uncle Matthew. One of the few scientific works that Lister kept until his death was the chemical physician John Friend’s (/–) Praelectones chymicae.37 Though he disagreed with aspects of Helmontian chemistry (see Chapter Nine), Lister possessed two Helmontian manuscripts, De flatibus and Praxis Helmontiana, written in the hand of fellow York virtuoso, John Sturdy; Lister annotated several of Helmont’s prescriptions with “nota bene.”38 Lister’s Sex Exercitationes Medicinales can be seen thus as part of the flood of iatromechanical and iatrochemical books published in the s to enhance the College’s prestige. Another example was his old colleague Nehemiah Grew’s De Salis Cathartici (), which offered an iatrochemical interpretation of the healing powers of Epsom salts that he had discovered.39 Shortly after Lister’s work was published, he was rewarded with an appointment as a censor of the College, and he read and debated about other iatrochemical books deserving the College’s imprimatur. To satisfy the College, he even appended another account of bivalve anatomy, his Conchyliorum bivalvium utriusque

35 36 37 38 39

Brown, “The Mechanical Philosophy,” . Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. Carr, “The Biological Work,” . Bodleian MS Lister , ff. –. Sakula, “Doctor Nehemiah Grew,” –.

publication and prestige



aquae exercitatio anatomica tertia, to a treatise on gallstones.40 Lister had also combined the two works into one publication, as his bookseller advised medical books were more saleable than those of molluscan anatomy. In Lister’s own opinion the latter field of study was the more fruitful, for “medicine, except in so far at it is based upon a knowledge of nature, is a thing altogether vain and futile.”41 As a result, when we turn to his Sex Exercitationes Medicinales we see not only Lister’s obeisance to the latest fashion in iatrochemistry, but also some truly innovative work incorporating natural history into medicine.42 In an unpublished preface to his Letters and divers other Mixt Discourses in Natural Philosophy, Lister had commented, “I must yet for my owne part affirme that I am much beholden to the studdie of Insects for the disciplining my thoughts, and making of them readier in observing, if you will . . . usefull and necessarie things in Phisic.”43 This guiding philosophy was literally born out in one of his tracts in his medical exercises, the “Dissertation on Smallpox.” (His second edition also included essays on smallpox and the stone, in addition to the original six pieces about dropsy, diabetes, rabies, syphilis, scurvy, and arthritis.) In the course of his examination of the etiology of smallpox, Lister used his knowledge of entomology to investigate the possible role of insect vectors when tracing the ultimate origins of the disease. Until the mid-s, the pathogenesis of smallpox was generally thought to be a type of “putrid bubbling” or fermentation that occurred in the blood. The origins of this model come from the Islamic physician Rhazes in the tenth century, a humoral physician who conceived of the disease as “an almost salutary childhood distemper which assisted in the inevitable transition from the moist blood of childhood to the mature, ‘drier’ blood of adulthood.”44 Rhazes suggested that the excess moisture escaped the blood through the pustules of the disease, and he compared its course to the fermentation of wine: Now the smallpox arises when the blood putrefies and ferments, so that superfluous vapors are thrown out of it and it changed from the blood

40

Lister, Dissertatio medicinalis. Lister, “Preface,” Dissertatio medicinalis, viii. [profectò ipsa Medicina, nisi quatenus Historiâ naturae fundata fuerit, res omnino vana et futilis est.] 42 Lister, Sex exercitationes medicinales was revised and enlarged as Octo exercitationes medicinales (). I will use the revised and enlarged edition for citations. 43 Bodleian MS Lister , f. . 44 Carmichael and Silverstein, “Smallpox in Europe,” . 41



chapter thirteen of infants, which is like must, into the blood of young men, which is like wine perfectly ripened . . . and the smallpox itself may be compared to the fermentation . . . which takes place in must at that time.45

Later physicians modified Rhazes’s ideas, and postulated that smallpox was caused by the fermentation of certain substances in the bloodstream such as residual menstrual blood or undigested food. The putrid matter would then cause the pustules of the pox. Lister’s colleague, Dr Thomas Willis, used Rhazes’s ideas and applied his own conception of corpuscular and iatrochemical animal spirits to them. Willis agreed with Rhazes that “This disposition or natural predisposition, which inclines humane kind to this Disease, seems to be a certain evil or impurity of the Blood, conceived in the Womb, among the first Rudiments of Generation; almost all Authors would have this ascribed to the Menstruous Blood.”46 Willis then claimed that the seeds of the putrid menstrual matter hid amongst the animal spirits in the brain and spinal marrow, whereupon they spread to the bloodstream and worked their mischief when provoked by “the contagion received from some place: the disposition of the Air, and the immoderate perturbation of the Blood and Humors.”47 In his treatise on smallpox, Lister argued that such claims from Willis were dubious. His criticism came from two sources. Part of his critique aimed to please the Censors, as the fashion in College was to display basic loyalty to Willis’s general approach, whilst disputing his ideas about fermentative agitations in the blood; Walter Charleton had used a similar strategy in his Three Anatomic Lectures (), as well as his Inquisitiones Medico-Physicae () on the pathology and physiology of menstrual flux.48 Lister also showed he was au fait with the latest medical ideas by discounting Willis’s idea that animal spirits were supposed to travel through a narrow cavity or pores in the nerves. Lister pointed out if the animal spirits contained the poison, why were smallpox victims not in pain along the spine?49 His own anatomical dissections showed that nerves were solid in nature. In his later

45 Rhazes, Treatise, , as quoted in Carmichael and Silverstein, “Smallpox in Europe,” . 46 Willis, Practice, . 47 Willis, Practice, . 48 Brown, “The Mechanical Philosophy,” . 49 Lister, Octo, . [Deinde, quare non total spinalis medulla doleat, sed lumbi tantum imi; an ibi sedes conati veneri?]

publication and prestige



De Humoribus (), Lister wrote: “There remains one other humour, the animal spirits, the subtlest of all; credited with an infinite number of properties . . . For solution of any difficult problem, they bring in this deux ex machina and take refuge in this animal spirits carried about by the nerves.”50 Though eminent Georgian physician George Cheyne (–) was heralded by Roy Porter as “a modern” for making largely the same conclusion about the animal spirits in his The English Malady, Cheyne’s work was not published until thirty years after Lister’s.51 Lister argued further that menstrual fluids had “no corrupt matter in them naturally at all, but that they are harmless as men’s saliva, or the remaining bulk of the blood, from which they come.”52 If this were not so, women would be more afflicted then men by smallpox, especially when menstrual periods were imminent “when the fluids swell and collect in the uterus.”53 As this was clearly not the case, the notion of a uterine poison transmitted by animal spirits was groundless, which meant there was another cause responsible. Lister also rejected Thomas Sydenham’s idea that miasmas from subterranean minerals contaminated the air and caused smallpox.54 Through systematic study of epidemic diseases, Sydenham noted that different years possessed different “constitutions” and speculated that different qualities of weather or air would produce specific diseases; as we have seen in Chapter Eleven, Sydenham’s conclusions were a variant of Hippocrates’s ideas in Airs, Waters, Places. Lister, while sensitive to ideas of environment and health, however dismissed Sydenham’s idea of mineral exhalations as “unadulterated fantasy” created in “ignorance of natural history.”55 Lister had devoted years, after

50 Lister, De humoribus, . [ . . . unus tamen imaginarius restat, long omnium subtilissimus, spiritus animalis dictus: de quo infinita bona praedicantur; certè non solùm maximi usûs in sensu motúque corporis expediendis, sed ad difficillima quaeque phaenomena solvenda, tanquam Deus aliquis è machinis, adhibetur: profecto in omni difficultate, nervos eorumque spiritum animalem sibi portum et perfugium habent.] 51 Porter, “Introduction,” to George Cheyne, xx. 52 Lister, Octo, –. [sed aequè innocua esse, ac hominum salivam, aut reliquam sanguinis massam, unde orta sunt.] 53 Lister, Octo, . [Deinde, si illud verum esset, foeminae adultae vehementiùs afficerentur, quam mares; maximè si menstrius instantibus, scilicet uba illa turgent. et in utero accumulantur, variolis corriperentur.] 54 Lister, Octo, . [At halitus expiratos (loquor ex ore nuperi scriptoris Sydenham) ex subterranea aliqua minera nunc hoc, nunc illud animalium genus contaminare.] 55 Lister, Octo, . [At quaenum sunt illa, quaeso, metalla in nostra terra Londinensi, aut alibi Angliae, effossa, quae haec efficiant. dic sodes, si pores. mera itaque haec tua insomnia funt; prout pleraeque id genus explicationes, quae ex ignoratione Historiae



chapter thirteen

all, to studying the chemistry of pyrites in his investigation of healing springs, published in De Fontibus (see Chapter Nine). Here, he had formulated the idea that these minerals could produce sulfurous vapors, which would heat mineral springs and influence the weather, but in the course of his observations, he saw no evidence of any relationship between mineral exhalations and disease. Admittedly, the Royalist Lister was prejudiced against Sydenham, as Sydenham supported the Parliamentarians during the Civil War and was a Puritan. Lister used the term “sectaries” for him and his admirers in , even five years after Sydenham’s death.56 Having dismissed the theories of Willis and Sydenham, Lister offered one of his own ideas, stating, “what is left then, is the notion that the infection is first produced by some poisonous insect.”57 In this hypothesis, he demonstrated a novel ontological understanding of the “collective entities” of medicine and natural history.58 Lister had received letters from naturalists John Banister and James Petiver in Maryland describing the decimation of Native Americans exposed to smallpox by colonists. Their lack of immunity showed that the disease was not “communicated to individuals from some internal bodily cause or defect of character . . . but by some contagion externally applied.”59 This contagion, he postulated, could be due to an insect or poisonous animal [bestiola], “either as a result of its being eaten, or from its bite and that it then spread to all mankind.”60 After all, the application of Spanish flies to the skin resulted in a blistering rash which was similar to smallpox pustules, and he classified a number of diseases noting that “most of the indications of persons infected with smallpox are common to those bitten by poisonous

Naturalis venditantur.] Literally, “What on earth, pray, are the minerals which have been dug up in our London earth, or elsewhere in England, which could cause this? Do tell me, if you can. This theory of yours is unadulterated fantasy, like most explanations of this kind, which are touted around based on an ignorance of natural history.” 56 Encyclopedia Britannica, s.v. “Thomas Sydenham.” 57 Lister, Octo, . [Igitur restat, insectionem primùm ortam esse ex aliqua bestiola venenata.] 58 Foucault, Birth, . 59 Lister, Octo, . [Claro documento, variolas non privatim à causa aliqua interna, aut à natura hominis per se vitiata, sed contagione extrinsecus illata communicari.] 60 Lister, Octo, . [Nimirum illam insectionem à bestiola aliqua vel esa, vel ab ejus morsu primulùm genitam fuisse, deinde in omnes homines . . .]

publication and prestige



beasts” comparing the rashes’ appearance with insect bites.61 As Lister himself had reported when writing his tract on spiders that he had been stung many times, his description that “the part bitten by a phalangius [a poisonous spider] grows red, and develops what look like needle-points,” and is accompanied by difficulty urinating was borne out of direct experience.62 He had reported the therapeutic uses of spider venom in his tract on arachnids in the Historiae Animalium, so it was little wonder he made these connections between insects and disease.63 Pages of his treatise on smallpox were devoted to classifications of the effects of the bites of poisonous insects and animals, and comparisons of their side effects to current maladies.64 He also noted that many insect and snake poisons affected the parts of the body that were attacked by smallpox; just as smallpox affected the genitals, “the bite of the viper, irrespective of where on the body it is inflected, always concludes with a swelling of the scrotum and an abundance of burning urine.”65 Lister’s remarks were a creative variation of Francesco Redi’s work on vipers, which he read as a student in Montpellier.66 Comparison of ancient medical authors to physicians of his time also revealed that the medications employed to treat poisonous bites were much the same as those in use to treat smallpox: opium in wine, and concoctions of figs being particular popular concoctions to treat the copious vomiting which accompanied the maladies. Though the ultimate origins of smallpox were due to insect and poisonous animal vectors, Lister realized this was not the means by which it spread because of the relatively low incidence of poisonous insect bites in the population. He did notice that some families seemed more readily infected than others, and speculated whether, in some cases, proclivity to the disease could be inherited.67 Weighing his

61 Lister, Octo, . [Quòd pleraque signa variolatorum, cum ictis à venenatis bestiolis communia sunt.] 62 Lister, Octo, . [A Phalangiis morsi pars affecta rubet, et velut aculeis compuncta conspicitur.] 63 Lister, “De Araneis,” in Historiae Animalium, . 64 Lister, Octo, –. 65 Lister, Octo, . [item morsus viperae, ubi ubi corporis-fieri contigerit, semper tamen solvitur scroti tumore, et Urinae ardentis copia.] 66 Redi, “Vipers,” –. Lister also noted that he referred to an article in the Philosophical Transactions, number , which was Vaux, “Discourse of the Viper,” –. 67 Lister, Octo, . [Proximo loco rationes reddam, cur haec labes haereditaria quoque existimari possit. quòd in aliquibus Familiis variolae ferè exitiales sunt. quòd



chapter thirteen

observations, Lister then concluded that direct contact with the breath or pustules of a person infected by smallpox was the main secondary source of transmission, writing: Smallpox then consists of poisonous pustules, initially transmitted to mankind by (let us say) an insect bite, and now only very rarely transmitted spontaneously from infected parents as a sort of inherited calamity, and most often transferred from a person with smallpox to another person by the effluvia he makes into the air, outside the body, and forced from the excretory ducts accompanied by an inevitable unrelenting fever.68

Although it was by circuitous means, Lister was one of the first physicians to suggest the correct means of transmission of the disease.69 Lister also had some perceptive observations about the epidemiology of smallpox, noting that the intervals of three to four years between several smallpox plagues were due to: the fact that all the children of, say, one house, town or city (with the exception of London, on account of its enormous size and large numbers of newcomers constantly arriving) succumb within a few months or a year, leaving no others to be infected there. The disease therefore dies down after a proportional period of time until a new generation is born to receive the infection.70

fratres et consanguinei faciliùs insiciantur, quàm qui inter se cognati non sunt. quòd interdum Sporades sunt, et sine ullo variolati hominis insectu per se exfuscitari videntur; feminia itaque propagari posse in prolem, perinde ut de Lue venerea notum.] Literally, “Now I shall give an account as to why this ailment may also be considered as hereditary, since in some families smallpox has almost caused total extinction. This is because brothers and blood relatives are more readily infected than those who are not related. At times sporadic cases occur, which appear to be generated spontaneously without any infection from a person already suffering from smallpox. The seeds of these can therefore be spread to their offspring, as is known to happen in the case of syphilis.” 68 Lister, Octo, –. [Variolae itaque sunt Pustulae Venenatae, primitùs à bestiolae ictu (putà) humano generi illatae, nunc verò per se, rarissimè tamen, tanquam ex insectis parentibus haereditario quodam infortunio genitae, saepissimè verò ab homine variolato in homine translatae, ab effluviis ejus in aërem emissis, extra habitum corporis, et è ductibus excretoriis nusquam non cum febre continua protrusae.] 69 This is also noted by Sereni and Sereni, “Exanthematous infectious diseases,” . 70 Lister, Octo, . [Intervallorum autem ratio est, cùm omnes pueri alicujis domûs, putà, aut oppidi aut urbis (unis Londiniis exceptis, propter ejus enormem magnitudinem, et perpetim adventientium multitudinem) ferè intra aliquot menses annúmve decubuerint; nec alii ibidem insiciendi restent. Igitur extinguitur, pro illo tempore, malum; donec nova soboles subcrescat variolanda.]

publication and prestige



Lister’s claim that the Arabs were the first to describe smallpox was also essentially correct as the first recorded epidemic took place in Arabia in the sixth century, and the first clear description was from the Islamic physician Rhazes in the tenth century.71 His opinion about the origins and duration of the disease were, however, controversial, part of an ongoing debate that lasted until the nineteenth century about the antiquity of the disease itself and whether it was known before Rhazes’s description.72 Lister’s opinions attracted the attention of the eminent physician Archibald Pitcairne, the Scottish professor of medicine in Leyden. Pitcairne in his correspondence commented that while he was “perfectly pleased” with Lister’s argument that the disease was “unknown to the ancients before the Arabian age,” it was possible that ancients simply did not have the medical knowledge to identify the disease.73 Pitcairne noted that smallpox could also be easily confused with chickenpox. He did however admire Lister’s observations, “free and bold thoughts about the materia medica” and his description of the disease’s course.74 Lister’s work was particularly detailed concerning the appearance of the pustules, due to his comparison of them to insect bites. It was in fact one of the earliest works to attempt to distinguish systematically between syphilis (the great pox) and smallpox by a detailed examination of the skin lesions they produced. (It also can be challenging for modern medics to differentiate secondary syphilis from smallpox).75 Lister’s identification of necrosis and blood poisoning from the pustules’ appearance also corresponds to modern conceptions of its etiology. Although he thought the disorders of smallpox and syphilis were different due to the dissimilarity of their rashes, he believed the origins of both diseases were due to animal transmission. In his tract on syphilis, Lister asserted like most other physicians that the disease was usually spread by:

71 Lister, Octo, . For Arab reports of the disease see Behbehani, “The Smallpox Story,” . 72 See Woodville, Inoculation; Hirsch, Handbook of Pathology; and Willan, Miscellaneous Works; Carmichael and Silverstein, “Smallpox in Europe,” . 73 Bodleian MS Lister , ff.  r and v. 74 Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. 75 Breman and Henderson, “Diagnosis and management of smallpox,” –, Table One. They list secondary syphilis as a maculopapular eruption in their table, noting it has frequently been confused with smallpox.



chapter thirteen sexual intercourse . . . A man who has intercourse with a diseased woman is infected with syphilis through the genitals; the wet-nurse, from whom a diseased infant sucks, is infected through her breasts; the infant suckled by a diseased nurse is infected both through the mouth and the inner parts; a person sleeping with a syphilitic is covered with diseased sweat on the skin and surface regions; a man who ingests saliva from a passionate kiss is infected through the mouth.76

However, he still believed the very origins of this venereal disease were due to animal vectors. He wrote, “Nobody now doubts that it [syphilis] was brought to Europe by the Spaniards from the islands of America, in which before the arrival of the Spaniards this affliction rampaged through the population,” and the disease first arose “either from the bite of some poisonous animal or at least from some poisonous food.”77 Here he again disregards Willis’s idea that the disease originated in fermentation in the woman’s womb; Willis postulated that the heat and moisture engendered in a promiscuous woman during the sexual act led to fermentation, purification, and agitation of the venereal poison. Lister, like most contemporary opponents of the fermentation theory: opposed it because it logically disagreed with the American origin of the disease. Such logic ran: since there have always been promiscuous women, the pox should have always existed; but the pox first appeared in ,” and therefore the fermentation theory must be wrong.78

In formulating his theories about the origins of the disease, Lister was also influenced by Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo’s (–) first comprehensive history of Spanish America, the Historia general y natural de las Indias. In fifty volumes, Oviedo attempted to provide a complete account of the Spanish discovery, conquest, and colonization of the Americas from  to , along with descriptions

76 Lister, Octo, . [maximè tamen ex Venereo sit concubitu, à quo ferè propagari solet Lues Venerea in hominum genus. Itaque qui venereo complexu jungitur cum inquinata, à pudendis Lue inficitur: nutrix, à quâ infans pollutus lac fugit, à mammis: obstretrix, quae infectae parienti opem tulerit, à manu: infans a vitiata nutrice altus, nunc ab ore, nunc ab interioribus, condormiens inquinato sudore diffluens, à cure, et à summis partibus; qui effusiore osculo salivam exceperit, ab ore.] 77 Lister, Octo, . [Ab Insulis autem Americanis, in quibus, ante Hispanorum adventum, hic affectus populariter grassatus est, illum per Hispanos in Europam allatum esse, nullus jam dubitat . . . Vel à morsu alicujus animalis venenati, vel à victu certè aliquo veneanto, caedibile est.] 78 Siena, “Pollution, Promiscuity, and the Pox,” .

publication and prestige



of the land’s fauna, flora, and indigenous peoples.79 Oviedo observed that Native Americans ate snakes “of which there are innumerable new species unknown to us among the Indians” so Lister considered it probable that syphilis resulted from eating such “unclean food.”80 Lister then reported that Oviedo: gave a precise description of the iguanas of West India, which are no mean little beasts in the category of four-footed serpents [i.e. reptiles]. The Indians eagerly ate them and considered them a delicacy. Yet the Spaniards followed their example and made the animal part of their diet too, for they tasted quite pleasant, and were much tastier than rabbit meat. Indeed, he says, eating them harms nobody, excepting those thereby infected by syphilis, and although these persons enjoyed a respite from the disease for a long period, it was nevertheless responsible for some immediate initial damage, and after the affliction has been inactive for several years it once more awakes and is renewed. This has been the fate, he says, of countless of our own people. Such are his words. It is then certainly not absurd to believe that syphilis has its origin in a similar cause, if not that precise one, since the damage that was initially caused by eating them was re-activated after appearing for a long time to be dead.81

Evidently Lister thought that the periodic nature of syphilis might have been caused by intermittently including the reptiles on the menu. He then noted that the genital warts of syphilitics looked like the iguanas’ crests, and the victims were said to find iguana flesh repulsive. This repulsion according to Lister was “of course . . . a specific representation of the animal from which the illness took its origin. These crested evil things are probably reckoned by others as genital warts and piles, even though they usually do not involve any pain or what

79

See Meyers, Chronicle. Lister, Octo, . [Americanos autem Serpentes quoslibet (quorum innumerae novae species nobis incognitae apud Indios sunt) libenter comedisse, notissimum est; adeóque vel à victu eorum impuro.] 81 Lister, Octo, –. [Inter alia animalia Indiae occidentalis Inguanas exactè describit, scil. ex serpentum Quadrupendum genere bestiolam haud mediocrem; eo Indi avidè vescebantur, et in deliciis habuerunt; homines verò Hispani ad eorum exemplum illum in cibis fuis quoque posuerunt: neque enim ejus gustus displicuit, etiam cuniculorum carne multo sapidior; imò nemimen, inquit ille, eorum eius laedit, nisi quem Lues Venerea affecerit; de quo quidem morbo, etiamsi diu sanati sint, tamen iis noxam protinus infert, et morbum, ex aliquot annis sopitum, denuò excitat, renovátque; id quod nostri homines innumeris exemplis experti sunt: Haec ille. Adeóque haud ita absurdum est credere, Luem hanc originem suam ex simili, si non ipsâ illa, causâ habuisse; cùm ex eorum quidem esu protinus renascatur malum, dui anti quasi extinctum.] 80



chapter thirteen

I might call a thinning of the membrane.”82 Lister mentioned in support of his argument that it was not unusual for poisonous animals to impart the particular and especial characteristics of contagion.83 His essay on hydrophobia (rabies) in his medical tract had demonstrated that “sufferers show a dog-like voracity in swallowing down food, and a tendency to lap, rather than drink, by continually sticking out the tongue.”84 Those bitten by tarantulas, he also noted, “suffer from an unceasing desire to jump, and the gait of spiders of this type is simply a jumping from place to place like a flea. I am well aware that this is considered by certain learned men as a mere fairy-tale, but certainly not by me, for I have investigated the ways of spiders a little more closely than the rest.”85 Lister’s suggestion of permeable boundaries between humans and animal forms reflected a myth, first proposed by sixteenth-century physician Leonard Fioravanti, that cannibalism was the origin of syphilis. It also reflected early modern racism and inherent cultural slippages between human, “subhuman” and animal forms and behaviors.86 Oviedo had been the first person to “advance the view that syphilis originated in America,” shifting blame for the disease onto a foreign “Other,” indigenous peoples that seemed to transverse the boundary between civilized humankind and wild nature.87 Lister’s medical opinions also reflect his work in taxonomy, in which the Aristotelian chain of being was gradually broken by new categories and the boundaries between human, animal, vegetable, and mineral readjusted and

82 Lister, Octo, . [propria sanè repraesentatio, à quo animali ortum suum deduxisset malum: haec autem mala cristata, inter condylomata et mariscas ab aliis fortasse numerata sunt; etiamsi ea ferè sine ullo dolore et tenuitate quâdam membranaceâ conspicua sint.] 83 Lister, Octo, . [Animalia autum venenata contagii sui characteres proprios et peculiares imprimere haud rarum est . . .] 84 Lister, Octo, . [item deglutiendi canina veracitas; item lambendi potius, quàm bibendi, assiduâ linguae exertione, aptitudo.] 85 Lister, Octo, . [Ab aranei Pulicis morsu, Tarantula dicti, assidua saltandi cupiditas; neque istiusmodi araneorum gressus alius est, quàm, more pulicum, de loco in locum saltatio. Illud quidem non ignoro, à quibusdam etiam doctis viris pro fabulâ haberi; at mihi certè non ita, cui araenorum mores caeteris paulò diligentiùs perspecti sunt.] Lister was referring not only to his spider chart in the Historiae Animalium, but also to an article he had written about tarantulas for the Philosophical Transactions, in which he queried if the tarantula was in reality related to a six-eyed jumping spider. See Lister, “Some Additions of Mr Lyster,” . 86 McAllister, “Stories of the Origin of Syphilis,” . 87 Eamon, “Cannibalism and Contagion,” .

publication and prestige



reclassified for both cultural and for scientific reasons. Crinoid “rock plants,” plants with circulatory systems, parasitic wasps that raised questions about spontaneous generation, symptoms of human disease evoking animal behavior—all of these phenomena were part of Lister’s mental world. These permeable boundaries of classification combined with his interest in arachnology made the possibility of insect vectors for smallpox and syphilis utterly probable. While Lister’s theory of the origins of the disease was highly original, his treatment for syphilis was also atypical, part of that “free and bold” discussion of pharmaceuticals that Pitcairne admired. While he advised the traditional use of mercury to treat syphilitic pustules was necessary, he directed that it be taken in tandem with Peruvian balsam or guyac, an evergreen resin obtained from Myroxylon balsamum in El Salvador and shipped by Spanish explorers from Peruvian ports. The balm was first mentioned in England in  in correspondence between Robert Boyle and his protégé, Dr Daniel Coxe, who noted that it stopped bleeding.88 The chronic salivation, bone loss, and sluggishness experienced by patients given mercury convinced Lister that its poisonous effects could affect the body years after it was initially was administered, and was “wont to lie hidden in the twisting of glands and other recesses of the body,” when “it finally moves its station on some occasion and once more makes its nature felt.”89 However, “if any mercury has ever been taken either internally or has been applied to the body externally, it is roused from its lair by the use of guyac.”90 Lister conceived of guyac as a peppery resin consisting of thin particles that could: cure the stupidity brought on by mercury, and to digest mercury, which in itself is a heavy and sluggish medicine, and to spread it into all parts of the body, and finally to expel it by heating, penetrating and strengthening the internal organs and their vessels. Therefore the guyac of mercury, like the mercury of poison, is an antidote in the case of syphilis . . . When the internal organs have once again been invigorated they finally compel the mercury itself, which is an inert and alien guest in the body, to circulate, to prevent it spending an eternal night of rest within us, and,

88

Boyle, Correspondence, : . Lister, Octo, . [in glandularum Maendris aliisve corporis recessibus latere soltet; aliquâ tandem occasione loco moveri, et genium suum denuò exerere solere.] 90 Lister, Octo, . [adeóque; si quis Hydrargyrus vel intus sumptus, vel extra corpori adhibitus unquam fuit, ex usu Guaiaci è latebris excitari.] 89



chapter thirteen when it has been particularly rarefied by sweat, they expel it in either the urine or some imperceptible gas.91

Lister’s analogy of the mercuric poison and its antidote which worked in tandem to cure syphilis chemically may have been inspired by the iatrochemistry of his colleague Thomas Willis. Though Lister rejected Willis’s hypothesis that “morbific” matter in the blood from menstrual discharge caused syphilis or smallpox, Willis used a similar analogy of poisons and antidotes in his analysis of the use of Peruvian Bark in treating syphilitic and other fevers. Willis postulated that fever arose from excessive fermentation or bubbling in the blood. The blood of the patient then turned so salty that it could not absorb nutrients from the intestine; the resultant extra nutrients then in turn became even more deadly, causing unnatural blood fermentation. Willis thought that if patients took Peruvian bark repeatedly, the particles would enter the blood, causing a new fermentation or invigoration.92 The particles of the blood, though “distempered with an evil disposition,” were agitated and altered in such a way that they were enabled to concoct “in some measure” the nourishable juice and to “evaporate its excrement.”93 Just as Lister’s Peruvian balsam dispelled the extra poisonous mercury in the body by its brisk action, the Peruvian bark dispelled the morbific matter in the blood. Willis also compared the action of the bark with antidotes to animal bites, which retained the venom of a mad dog’s bite or of a poisonous sting in “another Fermentation,” preventing it thus from producing harmful symptoms. As the antidote wore off, so the fever would return, when the particles of the Peruvian bark had wholly flown away from the blood. Similarly in Lister’s model, when the Peruvian balsam wore away, the effects of the mercury would return, which is why Lister recommended frequent administration of balsam in wine to syphilitics.

91 Lister, Octo, –. [Ejusque adeò praecipua facultas est, stupori ab Hydrargyro inducto mederi, ipsúmque Hydrargyrum ponderosum et hebes medicamentum digerere, et in omnes corporis partes dissipare, tandémque expellere, scilicet viscera eorúmque vasa calefaciendo, penetrando, corroborando. Igitur Guaiaicum Hydrargyri, ut Hydrargyrus Veneni, in Lue Antidotum est . . . visceribus autem jam denuò invigoratis, ipsum tandem Hydrargyrum, Hospitem torpidum et alienum, nè intra nos aeternùm pernoctet, circuire cogunt, sudoreque praecipuè rarefactum aut Urina, aut Vapore insensibili expellunt.] 92 Maehle, “Peruvian Bark,” . 93 Maehle, “Peruvian Bark,” .

publication and prestige



Although Lister claimed he did not like to promote medical books, his description of a “new” method of treating syphilis was likely done with the medical marketplace in mind. Because syphilis was diagnosed and treated primarily on external appearance, generally it was considered among the preserve of surgeons.94 However, as venereological care was quite lucrative, physicians wished to expand their practice into this area. Though many doctors, surgeons, and empirics advertised their unique or secret cures for the pox prominently, “even offering directions to back-door entrances to allow gentlemen the utmost discretion,” Lister took a more subtle approach more in keeping with his elite clientele.95 By publishing a learned work in Latin describing an innovative treatment using an exotic ingredient like Peruvian balsam, his personal reputation as a specialist in treating venereal disease was enhanced. His “free and bold” use of medicaments, as well as an iatrochemical focus also shaped his treatment of scurvy. Because it was associated with sailors and had some similar symptoms, scurvy was often confused with syphilis; Lister noted in the preface of his tract in the Octo Exercitationes Medicinales that: I have placed scurvy adjacent to the chapter on venereal disease, because of the newness of the disease, and because both are so closely related and have so many symptoms in common that they are not readily distinguished from each other, except by an experienced physician.96

For Lister, the cause of scurvy was the eating of overly salty food, common on sea voyages, a conceit he took from ancient author Pliny and sixteenth-century physician Eugalenus.97 Though he again disagreed with Willis that the disease itself caused fermentation of the blood resulting in salty residues in the bloodstream, the eating of excessively salty foods caused essentially the same effects. These effects were a “saltiness of blood that moves only with difficulty” which stagnated

94

Merians, Secret, . Siena, “Pollution, Promiscuity, and the Pox,” . 96 Lister, Octo, . [Proximo autem Lui Venereae loco Scorbutum posui, et propter morbi novitatem, et quòd illi tot tantisque signis communibus, valdè assinis sit; imò unum ab altero dignoscere, nisi admodum exercitato medico, haud ita facile est.] 97 Lister, Octo, . 95



chapter thirteen

and clotted in capillary vessels and excretory ducts, forming the purple spots on the skin characteristic of the disorder.98 To cure the disease, he utilized acids such as vinegar, which his experiments with salt chemistry taught him would “combine with urinous salts and destroy their power.”99 The therapeutic use of acids to dissolve volatile alkaline salts was common in early modern medicine, propounded by not only Willis, but also by Sylvius de le Boë whose acid-alkaline iatrochemistry, as taught at Leiden, was particularly influential.100 Lister, however, found by empirical observation that some acids were better than others, namely that in the citrus fruits, particularly in lemons, a special principle curative of scurvy resided superior to bezoar stones or theriac.101 Lister was certainly not the first physician to recommend lemons for scurvy, as he cites similar observations made by Willem Piso (–).102 Piso published his own accounts of his exploration of the East Indies and Dutch Brazil, and he mentioned colonial doctors who had noted the beneficial effects of citrus fruits in treating illness.103 The rise of commerce and trade in the Netherlands encouraged a wave of new scientific investigation, something that was certainly true for Lister in this case.104 Lister’s curiosity about materia medica and his penchant for collecting natural history specimens also led to correspondence about medical treatments for epidemic disease. Lister exchanged letters with a distant relative, Joseph Lister, who was serving in the Dutch East India Company in the Indies and then in China in Amoy (Xiamen).105

98 Lister, Octo, . [à motu verò sanguinis lento et inaequali, eum, maximè vasis capillaribus, ipsisque excretoriis ductibus, ob pulsûs impotentiam ac languorem, coalescere et stagnare aptum esse. Hinc Symptomatum facilis explicatio: nimirum maculae purpurae, ut in suggillationibus, et in omni vulnere contuso latè circumcirca fiere à sanguine coagulato novimus . . .] 99 Lister, Octo, . [. . . quod acida salibus urinosis adjecta eorum vim protinus frangunt.] 100 Roos, Salt, . 101 Lister, Octo, . [Limonum autem commendationem hic inserere suave est, Authore Pisone Batavo, medico diligentissimo, et in rebus Naturae exoticis, si quis alius, versatissimo. Peritissimi, inquit ille, nonnulli Indiae, ubi diu vixit, medicastri plus praesidii in limonibus ponunt, quàm in lapide Bezoartico aut Theriaca, contra malignos morbos, et pestilentes febres, atque ipsa Venena.] 102 Lister, Octo, . 103 Cook, Matters, . 104 Cook, Matters, . 105 The correspondence began on  October  when Joseph Lister was posted in Fort. St George. Joseph Lister wrote, “the desire I have of Serving you, and the

publication and prestige



Initially, he offered Dr Lister “plants and seeds,” and subsequently sent him a package of shells from the Dutch colony in Amboina in Indonesia, “wrapt up in Papers w[i]th Dutch Names upon them, such things as they think they have resemblance to.”106 As Joseph was hopeful of having his observations published in the Philosophical Transactions, he also described medical and cultural practices of the Chinese, including their use of intranasal variolation for smallpox. His was the first report of variolation to reach England, well before Dr Emanual Timoni reported the Turkish method of inoculation against the disease in .107 Joseph Lister wrote on  January / that the Chinese had a: method of Communicating the Small Pox when and to whom they please, which they perform by opening the pustule of one who had the Small Pox ripe upon them and drying up the Matter with a little Cotton, which they preserve in a close box, and afterwards put it up the Nostrills of those they would infect the benefit they pretend by it is, they can prepare the body of a Patient, and Administer it at what Season of the Year or Age of the person they think most proper.108

Scholars such as Stearns have criticized Lister for not acting upon his relative’s report due to his supposed medical conservatism, incredulity, or irrationality.109 This assessment seems out of context. It is clear that Lister was far from conservative when speculating about the transmission of smallpox or its treatment. Introducing any new method of treatment, which involved voluntary submission to inoculation with disease agents, would also have been seen as extraordinarily risky at the time. This advice would be the case especially for a doctor who was a member of the Royal College of Physicians, an organization that set standards for the profession. It was not until the s that James Jurin (–), who served as secretary of the Royal Society, calculated the relative risks from dying from natural or inoculated smallpox.110 Further, if we read the rest of Joseph Lister’s letter, we can see that directly after his description of variolation, he related another custom

honour to be of your name, and presume belonging to your family, prompted me to Tender you my hearty service.” Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. 106 Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. 107 Bodleian MS Lister , ff. r and v. 108 Bodleian MS Lister , f. v. 109 See for instance Stearns, “Introduction,” to Lister, Journey, xxvii. 110 Rusnock, “Weight of Evidence,” , –.



chapter thirteen

of the Chinese, which may have made both gentlemen question the efficacy of Asian practice: Neither can I forbear acquainting you of the most unnatural Custome that was ever heard of, and which is daily practised here. The murdering of their female Children. In the Six months I have been here we have met several Examples, our Sailors taking up many dead children in the water, the most common way of murdering them being to drown them.111

Joseph Lister then noted that upon talking to Chinese merchants who spoke English that they admitted dispatching female children so they could “make away with more of Money and Credit so that it is not for want.”112 Joseph Lister’s account may have been racist rumor, but recent work by historian David Mungello has demonstrated that Christian missionaries in the nineteenth century in the same areas of China documented strikingly similar practices for the same reasons of material profit.113 David Abeel, a nineteenth-century missionary who extensively traveled in the Amoy region, called infanticide he observed there among the rich of China “an act of heartless calculation—a balancing of mere pecuniary profit and loss.”114 No matter what the truth was, the effect of Joseph Lister’s letter on its recipient would not exactly inspire his confidence in the practice of variolation. Nonetheless, six weeks after Joseph Lister wrote his letter, the physician Clopton Havers presented the details of the procedure to the Royal Society; as Lister and Havers were both members of the Society and College of Physicians, it would not be unreasonable to surmise Lister was his source of information.115 Although nothing substantive came of either account, knowledge of Chinese variolation did not vanish. Dr Richard Mead (–) mentioned it in his book De

111

Bodleian MS Lister , f. v. Bodleian MS Lister , f. v. 113 Mungello, Drowning, . David Abeel (–), an American Protestant Missionary, prepared a careful report for the October  issue of the Chinese Repository on the practice of infanticide. Abeel, as Joseph Lister, lived in Amoy (Xiamen) from – and traveled to the coastal areas of Tongan in Quanzhou Prefecture of southeastern Fujian. After visiting forty different towns and villages in Tongan, he reckoned that an average of thirty-nine percent of females were destroyed at birth, the cause was material avarice, and it was as prevalent among the rich as the poor. His report challenged the conventional wisdom that infanticide in China was due to poverty. 114 Mungello, Drowning, . 115 Stearns, “Remarks upon the Introduction of Inoculation,” –; for Havers’s report see the Journal Book, : , Royal Society Library, London. 112

publication and prestige



Variolis et Morbillis () to which he appended Rhazes’s treatise of smallpox. Mead used the nasal method on an experiment on prisoners in Newgate in , testing it out on an eighteen-year old girl who duly contracted the disease, albeit in a less virulent form. She was, however, “sadly afflicted with most acute pains of the head, together with a fever,” until the pustules appeared.116 As Lister’s writing of the Sex Exercitationes had been motivated by factionalism within the medical profession, it is not surprising that reviews of his work reflected the same biases. Lister was roundly criticized by some of his peers in the College, Lhwyd informing him, “Dr Sherard and others had inform’d me that your book had given much offense to the London physicians: and I heard a young physician of great character in this town disparaging it, for some of the patients being women.”117 On the one hand, using case studies was a tried and true convention among early modern English doctors and surgeons writing medical tracts to demonstrate theoretical principles or the efficacy of a given prescription or surgical procedure.118 On the other hand, as the vast majority of early modern medical writers supported a fermentation theory of syphilis in which the disease putrefied in the woman’s womb, their case studies normally represented victimized men infected by women.119 Moreover, early modern physicians writing about syphilis “often took this opportunity to pass moral judgment on female patients,” and advocated the only safe sex could be with a “cold” or phlegmatic women whose constitution was less likely to lead to humoral fermentation and disease.120 Lister, however, saw syphilis as gender neutral, not only in its origins from insects and sexual transmission, but also in his descriptions of culpable parties. Rather than concentrating on promiscuous women or ill-bred wet nurses who passed the disease to innocent husbands or children, in most of his case studies he described the devastating effects of a husband who

116

Mead, Translation, –. Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. Sherard was James Sherard (–), an apothecary, and one of the most eminent botanists of his day. See Webb, “Sherard, James,” rev. Mandelbrote, Oxford DNB. 118 See for instance, Sandassie, “Evidence-based medicine?,” –; Wilson, “Surgery, skin and syphilis,” –.; Nance, Turquet de Mayerne, –. For a general overview of the case history, see Riha, “Surgical case records,” –. 119 Siena, “Pollution, Promiscuity, and the Pox,” . 120 Siena, “Pollution, Promiscuity, and the Pox,” . 117



chapter thirteen

infected his wife and children. For instance, in one of his accounts, Lister wrote: She had been prescribed many things by many doctors, but all had proved useless . . . The illness dragged on into a third year, and the woman had by now almost wasted away. When I was finally called I informed the husband about his wife’s disease, which he took badly. However he freely acknowledged that in his earliest youth he had contracted a disease of the syphilitic kind, but added that apart from some chance wandering pains, which had been very rare, he had not even a suspicion of any disease. Indeed, he said, his daughter, who was now eight years of age, had never given any hint of any disease, so his wife could hardly be contaminated. I was unwilling to prolong the discussion, and replied that it was too late for me to bring her assistance with my own medicines. The woman went into the countryside a mile or two from the city and died of this disease.121

Though it is clear the actions of some of his clients clearly appalled him, at least from his own account, he did not moralize or “prolong the discussion” and did what he could as a physician. Lister’s informed critiques of current iatrochemical theories in the Sex Exercitationes demonstrated his competence as a fellow of the College, but the manner upon which he presented his ideas were clearly against received gender norms. It is possible that his cultivation of his daughters as partners in his enterprises in natural philosophy and his practical experience as a physician may have given him a more equivocal view about relationships between the sexes. . Journeys and Losses Perhaps Lister’s care in describing the plight of his female patients was inspired by his own wife Hannah’s death. Ironically, we do not know her own case history that lead to her decease. There is also no mention 121 Lister, Octo, –. This was the case history of patient number four. [Etenim huic à multis multa data sunt; at inutilia omnia . . . Ad tertium annum malum assiduè protractum est; penè jam tabe consumpta est foemina; ipse tandem accersitus maritum clam monui de uxoris malo, quod graviter tulit; tamen libenter confessus est, se primâ juventute istiusmodi labem contraxisse; at praeter aliquos, idque rarissimè, contingentes dolores vagos, se nè suspicionem quidem alicuius mali habere; imò nec ejus filiam, octo jam annos natam, alicuius vitii impressionem unquam indicâsse, adeóque ejus uxorem minimè contaminari posse. Ampliùs contendere nolui: Respondi, Seriùs esse quàm, ut propriis medicamentis opem ferre possem Rus abiit mulier uno vel altero lapide ab urbe; eòque malo obiit.]

publication and prestige



of her illness in the correspondence, though Lister at this time often referred to himself as an old man or a “poor weake man” as he suffered with asthmatic coughing and a double sight caused by eyestrain, likely from squinting in the eyepiece of his microscope. Hannah passed away in the summer of  and was buried in Clapham near the north wall of the chancel. The church was rebuilt in the eighteenth century and her tablet moved; now on the south wall, it features the Lister arms with the following inscription: “Hannah Lister, Deare Wife! Died the st day of August , and left six children in teares for a most indulgent mother. She was Daughter and Heir of Tho. Parkinson of Carleton in Craven.”122 Lister clearly had a talent for composing simple heartfelt epitaphs full of suggestive sorrow. After all, he had ability to craft scientific prose that was spare, clear and yet metaphorically evocative, for example describing a white-plant juice springing out of its ligature, “thick as Cream and Ropes.” Before Westminster Abbey housed exclusively the remains of the good and great, the Dean and Chapter sold spaces for monuments, so when his four-year-old daughter Jane died, she was buried in the east cloister. Lister composed the simple inscription: “Jane Lister, dear Childe, died Oct. th, .” Victorian sentimentalists, tourists, and clergy loved Jane’s epitaph. Arthur Stanley, the Dean of Westminster from  to , preached in one of his sermons at the Abbey: it is an inscription which goes to the heart of every one. It was in the year , just a month before the great English Revolution, but the parents thought only of ‘Jane Lister,’ their ‘dear child.’ Their hearts were not on earth, but in heaven, where they hoped that she was.123

Jane’s grave is still pointed out in Abbey guidebooks for its simple unaffectedness, and it even featured in Amy Donald’s book for children, Penelope and the Others (): Miss Unity always went as swiftly through the cloisters as possible; and Pennie, keeping close to her side, tried as she went along to make out the half-effaced inscriptions at her feet. There was one she liked specially, and always took care not to tread upon: Jane Lister Deare Childe. Aged  Years. . By degrees she had built up a history about this little girl,

122 123

Strype, History, appendix , chapter , . Stanley, Sermons,  and .



chapter thirteen and felt that she knew her quite well, so that she was always glad to pass her resting-place and say something to her in her thoughts.124

Lister was evidently devastated by his loss. A few days after his wife’s burial, he received a letter from Thomas Tufton, the sixth Earl of Thanet (–). Lister had treated his valetudinarian wife, Lady Catherine Cavendish (d. ) on past occasions for headaches and dizziness, as well as for her attacks of “the spleen” or melancholy, which Tufton admitted “neither of us can cure.”125 Thanet wrote: Doctor—I am very sorry for the occation of your great affliction, I can better judge then manny of such a losse by the satisfaction I have had in a good wife; you must now consider the comfort God has given you in soe manny hopeful Children who I hope will contribute all they can to make you happy in them. As you one [own] house or any place where you were with her may increase your concerne, if I could encline you to come hither for a monthe I will send my Coache to Grave-end or London any time after this weeke . . . My wife makes you the same invitation and is much troubled for your losse.126

Lister had high expectations for his “hopeful children”; considering the standards to which he held his two older daughters in their limning, one gets the impression he could be a bit of a taskmaster. He was beginning to have problems with his only son Alexander, who was to matriculate at Balliol College, Oxford, the following spring.127 At sixteen years of age, Alexander had just lost his “most indulgent” mother, was making the transition to adulthood and was apparently ripe for adolescent rebellion. It was a delicate situation. Lister now revealed to his friend Edward Lhwyd what he “long designed” for Alexander, mentioning his intention that he should go to Oxford, and also that he would “make it something worth your while to overlooke his studdies.”128 Though he knew Alexander would have to be placed with a Tutor, he confided, “having been long Fellow of a Colledge my self, I observed the greatest miscarriages were from the recreations and howers of leisure and diversion. And therefore [I] designed you his companion, to see that he had no howers but what

124 125 126 127 128

Smith, Westminster, ; Walton, Penelope, –. Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. Alexander matriculated on  March /. See Foster, Alumni Oxoniensis, : . Bodleian MS Ashmole , f. r.

publication and prestige



was well imploied.”129 He offered Lhwyd £ per annum expenses for his time and troubles, and remarked that if Alexander “settle well the first yeare he may proceed with less trouble to you and more comfort to me.”130 He then asked for Lhwyd’s advice for a suitable college and tutor, emphasizing, “Communicate it to noone. Think seriouslie of it, give me your thoughts.”131 One wonders if Lister remembered his early days in college in his “melancholy cell,” and the benefits he received from the mentorship of John Ray. Perhaps he thought a tutor like Lhwyd would steady Alexander’s teenage years. Lhwyd did his best for his friend. He wrote, “had I known about your intensions about your son, I should scarce have entertain’d any thoughts of an other employment.”132 Lhwyd then discoursed upon suitable tutors, though admitted there were few that had “any notion of the modern Natural Philosophy,” though he particularly recommended John Wyn at Jesus and one Mr Dyer at Oriel as diligent tutors and good naturalists, before settling on Jeremiah Milles, a fellow and tutor at Balliol (–).133 Lhwyd supervised Alexander throughout  and apparently thought well of him, commending his character to his father. Lhwyd remarked, “I find him to be dayly more curious and inquisitive; and that I think, is a true sign of good sense and humour.”134 He also judged Alexander to have “parts enough for any profession.”135 In  however, Lhwyd had to leave the young man on his own, as his research on his catalogue of fossils took him “rambling every summer,” and he was “busy at study” during the winter.136 Lhwyd took his grand tour of Britain that year, traveling to Scotland, Ireland, Cornwall, and the Isle of Man to study fossils as well as to further his antiquarian and linguistic research into Welsh and 129

Bodleian MS Ashmole , f. r. Bodleian MS Ashmole , f. r. 131 Bodleian MS Ashmole , f. r. 132 Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. 133 Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. Jeremiah Milles, a Church of England clergyman, matriculated from Balliol on  Mary , receiving his BA in February  and MA in . He was a fellow and tutor of his college from  until , having left behind a diary written between  and  that provides insights into his college activities which included breaking up his students’ gatherings in alehouses and bullbaitings. He would have been a good disciplinarian for Alexander. For information about Milles, see the biographical entry about his father Isaac Milles, Brunton, “Milles, Isaas,” Oxford DNB. 134 Bodleian MS Lister , f. . 135 Bodleian MS Lister , f. . 136 Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. 130



chapter thirteen

Cornish history and language for his Archaeologia Britannica (). Left to his own devices, Alexander proved a bitter disappointment, showing increasingly “willful neglect” at writing home. Lister complained to Lhwyd that he wanted “now and then a letter, whether he delights in any sort of his studdies,” along with the forlorn hope that he “mindes and observes the Colledge discipline.”137 Lister’s personal worries were exacerbated by professional concerns, and they manifested in the form of a young rival. The reputation of the physician and young and rather arrogant virtuoso John Woodward (–) had rapidly risen in the Royal Society in the early s, particularly for his work on fossil shells. Woodward became Professor of Gresham College in , and his controversial Essay Toward a Natural History of the Earth published in  made his reputation. Subsequently, he parlayed the acclaim surrounding his research and his patronage network to obtain an honorary doctorate in medicine from the Archbishop of Canterbury. This degree was “confirmed by another (not over-regular according to Thomas Baker) at Cambridge six months later.”138 Woodward was able to obtain his M.D. at the young age of thirty, despite having rather less experience than Lister did when seeking his medical degree, and without having to make the massive donations to the Ashmolean to secure his qualifications as Lister felt he was required to do. It also did not help matters when in  Lhwyd enthused to Lister that his new acquaintance Woodward seemed “to have made a wonderfull progresse (considering his age) in several kinds of Knowledge”; Lhwyd was, however, doubtful if he was “sufficiently experienced in such Observations to be able to satisfie mens Curiosities in soe Nice a Phenomenon” as the origin of fossils.139 Lister confirmed Lhwyd’s suspicions after having read Woodward’s book. Its premise was that as most fossils are marine forms; “since these occurred universally, the obvious explanation . . . was a universal event,” Noah’s Flood. As Noah had not described the geological effects of the Flood, Woodward extrapolated with his own theory, claiming that the Flood dissolved the earth’s crust.140 The resulting sediments and the fossils of living creatures with which they were combined settled in order of their specific gravities “those which are heaviest lying 137 138 139 140

Bodleian MS Ashmole , f. r. BL MS Additional , , as quoted in Levine, Shield, . Bodleian MS Lister , f. v. The letter was dated  July . Rappaport, Geologists, .

publication and prestige



deepest in the Earth, and the lighter sorts . . . shallower or nearer to the Surface . . . the heavier Shells in Stone, the lighter in Chalk, and so of the rest.”141 As Rappaport has indicated, although Woodward’s diluvial theory had its problems, he was acknowledged as an “expert fossilist” accompanying his discourse with an virtuosic discussion of marine fossils, demonstrating their resemblance to living organisms.142 Woodward responded also to problems that led other investigators astray, stating in the beginning of his work: that he would first fairly lay before the Reader the Arguments that have been urged by these Gentlemen to perswade us that these Bodies are mere Mineral Substances; and having detected the insufficiency of them, by evincing from the most plain and simple Reason, how far they are from being conclusive, and how much they fall short of proving what they are alledged for.143

Though Lister was not named, it was clear who Woodward had in mind. If that was not irritating enough, Woodward asserted that mineral springs carried vitriolic substances that infiltrated the bodies of dead animals, fossilizing them into pyrite substances, in direct contradiction to Lister’s hypothesis of formed stones and his aerial theory of fossilization in which he demonstrated spa waters did not contain vitriol. Woodward also asserted that although larger “Buccinae, and Conchae Veneris, or Lobsters, Crabs, and others of the crustaceous kind . . . are very rarely found at Land,” it was a mistake of Lister and his colleagues to assert “they are never found.”144 According to Woodward’s theory of specific gravity, the reason for the fossils’ scarcity was that as they were heavier, they had sunk down into the lowest strata of the earth and were difficult to find; fossils of the same specific gravity as chalk however were more readily found in the limestone chalk beds. Though Woodward had his supporters, Lister and his colleagues were up in arms. Lhwyd considered Woodward’s diluvial ideas “a confus’d notion, of no real use”; he remarked to Lister the only “two good effects” his book would have were to stimulate research into fossils and make investigators prefer solid observations in natural history to the

141 142 143 144

Rappaport, Geologists, . Rappaport, Geologists, . Woodward, Essay, –. Woodward, Essay, .



chapter thirteen

“romantic theories” Woodward proffered.145 John Ray had also noticed that he had seen the heaviest fossil shells on the surface of the earth, which made “nonsense of Woodward’s notion of gravity as an explanation for their location.”146 Lister’s friend, Tancred Robinson, noted that Woodward had compared the Old and New World to prove the universality of the effects of the Flood, but in “discoursing with him I discover his ignorance of the History of both, especially Asia and America, whence he affirms the Animals are the same and the migration of the first into the latter demonstrable, though he knows not when nor which way.”147 Lister himself wrote to Lhwyd: In answer to your last I was not deceived in the man, nor in my expectation of the booke, whose vanity and arrogance I not long since sufficientlie saw in his publiclie villifying Mr Wray; and particularlie upon this subject, whose candour is a general example to all mankind. I read so farr of the booke till I came at the world being dissolved into a mudd, the shells excepted; which wild fancie so shockt me that I desided to have to doe noe more either with the author nor his writings. These bold stroakes have been in all ages the bain of natural Philosophie: and they will prevail for aught I can see for ever with the idle and prating part of mankind. But yet I can assure you he is much dispised here for his pains.148

Lister was correct Woodward arrogantly vilified Ray in his work, criticizing Ray’s ascription of strata and their fossils to causes other than the Flood; Ray had noted that marine sequences included fossils in growth positions, which indicated long-term deposition of their remains.149 Ray thus suggested their origins were between the Creation and the Flood. Lister was also correct that Woodward had a rather haughty streak in his nature; Woodward wrote that he considered the enmity of Lister, Ray, and Robinson to be to his benefit, remaking “The Truth is their opposition is of real advantage to me, and hath made me appear more considerable to some than perhaps I should otherwise have done.”150 Objections to Woodward’s theory then moved from private correspondence and gossip to published rebuttal, the most mysterious being

145 146 147 148 149 150

Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. Levine, Shield, . Gunther, ed., Further Correspondence, . Bodleian MS Ashmole , f. . Ray, Physico-Theological, –. Bodleian MS Engl. Hist. C , f. r, as quoted by Levine, Shield, .

publication and prestige



a tract by an anonymous author “L.P.” entitled Two Essays Sent in a Letter from Oxford, to a Nobleman in London () (Figure ).151 The identity of the writer of the Two Essays has been a matter of historical debate, ranging from John Toland to Tancred Robinson, to Lister himself.152 Historian Giancarlo Carabelli cautiously offered some evidence attributing the essays to the Irish philosopher and freethinker John Toland, a conclusion that other scholars such as Stephen Hartley David and William Poole have subsequently supported.153 Carabelli’s conjecture was based upon the premise that the Two Essays reflected ideas of materialism representative of Toland’s philosophy, and because of a piece of evidence in a letter from Lhwyd in response to Lister.154 Lhwyd wrote: The reason I enquired after the author of the Two Essays, was because the th and th pages are part of a letter of myne to Mr Ray. I must confesse I like’d it very well; but it seem’d to me that only some good naturalist had supply’d an other writer with materials. They have a notion in this town [Oxford] that one TOLAND an Irishman who has liv’d here this last -month, and is eminent for railing in coffee houses against all communities in religion, and monarchy, is the author; but for the reason above mentione’d (besides some others) I presume he had noe hand at all in’t.155

As this rumor was the only tangible data to support Carabelli’s hypothesis, historian Rhoda Rappaport considered the evidence for Toland as author as fairly slender.156 Although Lhwyd did not yet know it, L.P. did indeed get such aid from Tancred Robinson, but Robinson declined to identify L.P.157 In a publicly printed letter to William Wotton, Robinson wrote, “I am not afraid to own ingenuously, that the Composer of them shew’d me Part of those Essays, I mean those relating to America, which I did touch here and there and [that I] furnish’d him with some Books and Letters.”158 Robinson said his actions were motivated by “private 151

L.P., M.A., Essays. See for instance, Rappaport, “Questions of Evidence,” –. 153 Carabelli, Tolandiana, –, as mentioned in Rappaport, “Questions of Evidence,” –. David, John Toland, ; Poole, “Sir Robert Southwell.” 154 Rappaport, “Questions of Evidence,” –. 155 Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. 156 Rappaport, “Questions of Evidence,” –. 157 Rappaport, “Questions of Evidence,” . 158 Robinson, Letter, . See also Autograph File R, Houghton Library, Harvard University, which contains one letter from John Ray to Edward Lhwyd, dated  September 152



chapter thirteen

Fig.  The frontispiece to the notorious publication Two Essays Sent in a Letter from Oxford, to a Nobleman in London by the anonymous L.P. Shelfmark Sigma III. . The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.

disgust at D.W. [Dr Woodward] who . . . had spoke very reflecting Words against Mr Ray.”159 So Robinson either greatly influenced or was the author of one of the tracts in the Two Essays, “concerning the Peopling and Planting [of ] the New World, and other remote Countries.”160 L.P. argued that the Mosaic account of the deluge and the re-peopling of the world by the sons of Noah were not to be accepted literally, suggesting Noah had “adopted a fable to persuade a rude and ignorant . In the letter, Ray told Lhwyd that Robinson admitted meeting with “L.P.” in a coffee-house and telling him what he knew about the “State of America, and other Countrys” before discovered by Europeans. Robinson describes L.P. as someone connected with Oxford who did not want to lose his preferment, but Robinson would not reveal who he was. 159 Bodleian MS Ashmole a, f. . 160 L.P., M.A., Essays, –.

publication and prestige



people of an underlying truth.”161 Part of L.P.’s strategy to discredit the Mosaic account was to demonstrate that the diversity of the world’s peoples and religions meant that they could not have all had Christian ancestry. To do this, the author utilized reports of overseas voyages to the New World, Russia, and Greenland that categorically showed the geographical obstacles presented to Noah’s descendents if they migrated to the new world. In his discussion of Greenland and Chile, L.P. cited An account of several late voyages and discoveries to the south and north towards the Streights of Magellan, the South Seas, the vast tracts of land beyond Hollandia Nova (), which was written by Sir John Narbrough and edited by Tancred Robinson.162 Clearly, Robinson had a connection to the Two Essays, so much so that Woodward and one of his disciples, John Harris, suspected Robinson had written the Two Essays in its entirety. Robinson, however, publicly denied sole authorship, and there is another possibility for the identity of the Two Essays—Lister himself.163 Due to his enmity with Woodward, Levine argued that Lister remained “a likely candidate” as author.164 John Ward in his Lives of the Professors of Gresham College () noted that Lister was generally considered to be the writer of the tract, as Woodward had so thoroughly criticized Lister’s ideas.165 Lister was also no stranger to the writing of anonymous tracts. He has been attributed as the author of a pro-Whig and anti-papist ballad, “A Letany of St Omers” () in two parts that decried Catholic interests at court in the wake of the Popish Plot.166 (The English College of St Omer was established in  to educate English Catholics.) He may have written this rather vitriolic set of verses to garner support for his niece Sarah Churchill, who was appointed shortly after a lady of the bedchamber to Princess Anne, and who tirelessly campaigned on behalf of the Whigs. Lister also may have hoped his support of Sarah would lead to him gaining favor as, at the time, he was

161

Levine, Shield, . Narbrough, Account. The descriptions of Nova Zembla or Greenland in Robinson’s work and the Two Essays are quite similar, and L.P. cites Robinson/Narborough’s work directly on p. . 163 Levine, Shield, . 164 Levine, Shield, . 165 Ward, Lives, . 166 Lister, Letany; Lister, Letany II. The Wing Catalogue attribute Lister as the author. 162



chapter thirteen

thinking of moving from York to London to further his career (see Chapter Eleven). An analysis of the sources and arguments used in Two Essays also suggests that Lister may have had a hand in their composition. Evidence from a paper published by Lister in the Philosophical Transactions in  was used to support L.P.’s assertion that humanity was not descended from the family of Moses.167 In the s, Lister had a brief correspondence with a physician named Thomas Townes who was stationed on a plantation on Barbados.168 Townes sent him reports of the flora, fauna, and appearance and behavior of indigenous peoples, and Lister related his information to the Royal Society in his article.169 Townes commented that: the Blood of Negro’s is almost black as their skin. I have seen drawn forth the Blood of at least twenty, both sick and in health, and the superficies of it all is as dark, as the bottom of any European Blood, after standing a while in a dish. So that the Blackness of Negro’s is likely to be inherent in them, and not caused by the scorching of the Sun, especially seeing that other Creatures here, that live in the same Clime and heat with them, have as florid Blood as those that are in a cold Latitude, viz. England.170

Townes’s denial of the geographical determinism of race also featured in the Two Essays, which argued that skin color “was innate . . . which neither the Sun, nor any Curse from Cham could imprint on them.”171 As a result, it was according to L.P. extremely unlikely that the descendents of Noah’s Ark populated the earth. Though, as Levine has noted, Woodward’s supporters thought that L.P.’s idea of innate skin color originated with Tancred Robinson, it indeed might have come from Lister’s much earlier remarks.172 It could be argued against his authorship, however, that Lister never publicly “put forward any theory of the earth of his own,” but on the other hand, he did privately critique Thomas Burnet’s The Sacred Theory of the Earth () in his notebook of adversaria.173 Just as

167

Lister, “Observations Made at the Barbado’s,” –. There are six letters from Townes to Lister in Bodleian MS Lister  and Bodleian MS Lister . 169 Bodleian MS Lister , ff. r–r. 170 Lister, “Observations Made at the Barbado’s,” . 171 L.P., M.A., Essays, . 172 Levine, Shield, . 173 Carr, “The Biological Work,” . Bodleian MS Lister , ff. –. 168

publication and prestige



Woodward thought fossils became stratified due to their specific gravities, Burnet reasoned that as the matter of the primeval earth precipitated from the initial chaos in Genesis, it was sorted by density. At the core were heavy rocks and metals, followed by a liquid layer, which was covered over with terrestrial materials and air that precipitated to form a featureless surface without faults and wrinkles. This flawless original earth was altered into the state it is today by the Noachian flood. Burnet postulated that the waters of the presentday oceans were insufficient to have caused the Noachian flood, and instead argued that the deluge originated from vast stores of waters in the earth’s subterranean chambers. In his adversaria, Lister wrote in response that fish in the primeval earth would have not been able to breathe in water covered by a layer of terrestrial materials as Burnet postulated, and that the composition of rocks varied from place to place in a manner in which they could not have been one continuous and smooth covering.174 In his paper for the Philosophical Transactions containing his table of rocks and clays, Lister claimed also that erosion was sufficient to have created the hills and mountains in Northern England.175 Earthquakes could also cause earthly changes without need to recourse to the deluge. Lister was thus skeptical of any theory like Burnet and Woodward’s that utilized the Noachian flood as the main operative cause in geological change. As Lister did in his adversaria, L.P. also critiqued Woodward for allowing “nothing but a general Dissolution of the whole Terrestrial Globe” to explain the alteration of the earth’s surface, noting earthquakes and sedimentary deposits had changed landscapes.176 L.P. included also three specific references in the Two Essays to Lister’s descriptions of molluscan fossils in De Cochlitis and to his papers on fossils in the Philosophical Transactions.177 L.P. mentioned that Lister and Plot’s classification of fossils as “formed stones” was more successful at explaining why fossil shells were at the tops of Mountains than positing their displacement by a “Chaos or Deluge.”178 Furthermore, the author of the two essays referred to Lister’s hypothesis that saw petrifaction of formed stones as equivalent to the formation of

174 175 176 177 178

Carr, “The Biological Work,” . Bodleian MS Lister , ff. –. Lister, “An Ingenious proposal,” –. L.P., M.A., Essays, . L.P., M.A., Essays, . L.P., M.A., Essays, .



chapter thirteen

gallstones in the body in support of the hypothesis that fossils were formed stones.179 Finally, Lhwyd’s comments themselves suggest Lister’s authorship. His initial letter to Lister about the Two Essays stated, “Pray (if it be communicable) be pleased to acquaint me in your next, who write that small pamphlet against Woodward &c under the title of Two Essays . . . I am sure by some words I find in it, you can guess at the author; and am also as certain that no one of Oxford could write it.”180 His remarks seem to suggest that Lhwyd suspected Lister had a hand in the essays’ composition. In his following message, Lhwyd then explained, “The reason I enquired after the author of the Two Essays, was because the th and th pages are part of a letter of myne to Mr Ray.”181 Lister revealed apparently nothing to his friend, but then we must ask if Lister was the author, how did Lhwyd’s letters to Ray come to Lister? Ray and Lister had broken off correspondence earlier, but Tancred Robinson had served as an intermediary between the two virtuosi, politely passing information between them. It is entirely possible that Robinson passed along the substance of Lhwyd’s letter to Lister to help him compose the essay, as he had, after all, admitted certainly at least to aiding L.P. There also may be psychological reasons that Lister was involved in composing the anonymous tract. Lister had just lost his wife, and his son Alexander’s failures were a painful contrast with the success and rapid advancement of Woodward. In his book, Woodward had challenged Lister’s cherished ideas on petrifaction that had once been at the center of Royal Society business, and vilified his old mentor Ray. Lister’s colleagues had criticized his Sex Exercitationes Medicinales, a book he had not really wanted to write. Though Lister had withdrawn previously from conflict, for instance, deciding not to attend any more Royal Society meetings, his many successive losses may have produced emotional strain and more combativeness than usual. His behavior towards Woodward two years later certainly suggested a bitter hatred between them: at Westminster Hall, Lister drew his sword against Woodward, “and had it not been for another Dr in company with him (who suddenly interposed) there had been Philosophical blood

179 180 181

L.P., M.A., Essays, . Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. Bodleian MS Lister , f. r.

publication and prestige



spilt and it may be the death of one or both of the brethren of the same society.”182 Anonymous tracts were one thing, but violent duels and subsequent disgrace were entirely another. Perhaps Lister realized that it was time for him to withdraw from such heated disagreements to clear his mind of family troubles and losses and regain control of his emotions. Lister wanted also to improve his physical health, which was suffering greatly, and he complained often to Lhwyd about his asthma getting worse in the damp, polluted air of London. He decided to travel to France, asserting that the “fair Nature and a warm Sun” of France would help him recuperate as it had on several previous occasions.183 It was in fact his “chiefest reason” to travel there, and indeed within ten days of his arrival, his asthmatic cough was cured during the rest of the entire length of his journey.184 He had made the acquaintance of William Bentinck, Lord Portland, who had gone to Paris in  as English ambassador following the Peace of Ryswick. Portland was Superintendent of the King’s Gardens and one of Lister’s patients. Lhwyd had asked Lister for help in attaining Portland’s sponsorship for natural history expeditions to the Canary Islands and the West Indies, and Lister’s second cousin John Lambert had also asked Lister to intervene on his behalf for an appointment from the King, so it was clear he was a close patron.185 Upon taking “first opportunity of Lord Portland’s acceptance of my attendance on him in his Extraordinarie Embassie,” Lister went ahead of the Ambassador with a “good friend who was sent to prepare matters.”186 Lister left London on  December, and in a much shorter passage than he had experienced as a young medical student, arrived in Paris on  January . In reality, he was “no more concerned in the Embassy, than in the sailing of the Ship which carried” him over, leaving him plenty of time to keep careful notes of his observations as he had on his first trip to Montpellier as a young medical student.187 The journey would spur Lister to create a new body of work, and a new life.

182 Bodleian MS Ashmole , f. ; Bodleian MS Engl Hist. C , f. . Both William Cole and Robinson described the brandishing of swords to Lhwyd. See Levine, Shield, . 183 Stearns, ed., Journey, . 184 Stearns, ed., Journey, . 185 Carr, “The Biological Work,” ; Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. 186 Stearns, ed., Journey, . 187 Stearns, ed., Journey, .

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

THE SPICE OF LIFE: A JOURNEY TO PARIS AND A COOKERY BOOK . Introduction In the last years of his life, Lister’s work demonstrated a desire to “understand Mankind” outside a medical context and became both broader and more reflective. In , King William III sent Lister to Paris as a medical attendant to William Bentinck, the Earl of Portland, who was negotiating with the French about the Spanish succession. Lister, for his part, was more interested in French wine and French natural philosophy than diplomacy. As a student he had recorded his observations about his travels in his notebooks, and now, with six months’ time on his hands (from  January to mid-June ), he reprised the habits of his youth. Lister transformed the notes that he took on his journey into a travel memoir, entitled prosaically A Journey to Paris in the year 1698.1 Lister’s work became a best seller, which went through three editions, replete as it was with the rhetoric of exoticism, tropes of cultural inclusion and exclusion, and native expressions that added authenticity to his narrative. Lister’s memoir was dedicated to Lord John Somers (–), who was a fervent Whig, Lord Chancellor, and President of the Royal Society. This act, and the influence of his niece Sarah Churchill, resulted in Lister being made a physician-in-ordinary to Queen Anne in . Lister had many of what he described as “leisure hours” waiting on the gouty, perpetually pregnant, and overweight monarch. He used his spare time to publish his medical textbook Dissertatio de Humoribus (), which synthesized all his previous publications in medicine, but added new iatrochemical speculations. In , the book was reprinted in Amsterdam and as part of an edition of his complete

1

There was a second and third edition published that same year, also by Jacob Tonson. It continued to be published in travel anthologies throughout the nineteenth century, and, in , Raymond Stearns edited a facsimile edition, which is the one I have been using for purposes of citation, noted as Stearns, Journey.



chapter fourteen

works; medical students at Leiden and at the University of Edinburgh were still using it in their studies throughout the eighteenth century.2 In , he was made a second physician-in-ordinary to Queen Anne with few responsibilities due to his own ill health (chronic asthma, and kidney stones, which he wrote made travel by coach an agony, and writing at a desk almost impossible). Subsequently, Lister retired to Epsom to take the waters he had advocated many years before in De Fontibus. In his last days, he cultivated an enormous garden replete with exotic fritillaries, remarried, and penned responses against persistent satirists. Through it all, he maintained a lively interest in making observations of the natural world, continued to dissect specimens, and revisited the classical authors he had enjoyed as a student, publishing commentaries on Hippocrates and the Roman cookbook by Apicius.3 He was a virtuoso to the last. . The Journey to Paris Though subsequently mined by historians for its anecdotes and descriptions, most scholars have not appreciated how very different Lister’s Journey to Paris was from the standard travel guide.4 Most early modern guidebooks to France were produced for the benefit of young gentlemen to acquire those accomplishments that became a person of estate and quality. It was thought that learning French, horsemanship, fencing, dancing, and drawing, as well as mixing with the rest of the citizens of the world produced “confident and comely behavior in the English gentleman and rid him of his English rusticity, sourness in conversation and laziness.”5 Louis XIV, with the help of his engineers, had constructed architectural wonders in Paris, fashioning his capital as the “new Athens,” and tourists came to study the city’s buildings, collections, and manners.6 The book trade responded. The first travel guide to architectural Paris was written by Germain Brice in ; arranged topographically and in a portable format, it went through

2

Van Strien, “A medical student at Leiden,” . Lister, Hippocratisi; Lister, Apicii Coelii. 4 Stearns, for example, attributes its unique nature solely to Lister’s interests in “French learning and technology.” See Stearns, “Introduction,” Journey, xi. For use of the Journey for anecdotal material, see Biagoli, “Etiquette, Interdependence,” –. 5 Walker, Education, , as quoted by Warneke, Traveller, . 6 Woodcox, “Paris,” . 3

the spice of life



nine editions.7 The following year, C. Le Maire wrote three volumes that concentrated not only upon edifices, but also on Parisian politics and high society. Lister, however, did not describe the obligatory architectural sites that young men should visit, nor did he proffer tropes of politeness or the manners of distinguished gentlemen. He admitted to his readers that they might have known from guidebooks everything he could possibly say about politesse and palaces, asking rhetorically: why do you trouble us with a Journey to Paris, a Place so well known to every body here? For very good Reason, to spare the often telling my Tale at my return. But we know already all you can say, or can read it in The Present State of France, and Description of Paris; two books to be had in every Shop in London. ‘Tis right, so you may; and I advise you not to neglect them, if you have a mind to judge well of the Grandeur of the Court of France, and the immense Greatness of the City of Paris. These were Spectacles I did indeed put on, but I found they did not fit my Sight, I had a mind to see without them; and in Matters of this Nature, as vast Cities and vast Palaces, I did not care much to use Microscopes or Magnifying Glasses.8

For Lister, such expansive overviews or specialist treatments would distort his eyewitness view of Parisian culture. Comprehensive and detailed guidebooks were for young men who needed to find their way, but Lister had already made that voyage of discovery to Montpellier and Paris as a young man in the s. Now he would determine his own way. He directed the reader thus to his interests in natural history using his mature judgment and own eyes, offering “clean Matter of Fact, and some short notes of an unprejudiced Observer.”9 Inclining “rather to Nature than Dominion,” Lister, of course, demonstrated his connoisseurship with his informed analysis of items in cabinets of curiosities, as “the cultivated traveler was expected to visit the public and private cabinets of his hosts.”10 But he also admitted that he: took more pleasure to see Monsieur Breman in his White Waistcoat digging in the Royal Physick Garden, then Monsieur de Saintot making

7 Editions of Brice’s work were published in , , , , , , , and . See Lelong and de Fontette, eds, Bibliothèque Historique, : . Travel guides to the continent as a whole, of course, had been common since the sixteenth century. 8 Lister, Journey, . 9 Lister, “Dedication,” Journey, . 10 Lister, Journey, ; Levine, Shield, .



chapter fourteen room for an Ambassador; and I found my self better disposed, and more apt to learn the Names and Physiognomy of a Hundred Plants, than of Five or Six Princes. After all, I had much rather have walked a Hundred Paces under the meanest Hedge in Languedoc, than any the Finest Alley at Versailles or St. Clou, so much I prefer Fair Nature and a warm Sun, before the most exquisite Performances of Art in a cold and barren Climate.11

He was true to his word. The lion’s share of the memoir’s illustrations were not grand buildings, but engravings of slugs, snails, shells, and millipedes, with a drawing of Roman coins put in for good measure. Lister’s interests in natural history and philosophy, mixed with occasional references to antiquarianism, medicine, and fine wine and food were the hallmarks of his status as a virtuoso, but also reflections of who he was. The memoir was a set of empirical observations about the activities of natural philosophers, collectors, virtuosi, bibliophiles, and even gardeners, the curiosi and virtuosi. As a student Lister had recorded his observations about viniculture and the terroir of the vineyards in his notebooks, and he revisited them in his old age. He also toured gardens: the Jardin du Roi, the gardens of the Palace of Luxembourg, and the King’s Physic Garden which he saw with the eminent botanist Joseph Pitton de Tournefort (–), the first to create a clear concept of a plant genus. And, of course, Lister strolled through the Tuilleries, where he was especially taken with the summer-evening promenade of members of the court, writing, “I did not think that there was in the World a more agreeable place, than that Alley at that hour, and that time of Year.”12 Libraries also figured prominently in his tour of Paris, Lister visiting the collections of the Sorbonne and St Genevieve, as well as private libraries of his friends and correspondents Abbé Philippe Drouyn, a doctor of the Sorbonne and member of Parliament, and antiquarian Charles-César Baudelot de Dairval (–).13 Lister noted particularly that Abbé Drouyn showed him the papers of Swammerdam on

11

Lister, Journey, . Lister, Journey, . 13 Their letters to Lister can be found in Bodleian MS Lister . There are five letters from Drouyn, and four pieces of correspondence from Baudelot. One of Baudelot’s letters to Lister regarding the development of gallstones in horses was passed onto the Royal Society: MS EL/B/, Royal Society Library, London. Lister’s visits to their libraries are mentioned in Lister, Journey, –. 12

the spice of life



Insects, though he remarked sniffily that “they were much beneath my Expectation, not answering the Printed Catalogue of Thevenot.”14 But he was most pleased to tour the King’s Library, where Monsieur Clement, the deputy keeper, showed him “most of the Books and the Names of the rest I had publisht in Latin; and shewed a great satisfaction, that he had got the Synopsis Conchyliorum, which he had caused to be bound very elegantly.”15 Unfortunately, Lister had to inform Clement that it was “a very imperfect trial of the plates, which I had disposed of to a few Friends only,” and he promised to give him a better copy when he returned to England as it was “no inconsiderable Present, even for so great a Prince, as the King of France.”16 Lister also recorded his visits with Joseph-Guichard Duverney (–) who had an international reputation as a teacher of anatomy and who shared Lister’s interests in snails. The work was written indeed as Lister said to “satisfie” his “own Curiosity and to delight my self with the Memory of what I had seen.”17 Lister loved to observe, whether the “small and trifling things of Nature” or another culture, his “Character of a Stranger” and status as a gentleman giving him “free Admittance to Men and Things.”18 To some degree, Lister’s travel narrative reflected the paradigmatic shift in travel literature which occurred from the late-medieval to the early modern period. As Elsner and Rubie indicated, “This attention to the narration of observed experience, with special attention to human subjects, can in a general sense be seen as the ultimate relocation of the paradigm of travel from the ideal of pilgrimage to those of empirical curiosity and practical science.”19 Lister’s work shares elements of the medieval representation of the marvelous in encyclopedic texts in its description of exotic specimens. On the other hand, it does not rely on authorities for authentication, but rather offers an eyewitness account of an observer who was well known among his colleagues for his accurate empiricism and attention to detail. Lister’s travel narrative would also be thought to be reliable because of his social status. Shapin has argued that for scientific works “the

14 15 16 17 18 19

Lister, Journey, . Lister, Journey, . Lister, Journey, . Lister, Journey, . Lister, Journey, . Elsner and Rubiés, eds, Voyages, .



chapter fourteen

distribution of imputed credit and reliability [in early modern England] followed the contours of authority and power . . . the moral economy of premodern society located truth within the practical performances of everyday social order.”20 Julia Schleck has noted that the same standards held true for early modern English travel literature, in which “credit was extended to those deemed worthy of credit, rather than upon the abstract merits of the claim; empirical accounts were judged not so much on the tale but on the teller.”21 Certainly in areas in which he was knowledgeable, Lister’s descriptions in his travel memoir were de facto, “true,” but even in other spheres where he was at best a gifted amateur, his very lack of expertise combined with his gentlemanly status made them seem more credible. When discussing wines for instance, he simply recorded what he was served and what as a discriminating gentleman he thought of them. His lack of self-interest in his observations was a ringing endorsement or criticism for the qualities of a particular wine, his enthusiasm a toast to his readers: But the most excellent Wines for strength and flavour are the Red and White St Laurence, a Town betwixt Toulon and Nice in Provence. This is a most delicious Muscat. These are of those sorts of Wines, which the Romans called Vinum passum, that were made of half Sun-dried Grapes: for the Grapes (especially the White Muscadine Grapes) being usually sooner ripe, than the common Grapes of the Country, called Esperan, viz. the latter end of August, (as I have seen them in the Vintage at Vic, Mirabel, and Frontiniac, three Towns near the Sea in Languedoc, where this sort of Wine is made) they twist the Bunches of Grapes, so breaking the Stalks of them, that they receive no longer any nourishment from the Vine, but hang down and dry in the then violent hot Sun, and are in few days almost turned into Raisins of the Sun; hence, from this insolation, the flavour of the Grape is exceedingly heightned and the strength and Oiliness, and thick Body of the Wine is mightily improved. I think the Red St Lauren was the most delicious Wine I ever tasted in my life.22

As an entertaining memoir that was perceived to be reliable, Lister’s work went through three editions in one year. A French publisher

20

Shapin, Social, , . Schleck, “Plain broad narratives,” –. 22 Lister, Journey, –. The St Laurent grape today is also being used as a substitute for Pinot Noir. 21

the spice of life



even eventually published an edition of it in French, certainly the ultimate success for a travel diary.23 Lister’s correspondence is also full of congratulatory letters from his friends as a result of the success of his book. The mineralogist Jabez Cay from Newcastle commented that he was “amaz’d” at the “universall learning of the Author” and told Lister “Every Body here is fond of the Book.”24 Arthur Charlett (–), Master of University College, Oxford, remarked of Lister’s memoir, “We are all obliged to you for your useful and entertaining Account of Paris, tho I cannot tell whether we ought not to complain that you have layd too great a Temptation to our Youth to run away from theyr native Country.”25 The poet Matthew Prior also thought highly of the work, at least to Lister’s face. Prior was secretary to the plenipotentiaries who concluded the Peace of Ryswick, and along with Lister, was part of the Earl of Portland’s diplomatic entourage. He had also been one of Lister’s patients, remarking to the Earl of Dorset, “he took extraordinary care of me.”26 With his typical easy and wayward humor, Prior wrote to his doctor: . . . I sent for your voyage to Paris . . . if every Man wrote fairly and intelligibly like my good friend Dr Lister what he saw and observed in the place he was in the world would be very much undeceived even in the commonest Notions and in the countries nearest to Us; but We write and read of Elephants and Crocodiles in China or Egypt and know nothing of the Sheep or Oxen of france; and amuse our Selves with what is wonderfull whilst We think it below us to take notice of any thing that is usefull.27

Though Prior appreciated Lister’s work publicly, privately he was less sure, remarking to Dr William Aglionby “And what the Devil could Dr Lister of the Old Palace write concerning the city of Paris except that Notre Dame Church stands in the Isle, and King Henry’s statue upon Pont-neuf ?”28 Lister’s memoir also attracted other criticism and

23 It was reprinted in Pinkerton, General Collection, : –, and there is a revised edition by Henning, Account. Henning’s edition was translated into French in an  edition as Voyage de Lister. 24 Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. 25 Bodleian MS Lister , f. . 26 Manuscripts of the Marquis of Bath, : . 27 Bodleian MS Lister , ff. v and r. The letter is also printed in the Manuscripts of the Marquis of Bath, : . 28 Manuscripts of the Marquis of Bath : .



chapter fourteen

satire, criticism that illuminates early modern English attitudes about natural philosophy, curiosity, travel, and French culture. William King (–) was a fellow Scriblerian and friend of Jonathan Swift, vicar-general of Armagh, and a lawyer. King cut his teeth at the beginning of his writing career by lampooning academics and natural philosophers, satirizing the battle of the ancients and moderns that arose in the late-seventeenth century amongst scholars.29 The “ancients” argued that all that was necessary to be known was in the works of the ancient Greeks and Romans. The moderns, on the other hand, took the position that the age of reason and natural philosophy surpassed the knowledge of antiquity. Like Swift, King was “opposed to all forms of modern learning, whether philological or philosophical, and equally ignorant of them.”30 Previously, King had satirized the “modernist” stance of scholar Richard Bentley christening him “Bentivoglio” in his vaguely amusing spoof Dialogues of the Dead (), as well as meddling in a dispute Bentley had with the young aristocrat Charles Boyle in .31 As King was a Tory and a HighChurch Man, perhaps even a Jacobin, and Bentley a staunch Hanoverian, their rivalry in print also reflected their political and religious disagreements. Samuel Johnson said rather disparagingly of King that he “was one of those who tried what wit could perform in opposition to learning; on a question which learning only could decide.”32 King, rather more successfully, lampooned the “modern” new science of the virtuosi, writing a work called The Transactioneer (), consisting of two dialogues reminiscent of Shadwell’s Virtuoso, which caricatured the Royal Society’s secretary, Hans Sloane. King used Sloane’s own words against him, writing that the “lies” and “blunders” which Sloane and his friends poured forth so naturally could not be misrepresented, so careful was he in producing them.33 This work was followed by his lampoon of the Philosophical Transactions, re-titled Useful Transactions in Philosophy (–), its frontispiece reproducing the look of the Royal Society’s journal. In the same manner, King lampooned Lister’s travel book, writing A Journey to London in the Year 1698. After the Ingenuous Method of

29 30 31 32 33

Levine, Battle; DeJean, Ancients. Levine, Shield, . Boyle, Dissertations, . Johnson, Lives, : –, on . King, “Transactioneer,” in Works, : .

the spice of life



that made by Dr Martin Lyster to Paris, in the same year, &c. Written originally in French, by Monsieur Sorbière, and Newly Translated into English (). King used a mixture of allegory, picaresque narrative, and ludicrous commentary in his Menippean satire.34 He created the character of “ingenuous” Lyster as a foil for the real “ingenious Dr Lister” who authored articles in the Philosophical Transactions, taking advantage of the fuzzy boundaries that exist between curious inquiry and credulous naiveté. King’s reference to Samuel Sorbière was also equally fallacious. Sorbière had nothing to do with Lister’s book, but Sorbière had published earlier a work on his brief travels to England that was “well known and much maligned for the author’s ignorance and misinformation about English manners and customs.”35 The Frenchman’s vivid and indiscreet descriptions of the Royal Society, and the Lord Chancellor, Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon in particular, led to the wrecking of his career.36 King hoped the infamy of Sorbière’s book would rub off on Lister’s Journey to Paris, and his satire would ride on the coat-tails of the success of the travel memoir at the booksellers. To drive home the point, King had “Monsieur Sorbeir” apologize to the reader in a fake preface: “I might here take an Opportunity to beg Pardon of the English, for my misrepresentations Thirty Years ago, but ‘tis to be hoped this Book will make my Peace with that Nation.”37 In his memoir, Lister wrote at length about the shell and botanical collections of a number of French natural philosophers, including those of Monsieur Buco, or Nicholas Boucot (d. ?), one of the four Keeper of the Rolls of the Chancellery, as well as the collection of , “seeds and fruits, and dried plants” of Tournefort.38 He marveled, for instance, at a specimen of a “large blood-red Spondile” (Spondylus princeps), which for at the height of the shell-collecting market, the late Duke of Orleans paid  livres or £.39 The Duke apparently also offered , livres for a collection of  shells, which was refused, and then remarked he “knew not who was the greater

34 For a more thorough discussion of King’s satiric techniques, see Engel, “Menippean satire.” 35 Stearns, ed., “Introduction,” Journey, xiii. 36 Sarasohn, “Who was then the Gentleman,” . 37 King, “Preface,” to Journey, . 38 Lister, Journey,  and . 39 Lister, Journey, .



chapter fourteen

Fool, he that bid the Price, or the Man that refused it.”40 Like tulip speculation in Holland in the first half of the seventeenth century, the values of spondile shells also declined precipitously as more reliable trade routes increased their quantities in the collectors’ markets. Even today, the market value of shells can fluctuate wildly. Lister’s eponymous shell, Strombus listeri, was once considered the most rare of the strombs, originally known from a single specimen brought back to England from the Indian Ocean (Figure ).41 In , a second was brought to England from Ceylon, and four more specimens turned up from the Gulf of Martaban in Burma in the s. Until the mid-s, collectors were paying as much as US$, per specimen until the stromb’s habitat was discovered in deep waters in the eastern Indian Ocean and hundreds suddenly appeared on the market. Today, the same shell costs just $.42 This is a fortunate state of affairs, as the original type specimen visiting the Glasgow Museum was crushed accidentally during preparations for an exhibit to accompany the Ninth International Malacological Congress in .43 Lister’s conch was painfully reconstructed shard by shard; as it was the original shell from his collection and bought  years ago for a high price, the insurance settlement between the Glasgow Museums and the Hunterian Museum was $,.44 Just as the values of shells can appear incomprehensible to those who are not aficionados of conchology, Lister’s love of molluscs and other rarities from the natural world was equally unfathomable to King. King used several techniques to emphasize what he perceived as the triviality and “foolishness” of the doctor’s observations and obsession with collections of natural history. King’s Journey to London began with a satiric device he invented—the humorous index, referring to the pages of Lister’s original work to form an index to that book. His index began with “Asses,” an oblique reference to Lister’s description of a skin of an African ass he saw in Paris, followed by (among other entries) Beggars, Curiosity, Cellar Windows, Commendation of Linnen

40

Lister, Journey, . Lister was the first to illustrate it in the second edition of his Historiae Conchyliorum, table , figure a. Originally, it was part of the Tradescant’s collection at the Ark in Lambeth Palace. See Dance, Rare, . 42 Dance, Rare, . 43 Hancock, “Accidental damage,” –. 44 Hancock, “Accidental damage,” . 41

the spice of life



Fig.  Strombus listeri. Image . Shutterstock images.

Shirts, Grey Pease Hot!, Kitling in an Air Pump, Pox, and Turnips.45 The “kitlings” in air pumps described in Lister’s memoir referred to a demonstration by the French anatomist Joseph-Guichard Duverney showing that a kitten just born could survive better a partial vacuum than a mature cat, demonstrating the properties of fetal circulation.46 King’s derogatory list lampooned not only the diverse interests of the virtuosi, but their catalogs of early museums and collectors’ cabinets, like those of the Ashmolean Museum or the Royal Society Repository, which listed seemingly random items, either donated by fellows or of curious interest. To be fair to King, there was much to satirize, as two of the six folding plates in Lister’s Journey to Paris portrayed a giant millipede as well as a centipede in Father Charles Plumier’s collection which was described as a “foot and half long, and proportionally broad.” Though Lister was more used to the smaller British species and as a naturalist these spectacular creatures made a lasting impression,

45

King, “Contents,” Journey. Lister described viewing the “striated skin of an African ass” on page  of his own Journey. 46 Lister, Journey, . For more on Duverney, see Guerrini, “Duverney’s Skeletons,” –.



chapter fourteen

such illustrations were not the typical fare for a travelogue and, were frankly, off-putting to non-myriapodists.47 King then portrayed his satiric character of “Lyster” as seeming more interested in seeing two Owls than touring the English Armory, his “observations inclin’d rather to Nature than Dominion.”48 In the satire, “Lyster” was led to see a farcical zoo where there were “catamountains” and a stuffed calf ’s head with a tumor that looked like a topknot on display.49 Upon listening to a discourse about the Bank where “two Millions Sterling were subscribed in less than two days time,” “Lyster” commented: I believe the Man would have run on till Evening, if I had not thus interrupted him: Sir, said I, I beg you to consider, that I am a Virtuoso, and that your present discourse is quite out of my Element: Sir, you would oblige me much more, if you could find me any Coin from Palmira . . .50

“Lyster’s” host obliged by giving him “two rusty Copper Pieces,” supposedly Saxon in nature.51 The antiquarian “Lyster’s” numismatic interests were literally portrayed as valueless in this exchange, though ironically the real Lister was one of the Bank’s earliest subscribers, buying annuities for his children.52 Although King’s readers may have laughed at the character of “Lyster,” Lister believed in the power of collection. From the virtuoso’s point of view, all items “were conquered by the collector’s most powerful use of curiosity: collection. Indeed, curiosity makes the curious themselves explorers, conquerors, scientists, and phenomena in their own collections, their own ultimate example of fine art.”53 Lister’s description of the collections that he saw made him both a literal and a virtual explorer, and his memoir was an attempt to convince others to see, or to question what he saw, as he did. His virtual cabinet of curiosity gave his readers the “experience of museuming, the patriotic admiration of acquisition,” virtual participants in the prestige and power

47 Hopkin, “Myriapodology,” . My thanks to Ailsa Hopkin for providing me with a copy of her late husband’s paper. 48 King, Journey, –. 49 King, Journey, . 50 King, Journey, –. 51 King, Journey, . 52 Original Subscriptions Ledger, Reference A/, , entry number , ledger folio , Bank of England Archive, London. 53 Benedict, Curiosity, .

the spice of life



of collecting.54 That is why it continued to sell well, despite or even perhaps because of King’s criticisms: no publicity is bad publicity. Lister’s Journey to Paris showed he was clearly a Francophile, and he recalled with fondness his travels there as a young man. Though he criticized the French who “build and dress mostly for Figure,” decried French popery and monasticism, and denigrated the absolutist government of Louis XIV, he also found much to admire in France. He praised everything from the magnificence of Parisian architecture, to the pomme d’apis variety of apple, “very red on one side and pale and white on the other,” which served “the French Ladies at their Toilets for a Pattern to paint by.”55 Lister was even grateful for the French carriages with “double springs” at the corners, which meant a subsequent lack of jolts that was wonderful to an old man with creaky joints and kidney stones. Some commentators, however, were disturbed at his praise of the French. Early modern conduct literature trod a delicate balance between the benefits of travel to France and the possible spiritual and moral corruption it could engender in the young and impressionable.56 There was a tradition in medieval English literature that the English suffered from an unsteady character that predisposed them to discard their own customs in favor of new or foreign standards. As an island nation, it was thought that its watery surroundings meant that its people were subject to the power of the moon, just as the tides were.57 The moon’s changing appearance was seen as indicating an inconstant and mutable nature, and a person influenced by luna according to one sixteenth-century text, “shold be a traveler and like strang cou[n]tres.”58 This inconstancy of mind that Englishmen and women exhibited resulted in a “fascination with new and foreign things.”59 Playwright Aphra Behn complained in the preface to her translation of Bernard de Fontanelle’s Discovery of New Worlds () that just as the English uncritically accepted French fashions, credulously they accepted French scientific ideas.60

54 55 56 57 58 59 60

Benedict, Curiosity, . Lister, Journey, . Warneke, Traveller, . Warneke, Traveller, . Boorde, Pryncyples, . See also Roos, Luminaries, . Warneke, Traveller, . Behn, “Preface,” Discovery, sig. A.



chapter fourteen

These traditional fears about foreign influence were exacerbated by increasing concerns about the influence of French politesse and scientific discourse on English society. After the Secret Treaty of Dover in  agreed with Louis XIV, King Charles II “lapsed into what Yes Minister’s Sir Humphrey Appleby might have praised as ‘masterly inactivity’. The controversies of religion and the succession which prompted him to rule without Parliament laid him open to manipulation by Louis, for whose subsidies he was prepared to barter English neutrality.”61 Charles’s early adulthood had been spent amongst the French, and French dress and social fashions were popular at court. But the Anglo-French détente was not so easygoing after James II took the throne in . The “secret” Treaty of Dover was no longer a secret. James’s abdication of the throne and the “Glorious Revolution” in which William of Orange gained power led to a sudden change in Anglo-French relations, which culminated in the Nine Years War (–). Though the subsequent Peace of Ryswick in  led Lister to declare “Tis a happy Turn for us, when Kings are made Friends again. ‘Tis was the end of this Embassy, and I hope it will last our Days,” many of his more patriotic readers may have not been so sure.62 Even after the Peace, there was a re-evaluation of the cultural relations between England and France that was bound up with the Whiggish distaste for French absolutism.63 It is not entirely surprising, therefore, that Lister’s Francophilia would attract not only satire but also outright censure. An anonymous author who styled himself “Eugenius Philo-Patriae,” offered a correction to Lister’s enthusiasm for the French in his Succinct description of France (), dedicating the preface of his work to him. There are some detailed descriptions of contemporary Orléans, the Jesuit order and the universities, which were based upon the author’s journeys through France, so it was in some respects, a legitimate travel guide. In other respects, however, it was an attack upon Lister. Eugenius began his preface by ingenuously remarking: some ill natured and unthinking Animals having imbib’d an Opinion that your only Design in publishing your Journey to Paris was to flatter the French and disparage the English, they made, you know, very unde-

61 62 63

Richardson, Contending, . Lister, Journey, . Klein, “The figure of France,” .

the spice of life



cent Reflections upon that Treatise, presented your Worship as a short sighted, prejudiced Observer, and one that had a greater Esteem and Veneration for Paris than the famous City of London.64

But things only went downhill from there, as Eugenius, much in the matter of King, used Lister’s own comments against him to write a tract that presented Lister as a “prejudiced observer” and the French in a derogatory light. He concluded his publication by having the gall to ask Lister to give “it the Honour of being Bound up as a Supplement with your Journey to Paris.”65 Lister’s response to these satires was entirely predictable, consisting of a series of bilious complaints to his correspondents about King, telling Lhwyd he considered him an “impudent buffoon.”66 But he did not give the satirists the satisfaction of a public reply. A draft letter to Lord Portland revealed his attitude when he stated that “a silent contempt of such people is a remedie for the present time: and posteritie will be just & thankfull, if there is anything usefull in a mans Labour.”67 After all, he had other things to think about. Lister was maintaining a lively correspondence with friends he had met in France, including Tournefort; Michael Butterfield, an English expatriate who had lived in Paris for thirty-five years; and Nicholas Cornelisz Witsen, F.R.S. (–), mayor of Amsterdam, collector of naturalia, cartographer, and traveler to China, Russia, and Australia.68 In a letter to Lister, which was eventually published in the Philosophical Transactions, Witsen remarked that he had been given two shells from “New Holland” or Australia by the Dutch sea Captain William Vlamingh, who had visited Western Australia the previous year.69 These were the first specimens to reach Holland from Australia and, in the article, Lister mentioned that he illustrated them in the last edition of his Historiae Conchyliorum. One was the record of the first Australian nautilus, and the other was then named the Concha persica clavicula radiata.70 Witsen noted, “I could not bestow them better than on one

64

Philo-Patriae, Succinct, sig A. Philo-Patriae, “Dedication,” Succinct, . 66 Bodleian MS Ashmole , f. . 67 Bodleian MS Lister , f. v. 68 The correspondence is primarily in Bodleian MS Lister . 69 Witsen, “Part of a Letter,” . 70 The letter exists as EL/W/ and as a scribal copy of the original, LBO/./, Royal Society Library, London. It was printed in part as Witsen, “Part of a Letter,” . Neither shell has ever been located. 65



chapter fourteen

who hath the best knowledge of these and all other sea products.71 In the same letter, Witsen described also the European discovery of an Australian marsupial, the Quokka Setonix brachyurus, making the first recorded reference to the marsupial pouch as a “kind of bagg or purse hanging from the throat upon the brest downewards.”72 Lister duly passed news of this to the Royal Society; though no longer active in the organization, he continued to be a conduit for information. Lister had also been helping Lhwyd see through the press his catalogue of fossils, the Lithophylacium Britannicum. Much as he did with the Historia Piscium, Lister supervised the production of the illustrations and lent his friend copperplates that would be useful, telling him “Yor Booke is well printed for letter & paper, & cutts, as any ever was in England.”73 As Oxford University Press would not publish the work due to its expensive illustrations, Lister also encouraged his colleagues to subscribe, the cost of the  books produced being shared between ten virtuosi and noblemen, including Lister, Lord Somers, Lord Montagu, the Earl of Dorset, Dr Hans Sloane, Tancred Robinson, chemist and professor Étienne François Geoffroy of Paris, Francis Aston, and Isaac Newton.74 Because of Lister’s efforts, Lhwyd wrote “you have been at a great deal of trouble and expence about the graving which is a kindnesse I am troubled I know not how to make any amends for, tho I know your goodness never expected any.”75 Subsequently, Lhwyd dedicated his book to Lister, describing him as the “Fundator munificus” of the Ashmolean Museum as well as a great encourager of the study of British fossils.76 Lister had in fact just brought back a cartload of books from France that he donated to the Ashmolean, which the University of Oxford did not acknowledge for several months.77 Their oversight and Lister’s years of bequests may have prompted Thomas Tanner,

71

LBO/./, Royal Society Library, London and Witsen, “Part of a Letter,” . LBO/./, Royal Society Library, London. See also Nelson, “Nicolaas Witsen’s letter of ,” –. 73 Bodleian MS Ashmole , ff. –. The letter was dated  January . 74 Lhwyd, Lithophylacii; See also Gunther, Early, : . Lhwyd’s letter to Lister indicating Oxford’s refusal to print his book is Bodleian MS Lister , f. . 75 Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. 76 Gunther, Early, : . 77 Archives in the Bodleian Library show that Lister received three letters of apology for the oversight: one from Arthur Charlett (Bodleian MS Lister , f. ); one from William Paynter (–), rector of Exeter College, Oxford (Bodleian MS Lister , f. ); and a final letter from Thomas Tanner (–), chaplain and fellow at All Souls, Oxford (Bodleian MS Lister , f. ). 72

the spice of life



chaplain and fellow of All Souls, to arrange for Lister’s name to be placed “in Gold letters over the door of the library there, as the chief benefactor to it next Mr Ashmole” in November .78 Lister’s time away, however, exacerbated the problems he was having with his son at Oxford. Alexander continued to be a wayward youth, but the reason was one that his father did not expect: Alexander was neglecting his studies because he was in love. On  June  Alexander secretly married Sarah Holloway in Oxford, described by one of Lhwyd’s fellow librarians as a woman of “no extraction and scarce reputation.”79 As a married man, he lost his fellowship at Balliol, and the marriage was, apparently, not a happy one. Lhwyd remarked in a letter to Lister sent in October , that he was “heartily concerned” at the news of “Mr Alexander’s marriage,” but “this being long since over, & should not be said.”80 We hear little of the young couple from that point, except of Alexander’s subsequent concern about his lack of financial support from his father. Thomas Railton, a family friend, remarked to Lister in , “as for what allowance you think fit to give your Son, he must be Contented with it, until you are pleased to increased it, which I hope you may Resolve to doe, if he cannot get an imploym[en]t Suitable to a Gent[leman] which he should not long want, if to procure.”81 Later that year, Lister relented, as his nephew Charles Lister noted he was making regular payments to Alexander, and that Alexander in turn was “overjoyed in expressions of thankfulness for this your favour; and make no doubt by this together with his honest endeavours in one employment or other, will maintaine him. I advised him to resolve on that being the most that you would . . . do for him.”82 Alexander was apparently getting an allowance of at least £ per year in an annuity.83 As a comparison, a yeoman farmer would have been making about £ per annum, so while it was enough for main-

78 Bodleian MS Lister , f. . The letter, from Tanner to Lister, is dated  November . 79 Bodleian MS Ashmole , ff. –. The letter was by William Williams, inside another from Foulkes to Lhwyd. The marriage record is in the IGI Individual Record for “Alexander Lyster,” familysearch.org. See also Gunther, ed., Early, : . 80 Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. 81 Bodleian MS Lister , f. v. 82 Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. 83 See Bodleian MS Lister , ff. r and r. These letters contain the annuity amounts resulting from Lister’s investments.



chapter fourteen

tenance, it was not the income of a gentleman. In , his father subscribed £, to the newly formed Bank of England, which secured life annuities of £ not only upon Alexander, but his siblings Anna, Dorothy, Frances, and Barbara.84 Lister’s eldest daughter Susanna, still unmarried, was due to receive most of her father’s estate, so she was not included in the annuities scheme. At the time Lister made his investments, a force of up to , men had been battling French forces for six years, placing great pressure on the government to cope with war-swollen national debt. Not only did William III’s parliament raise duties on non-essentials such as beer, wine, and tobacco, but also borrowed £,, from  original subscribers such as Lister, creating the first national bank. His annuity intact, Alexander was subsequently given a meager £ in Lister’s will for disobeying his father’s wishes. Although we cannot guess at the exact dynamic between father and son, the hostility must have been extreme for Alexander to be largely disinherited, particularly when he should have received the bulk of his father’s estate in the usual system of primogeniture. Lister was also having trouble with his daughter Frances, who married in strained circumstances. In , the Reverend Humphry Bralesford of All Saints and St Mildred in Canterbury informed Lister of her entanglement with Owen Evans, remarking that “a friend of mine has taken a great liking to my Cozen Frances & has entreated me to acquaint you there within.”85 All appeared well on the outset, as “the matter has been soe farr offer’d to your daughter as to enquire whether she has any objections to make against him: and her answer is (like all her other actions) very discrete—that her fathers’s like shall be your measure of hers.”86 Bralesford thought the match would “prove to the satisfaction of al parties,” and the couple indeed married on  July  at St Botolph, Bishopsgate in London.87 Three years later, Frances, who had been described as a “good child,” caused Lister some real consternation when she became “Mrs Evans,” speaking disparagingly of her father in mixed company and showing up uninvited in the

84 Original Subscriptions Ledger, Reference A/, , entry number , ledger folio , Bank of England Archive, London. 85 Bodleian MS Lister , ff. r–v. 86 Bodleian MS Lister , ff. r–v. 87 IGI Individual Record for Frances Lister. familysearch.org.

the spice of life



homes of her father’s friends.88 Like Alexander, she also only received £ in Lister’s will. Frances’s change of attitude may have been in response to Lister taking another wife in the interim and “replacing” her late mother. He married Jane Cullen (–) from the London ward of St Mildred in the Poultry on  October .89 A genealogy of her family in Lister’s handwriting among his private papers indicated that Jane was related to a Flemish family of merchants, which emigrated in the sixteenth century due to religious persecution, and that she was the sister of Richard Cullen who served as Lister’s solicitor and who managed his financial affairs.90 Their service was held in the fashionable baroque St Stephen’s Church in neighboring London parish of Walbrook, now near Bank underground station. Lister’s colleague Sir Christopher Wren had designed the church, which was built in the s to replace an earlier church destroyed in the Great Fire. Its -feet-high dome was based on Wren’s original design for the dome at St Paul’s, its ocular window illuminating an interior of white marble. It was a dignified and elegant choice for a wedding between a -year-old heiress and a -year old virtuoso. Samuel Fuller (–), a school friend from St John’s and Dean of Lincoln, noted teasingly that in Jane, Lister had chosen “youth and Riches.”91 Fuller went on to poke fun, mentioning that when he read Lister’s rebuttal of the austerity of French monasticism in the Journey to Paris, he suspected the doctor was “about some carnal design.”92 Fuller’s congratulatory letter wishing them both many years of “love and dearnesse” was accompanied by a collar of brawn, a combination wedding and Christmas present of pickled pork with mustard and white-wine sauce to be served on Twelfth Night. Matthew Prior, ever the wit, remarked to James Vernon, “What is the matter with my Dr Lister that he voyages, plants, marries, prints, and kills like Dryden’s Almanzor, a perfect hero?”93 As Vernon was Secretary of State, Lister was probably the subject of a bit of court gossip. Because Lister’s courtship of Jane was protracted, Prior remarked that Lister’s pursuit of a

88 89 90 91 92 93

Bodleian MS Lister , ff. r–v. IGI Individual Record for Frances Lister. familysearch.org. Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. Manuscripts of the Marquis of Bath, : .



chapter fourteen

wife “kept him from going with Mon. d’Alonne into Holland” after his travels in France.94 (Abel Tassin d’Allone (–) was secretary to William Bentinck, Lord Portland). That said, Jane provided needed companionship to the old doctor, care for his ills, and many domestic comforts. Several of his letters enclosed receipts for things she had ordered, like sugar, or drapery hangings, or flowers for the garden. They enjoyed a summer’s visit to Craven in . An old family friend named Robert Parker told Lister the newlyweds “would be entertaind with all affection and respecte” when they returned to Yorkshire; as Carr has speculated, Lister may have wanted to show his landed estates to his new wife.95 Lister’s eldest daughter Susanna, finally freed from engraving shells and caring for her father, married Sir Gilbert Knowler (–), of Herne in Kent, to become his third wife.96 She had one daughter, Susanna (–) who subsequently married Reverend William Bedford (–) of Bekesbourne, Canterbury in .97 Nothing more, however, is known definitively about Lister’s younger daughter and illustrator Anna. Only two of her brothers and sisters had died by , so Anna was still alive when her mother’s memorial tablet recorded “six children in teares.”98 However, she was not mentioned in her father’s will made in . This may have been because Anna had married, perhaps against her father’s wishes. The Parish Records of St Martin’s in the Fields in Westminster do show a marriage between Anne Lister and John Bristow in , and a birth of a daughter named Elizabeth to John and Anne Bristow in .99 As Anne grew up in the Old Palace Yard in Westminster, the location was

94

Manuscripts of the Marquis of Bath, : . Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. Carr, “The Biological Work,” . 96 The Parish Church of Herne, dedicated to St Martin of Tours, has a black marble slab memorial to Sir Gilbert, Susanna, and his other two wives Elizabeth Juxon and Honeywood Denne, in the South Chantry Chapel. The arms of all the families are duly incised. See Buchanan, Memorials, –. 97 Woodley, “Lister, Susanna,” Oxford DNB. Reverend Bedford’s autograph journal mentions that his wife Susanna died on  January  and was buried on  January . At the time of writing, the journal was available for sale at Personalia, http:// www.personalia.co.uk/. 98 Woodley, “Lister, Susanna,” Oxford DNB. 99 IGI Individual Record “Anne Lister,” Batch Number M, –. familysearch.org. IGI Individual Record “Elizabeth Bristow.” Batch Number C, –, familysearch.org. The parish records of St Martin’s in the Fields also show Elizabeth Bristow’s marriage to Matthew Aish in , so it is clear they had ties to the area. My thanks to Jeremy Woodley for this information. 95

the spice of life



correct. However, if Anne Bristow was Lister’s daughter, she would have been forty-one when her daughter Elizabeth was born, which is just inside the realm of possibility; Susanna Lister also became a mother quite late. . Lister’s Last Years Shortly after his wedding to Jane, Lister began his new married life, appropriately enough in a new home. In , they took lodgings in the country in Leatherhead, Surrey at “Mr Mitchell’s house,” where they spent three years. Lister explained to Lhwyd that he had been ill of a “feavour and cough at Michelmas,” so he thought it “best to breake up house in the old Palace yard . . . and to retire to the present hither for aire.”100 In , Lister and his wife made their last move to Epsom, Lister telling Lhwyd he had “hired a house by lease for  yeares, and where I purpos, God willing to end my dayes.”101 His residence was on Church Street, part of a series of grand houses built in – during Epsom’s spa period, when the present High Street became the center of Epsom as a spa town, and the racecourse nearby also provided amusements for the gentry who lived there. From the seventeenth century, many of the homes on Church Street were designed for fashionable London commuters, such as “Richmond House,” built in  by John Hilman, an eminent London haberdasher.102 Lister’s move there, however, was for the sake of his health, as his asthmatic cough had returned with a vengeance since his return from France; Lister wrote Lhwyd in February / that he could “neither endure the choakie air of London, nor the piercing colds of a dryer aire.”103 Tancred Robinson remarked the month previously that he was glad Lister “conqer’d so many acute Symptomes,” and hoped he had a “fair prospect of thriving with the Spring”; Sarah Churchill wrote “I hope that good air of that place (which I have all way heard much commended) will perfect your ease which I heartily wish of that you might

100 Bodleian MS Ashmole , f. . Lister stored his furnishings in chambers at one Mr Broughton’s, an apothecary in Tuttle Street in Westminster, and Lister apparently went back and forth into London from Leatherhead on business. 101 Bodleian MS Ashmole , f. . 102 “Church Street Conservation Area,” Planning Guidance Note , Epsom and Ewell Borough Council,  June . www.epsom-ewell.gov.uk. 103 Bodleian MS Ashmole , f. r.



chapter fourteen

enjoy all things that can contribute to make your life hapy,” so his relocation did him some good.104 When he did come into London for his medical practice, he stayed with his younger sister Jane on Glasshouse Street “at the  blacke posts” above Piccadilly Circus.105 After the premature death of her first husband Hugh Alington in , Jane had remarried John Thynne of Egham, Surrey (d. ), and was referred subsequently to in his correspondence as “Mrs Thynne.”106 After his death, John Thynne had left Jane with some burdensome debts, and she was busily leasing and selling off property to raise funds.107 Jane Thynne was also having some health problems, moving back and forth between London and the country. Tancred Robinson remarked of her “I suppose she is well, unless some body deludes her with opium,” suggesting she may have fallen prey to the new fashion for this narcotic.108 Lister used laudanum in his practice as a pain reliever, but in , Dr John Jones, a member of the College of Physicians and Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford published his Mysteries of Opium Reveal’d which promoted the drug as a panacea. Jones’s work featured an all-inclusive list of the positive effects of opium; use of the drug not only “caused a most agreeable, pleasant, and charming Sensation about the Region of the Stomach,” a “brisk, gay, and good humour,” but led “Promptitude, Serenity, Alacrity, and Expediteness in Dispatching and Managing of Business.”109 Though Robinson was clearly cautious of its use for these purposes, the general consensus was that there was not “any danger in moderate addiction, or any difficulty in gradual withdrawal.”110 One can only hope “Mrs Thynne” was not so deluded.

104

Bodleian MS Lister , f. r; Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. Bodleian MS Lister , ff. –. Lister wrote this letter from his sister’s home. 106 Jane’s first husband Hugh Alington inherited his father Henry Alington’s estates in Swinhope, Lincolnshire. Jane and Hugh had one daughter, Barbara, who married Richard Pye, Esq., and M.P. for Wallingford. Richard Pye was a younger son of Sir Robert Pye of Faringdon, Oxfordshire. There is one letter extant from Richard Pye to Martin Lister, dating from Lister’s time in Leatherhead. See Bodleian MS Lister , ff. –. For the genealogical history of the Alingtons, see Burke, “Alington of Swinhope,” : , and Arthur, Visitation, : . 107 Lobel, History of Oxford, : –. Jane also sold a substantive property known as Imworths in Egham on  December  for £. See MS //–, “Manors of Imworths, Egham: Deeds, –,” Surrey History Centre, Woking. 108 Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. 109 Jones, Mysteries, –. 110 Hayter, Opium, . 105

the spice of life



Jane Thynne’s letters to Lister in her youth showed she was a sparkling personality, so it is not surprising that she became a confidante of the equally vivacious Sarah Churchill, now Duchess of Marlborough. Sarah wrote to Jane throughout the first decade of the eighteenth century, sending her correspondence through an intermediary—one Captain Tayler—to ensure it was confidential.111 In a typical exchange, Sarah gave her thanks to Jane for some advice that “desided the despute between Lord Marlborough, & me, of my side,” and she trusted Jane to bring back some dressmaking materials for her when she traveled to France.112 To cut a fine figure at court, Sarah had told her “deare Auntie” that she required:  English yard in each piece, seven ells of stuff all selver [silver], not exceeding two pistols113 and the ell, there must bee noe colour in it because tis for mourning, fourty yards of gold galloone, & sixty of silver the breaths that are used, six fans none above a pistole a fan some rich ribbon, some paper of roses. Twenty grams of gold fringe, & as much of silver about half a quarter deep for petecoats [petticoats], they must not bee mix’d nor the galloons neither, but all gold and all selver [silver], ten dozen of combs, four purses.114

In return for such precisely given favors from her aunt, Sarah was doing what she could to advance her Uncle Martin’s cause to become a Royal Physician. She remarked to Jane that she had the: satisfaction of seeing my uncle Lister at this place, and once senc[e] [since] at London, which I was very well pleased with, for I think hee is very agreeable company and a very ingenious man, and I think it s a misfortune to have lived so long & had soe little acquaintance with soe near a relation as hee is to me, but I am sure it was not my fault, & I will convince of that truth, by watching for . . . all opertunitys of doing him all the service that can ever bee in my power.115

William III died in March , and was succeeded by Queen Anne, who was Sarah’s close friend and confidant. The Marlboroughs were the “first beneficiaries of the new reign.”116 Not only was the Duke of Marlborough made captain-general of the army, master-general of the 111

Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. 113 A pistol was a French gold louis d’or, minted in the late-seventeenth century and worth anywhere from  shillings to slightly more than a pound. 114 Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. 115 Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. 116 “Anne (–).” Oxford DNB. 112



chapter fourteen

ordnance, and ambassador-extraordinary to the Dutch republic, but Sarah became groom of the stole, mistress of the robes, and keeper of the privy purse. A true “power couple,” the Marlboroughs enjoyed a lavish annual income of £,, and the Duke was heralded for his victories at Blenheim. In a letter to Sarah, Lister offered his own personal congratulations upon “his glorious campaine and the honour the Queen has conferred deservedlie upon him, pray, Madame, give me leave to joy you both, which I doe hartilie, & I pray God to continue his blessings to your persons and family.”117 Not surprisingly, soon after Queen Anne’s accession, Lister was appointed fourth royal physician; at that point, he dissolved his London practice, only coming to the capital for consultancies at Court. Though Lister waited on Anne, most of his visits were concerned, ironically, with treating her husband, Prince George of Denmark, for prolonged asthma attacks. Prince George was described by John Evelyn as having “the Danish countenance, blond: a young gentleman of few words,” and Sarah said of him that in between wheezing coughs, he “used to employ himself agreeably all day either in standing upon a stair-head or in looking out of a window to make malicious remarks upon people that passed by.”118 Unless one liked vicious gossip, George could not have been a very entertaining patient. Lister, who was not well himself, complained to Lhwyd of the bondage of royal service, that he was tied “to waiting at St. James at present, which if the Prince recover I shall be released from, and return in the Countrie to Epsome again.”119 It was obvious that he regretted his ambition to be a Royal Physician, ruefully remarking to Lhwyd in , “I have been  yeares at Court, and have never received any the leaste favour for my selfe, or any of my familie. This I do not complain off; but by it, you may see, how incapable I am to doe you or any friend any kindnesse . . .”120 Anne’s visibly declining physical condition not only made the question of the succession more crucial as her reign progressed, but necessitated that she receive more medical care. She was squinting, gouty and overweight, her body suffering from the effects of eighteen

117

Bodleian MS Lister , f. . The letter was dated  December . Gregg, Queen Anne . BL Additional MS , “Characters of Princes”; BL Additional MS , “Narratives and correspondence relating to the Duchess’s removal from her St. James’ lodgings, May–June .” 119 Bodleian MS Ashmole ,  November . 120 Bodleian MS Ashmole , f. . 118

the spice of life



pregnancies. As a result, she usually had to be carried from room to room in a portable dais. Arthur Charlett told Lister he was surprised when Anne was able to “stand all the time of the Long Musick above two Hours in the Choire” when he saw her during a royal procession in .121 Like the monarch he served, Lister’s health was also declined. In , he apologized to Lhwyd for not “answering his desires at Court,” but he had not been “of some months,” keeping to his chamber for two months.122 By , Lister was appointed second physician to the Queen and only came to Windsor three times that year. By this time, his own infirmities with kidney stones made him so “crazie” that he “could bear neither Coach nor chair upon the pavement,” and the journey from his lodgings with his sister-in-law in Chelsea to Epsom was taking five days.123 Pleading ill health, his appointment at court was becoming more and more honorary than actual, though he continued to receive correspondence from patients wanting a house call or a diagnosis by mail.124 But there is no doubt that Lister spent more and more time at home in the last decade of his life, gradually withdrawing from public affairs. The last years of Lister’s life at his country house in Epsom seemed to be divided between preparing books for the press, doing medical consultancy, and gardening. Lister’s gardening plans from  show that he must have had a large plot in Epsom, a decided contrast from his tiny garden in Westminster, which was barely large enough to breed snails.125 To aid him in his construction of his country garden, Lister kept several letters from Samuel Driver, a Southwark nurseryman who tended his plants on land occupied previously by the notorious brothel Hollands Leaguer, which had been shut down by Charles I in /.126

121

Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. Bodleian MS Ashmole , f. . 123 Bodleian MS Smith , f. r. 124 See, for instance, a letter of  November  from S. Child about symptoms of his illness (Bodleian MS Lister , ff. –). J. Danvers also asked for a consultation by mail in a letter dated  February  (Bodleian MS Lister , ff. –). Lister continued to receive a steady stream of correspondence from hypochondriac and F.R.S. Sir Richard Bulkeley (–) (Bodleian MS Lister , ff. –, and –). Bulkeley was a hunchback who suffered from what appears to have been sciatica. 125 Bodleian MS Lister , ff. r and v. 126 Bodleian MS Lister , ff. r–r consists of a series of letters from Driver to Lister, some indicating that they had enclosures of small parcels of bulbs and roots. For a short biography of Driver, see Harvey, Nurserymen, . His son, also named 122



chapter fourteen

Driver gave Lister instructions when to plant his “roots,” and Lister, ever the empiricist, carefully recorded the information in a systematic folio-sized table noting the type of plant, price, time of flowering, and time of moving and setting.127 His garden plan listed over , bulbs, most typical spring bulbs such as common, major, and double snowdrops, , crocus bulbs, , common tulips, grape muscali, narcissus, hyacinth, and campanula, as well as less usual specimens such as single and double fritillaries, of which he was a collector. In the early modern period, a dramatic or multicolored flower or a double flower was always more valuable than a white or single bloom, and the “dicebox” variegation of fritillaries were considered rare and beautiful: they were baroque plants for a baroque era.128 In one of his notebooks, under the query “What fritillaries have you?” Lister listed forty species that would have been put into one single bed or area of the garden.129 Flowerbeds in English gardens of this era “seem to have been small and frequently contained only one kind of plant.”130 His plans for his garden in Epsom in  featured a list of desiderata, a wish list including the exotic crown imperial fritillary from Iran, one of the earliest plants to be cultivated.131 Mr Bobart, the keeper of the Oxford Botanic Gardens, also sent a number of species to the doctor, including “ or  roots of the Gladiolus Bizantinus, with a few flowers &c for your Lady.”132 To stock his orchard, Lister had several peach and pear trees brought from France. His friend the instrument maker Michael Butterfield negotiated the price in letters to Parisian nurserymen; Butterfield was also in the midst of selling the gowns and periwigs Lister left behind, which were either too French or too inconvenient to carry back to London.133 In his library collection, Lister noted that he owned T. Langford’s work on fruit trees, which recommended growing them

Samuel Driver (fl s-), continued the family business. For a description of Hollands Leaguer, see Howard, Theater, , . A leaguer was a military camp, and there were rumors that linked the brothel with Dutch prostitutes. 127 Bodleian MS Lister , ff. r and v. 128 Bushnell, Green, . 129 Bodleian MS Lister , f. . Bodleian MS Lister  is another folio volume of Lister’s notes. 130 Duthie, “Planting plans,” . 131 Bodleian MS Lister , ff. r and v. 132 Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. 133 Bodleian MS Lister , ff. – (trees); Bodleian MS Lister , ff. – (periwigs and gowns).

the spice of life



against walls, the French pears likely grafted onto quince stock.134 Matthew Prior, who helped Lister ship the trees across the Channel, joked that Lister would see when getting the bill that “we ordinary men can buy our wood much cheaper, that you Virtuosi only are so expensive, and that learning and poverty are inseparable as light and heat, or as Ben Johnson say’d as a Clove and an Orange.”135 In his usual witty and pithy manner, Prior’s statement reflected a basic truth. Lister not only gardened because he was fascinated by the natural world, but, like his shell collection and his library, stocking his garden with expensive varieties was another means to gain social status. As Rebecca Bushnell has demonstrated, gardening offered a means for people to “create rarities in their gardens,” and was a means of social ascent. As Lister’s passionflower vines climbed, so did he.136 His exchange of specimens with other enthusiasts in the Temple Coffee House Botanic Club to complete his collection of fritillaries was a means of social exchange and prestige. Certainly there was no question of Lister gaining anything monetarily from his patch at Epsom— that would be too vulgar—but as a gentlemanly English gardener, he could nurture rare species for enlightenment and recreation, gardening books of the late seventeenth century advocating such pastimes for the privileged classes.137 In the midst of his gentlemanly gardening, Lister also published an annotated edition of the Apicii Coelii, de opsoniis et condimentis . . . (), the famous recipe book attributed to the Roman gourmand M. Gavius Apicius, (c.  B.C.E.–c.  C.E.); Apicius also became a honorific name bestowed upon several Roman gourmets, and the work is a compilation of authors. As it was a specialist volume, Lister published the work privately, the first edition with a limited run of  copies; his subscribers included Sir Isaac Newton, Francis Aston, Tancred Robinson, Hans Sloane, and Christopher Wren, as well as the Bishops of Canterbury, Norwich, and Bath and Wells, ecclesiastics

134 Lister notes Langford’s work in Bodleian MS Lister , f. v. For remarks on pear trees, see Langford, Plain, –. Langford advised that dwarf trees were good for “wall fruit,” and “the Quince-tree is generally used, and best for Stocks for Pears, both for Dwarfs and Wall.” Langford’s work carried an endorsement from Lister’s colleague, John Evelyn. 135 Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. 136 Bushnell, Green, . 137 Bushnell, Green, .



chapter fourteen

who lent him classical sources from their libraries. Lister later gave the Archbishop of Canterbury a copy for his library at Lambeth Palace.138 These ancient lists of recipes in the Apicius would have appealed to Lister on many levels. To produce his annotated edition, he had to do philological comparisons of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century humanist editions, which gave him the chance to use and show off his elegant Latinity.139 Lister wrote several letters to Lhwyd in  and  asking him to find one rare edition or another in the Bodleian Library, as well as in college libraries in Oxford and Cambridge.140 The rarity of the work in manuscript and printed form would have appealed to his virtuosic love of the exceptional. The descriptions of ingredients, especially in the section on luxury dishes in book seven featuring ingredients such as flower bulbs (especially the grape hyacinth) and snails also let him indulge his love of the exotic and his interests in natural history. The culinary ingenuity and the Romans mentality fitted in with his antiquarian interests, the elaborate frontispiece in the second edition featuring a kitchen with a variety of Roman cooking pots and cutlery, which apparently were drawn from some of Lister’s archaeological findings (Figure ). A mortarium, the ubiquitous round, shallow mixing bowl with wide overhanging rim was drawn in the foreground, hooked cutting instruments hung on the wall, and a cook was shown carrying a patina, or a round, shallow vessel made of terracotta used to cook and serve food. Finally, amongst the recipes were medicinal preparations for pulmentarium ad ventrum or “relish for the stomach” and sales conditos ad multa, or “multi-purpose salt preparations” believed to prevent disease, plague, and all chills. As these recipes were similar to descriptions of medicaments in Galen’s 138 The copy may be found in Lambeth Palace Library, London, shelfmark: SA. A. Lister gave a copy of his Historiae conchyliorum to the Archbishop for his Cathedral Library in Canterbury, as well as a small imprint: Figurae anatomicae cochleae cuiusdam, . He donated as well one of his books that he brought back from France, Charles Dumolinet’s Cabinet de la bibliotheque de Sainte Geneviève. . The shelfmarks for these items are W/A--, W/A--, and W/A--, Cathedral Library, Canterbury. 139 From his letter to Lhwyd sent  February /, we can see that Lister used the Apicius edition of Bernardinum Venetum. Apicii Celii De Re coquinaria libri decem (Venice: Bernardinus de Vitalibus, ). He also utilized Johannem de Cereto de Tridino, Apicii Celii de re coquinaria libri decem. (Venice, ). See Bodleian MS Ashmole , f. , For the publication history of Apicius, see Grocock and Grainger, eds, Apicius, –. 140 For instance, Bodleian MS Ashmole , f. ; Bodleian MS Ashmole , f. ; Bodleian MS Ashmole , ff. –; Bodleian MS Ashmole , f. .

the spice of life



Fig.  Frontispiece to Lister’s second edition of the cookbook of Apicius, De Opsoniis et Condimentis (Amsterdam: J. Waesbergios, ). Richard L.D. & Marjorie J. Morse Department of Special Collections, Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas.

works, they would have been of some interest and use to an early modern physician; they were actually from a tract written by Marcellus, a doctor in the reign of Nero.141 Lister, in fact, justified his publication of his edition of Apicius, claiming “Cookery is the hand-maid of medicine,” doctors carefully attending “even to trifling directions of seasoning, such as these.”142 The work was a challenge for Lister to edit for several reasons. Firstly, it is a product of a late-Antique compiler writing in the fourth century who combined excerpts from an agricultural treatise, a Greek study of

141 142

Lindsay, “Who was Apicius?” . Lister, “Preface,” to Apicii Coelii, .



chapter fourteen

dietetics, a tract on the household economy, as well as two publications by Apicius himself. The Latin, therefore, varies from nearly Ciceronian to vulgar Latin spoken and written by the lower classes throughout the Roman era. There are many voices and many recipes from several culinary traditions in the ancient world, and distinguishing between them was difficult. These factors led Lister to argue (correctly) in the preface that there was more than one Apicius.143 To overcome the philological challenges of the text, Lister utilized a variety of versions, and provided comparative and copious annotations with “utmost restraint and caution” which is why his work was so highly regarded. Rightly, he criticized Albinus Torinus, who in his  edition, “added countless suggestions of his own making . . . these should however have been kept separate . . . so that what is genuine might be distinguished from what is spurious,” and in his own work, clearly separated the text and his apparatus.144 Lister wrote to a number of his colleagues to collect his sources. Richard Bulkeley asked Lord Carbery if he had the  edition prepared by the humanist Gabriel Hummelberger, considered the best of the early Apicius editions as it was based on definitive manuscripts.145 Tancred Robinson offered to lend him a  edition of Apicius published at Lyons, and suggested the Bishop of Norwich might have an edition published in Venice, though Lister ultimately admitted that first Venetian edition was nowhere to be found in England.146 Thomas Smith (–), the librarian of the Cotton Library in London,

143 Lister, “Preface,” to Apicii Coelli, . Lister wrote, “As far as this Apicius of ours is concerned, it is agreed that there were two men of the same name, one of whom lived in the republican era, and a second, the most famous one, under Tiberius.” [Ad Apicium verò nostrum quod spectat, duos fuisse viros ejusdem nominis constat, unum Reipublicae temporibus; alterum, eumque celeberrimum, sub Tiberio.] 144 Lister, “Preface,” to Apicii Coelii, . [profectò in ipso passim textu innumera de suo adjecit, mutavitque, expositionis gratia: quae tamen distincta opotuit, aliquo saltem artificio, ut genuina a spuriis dignoscerentur.] 145 Bodleian MS Lister , f. r.; Lister, “Preface,” to Apicii Coelii, . Apicius is found in two early ninth-century manuscripts. One is in the Vatican and was a presentation copy to Charles the Bold (Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana vrbanis latinus ), and the other now resides in the New York Academy of Medicine, formerly Philiips , Cheltenham. Hummelberger utilized the latter for his edition, published as Gabriel Hummelbruger, Apicii Caelii De Opsoniis Et Condimentis Sive Arte Coquinaria, Libri X (Zurich: Officina Froschauer, ). See “Introduction,” Apicius, –. 146 Bodleian MS Lister , ff. r and r (letter from Robinson); Lister, “Preface,” to Apicii Coelii, .

the spice of life



was also queried if he had “any thing about Apicius in Tertullian.”147 Lhwyd searched “Peter House, Bennet College, Trinity and St John’s but found no Apicius nor any manner of curiosity of that sort,” though he did come upon Torinus’s edition and amongst “Mr Ashmole’s manuscripts a very fayr book of old English cookery written about  years since on parchment.”148 Eventually Lister found a fifteenthcentury manuscript in the Bodleian Library as well as a copy of Hummelberger, which he borrowed from Hans Sloane and followed closely when doing his own edition. Lister’s commentaries on Apicius were practical applications of his theory of digestion, which was enumerated in the second book of De Fontibus () and which he was preparing for another medical tract, Dissertatio de Humoribus (). His work synthesized all his previous publications in medicine, “as full and compleat a system of the animal oeconomie” as he “could contrive.”149 In his work, he included iatrochemical speculations, particularly about digestion. He had noted earlier in his Sex Exercitationes Medicinales that an overly salty and preserved diet was the root cause of scurvy, but that did not mean that he did not think salts and condiments in moderation were not useful to digestion. Here Lister agreed with Galen who had made it quite clear that he had “no time for cooks,” stating “the common habit of cooks is to use unsuitable seasonings in large quantities,” but Galen did think combinations of spices and some salts were entirely appropriate for good digestion.150 Lister thus praised the Roman diet that utilized condiments as beneficial for one’s health.151 Lister’s theory of digestion, as his ideas of petrifaction, was a rejection of the ideas of Johann van Helmont.152 Van Helmont conceived of digestion as a chemical process of fermentation, involving six separate processes in the conversion of food. Carr has noted that these reactions, amongst others, included acid fermentation in the stomach due to ferment from the spleen, ferment in the bile that resulted in digestion in the duodenum, and fermentation in the liver to produce a dark and crude blood.153 Sylvius de le Boë elaborated upon van Helmont’s 147 148 149 150 151 152 153

Bodleian MS Smith , f. r. Bodleian MS Lister , ff. r, r and r. Bodleian MS Smith , f. r. Grant, Galen, , , and . Guerrini, “Locovores and Carnivores.” See Chapter Nine for Lister’s hypotheses about petrifaction. Carr, “The Biological Work,” .



chapter fourteen

ideas, attributing digestion purely to interactions between acids and alkalis in the gastric and pancreatic juices. Lister, however, claimed digestion was not chemical fermentation, but instead identical to decay or putrefaction, writing that: food and drink are wont to decay into chyle in the stomach. For there is no other way in which the natural breakdown of substances can occur which are found outside the living creature, as indeed all things are, which are contained in the stomach and the intestines. I refer to substances like grasses, meat, fish, wine, beer and the like, and in a similar manner every food stuff we consume of that kind decays naturally.154

In other words, there was little difference between the putrefaction of substances in the air outside the body and its digestion in the stomach, “since food in the gut was in fact still outside the body, not having passed through a body surface.”155 After all, Lister noted that “wine and drinks made of barley and the like grow acidic when they decay naturally; indeed everybody has experienced this within his own body” when for example, experiencing heartburn or acid reflux.156 Where van Helmont thought the presence of acids meant there was chemical digestion, Lister saw it as part of the natural process of decay. Lister thought that the atmosphere aided both putrefaction and digestion. In his De Humoribus, he distinguished between a nudus aer, which was weightless, subtle and invisible, and aer atmosphericus.157 Taking a page from his works on pyrites, he thought the aer atmosphericus was contaminated by sulfurous volatile salts, which were derived from witterung or vapors from minerals like pyrites or the sulfurous exhalations of volcanoes. These sulfurous volatile salts in the atmospheric air entered the gut in the fluids secreted by the lining of the stomach and brought about digestion, whereupon the salty

154 Lister, De Fontibus, II, –. [. . . cibum potionésque; in ventriculo in chylum putrescere solere, neque, enim naturalitèr omnino ulla alia resolutio est rerum concoctibilium, extra animal positarum, uti omnia quidem sunt, quae in stomacho et intestinis continentur: nimirùm herbae, carnes, pisces, vinum, cerevisiae atque; similiter id genus universus victus noster naturalitèr putrescit.] 155 Carr, “The Biological Work,” . 156 Lister, De Fontibus, II, . [Nimirùm, vinum potionésque; ex hordeo confectas etc. naturalitèr putrescendo accscere; imò illorum et su genere vel optimorum, putredinem acidam, quàm citò id contingere solet, à ventriculo concoquente nemo non in se ipso aliquando et expertus et miratus est.] 157 Lister, De humoribus, –, as quoted in Carr, “The Biological Work,” .

the spice of life



air was expelled from the gut much as salty perspiration was expelled from the skin. Not surprisingly, moderate use of salt was thought to be an aid to digestion, as it facilitated petrifaction of food. Not only were common and sea salts dietetics, but this was also: true of those salts called alkalis, which are made of the lye of burned grass, and also of vinegar, made say from vinegary lemon juice, and the like. Although, as I say, all of these are on other occasions applied externally, and season food and preserve it from decay, yet internally and especially in the stomach they promote decay through digestion.158

Food that was rotted down, or partially digested, was also easier for the body to absorb. Lister supported his argument with the observation that the French considered that the flavor of meat and cheese was improved when it rotted down a bit, and that Galen agreed that substances, which rotted easily, also digested easily. In his De Humoribus, Lister remarked that English law made it compulsory to bait bulls before slaughter, as the heat produced by the struggle would make the flesh more easily digested.159 In the Apicius, Lister praised greatly the ubiquitous Roman use of fish sauce as healthy, as it was also made of substances that were partially digested.160 Pliny explained that liquamen or garum was made with “The innards of fish and the refuse that would otherwise be thrown away, mixed with salt.”161 While Apicius recorded  recipes that used salt, he included nearly  recipes that contained a fish sauce.162 The Romans also made muria or brine of salted fish; when cleaned fish were salted for the market, water was drawn out of the fish by salt, and this liquor was drained off and used as a condiment; garum possesses the fifth flavor of umami, a whole-mouth taste also found in mushrooms and parmesan cheese.163 Roman doctors used fish sauce in their remedies, garum was the “primary medicinal salt,” and Galen, among others ancient physicians, considered it “wholesome, promotive of the 158 Lister, De Fontibus, II, . [item sala, Alkalisata dicta, scilicet ex herbarum crematarum lixivio confecta: item Acetum, succi acetosi Limonum putà, etc. haec, inquam, omnia extrà adhibita, quamvis cibum aliàs condiunt, et à putredine conservare videntur; tamen putredinem concoquente intùs et instomacho maximè promovent.] 159 Lister, De Humoribus, II, – as quoted in Carr, “The Biological Work,” . 160 Anita Guerrini made this cogent point in her paper “Locovores and Carnivores.” 161 Grocock and Grainger, Apicius, . 162 Curtis, “Salted Fish Products,” . 163 Grocock and Grainger, Apicius, .



chapter fourteen

appetite, and stimulative of the stomach and intestines.”164 For Lister, these fermented fish sauces, being partially digested and salty, would have the exact necessary qualities in his scheme of digestion to serve as a dietetic aid. Lister combined his theories of sulfurous vitriolic salts, his physiological hypotheses of digestion, and his antiquarian interest in Roman cooking to demonstrate the healthiness of the ancient diet. His interdisciplinary synthesis was successful, and the first edition sold quickly, and not surprisingly, attracted the attentions of William King who lampooned Lister in his Art of Cookery, in Imitation of Horace’s Art of Poetry. With Some Letters to Dr Lister, and Others. There is some evidence that King may have been put up to it by some of Lister’s rivals in the College of Physicians. Lister wrote to Lhwyd in  that: you may plainlie see, by the fresh attack of a villanous buffone, set on by the Phisitians . . . I laugh with the jester, tho’ he is greatlie put to it now, for diet is a most principal part, tho’ mean in it self, of Phisic, and so I not out of my profession.165

Certainly there was some bad blood between Lister and the College. He had been criticized by William Sherard for his Sex Exercitationes Medicinales, and in , the President of the College, Sir Thomas Millington, begged Lister to come to a quarterly meeting claiming there was a “party of men amongst us, who design the ruine of the College and the Faculty.”166 There was indeed dangerous factionalism. By the end of , the Society of Apothecaries made a direct legal appeal to the City to be exempt from certain minor and disliked parish offices in the City government. As the physicians were exempt, the apothecaries claimed they were their equals, and they won the case. As they subsequently lost the apothecaries’ services as parish officers, some bureaucrats in the City of London were angry with the apothecaries. The College of Physicians, clearly unhappy about being deemed equivalent to the apothecaries, thus saw a political opportunity to ally with the City and to assert their power. As Hal Cook has indicated, they counter-attacked: by immediately ordering the members of the College to act upon the earlier statutes requiring them to prescribe for the poor in their neigh164 165 166

Curtis, “Salted Fish Products,” –, . Bodleian MS Ashmole , f. . The letter was dated  December . Bodleian MS Lister , f. r.

the spice of life



borhoods gratis; this order soon developed into a much larger plan to set up the London dispensary, ostensibly to serve the sick poor. The dispensary project also solidified the alliance created between the City and the College during their joint arguments against the apothecaries’ bill: the City got some help in taking care of the burgeoning numbers of the poor, while the College could rely upon the good will of the City in carrying out its plan.167

The apothecaries subsequently protested this dispensary hurt their business, and even the dispensary project deeply divided the College of Physicians; some members of the College were close colleagues or partners with apothecaries and wished to work with them rather than against them. Other members wanted to assert College privileges. Things became so bad that “the leaders of the Society of Apothecaries . . . courted disaffected members of the College and obtained inside information about College plans from them.”168 Furthermore, the College was in the thick of the William Rose Case, which also pitted the physicians against the apothecaries and divided the College of Physicians. Rose was an apothecary accused of illicit medical practice. The outcome of the case ultimately confirmed the right of apothecaries to continue charging fees for medical advice. Though Lister never figured prominently in these disputes, he was known to support the privileges of the physicians over apothecaries. This was why Millington may have appealed to him to attend the meeting. However, in  Lister told Lhwyd that he had not been to the College for twelve years, so he apparently did not heed Millington’s request.169 So, his decision not to get involved may have made the old doctor open to attacks from his rivals in the College, which were manifested in King’s lampoon. In , Lister mentioned to his friend Thomas Smith “all the contempt and scorne which I have had these manie yeares from the brotherhood of Phisic,” and he had remarked to Lhwyd that year that “there alwayes will be envie in all great Corporations; but that is onlie personal, and is not to be valued; None has suffered more than myself; and because they durst not fairlie attack me, they put a buffoon to do their worke.”170

167

Cook, “Rose Case,” –. Cook, “Rose Case,” . 169 Bodleian MS Ashmole , f. . The letter was dated  February . 170 Bodleian MS Smith , f. r. ( June ); Bodleian MS Ashmole , f.  (undated). 168



chapter fourteen

Worse still, he noted to Smith that Henry Clements, the Tory printer of the Philosophical Transactions, advertised that “Dr Listers Art of Cookery was to be sold at his shoppe” in a London newspaper, The Postboy.171 Lister felt he had been “abused notoriously” by Clements, and that it was a “most impudent reflection,” to put his name to “a most vile and scurrilous pamphlet.”172 The Tory Post Boy, which was published by Abel Roper, was a special object of Whig detestation. As Lister was connected with the Whig Sarah Churchill, Clements, in collusion with some member of the Royal Society, may have been exacting some political revenge. Lister lamented to Lhwyd, “Sir, it is not alwayes verie for[tu]nate to be highlie related, and I persuade my selfe this impudent buffoon, [King] had not attacked me a second time but for their sakes.”173 King’s attack was similar to his comedic adaptation of Lister’s Voyage of Paris, making Lister’s Apicius and his satire, The Art of Cookery, self-referential. Lister was hailed in a mock-heroic poem, “Muse, sing the Man that did to Paris go, That he might taste their Soups and Mushrooms know,” and King used English xenophobia and hatred of the French as his comedic vehicle. The book was inscribed to the “Honourable Beef Steak Club,” because it was a defense of plain English cookery unsullied with exotic spices or condiments.174 In the preface, King wrote that he was dedicated to show “his Aversion to the Introduction of Luxury, which may tend to the corruption of Manners, and declare his Love to the old British Hospitality, Charity, and Valour . . . when Beef and Brown bread were carried every day to the Poor.”175 In his first “letter” to Lister, King queried sarcastically “what hopes could there be of any Progress in Learning, whilst our Gentlemen suffer their Sons at Westminster, Eaton, and Winchester to eat nothing but Salt with their Mutton, and Vinegar with their Roast Beef on holidays.”176 Surely, it was better to indulge them with all the sauces, cake and sweetmeat that they desired to produce a “warlike and frugal gentry, a temperate and austere clergy, and . . . persons of quality.”177 King then appended a satiric play where the characters 171 172 173 174 175 176 177

Bodleian MS Smith , f. r. The letter is dated  July . Bodleian MS Smith , f. r. Bodleian MS Ashmole , f. . The letter was dated  January /. Guerrini, “Locovores and Carnivores.” King, “The Publisher to the Reader,” in Cookery, –. King, Cookery, . King, Cookery, .

the spice of life



were concerned about nothing more than what they were going to eat and the ingredients in the sauces. In a particular dig to Lister’s praise of garum, King concluded his letter noting he was going to learn “how to strike a Lancet into the Jugular of a Carp,” so it would “instantly perform the Operation of stewing it in its own Blood, in the presence of myself, and several more Virtuosi.”178 King’s portrait of Lister highlighted what to him appeared to be the ludicrous gallimaufry of Roman dishes and condiments: Ingenious Lister were a Picture drawn With Cynthia’s Face, but with a Neck like Brawn; With Wings of Turkey, and with Feet of Calf, Tho’ drawn by Kneller, it would make you laugh!179 Such is (goe Sir) the Figure of a Feast, By some rich Farmer’s wife and a Sister drest Which, were it not for Plenty and for Steam Might be resuembled to a sick Man’s Dream . . . Crab, Salmon, Lobsters are with Fennel Spread Who never touch’d that Herb till they were dead . . .180

King considered Lister’s elaborate lists of condiments discussed in the Apicius as akin to the miscellaneous nature of his works. As Lister had appended a list of all his publications to the first edition of the Apicius, King noted: there is a copious Index, and at the end a Catalogue of all the Doctor’s Works concerning Cockles, English Beetles, Snails, Spiders that get up into the Air and throw us down Cobwebs, a Monster vomited up by a Baker and such like; which if carefully perus’d would wonderfully improve us.181

Despite King’s satire, Lister published a second edition of the Apicius in . Theodorus Janssonius van Almeloveen (–) helped him in his task. Almeloveen was a physician and professor of Greek, History, and Medicine at the University of Harderwijk who had edited works of Strabo, Quintilian, and Juvenal, as well as writing a work on

178

King, Cookery, . This is a reference to Sir Godfrey Kneller, st Baronet (–), the leading portrait painter in England during the late-seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. 180 King, Cookery, –. 181 King, Cookery, . The references King uses are generally references to Lister’s papers for the Royal Society, the “monster” for instance a reference to Henry Gyles’ report of a baker vomiting a toad or newt that he had swallowed accidentally drinking pond water. See Chapter Twelve. 179



chapter fourteen

the Fasti Consulares, a system of calculating the year in the Roman calendar according to the years of the consuls.182 He was capable of extremely formal and learned Latin and a renowned philologist. Almeloveen, in fact, began to write to Lister in  in a collaboration to inculcate modern medical practitioners “with some respect for classical authors.”183 Almeloveen sent Lister the works of Christophorus van Campen, a physician from Breda who had a penchant for ancient Greek and Roman medicine.184 Lister also impressed upon Almeloveen that he should create a new edition of the work of classical medical author Coelius Aurelianus, and Almeloveen began subsequently “gathering manuscripts and codices containing this author’s work.”185 He then arranged for an edition of Aurelianus to be published in Amsterdam in  that contained notes by Lister. Almeloveen was, thus, an excellent choice to edit the Amsterdam edition of Lister’s Apicius, enclosing and marking page proofs, which he termed “bundles” accompanying their correspondence. He quietly removed the list of Lister’s publications at the end, which were a focus for King’s satire and commissioned an engraver to create an elaborate frontispiece to make the Apicius more appealing at the booksellers. The philologist would also assist Lister when he published his second edition of the Dissertatio de Humoribus () in Amsterdam. As Carr has noted, because Lister did not wish this work to be pilloried as his Apicius, there was some secrecy over the book until its publication.186 Lister was also becoming increasingly isolated from his colleagues and old acquaintances, his correspondence limited. George Plaxton, rector of Barwick-in-Elmet, Yorkshire mentioned to Ralph Thoresby in  that “I would have you visit my old friend, Dr Martin Lister: tell him I am still alive and have the same value for him which I had in , for so long I have known him.”187 Three years before he helped Lister with the Apicius, Almeloveen had written to Lister, apologizing 182 For a thorough analysis of the correspondence of Almeloveen, see Stegeman, Patronage. 183 Stegeman, Patronage, . 184 Stegeman, Patronage, . 185 Stegeman, Patronage, . See also Bodleian MS Lister , f. . The letter was sent on  March . 186 Bodleian MS Smith , f. r, as mentioned by Carr, “The Biological Work,” . The correspondence from Almeloveen to Lister regarding the publication of De Humoribus in Amsterdam is in Bodleian MS Lister , f. , ff. –, f. , ff. –. It dates from –. See also Stegeman, Patronage, –. 187 Thoresby, Letters, .

the spice of life



that he had “no idea what divine decision, or what reason I have no idea caused me to imagine that you had died some years ago but when, on recently making a more careful enquiry, I discovered that this was untrue.”188 Almeloveen was not the only one who had thought Lister was dying or dead, as Lister requested of Lhwyd in  if he would oblige “the young Almanack maker to leave out my name, for the next yeare. It is against the grain, and I like it not at all to find my selfe therein. Tis time enough when I am dead to be remembered, if I shall have done anything to deserve it.”189 Lister was probably prickly at the thought of being commemorated before his time, and his correspondence during the last years of his life is characterized either by complaints of illness, comments on the new “Newtonian” philosophy, or with arrangements he made to bequeath his papers and collections. Sir Hans Sloane, a luminary of the Royal Society and founder of the British Museum, was certainly keen to buy Lister’s cabinets of shells for his own collection before the old doctor’s death. Lister had known Sloane a long time, nominating him for membership in the Royal Society, and encouraging him to go on a voyage of Jamaica in  to bring back molluscs and “naked snails,” and they were both members of the Temple Coffee House Botanist’s Club.190 Lister had borrowed some of Sloane’s specimens for his daughters to draw and engrave in his Historiae Conchyliorum; Sloane’s shells still form part of the collections at the Natural History Museum.191 In , Sloane asked Lister “what value you sett upon the cabinetts of Shells and what upon the plates, separately if you will part them, or together if you design they shall go together.”192 Lister’s price was apparently too expensive, Sloane complaining “really the summe is so great, to yet under what the value may be, that I cannot any ways contrive how to think them worth so much to me.”193 In reality, Sloane had only offered £ for both; though ultimately they came to an agreement about the shells, Lister bequeathed nearly , plates to the University of Oxford.194 Most of Lister’s library had been already given to Oxford, though a list of his books prepared after his death showed he left behind volumes worth 188 189 190 191 192 193 194

Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. Bodleian MS Ashmole , ff. –. Riley, “Temple Coffee House,” , . Wilkins, Catalogue. Bodleian MS Lister , f. . Bodleian MS Lister , ff. r and r. BL MS Sloane , f. r and BL MS Sloane , f. r.



chapter fourteen

£ including a collection of  medical volumes and light literature in modern languages.195 Lister wrote to Lhwyd until the latter’s death in . As in his life he had been in relative penury, so “Mr Floid” was intestate and £ in debt, mostly accrued by the high costs of engraving copperplates for his publications. Lister wrote to Thomas Smith that: I cannot forsee any thing will be done in my time, about the remainder of his papers and he himselfe, poor man, went about before he died an endlesse parte of worke, of getting  hands to subscribe his coppers. Tis well if any man can come to one hundred with much sollicitation of friends.196

Indeed, Lister’s most frequent correspondent in his last years was Smith, whom he had known since . Smith was the unofficial librarian of the Cotton Library in London, expert in oriental languages, and vice-president and fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. As a high churchman, he lost his fellowship as he refused to take oaths to William and Mary, and spent his time taking care of Cotton’s library in London, producing the Catalogus librorum manuscriptorum bibliothecae Cottonianae (), the library’s first printed catalogue. When he was passed over for the official post of librarian in  as a result of his political convictions, he turned to corresponding with colleagues in England, such as Lister. Smith was also writing to men of letters throughout Europe, including Almeloveen and Leibniz, as well as composing the biographies of his friends interested in oriental studies and fellow scholars.197 In their correspondence, the two “old friends” commiserated about their health and exchanged books by giving them to Lister’s “orange man” who came to his door on Church Street two or three times a week to act as an impromptu delivery service.198 They also discussed the latest material in the Philosophical Transactions and the journal of the Académie Royale des Sciences with which Lister, ever the Francophile, admitted he was “exceedinglie taken,” particularly the work of Bernard de Fontanelle.199 Though he admired the work of Pitcairne as “ingenious,” and recognized Newton’s Opticks as the “source of 195 196 197 198 199

Bodleian MS Lister , ff. –, as noted by Carr, “The Biological Work,” . Bodleian MS Smith , f. v. Harmsen, “Smith, Thomas,” Oxford DNB. Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. Bodleian MS Smith , f. v.

the spice of life



all the new hypotheses in Phisic and Philosophie,” he was less taken with some of the work of the Newtonian physicians who attempted to ascertain the effects of gravity upon the body; Lister remarked “the World at present is intoxicated with Subterraneous hypotheses, as well as with Superlunary ones, and attractions of immense distance.”200 Also, he rejected atomism as it could not be demonstrated empirically, and thought Descartes “with his whimsical principles, did Physic great harme.”201 For the same reason, he viewed the application of mathematical laws to medicine as absurd and even “dangerous,” claiming the authority of Francis Bacon to support his stance. Lister wrote to Smith stating that “Lord Bacon says right, that Mathematicks are but another form of Logic, and not at all inventive of Philosophie, they must be beholden to the Drogerie [drudgery] of Experiments and Observation, and they can make nothing of it.”202 For a consummate empiricist, theorizing without experiments was so much “cant.” In , Smith sent a copy of his biography, the Vitae quorundam Eruditissmorum et Illustrium Virorum to Lister, who replied that he had “read it with great pleasure, those sort of histories being greatlie instructive, espetiallie for private men,” but also apologized for not corresponding for a while, declaring there was “nothing so tedious to me as writing because it injures my breast.”203 In addition to being “very ill of an asthma,” Lister was suffering from trembles in his hands and feet, “so as not to be able to writ[e] legiblie,” evidenced in his correspondence to Smith.204 He also had a double vision, “neer blind, so as not easilie to read,” but he improved it through self-care.205 As Smith’s eyesight “had deteriorated gradually until he was practically blind,” Lister told him about the usefulness of “French Brandie” with which he wiped his eyes and hands every day for the past ten years, giving him “immediatelie a quick & clear sight.”206 By , Lister also lamented to Smith that he was no longer able to take his coach daily 200 Bodleian MS Smith , f. v. For material on Newtonian physicians, see also Guerrini, “James Keill, George Cheyne, and Newtonian physiology,” –; Guerrini, “The Tory Newtonians,” –; Guerrini, “Archibald Pitcairne and Newtonian medicine,” –, and Guerrini, Obesity; Roos, “Luminaries in Medicine,” –. 201 Bodleian MS Smith , f. v. 202 Bodleian MS Smith , f. r. This point was also made by Carr, “The Biological Work,” . 203 Bodleian MS Smith , f. r. 204 Bodleian MS Smith , f. r. 205 Bodleian MS Smith , f. r. 206 Bodleian MS Smith , f. v.



chapter fourteen

for “an aire” as he was experiencing attacks of kidney stones and “bloodie water.”207 Smith inquired gently if Lister would like some assistance in getting together his records and papers, and, as a biographer, suggested that Lister should write his memoirs. Lister’s response, written on  December , encapsulated what he thought about the significance of his life and letters: I am still and ever shall be obliged to thanke you for the great and constant care you take of my papers: I wish they were worth your pains. But, Sir, you have put upon me a new taske, which in truth I never thought on in all my life, having much rather have hid my selfe from the knowledge of the world, if my calling had not obliged me to make my selfe knowne, espeatiallie after I had incurred the envie of manie by endeavouring to affect manie things necesarie to be observed in practice, for the honour of the profession, espeacillie in relation to the methode and decorum, and good of consultations, which the avarice, hastie humor and pride of some men had quit[e] ruin’d. I have begun to collect some few accidents of my life: but find all my friends & relations dead, that should infome me better: however such short notes as I could make, I will have for your perusall.208

In the face of the squabbles of professional societies, the satires of his work, and the pain of his infirmities, Lister saw himself as upholding “the dignity of his profession,” his publications as part of his calling.209 Now, standing apart from his accomplishments, he observed and considered his life carefully, and found he was very much alone. Though at this point he still had three years to live, he was more and more confined to his house on Church Street, one of his last letters remarking, “I did go out with the butterflies, which is a great comfort to me to have lived to see warmer weather once more.”210 Smith died in . The same year, after Lister left some manuscripts as keepsakes to Almeloveen at his request, the Dutchman wrote a farewell letter to Lister as if the latter was facing imminent death.211 The last two years of Lister’s life saw no more correspondence.

207

Bodleian MS Smith , f. r. Bodleian MS Smith , f. r. 209 Carr, “The Biological Work,” . 210 Bodleian MS Ashmole , f. r. 211 University of Utrecht, MS k, f. v. The letter is dated  December . Almeloveen wrote: “Vale, mei carum pectus et solutus terrenis curis para Te ad iter 208

the spice of life



Lister passed away on  February / at home. His will, which he wrote on  July , directed that his body should “without pomp and in a private manner be carried in a hearse attended only by one mourning coach to Clapham in Surrey and there be buried in the grave of his first wife.”212 In  he had left £ a year for bread and clothing and £ for a sermon to the church, so he had connections to the parish.213 Unlike the emotional epitaphs he penned for Hannah and his daughter Jane, his memorial at Clapham Church was matter of fact: “Near this place is buried the Body of Martin Lister, Doctor of Physick, a Member of the Royal Society, and one of Queen Anne’s Physicians, who departed this life the second day of February, – .” Three months after his decease, £, was paid to his widow Jane in accordance with a bond to Charles Chamberlain, Esq. and his wife’s brother Richard, into which he had entered on the occasion of his marriage.214 Jane also received his property on Lendell Street in York, subject to an annuity of £ from him by deed charged upon the same, and two £ pound annuities payable out of the Exchequer, as well as the rest of his personal estate.215 Three daughters, Susanna, Dorothy, and Barbara, who were all married by this point, received £ each, and Alexander and Frances, the black sheep of the family, each received £.216 The poet Elkanah Settle (–) published a funeral poem, Threnodia Apollinaris, dedicated to Lister’s memory. Funeral poems were one of Settle’s specialties, as he later wrote two other poems recycling the same title, one to the memory of Joseph Addison (), the other to William Cowper (). The printer decorated the frontispiece with representations of thick, black mourning bunting and a

coeleste.” [Farewell, one dear to my heart, soon to be freed from earthly cares you prepare for heaven.] See Stegeman, Patronage, . 212 Goulding, “Martin Lister,” . The will was proved at Doctor’s Commons,  February . See also Davies, “Memoir,” . 213 Malden, ed., Surrey, : –. 214 Goulding, “Martin Lister,” . 215 Jane lived until  September , as recorded in the London Evening Post of Tuesday,  September . The newspaper reported: “Last Night the Corpse of Mrs. Jane Lister, Relict of Dr Martin Lister, who died on Wednesday last at Mr Lee’s near Doctors-Commons, in the d Year of her Age, was carry’d from thence and interr’d in a decent manner in St. Helens in Bishopgate-street.” Her brother Richard lived on Bishopgate Street in London. 216 Goulding, “Martin Lister,” .



chapter fourteen

quote from Juvenal Mors sola fatetur quantula sint hominum corpuscula or “Death alone proclaims the true dimensions of our puny frames.” Settle primarily praised Lister’s medical works, but also penned a paean to his natural philosophy: when, lo, his Pen ev’n Neptunes; Depths t’explore, Pourtraid the very shells that spangle on the Shore. See next the Tour he made through Earth and Air, In quest of Nature’s works, a chase so fair, down to her poorest Reptile Wanderer. Evn’ those minutest Heads he did survey, Their humble Nests and their uncommon Births display.217

All his books dedicated to his studies of the “small and exquisite beings of nature” and his copper plates of his beloved shells were bequeathed to the Ashmolean Museum. The plates were used to produce another edition of his Historiae Conchyliorum, published by the Clarendon Press in , and they were later characterized in the nineteenth century as of “matchless excellence.”218 William Huddesford, the Bodleian Librarian who saved Lister’s personal papers, was the editor. The preface of the edition showed Lister’s contemporaries acknowledged him to be pre-eminent both in his knowledge of natural history and his practice of medicine, recognition that continued for more than a century after his death.219 It seemed somehow appropriate that, in light of his twin interests, his name was given to an entire genus of orchids known as twayblades, the flowers all prominently forked or two-lobed. Of course, several molluscs were named after him as well, among them a land snail inhabiting the Philippines, Obba listeri. And most appropriately, the arachnologist C.J. Sundervell (–) honored Lister in  by naming Pachygnatha listeri, a tetragnathid spider, after him. Sundervell also adopted Lister’s term Opiliones or “shepherd spiders” for the order to which harvestmen, otherwise known as “daddy longlegs,” belong. Lister was the first to record and describe the three species in England.”220 Euro-

217

Settle, Threnodia, . The laudatory description of the plates is from Turton, Dictionary, xvi. Turton’s preface is also mentioned by Goulding, “Martin Lister,” . 219 Goulding, “Martin Lister,” . 220 Parker, “Introduction,” in English Spiders, . 218

the spice of life



pean shepherds sometimes walked on stilts to observe their flocks, and Lister seemed to think that Opiliones also looked as though they were on stilts when climbing about. Unlike the harvestmen, Lister did not need stilts nor did he stand on the shoulders of giants to attain his eminence, he just used his exceptional empirical ability.

EPILOGUE

LISTER’S PORTRAIT AND THE TRAGEDY OF BURWELL PARK The reader may note that the main (and only) portrait of Martin Lister in this book is in monochrome (Figure ). When I began this work, I believed optimistically that a lovely full-colored visage would be trivial to find. Surely, such an eminent Royal physician, officer of the Royal Society, alumnus of Cambridge and Oxford, and major donor to the Ashmolean Museum would have had several images painted or engraved. After all, there were numerous portraits of his parents, his mother’s being part of the Tate Collection.1 Lister’s daughters were also artists, so it was not altogether unreasonable to expect that they had subjected their father to a sitting. I was wrong. Paraphrasing George Bernard Shaw: “The reasonable woman adapts herself to the world: the unreasonable woman persists in trying to adapt the world to herself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable woman,” I decided I had better make some progress.2 Three years of queries around the world passed without any solid leads, the only image available a damaged and fuzzy reproduction that was circulating on Wikipedia without attribution. After weeks of searching, I tracked down the Wikipedia image to a black-and-white photograph in the archives of the Natural History Museum in London, but, frustratingly, the photo had no provenance. John Parker and Basil Harley had to use the same unsatisfactory illustration for their groundbreaking translation of Lister’s English Spiders. I came slowly to the conclusion that perhaps that would be my fate as well. A chance conversation at the Royal Society changed all that. After I contacted Keith Moore, the director of the library, he mentioned a file box of portraits that had been kept by past archivists. The practice had been for staff to cut out any portraits of Royal Society Fellows they saw in auction catalogues for future reference. Keith went into the back offices, and, like a magician performing a card trick, produced, seemingly out of nowhere, a scrap of paper, sliding it across the table. 1 Cornelius Johnson (–), Portrait of Susanna Temple, later Lady Lister, , Tate Britain. My thanks to Karen Hearn, Curator of Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Art, for supplying me with the provenance of this portrait. 2 Shaw, Man, .



epilogue

Fig.  Portrait of Martin Lister, M.D. F.R.S., circle of Charles Jervas (c.–). © Christie’s Images Limited .

lister’s portrait and the tragedy of burwell park



And here was Lister. . . a small, but eminently better and crisper image, clipped to an index card. Some quick Internet searching of the lot numbers scribbled on the back ensued, and I contacted one of the major auction houses. The portrait had been sold in the early s from a private house in Oxfordshire, but its current location was unknown.3 The photograph in the auctioneers’ catalog was black-and-white, and they kindly mailed me a high-resolution scan. When it popped up on my computer screen, I found myself saying out loud, “Nice finally to meet you, Dr Lister.” Lister’s frockcoat was described in the catalog as blue with a white stock, and he was fashionably periwigged, begloved, and carrying a goldheaded cane, that necessary accessory of the well-to-do physician. It is not known where the conceit of a physician carrying a cane originated, though it may be traced back to the mythical healing staff of Asclepius. Canes also had practical purposes, the hollow head containing a preparation of vinegar or aromatic oils to be sniffed by the doctor to protect him from contagion when visiting the sick. Though it is not known what color Lister’s eyes were, it is possible they were blue, the coat highlighting their hue. The work was attributed to the circle of Charles Jervas, an Irish portraitist who studied with the better-known Godfrey Kneller. Lister’s face was well modeled, but the pose was generic, used by portrait painters for active professional men to combine elements of the active and contemplative life. One glove was off, another on, a metaphor of his life of activity that was nonetheless refined, gentle and gloved. Lister’s fingers that held the cane were elongated, a Mannerist convention that was popular in English portraiture to make the models look more elegant. Jervas, or an artist closely associated with him, painted Lister with his hand placed on his hip, which broadened his chest and tilted it forward, forcing him into a straight and elegant posture, his head elevated and his gaze level and distant. Lister’s gaze was too observant, however, to be purely one of imperious hauteur, the usual manner adopted for early modern portraiture.4 Instead, he displayed a bemused consciousness that he was being beheld, the observed rather than the observer. But evidently he was

3

The portrait, the provenance of which is described as “Knowles, Chipping Warden, Oxfordshire,” was sold at a Christie’s Auction for £, at Sale , Lot , “British Pictures,”  June , London, King Street. My thanks to Melissa van Vliet, Department of Old Master and British Pictures, and Christie’s Images Limited for giving me permissions to use the image from the auction catalogue. 4 Berger, “Fictions of the Pose,” .



epilogue

quite pleased with himself, even perhaps a little smug. My hypothesis is that he may have had this painted when he moved to London and was given his M.D. and license to practice; in his mid-forties by that point, he may have wanted to commemorate and communicate his arrival in the City as a successful physician to the elite. But the existence of only one portrait nagged at me. Why only one? Lister had enough money and leisure to have had several painted. Was it modesty, impatience to sit and have it done, or was it simply that the others were destroyed? After all, Lister’s colleague Ralph Thoresby remarked that he would very much have liked “effigies” of Lister on the frontispiece of his many publications, which “would be highly acceptable to your absent friends.”5 It was then that my friend Ruth Bramley gave me something she thought might be of interest. Ruth is a gifted artist, married to Andrew, a Lincolnshire thatcher who is my husband’s boyhood friend. They do not live far from Burwell, the village where Lister spent his adolescence, and they both have a keen interest in local history as Andrew’s career consists of restoring early modern “mud-and-stud” thatched cottages. While browsing through the Horncastle Library, Ruth, in her typically sharp-sighted manner, found a work by the architectural historian John Harris called No Voice from the Hall: Early Memories of a Country House Snooper. In a chapter called “Sheep and Potatoes,” Harris described being one of the last people to see the Listers’s manor house, Burwell Park, in . At that point, it had been abandoned since . The house was Georgian, having been rebuilt in  by Lister’s descendants of “immaculately crafted brick” and with perfect neoclassical proportions (Figure ). When Harris approached the front door, he heard shuffling inside and upon opening it was “engulfed by a flock of sheep. . . that shot across the brambled lawn and disappeared into a field.”6 He stepped carefully inside, picking his way through the muck, urine, and hundreds of sacks of potatoes and bags of grain, the house evidently used as a barn by the owners, the appropriately named Muckton Estates, Ltd. Harris recorded and photographed Burwell Park’s Georgian plaster and tile work, which had been largely untouched, and its mahogany staircase which serpentined up into the upper floors containing “plaster perfection.” And then Harris noted something that made my heart skip a beat; “in several rooms” were “family portraits hanging on the walls, covered in cobwebs, an added 5 6

Bodleian MS Lister , f. r. Harris, Voice, .

lister’s portrait and the tragedy of burwell park

a) Reception room before the house was abandoned.

b) Reception room after the house was abandoned.





epilogue

c) Side-chamber after the house was abandoned. Note the family portrait above the mantel. Fig.  Burwell House, Burwell Park Estate, Lincolnshire. Reproduced by permission of English Heritage, National Monuments Record and Knight Frank.

theatricality.”7 The wall frames and window heads, I read with some emotion, were in the form of a scrolled pediment clasping. . . a shell. So, where was the house? I had been to Burwell and not seen it on the hill. Reading further, I found that the East Lindsey District Council had given Listed Building consent for demolition.8 In April , Harris saw it happen, saving bits of plaster decoration that fell to the ground as the workmen chipped it away. They demolished the staircase, the white marble floor was pried up with a crowbar and heaped on the lawn, and Burwell Park was set on fire.9 Though I did not know what happened to the portraits within, I had a sinking feeling they also were used as kindling. That is why there is only one portrait of Martin Lister, decorating a collector’s house or serving as an “instant ancestor” in a country-house hotel. Lister and his family surely deserved a better legacy. 7 8 9

Harris, Voice, . Harris, Voice, . Harris, Voice, .

BIBLIOGRAPHY Manuscripts Bank of England Archive, London. Reference A/, Original Subscriptions Ledger, Ledger , p. , entry number . Beinecke Library, Yale University. MS . Mellon Alchemical Manuscripts. Notes on the mining, preparation, and properties of “Saturn,” [i.e. lead] mid-s. Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. MSS Ashmole , , b, a, , . Letters of Martin Lister primarily to and from Edward Lhwyd, and Robert Plot. MS Lister . “A Method for the History of Iron,” a “sketch” of a treatise by Lister, unfinished, book one only (seven chapters). Folios – are blank. MS Lister . Letters to Lister from Foreign Correspondents. MS Lister  and MS Lister . Letters to Lister from Domestic Correspondents. MS Lister . Papers, notes, and extracts by, or owned by, Dr Martin Lister about –, chiefly on natural science, medicine or botany. MS Lister . A legal treatise; not in Lister’s hand. MS Lister . On the fossils of England, more particularly such as are found in these Northern parts. MS Lister . Commonplace book on matters of medicine and natural science. MS Lister . Drawings of shells from which the figures in Historiae conchyliorum were engraved by Anna and Susanna Lister. MS Lister . Commonplace book on theological and moral subjects. MS Lister . The Parson’s Lawe by William Hughes of Gray’s Inn, a manual of law as affecting the clergy; not in Lister’s hand. MS Lister . First draft of Lister’s Exercitatio anatomica in qua de cochleis maxime terrestribus et limacibus agitur, being Conclyliorum Anatomiae pars prima. MS Lister . Sanctorii Santorii de Statica Medicina Aphorismorum sectiones septem, cum commentario Martini Lister. MS Lister . Prosecutio tractus Problematum Novorum secundrum capita ididem descripta, some medical problems by Lister, arranged according to subject; much of the volume is blank. MS Lister . Excerpts from Aristotle’s Historia Animalium and kindred treatises, and folio  from the Medicinales Quaestiones of Felix Cassius; all in Latin in Lister’s hand. MS Lister . An account of the state of the Royal Navy in ; not by Lister. MS Lister . A report on the Mines Royal at Keswick by George Bowes and Francis Needham, made in , preceded by the instructions issued to them by the Society of Adventurers in the mines, and followed (folio ) by Sundry Experiments or empirical recipes for smelting an assaying copper, which are in part not before . MS Lister . An account dated  of the embassy of the Earl of Nottingham to Spain in . MS Lister . A copy of Every man’s companion, or a An useful pocket book (London, ), with notes by Lister about his journey to Paris and Montpellier in –.



bibliography

MS Lister . De Hydrope, notes of cases of dropsy, and abstract of one of Dr Listers Exercitationes medicinales; a dissertation by Edward Lhwyd about starfish (De stellis marinis). MSS Lister  and . Two notebooks of memoranda relating to Lister’s Journey to Paris in , forming the basis of his book (); each has an index. MS Lister . Translation of the Eunuchus of Terence into English. MS Lister . A copy by Lister of Apicius Coelius’s De opsoniis. MS Lister . A translation of Lister of the th book of Celsus de Medicina. MS Lister . A notebook of memoranda and book-lists connected with Lister’s journey to Paris in . Folio v is a list of books purchased by him with prices; not all in Lister’s hand. MSS Lister , , , , , *. Copies of printed almanacks, interleaved, with ms notes by Lister, forming a rough account book, chiefly of fees, for each year, with personal lists and notes. MS Lister . A copy of T. Gallens Compleat Pocket Almanack for , interleaved, with ms notes, consisting of botanical and medical memoranda, two lists of some specimens of Natural History apparently in the Ashmolean. MS Lister . Notes by Lister on the correct usage of Latin in medicine, specimens of descriptions of persons. MSS Lister –. Letters addressed to Lister chiefly on scientific subjects, – ; each volume contains nearly complete indexes of writers and subjects. MS Lister . Medical Papers in Latin and not by Lister. MS Lister . Miscellaneous notes and papers by, relating to, or in the possession of Lister; many are extracts from the Philosophical Transactions, folio  lists Dr Lister’s books that he sent to the Ashmolean Museum. MS Lister . Appendix de Scarabeis Britanicis. Museae Ashmoleano dedit clarissimus Auctor M. Lister. Lister’s account of beetles, published in John Ray’s Historia insectorum (London, ). MS Sherard . Notes and papers of William Sherard, colleague of Lister and Ray, and botanist. MS Smith , , . Letters of Martin Lister to and from Thomas Smith; MS Smith  is primarily draft copies of letters that Smith sent to Lister. British Library, London. MS Additional , f. . Letter of John Wallis to Martin Lister,  March . MS Additional , f. r. Collections of George Vertue, containing notes relating to artists and their works, made between –. MS Additional . Papers, chiefly in the handwriting of the Rev. W. Huddesford, Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum [–], relative to the life of Dr Martin Lister. MS Additional B, f. . Letter of Sir Robert Southwell to Martin Lister,  May . MS Additional . Narratives and correspondence relating to the Duchess’s removal from her St James’s lodgings, May–June . MS Additional MS . Characters of Princes. MS Additional , f. . British Library, London. Letter of Martin Lister to Henry Giles, n.d. MS Harley , f. r. Letter from Henry Paman to William Sancroft,  March . MS Sloane , f. . Agreement of the Corporation of Physicians at York. MS Sloane , f. . Transcription of Charles II’s letter to Turquet de Mayerne. MS Sloane , ff. –. Petition of George Eglisham to Charles I praying for justice upon the Duke of Buckingham.

bibliography



MS Sloane , ff. –. To the most honorable the Nobility Knights and Burgesses of both houses of Parliament in the Kingdome of England: The humble supplication of Mr George Eglisham doctor of Phisick. MS Sloane . Comments by Nehemiah Grew on Lister’s theories of plant circulation and his critique of Grew’s Anatomy of Plants. MSS Sloane –. Papers of Henry Paman, M.D. MS Sloane , f. . Letter of Martin Lister to Robert Steevens, September . MS Sloane . Papers and Draughts of the Reverend Mr Banister in Virginia sent to Dr Henry Compton Bishop of London, and Dr Lister from Mr Petiver’s Collection. MS Sloane , ff. –. Letter of Jabez Cay to Martin Lister,  October . MS Sloane , f.  and f. . Letters of Martin Lister to Sir Hans Sloane,  March  and  March . MS Sloane , ff. –. Letter of Martin Lister to Hans Sloane,  September . MS Sloane , f.  and ff. –. Letters of Martin Lister to Hans Sloane,  August  and  April . MS Sloane , f.  and f. . Letters of Martin Lister to Sir Hans Sloane,  March  and  March . MS Sloane , ff. –. Letter of Martin Lister to Hans Sloane, . MS Sloane , f. . Letter of Martin Lister to James Petiver, August . MS Stowe , f.  and f. . Letter of Martin Lister to Ralph Thoresby,  May ; Letter of Thomas Kirke to Martin Lister,  June . MS Stowe , f.  and f. . Letter of Martin Lister to Henry Giles.  January ; Letter of John Ray to Martin Lister,  August . MS Stowe , f.  and f. . Letter from John Beaumont, Jr. to Martin Lister,  November ; Letter from Samuel Dale to Martin Lister,  December . Cambridge University Library. MS Additional . Portsmouth Collection. Laboratory notebook of Sir Isaac Newton. This notebook is also on-line at The Chymistry of Isaac Newton, ed. W.R. Newman. http://webapp.dlib.indiana.edu/newton. Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies, Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire. Bishop’s Transcripts for Radclive for the years  and . Microfilm reference number M/. Centre for Editing Lives and Letters, Queen Mary, London. CELL/RS/HF_ Robert Hooke Folio, Centre for Editing Lives and Letters, Queen Mary, London. http://webapps.qmul.ac.uk/cell/Hooke/Hooke.html. The Dibner Library of the History of Science, Smithsonian Institution Libraries, Smithsonian Institution. MS B SCDIRB. Sir Isaac Newton, “Of Natures obvious laws and processes in vegetation.” East Sussex Record Office. SAS/HA . Deed Poll by Martin Lister of St Margaret’s, Westminster, February . Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington D.C. Folger MS V.b.. [Anonymous] “The Progresse,” Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington D.C.



bibliography

Houghton Library, Harvard University. Autograph File R. Letter from John Ray to Edward Lhwyd,  September . King’s College, University of Cambridge. MS Keynes . William Stukeley’s memoir of Newton, sent to Richard Mead in four instalments ( June to  July ), each with a covering letter to Mead. Lambeth Palace Library, London. Order no VX IA//. Letters testimonial signed by Martin Lister and William Cole for the licensure of Alan Henman alias Taylor, M.A.,  January . Lincolnshire County Archives, Lincoln. Reference /mm///a. Conveyance of Manor/Lordship of Calceby by Sir Martin Lister to Massingberd with acquittances and deedpoll. Diocese of Lincoln Presentation Deed, , n. . MM ///–. Jane Lister’s Acquittance for Papers of Sir Drayner Massingberd. . PG. ///. Settlement on the marriage of George Gregory, Esq., with Susanna Lister,  April . Linnean Society, London. MS , Case c. Working copy of Martin Lister’s De Cochleis, tam terrestribus, quam fluviatilibus exoticas, item de ijs quae etiam in Anglia inveniantur Libri II. (Conchyliorum Marinorum Liber III . . . [&] Buccinorum Marinorum Liber IV); De Cochleis (London: the Author, –). National Archives, Kew. C //. Equity Pleadings, Court of Chancery, . PRO, PROB /. Will of Sir Matthew Lister. PSO /, volume . Record for the Committee for the Advance of Money, . State Papers Domestic, James I, – ( April ). Natural History Museum, London. MS Ray . Ray Correspondence, Botany Library. New College Archives, University of Oxford. MS NC . Register of fines for leases, –, with notes on the computation of fines and on estate matters,  vol., –. MSS NC  with . Copies of terrier and rentals of New College property in various counties,  vol., th and th centuries. MS NC  Court Rolls, –, Radclive, Buckinghamshire. Northamptonshire Record Office, Northampton. E(B) . Indenture Agreement for Sir Martin Lister,  October . The Royal Society Centre for History of Science. Boyle Papers, vol. , ff.  and . Weather Histogram. Early Letters and Classified Papers, –. EL/B/. Part of a letter from Mr Michael Butterfield, dated at Paris, to Lister.  September . EL/B/. Charles César Baudelot to Martin Lister, n.d. EL/C/. A notice from D’iacinto Cestone of Leghorn to Martin Lister, . EL/C/. Part of a letter from Robert Clarke, dated at Lincoln, to Martin Lister,  November . EL/D/. David Davies, dated at Brathwaite, to Martin Lister,  June .

bibliography



EL/D/. Samuel Dale, dated at Braintree, Essex, to Martin Lister,  February . EL/H/. Robert Hooke, dated at Gresham College, to Martin Lister,  January . EL/H/. Christopher Hunter, dated at Newcastle upon Tyne, to Martin Lister,  November . EL/H/. Christopher Hunter, dated at Stockton, to Martin Lister,  April . EL/H/. Christopher Hunter, dated at Stockton, to Martin Lister,  May . EL/H/. Christopher Hunter, dated at Stockton, to Martin Lister,  May . EL/I/. Francis Jessop of Bromhal in Yorkshire, to Martin Lister,  June . EL/I/. Francis Jessop to Martin Lister, . EL/I/. Francis Jessop, dated at Broomhall, to Martin Lister,  September . EL/I/. Francis Jessop to Martin Lister,  October . EL/I/. An account about minerals found in mines in Derbyshire as it was given by Francis Jessop to Martin Lister,  January . EL/I/. Copy of a letter from Francis Jessop to Martin Lister, . EL/L; EL/O. Original Letters from Lister to and from Henry Oldenburg. These are not enumerated here as they are published in A.R. Hall, and M.B. Hall, ed., The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg (Madison and Milwaukee, –). EL/L/. Martin Lister, dated at York, to the Archbishop of York,  April . EL/L/. Martin Lister, dated at York, to John Brooke,  April . EL/L/. Martin Lister’s answer to Nehemiah Grew, . EL/L/. Martin Lister, dated at Leatherhead, to Tancred Robinson,  May . EL/L/. Edward Lhwyd to Martin Lister, . EL/L/. Edward Lhwyd, dated at Dol Gelhey, to Martin Lister,  January . EL/L/. Edward Lhwyd to Martin Lister, . EL/L/. Edward Lhwyd, dated at Oxford, to Martin Lister, . EL/L/. Edward Lhwyd, dated at Pembroke, to Martin Lister,  June . EL/M/. Thomas Molyneux, dated at Dublin, to Martin Lister,  March . EL/N/. Walter Needham’s reflections on Martin Lister’s letter of  June ,  July . EL/N/. Walter Needham to Martin Lister, . EL/P/. Monsieur Poupart to Martin Lister, n.d. EL/S/. Richard Sibbald, dated at Edinburgh, to Martin Lister,  October . EL/S/. Richard Sibbald, dated at Edinburgh, to Martin Lister,  January . EL/T/. Richard Towneley, dated at Towneley, to Martin Lister,  October . EL/T/. Ralph Thoresby, dated at Leeds, to Martin Lister,  November . EL/T/. Ralph Thoresby, dated at Leeds, to Martin Lister,  October . EL/T/. Ralph Thoresby to Martin Lister,  December . EL/W/. John Wallis, dated at Oxford, to Martin Lister,  January . EL/W/. Nicolaus Witsen, dated at Amsterdam, to Martin Lister. Register Book Original, RBO//. Frederick Slare, “A Discourse about the Calculus Humanus,”  December . Royal Society Scrap Book. Scientific Illustrations from the Philosophical Transactions and other sources. MS . Science Museum Archives, Wroughton, Sussex. MS . Original Drawings for Lister’s Conchology, c.. Society of Antiquaries, London. MS , item . Transcript of an account of the last illness of Charles II, –  February / (by Sir Charles Scarburgh, chief physician), with copies of medical prescriptions.



bibliography

St John’s College, Cambridge. Bound annual accounts of the College (rentals) subsuming internal accounts of the junior bursar. Reference number SB. Cartularies and registers of college lands and goods, –, C.. Surrey History Centre, Woking. MS //–. Manors of Imworths, Egham: Deeds, –. Trinity College, Dublin. MS /, f. . Letter from Thomas Molyneux to Lister,  March . MS /, ff. –. Letter from Robert Redding to Lister,  October . MS /, ff. –. Letter from Robert Redding to Lister,  October . MS , ff. –. Copy of Letter from William Musgrave to Lister,  December . University College, Cambridge. Additional MS . Treatise in autograph of Henry Gyles, Glasspainter, colouring Mezzotinto and transferring them to glass. University of Utrecht Library. K and K. Letters from Van Almeloveen to Lister (–). I have not enumerated these here, as a full calendar is provided in S. Stegeman, Patronage and service in the Republic of Letters: The Network of Theodorus Janssonius Van Almeloveen (1687–1754) (Amsterdam and Utrecht, ). Yorkshire Archaeological Society, Leeds. MS . Described in the Society’s catalogue as the English Translation of Johannes Godartius’s “The Natural History of Insects” c. from the Thoresby Manuscript Collection. This is actually Lister’s original manuscript notebook with notes and drawings for his  edition of Goedart’s work, the Johannes Godartius of Insects. MS . MS Calderdale. Papers of John Briercliffe. MS /. Copy Bargain and Sale, August . Enclosure of Lands at Friarshead, Winterburne and Sale of Friarshead, Winterburne. MS Thoresby MS . Two letters from Lister to Ralph Thoresby,  July , and  August ; the volume is not paginated. MS Thoresby MS . Letter from Lister to Ralph Thoresby,  August ; the volume is not paginated. MS Thoresby . Thomas Kirke, “The Art of Limning.” MS Thoresby . Francis Place, “A sketch of the Roman wall and Multangular Tower at York, from Thoresby’s Library.” Printed Books of Martin Lister Lister, Martin: Conchyliorum Bivalvium Utriusque Aquæ Exercitatio Anatomica Tertia: Huic Accedit Dissertatio Medicinalis De Calculo Humano (London, ). —— : De cochleis tam terrestribus, quam fluviatilibus, exoticis, seu, quae non omnino in Anglia inveniantur, liber (London, ). —— : De Fontibus medicates Angliae (York, ; London, ). —— : De opsoniis et condimentis sive arte coquininaria (London, ; nd edn, ). —— : De scarabaeis Britannicus (London, ). This was printed as part of John Ray’s publication of Francis Willoughby’s Historia insectorum.

bibliography



—— : Disquisitio medicinalis de variolis (London, ). —— : Dissertatio de humoribus in qua veterum ac recentiorum medicorum ac philosophorum opiniones et sententiae examinantur (London, ; Amsterdam, ). —— : Exercitatio anatomica altera de buccinis fluviatilibus et marinis (London, ). —— : Exercitatio anatomica in qua de cochleis maxime terrestribus et limacibus agitur (London, ). —— : Exercitationes et descriptiones thermarum et fontium medicatorum Angliae (London, ; London ). —— : Hippocatis aphorismi cum commentariolo (London, ). —— : Historiae animalium Angliae tres tractatus (London, ). —— : Historiae sive synopsis methodica conchyliorum (London, –; London, –). In the Bodleian copy, Books II–IV have separate title-pages which begin with “Historiae conchyliorum” and are dated , , and , respectively. Book III has an appendix which has a separate title-page, dated . —— : Historiae sive synopsis methodicæ conchyliorum et tabularum anatomicarum, editio altera, ed. William Huddesford (Oxford, ). —— : Johannes Godartius of Insects. Done Into English and Methodized. With the Addition of Notes (York, ). —— : A Journey to Paris in the Year 1698 (London, ; Paris, ; Urbana, Chicago, and London, ). [Lister, Martin:] A Letany for St Omers (London, ). [Lister, Martin:] A Letany for St Omers: from the same hand and to the same tune (London, ). —— : Letters and Divers Other Mixt Discourses in Natural Philosophy (York, ). —— : Sex exercitationes medicinales de quibusdam morbis chronicis (London, ); a revised and enlarged edition published as Octo exercitationes medicinales (London ). —— : S. Sanctorii de statica medicina . . . cum commentario (London, ; London, ). Printed Papers of Martin Lister Martin Lister was a frequent contributor to the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, submitting papers on insects, spiders, parasites, mollusks, birds, plants, physiology (particularly on the lymphatic system), medicine, geology, meteorology, and archaeology. There are in all  papers by Lister, from vol.  () to vol.  (), enumerated below chronologically. Lister, Martin: “Some observations concocting the odd turn of some shell snails and the darting of spiders. By an ingenious Cantabrigian. In a letter to Mr John Ray,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. —— : “Directing to another insect that is likely to yield an acid liquor; partly to the bleeding of the sycamore,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. —— : “Some experiments about the bleeding of the sycamore,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), . —— : “On the manner of spiders projecting their threads,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), . —— : “Extracts of divers letters . . . touching inquiries and experiments touching the motion of sap in trees,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. —— : “Some Observations, Touching Colours, in Order to the Increase of Dyes, and the Fixation of Colours,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –.



bibliography

—— : “Account of a kind of fly that is viviparous, together with a set of curious enquiries about spiders, and a table of the several sorts of them to be found in England, amounting to at least ,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. —— : “An account of an insect feeding upon henbane, the horrid smell of which is in that creature so qualified thereby as to become in some measure aromatical; together with the color yielded by the eggs of the same,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. —— : “Concerning the kind of insect hatched of the English kermes . . . as also the use of these purple insect hunks for tinging, together with a comparison made of this English purple kermes with the scarlet-kermes of the shops,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. —— : “A considerable accompt touching vegetable excrescencies,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. —— : “Confirmation of Mr Ray’s observations about musk scented insects, adding some notes upon Dr Swammerdam’s book of insects, and of that of Steno concerning petrified shells,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. —— : “Another letter enlarging his communications in numb.  about vegetable excrescencies, and ichneumon worms,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. —— : “Some additions . . . about vegetable excrescencies and ichneumon worms, together with an inquiry concerning tarantula’s, and a discovery of another musk scented insect,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. —— : “An ingenious account of veins by him observ’d in plants analogous to human veins,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. —— : “An account of a stone cut out from under the tongue of a man,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. —— : “An Extract of a Letter . . . concerning animated horse hairs, rectifying a vulgar error,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. —— : “An Extract . . . Both Enlarging and correcting his former notes upon kermes; and withal insinuating his conjectures of cochineals being a sort of kermes,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. —— : “A description of an odd kind of mushroom yielding a milky juice much hotter upon the tongue then pepper,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. —— : “A further account concerning the existence of veins in all kinds of plants; together with a discovery of the membranous substance of those veins, and of some acts in plants resembling those of sense; and also of the agreement of the venal juice in vegetables with blood of animals, etc,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. —— : “Anatomical observations and experiments concerning the unalterable character of the whiteness of the chyle within the lacteous veins; together with divers particulars observed in the guts, especially some sorts of worms found in them,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. —— : “A description of certain stones figured like plants, and by some observing men esteemed to be plants petrified,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. —— : “A letter containing the first part of his table of snails, together with some queries relating to those insects, and the tables themselves,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. —— : “Observations and experiments made for the Royal Society,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. —— : “Observations of the astroites or star-stones,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. —— : “Some observations about damps, together with some relations concerning some odd worms vomited by children,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), .

bibliography



—— : “Observations made at Barbados,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), . —— : “An account of a Roman monument found in the bishopric of Durham, and of some Roman antiquities at York,” Philosophical Collections of the Royal Society,  (), –. —— : “Several curious observations about antiquities near York,” Philosophical Collections of the Royal Society  (), . —— : “A remarkable relation of a man bitten with a mad dog, and dying of the disease called the hydrophobia,” Philosophical Collections of the Royal Society  (), –. —— : “An account of a very strange case in physic, together with the description of a monstrous animal cast out of the stomach by vomit,” Philosophical Collections of the Royal Society,  (), . —— : “Some probable thoughts of the whiteness of the chyle, and what it is after it is conveyed within the arteries,” Philosophical Collections of the Royal Society  (), –. —— : “Observations upon Roman antiquities at York,” Philosophical Collections of the Royal Society  (), . —— : “Touching the use of the intestine caecum,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. —— : “Observations of the midland salt-springs of Worcestershire, Staffordshire, and Cheshire; of the crude salt . . . dejected by the said brines; of the specific differences betwixt sea salt and common salt; with a way (which seems to be the true method of nature) of distilling sweet and fresh water from the sea-water by the breath of sea plants growing in it; and the breath of the sea plants probably the material cause of the trade or tropick winds,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. —— : “Of the nature of earth quakes more particularly, of the origin of the matter of them, from the pyrites alone,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. —— : “Concerning the spontaneous firing of the pyrites,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. —— : “Concerning thunder and lightening being from the pyrites,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. —— : “Concerning the projection of the threads of spiders, and bees breeding in cases made of leaves, as also, a viviparous fly etc.,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. —— : “An account of some very aged persons in the North of England,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. —— : “An ingenious proposal for a new sort of maps of countries, together with tables of sands and clays, such chiefly as are found in the North of England,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. —— : “A Discourse on the rising and felling of the quicksilver in the barometer; and what may be gathered from its great rise in frosty weather, as to a healthy or sickly season,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. —— : “An account of an experiment made for altering the colour of the chyle in the lacteal vein,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. —— : “Some experiments about freezing, and the difference betwixt common fresh water ice and that of the sea water; also a probable conjecture about the original of the nitre of Egypt,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. —— : “An account of a stone grown to an iron bodkin in the bladder of a boy,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), . —— : “An Account of a Strange Sort of Bees in the West-Indies,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. —— : “A Letter of Dr Lister’s to Mr Ray concerning some particulars that might be added to the ornithology,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –.



bibliography

—— : “Three Queries Relating to Shells Proposed by Mr Samuel Dale, and Answered by Dr Martyn Lister,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. —— : “Extracts of Some Letters from Mr John Sturdie of Lancashire concerning Iron Ore; and more Particularly of the Haematites, Wrought into Iron at Milthrop-Forge in That County. Communicated by Dr Martin Lister, S.R. S,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. —— : “An account of transparent pebbles mostly of the shape of ombriae or brontiae,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. —— : “The manner of making steel, and its temper; with a guess at the way the ancients used to steel their picks, for the cutting and hewing of porphyry,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. —— : “The descriptions of certain shells found in the East Indies,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. —— : “An account of the nature and differences of the juices more particularly of our English vegetables,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. —— : “An account of several plants which may be usefully cultivated for producing grass or hay,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. —— : “An account of the long worm which is troublesome to the inhabitants of Fort St George in the East Indies,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. —— : “The anatomy of a scallop,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. —— : “On a venomous scratch with the tooth of a porpoise, its symptoms and cure,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), . —— : “An opinion of Dr Clarke’s observations on the polypus of the Lungs,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. —— : “An observation of two boys bit by a mad dog,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. —— : “An objection to the new hypothesis of the generation of animalculae in semine masculino,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), . —— : “An account of coal borings in Yorkshire,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. —— : “A remark on Dr Cay’s account of the virtue of the ostracites,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. —— : “On the origin of white vitriol, and the figure of its crystals,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), . —— : “On powdered blues passing in the lacteal veins,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. Other Printed and Internet Materials Acts of the Privy Council, June 1630 to June 1631 (London, ). Adam, William: The Gem of the Peak; or Matlock Bath and Its Vicinity (London, ). Adams, Frank Dawson: The Birth and Development of the Geological Sciences (New York, ). Admissions to the College of St John the Evangelist in the University of Cambridge; Part I, January 1629/30–July 1665 (Cambridge, ). Agricola, Georgius: De Re Metallica, ed. Herbert Clark Hoover (New York, ). —— : De Natura Fossilium (New York, ). Ahonen, Kathleen Winnifred Fowler: “Johann Rudolph Glauber: A Study of Animism in Seventeenth-Century Chemistry,” Ph.D. Dissertation (University of Michigan, ). Aldridge, A.O.: “Benjamin Franklin and Jonathan Edwards on Lightening and Earthquakes,” Isis,  (), –.

bibliography



Aldrovandi, Ulisse: De animalibus insectis libri septem, cum singulorum iconibus ad vivum expressis (Bologna, ). —— : De reliquis animalibus exanquibus libri quatuor, post mortem euis editi: nempe de mollibus, crustaceis, testaceis, et zoophytis (Bologna, ). Allen, David: “The Political Function of Charles II’s Chiffinch,” The Huntington Library Quarterly, ,  (May ), –. Allen, Elsa G.: “The History of American Ornithology before Audubon,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, new series, ,  (), –. Allen, Phyllis: “Problems Connected with the Development of the Telescope (– ),” Isis, ,  (Spring ), –. Allmon, Warren D.: “The Evolution of Accuracy in Natural History Illustration: Reversal of Printed Illustrations of Snails and Crabs in Pre-Linnaean Works Suggests Indifference to Morphological Detail,” Archives of Natural History, ,  (), –. Alpers, Svetlana: The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century (Chicago, ). “Amazing Rare Things: Natural History in the Age of Discovery,” The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, London,  March -  September . http://www.royal collection.org.uk/microsites/amazingrarethings. Anatei, Stefan: “Flying Spiders Forecast the Weather,” http://news.softpedia.com/ news/Flying-Spiders-Forecast-the-Weather-.shtml. Anonymous: “An Account of Books,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. —— : “An Extract of a Letter Written from Dublin to the Publisher . . . viz. A Narrative of a Strange Effect of Thunder upon a Magnetick Sea-Card,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. —— : Great Britain’s Wonder: London’s Admiration (London, ). —— : “Roman Britain in : I. Sites Explored: II. Inscriptions,” The Journal of Roman Studies, ,  and  (), –. —— : The Blanket-Fair, or the History of Temple Street (London, ). —— : The Toilet of Flora (London, ). Anstey, Peter: “Boyle on Seminal Principles,” Studies in the History and Philosophy of Biology & Biomedical Sciences,  (), –. Apicius: Apicius, a Critical Edition, ed. Christopher Grocock and Sally Grainger (Totnes, ). Arber, Agnes: “Nehemiah Grew (–) and Marcello Malphigi (–): An Essay in Comparison,” Isis, ,  (Summer ), –. Aristotle: The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. Jonathan Barnes,  vols (Princeton, ). Armytage, W.H.G.: “Francis Jessop, –: A Seventeenth-Century Sheffield Scientist,” Notes and Queries ( August ), –. Arnold, Ken: Cabinets for the Curious: Looking Back at Early English Museums (Aldershot, ). Arthur, Frederick: Visitation of England and Wales,  vols (Privately printed, –). Ashmole, Elias: The Diary and Will of Elias Ashmole, ed. R.T. Gunther (Oxford, ). —— : Memoirs of the Life of that Learned Antiquary, Elias Ashmole, Esq. (London, ). Ashmole, Elias, and Lilly, William: The Lives of those Eminent Antiquaries (London, ). Aston, John: “The Journal of John Aston ,” in North Country Diaries, ed. John Crawford Hodgson (Edinburgh, ). Asúa, Miguel de, and French, Roger: A New World of Animals: Early Modern Europeans on the Creatures of Iberian America (Aldershot, ). Aubrey, John: Aubrey’s Brief Lives, ed. Richard W. Barber (Woodbridge, ). Averell, William D.: The Conchologists’ Exchange ,  (February ), .



bibliography

Axtell, James L.: “Education and Status in Stuart England: The London Physician,” History of Education Quarterly, ,  (Summer, ), –. Bacon, Francis: Instauratio magna (London, ). Badger, John: The Case between Doctor John Badger and the College of Physicians (London, ). Balzac, Jean-Louis Guez de: Letters of Mounsieur de Balzac. 1. 2. 3. and 4th Parts. Translated out of French into English. by Sr Richard Baker Knight, and Others. Now Collected into One Volume, with a Methodicall Table of all the Letters (London, ). Banks, Michael T.H.: Thorpe Arnold – The Story of Its Church and People (Thorpe Arnold, ). Barker, Jane: Poetical Recreations (London, ). Barker, Miles: “The Motion of Their Juice: Science, History, and Learning about Plants and Water,” Paper presented at the Australasian Science Education Research Association, Darwin Australia, – July . http://www.fed.qut.edu.au/projects/asera/ PAPERS/barker.htm. —— : “Putting Thought in Accordance with Things: The Demise of Animal-Based Analogies for Plant Functions,” Science & Education,  (), –. Beale, John: “In What Sense the Sap may be said to Descend, and to Circulate in Plants,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. Beaumont, John: “Two Letters Written by Mr John Beaumont Junior of Stony-Easton in Somerset-Shire, Concerning Rock-Plants and Their Growth,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. Behbehani, Abbas M.: “The Smallpox Story: Life and Death of an Old Disease,” Microbiological Reviews, (December ), –. Behn, Aphra: “The Translator’s Preface,” in A Discovery of New Worlds from the French by Bernard de Fontanelle, ed. Aphra Behn (London, ). Bell, James R.: “The Emergence of Manipulative Experiments in Ecological Spider Research (–),” The Journal of Arachnology,  (), –. Benedict, Barbara: Curiosity: A Cultural History of Early Modern Inquiry (Chicago, ). Benedict, H. Coleman: “The Romans in Southern Gaul,” American Journal of Philology, ,  (), –. Berger, Harry Jr.: “Fictions of the Pose: Facing the Gaze of Early Modern Portraiture,” Representations,  (Spring, ), –. Bertrand, L. and Solignac, Granel de: “Les Herbiers de l’Institut de Botanique de Montpellier,” Naturalia Monspeliensia, série botanique,  (), –. Berward, Christian: Interpres phraseologirere metallurgicrere. Oder, Erklaarung del’ fiiiirnembsten Terminorum und Redearten, welche bey den Bergleuten, Puchern, Schmetlzern, Probirern und Miiiintzmeistern, &c. in Benennung ihrer Profession Sachen, Gezeugs, Gebaaude, Werckschafft, und Jnstrumenten gebraauchlich sind, wie nemlich solche nach gemeinem Deutschen zu verstehn . . . (Frankfurt, ). Biagioli, Mario: “Etiquette, Interdependence, and Sociability in Seventeenth-Century Science,” Critical Inquiry, ,  (Winter, ), –. Binns, Jack: Yorkshire in the 17th Century (Pickering, ). Bioimages Virtual Field Guide. http://www.bioimages.org.uk. Birch, Thomas: The History of the Royal Society of London [1660–1687],  vols (London, –). Black, Robert: Humanism and Education in Medieval and Renaissance Italy (Cambridge, ). Blair, Ann: “Note Taking as an Art of Transmission,” Critical Inquiry,  (), –. Boerhaave, Hermann: Institutio in Physick . . . The Second Edition Translated by J. Browne (London, ). Bolam, Jeanne: “The Botanical Works of Nehemiah Grew, F.R.S. (–),” Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, ,  (February ), –.

bibliography



Bonet, Theophile: Mercurius Compitalitius: A Guide to the Practical Physician (London, ). Boorde, Andrew: The Pryncyples of Astronamye (London, ). Booth, Emily: A Subtle and Mysterious Machine: The Medical World of Walter Charleton (–) (Dordrecht, ). Botanical.com. A Modern Herbal. http://botanical.com. Boyle, Charles, Earl of Orrery: Dr Bentley’s Dissertations on the Epistles of Phalaris, and the Fables of Aesop, Examin’d by the Honourable Charles Boyle, Esq. (London, ). Boyle, Robert: The Correspondence of Robert Boyle, ed. Michael Hunter, Antonio Clericuzio, and Lawrence M. Principe,  vols (London, ). —— : “General Heads for the Natural History of a Country, Great or Small,” Philosophical Transactions,  (–), –. —— : General Heads for the Natural History of a Country Great or Small Drawn Out for the Use of Travellers and Navigators (London, ). —— : A General History of the Air (London, ). —— : Medicinal Experiments, or, A Collection of Choice and Safe Remedies (London, ). —— : Observations About the Growth of Metals in Their Ore Exposed to the Air (London, ). —— : Works of Robert Boyle, ed. Michael Hunter and E.B. Davis,  vols (London, –). Bracegirdle, Brian: “The Performance of Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Microscopes,” Medical History,  (), –. Breman, Joel G. and Henderson, D.A.: “Diagnosis and Management of Smallpox,” New England Journal of Medicine,  (), –. Brice, Germain: Description Nouvelle de ce qu’il y a de plus remarquable dans la Ville de Paris, par M.B. (Paris, ). Briggs, Thomas: Primaeva communitas non tollit proprietatum rerum: principatus humanus fundatur in natura (Oxford, ). Brighton, J.T.: “Henry Gyles: Virtuoso and Glasspainter of York, –,” York Historian,  (), –. British History Online. http://www.british-history.ac.uk. Britton, John and Bridley, Edward Wedlake: The Beauties of England and Wales: or Delineations Topographical, Historical and Descriptive of Each County (London, ). Brobst, Donald A.: “Barium and Strontium Minerals,” in Surface Mining, ed. Bruce A. Kennedy (Baltimore, ), –. Brockliss, Lawrence and Jones, Colin: The Medical World of Early Modern France (Oxford, ). Brown, Theodore M.: “The College of Physicians and the Acceptance of Iatromechanism in England, –,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine,  (), –. —— : “The Mechanical Philosophy and the “Animal Oeconomy,” Ph.D. Dissertation (Princeton University, ). Brown, William: Yorkshire Archaeological Record Series: Yorkshire Deeds,  vols (Leeds, ). Browne, Thomas: The Letters of Sir Thomas Browne, ed. Geoffrey Keynes (London, ). Brunten, D. and D.H. Pennington: The Members of the Long Parliament (London, ). Buchanan, James Robert: Memorials of Herne, Kent, rd edn (London, ). Buckland, P.C.: “The Stones of Roman York,” Geology Today (September–October ), –. Bulkeley, Sir Richard: “Part of a Letter from Sir R.B. S.R.S. to Dr Lister, concerning the Giant’s Causeway in the County of Antrim in Ireland,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –.



bibliography

Burke, John: A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Commoners of Great Britain and Ireland,  vols (London, ). Burke, Peter: “Images as Evidence in Seventeenth-Century Europe,” Journal of the History of Ideas, ,  (April ), –. Burt, Roger: “The International Diffusion of Technology in the Early Modern Period: The Case of the British Bon-Ferrous Mining Industry,” Economic History Review, XLIV (), –. Burton, Robert: Anatomy of Melancholy (London, ). Bushnell, Rebecca: Green Desire: Imagining Early Modern English Gardens (Ithaca, ). Büttner, Nils: Landscape Painting: A History (New York, ). Bylebyl, Jerome J.: “The Medical Side of Harvey’s Discovery: The Normal and the Abnormal,” in William Harvey and His Age: The Professional and Social Context of the Discovery of the Circulation, Henry E. Sigerist Supplements to the Bulletin of the History of Medicine, ed. Jerome J. Bylebyl (Baltimore, ), –. Caelii Aureliani: De morbis acutis et chronicis libri VIII (Amsterdam, ). Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Marquis of Bath Preserved at Longleat, Wiltshire (London, –). Cameron, H. Charles: A History of the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries of London, Volume 1 1617–1815, rev. ed. (London, ). Carabelli, Giancarlo: Tolandiana: materiali bibliografici per lo studio dell’ opera e della fortuna di John Toland (1670–1722) (Florence, ). Cardano, Girolamo: De rerum varietate libri XVII (Basel, ). Carmichael, Ann G. and Silverstein, Arthur. M.: “Smallpox in Europe before the Seventeenth Century: Virulent Killer or Benign Disease?” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, ,  (), –. Carr, Jeff: “The Biological Work of Martin Lister (–),” Ph.D. Dissertation (University of Leeds, ). Carr, Jeff: “The Fossil Controversy in Seventeenth-Century England,” unpublished paper. Cassini, Giovanni: “An Intimation of Divers Philosophical Particulars, Now Undertaken and Consider’d by Several Ingenious and Learned Men; Here Inserted to Excite Others to Joyn with Them in the Same or the Like Attempts and Observations,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. Catalogus Van een Heerlyk Kabinet Met Oost-Indische en andere Konstwerken en rariteyten (Amsterdam, ). Chang, Kevin: “ ‘Motus Tonicus’: George Ernst Stahl’s Formulation of Tonic Motion and Early Modern Medical Thought,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine,  (), –. Chevalier, A.G.: “The ‘Antimony War’ – A Dispute Between Montpellier and Paris,” Ciba Symposium,  (), –. Cheyne, George: George Cheyne: The English Malady (1733), ed. Roy Porter (London and New York, ). “Church Street Conservation Area,” Planning Guidance Note , Epsom and Ewell Borough Council,  June . http://www.epsom-ewell.gov.uk. Clark, Sir George: History of the Royal College of Physicians (Oxford, ). Clericuzio, Antonio: Elements, Principles and Corpuscles: A Study of Atomism and Chemistry in the Seventeenth Century, International Archives of the History of Ideas,  (Dordrecht/Boston, ). —— : “From Van Helmont to Boyle: A Study of the Transmission of Helmontian Chemical and Medical Theories in Seventeenth-Century England,” British Journal of the History of Science,  (), –. —— : “The Internal Laboratory: The Chemical Reinterpretation of Medical Spirits in England, –,” in Alchemy and Chemistry in the 16th and 17th Centuries, ed. Piyo Rattansi and Antonio Clericuzio (Dordrecht, ), –.

bibliography



—— : “A Redefinition of Boyle’s Chemistry and Corpuscular Philosophy,” Annals of Science,  (), –. Clinton, T.H.: Radclive-cum-Chackmore: Story of a Village (Privately printed, ). Cobb, Matthew: “Malpigi, Swammerdam and the Colourful Silkworm: Replication and Visual Representation in Early Modern Science,” Annals of Science,  (), –. Cohen, I.B: “Neglected Sources for the Life of Stephen Gray ( of –),” Isis, ,  (May ), –. Cohen, S. Marc: “Aristotle’s Metaphysics,” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-metaphysics/. Coley, Noel G.: “Cures Without Care: ‘Chymical Physicians’ and Mineral Water in Seventeenth-Century England,” Medical History,  (), –. —— : “The Preparation and Uses of Artificial Mineral Waters (c.–),” Ambix,  (), –. Collingwood, R.G. and Wright, R.G.: The Roman Inscriptions of Britain (Oxford, ). Columna, Fabio: Fabii Colvmnae Lyncei Pvrpvra: hoc est de purpura ab animali testaceo fusa, de hoc ipro animali, alijsque rarioribus testaceis quibusdam. Cum iconibus . . . elencho rerum (Rome, ). Colvin, Howard: “Views of the Old Palace of Westminster,” Architectural History,  (), –. Conan, Michel: Baroque Garden Cultures: Emulation, Sublimation, Subversion (Cambridge, ). Cook, Harold J.: “The Cutting Edge of a Revolution? Medicine and Natural History near the Shores of the North Sea,” in Renaissance and Revolution: Humanists, Scholars, Craftsmen and Natural Philosophers in Early Modern Europe, ed. J.V. Field and Frank A.J.L. James (Cambridge, ), –. —— : “Good Advice and Little Medicine: the Professional Authority of Early Modern English Physicians,” Journal of British Studies,  (), –. —— : Matters of Exchange: Commerce, Medicine, and Science in the Dutch Golden Age (New Haven, ). —— : “Natural History and Seventeenth-Century Dutch and English Medicine,” in The Task of Healing, ed. Hilary Marland and Margaret Pelling (Rotterdam, ), –. —— : “Physicians and Natural History,” in Cultures of Natural History, ed. Nicholas Jardine, James Secord, and Emma Spary (Cambridge, ), –. —— : “Physick and Natural History in Seventeenth-Century England,” in Revolution and Continuity: Essays in the History of Philosophy of Early Modern Science, ed. Peter Barker and Roger Ariew (Washington D.C., ), –. —— : “Policing the Health of London: The College of Physicians and the Early Stuart Monarchy,” Social History of Medicine, ,  (), –. —— : “The Rose Case Reconsidered: Physicians, Apothecaries, and the Law in Augustan England,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, ,  (), –. —— : “The Society of Chemical Physicians, the New Philosophy, and the Restoration Court,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine,  (), –. Coomans, H.E.: “Schelpenverzamelingen,” in De wereld binnen handbereik: Nederlandse kunst- en rariteitenverzamelingen, 1585–1735, ed. Elinoor Bergvelt and Renee Kistemaker (Amsterdam, ), –. Cooper, Alix: Inventing the Indigenous: Local Knowledge and Natural History in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, ). Corbett, Margery and Lightbown, R.W.: The Comely Frontispiece: The Emblematic Title-Page in England, 1550–1650 (London, ). Corfe, T.H.: The School on the Hill: An Informal History of King Edward VII Grammar School Melton Mowbray, 1910–1960 (Melton Mowbray, ).



bibliography

Cram, David, Forgeng, Jeffrey L., and Johnston, Dorothy: Francis Willughby’s Book of Games (Aldershot, ). Crawford, Raymond Henry: The Last Days of Charles II (Oxford, ). Cressy, David: Education in Tudor and Stuart England, Documents of Modern History (London, ). —— : Literacy and the Social Order: Reading and Writing in Tudor and Stuart England (Cambridge, ). Culpepper, Nicholas: The Complete Herbal (London, ). Curtis, Robert I.: “Salted Fish Products in Ancient Medicine,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, ,  (), –. Costa, P. Fontes da: “The Culture of Curiosity at the Royal Society in the First Half of the Eighteenth Century,” Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London,  (), –. Dance, Peter: Rare Shells (Berkeley and Los Angeles, ). —— : “S. Peter Dance’s Rare Shells,” http://www.jaxshells.org/strombus.htm. Daniele, C., et al.: “Atractylis gummifera L. Poisoning: An Ethnopharmacological Review,” Journal of Ethnopharmacology, ,  ( February ), –. Daston, Lorraine: “Historia: Explorations in the History of Early Modern Empiricism,” Max Planck Institute, http://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/en/research/projects/DeptII_ Da_Historia/index.html. —— : “The Moral Economy of Science,” Osiris (), –. —— : “On Scientific Observation,” Isis,  (), –. —— : “Taking Note(s),” Isis,  (), –. Daston, Lorraine and Park, Katherine: Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150–1750 (New York, ). Davies, Robert: “A Memoir of Martin Lister, M.D., F.R.S. –,” Yorkshire Archaeological Journal,  (), –. David, Stephen Hartley: John Toland, His Methods, Manners and Mind (Montreal, ). Davis, Natalie Zemon: Women on the Margins: Three Seventeenth-Century Lives (Cambridge, ). De Bills, L., and Stafford, R.: “Extracts of Three Letters; One, Lately Written by Monsieur De Bills, Touching the True Use of the Lymphatick Vessels; The Second, Written by Mr Stafford from the Bermudas, Concerning Tydes, Whales, Spermaceti, Strange Spiders-Webbs; Some Vegetables, and the Longevity of the Inhabitants of That Island; The Third, Written from Paris, About the Polishing of Telescopical Glasses by a Turn-Lathe; As Also the Making of an Extraordinary Burning-Glass at Milan,” Philosophical Transactions,  (January , ), –. Dear, Peter: “Totius in Verba: Rhetoric and Authority in the Early Royal Society,” Isis, ,  (June ), –. Debus, Allen G.: The Chemical Philosophy: Paraclesian Science and Medicine in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (New York, ). —— : English Paracelsians (Chicago, ). —— : “Thomas Sherley’s Philosophical Essay (): Helmontian Mechanism as the Basis of a New Philosophy,” Ambix, ,  (), –. DeJean, Joan: Ancients Against Moderns: Culture Wars and the Making of a Fin de Siècle (Chicago, ). Derham, William: Philosophical Letters Between the Late Learned Mr Ray and Several of His Ingenious Correspondents, Natives and Foreigners (London, ). —— : Selected Remains of the Learned John Ray (London, ). Dewhirst, D.W.: “Review of Derek Howse, Francis Place and the Early History of the Greenwich Observatory (New York: Science History Publications ),” Journal of the History of Astronomy,  (), –. Dewhurst, Kenneth: Thomas Willis as a Physician (Los Angeles, ).

bibliography



Dickson, Donald R.: “Thomas Vaughan and the Iatrochemical Revolution,” The Seventeenth Century,  (), –. Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, –). Dictionary of Scientific Biography, ed. C.S. Gillespie (New York, ). Dietz, Bettina: “Mobile Objects: The Space of Shells in Eighteenth-Century France,” British Journal for the History of Science,  (), –. Dillwyn, L.W.: An Index to the Historia Conchyliorum of Lister (Oxford, ). Dobson, Mary. J.: Contours of Death and Disease in Early Modern England (Cambridge, ). Dolling, Bill: “Martin Lister (–): Father of British Hemipterology?” Het News, ,  (Spring ), –. Duchesne, Joseph: The Practice of Chymicall and Hermeticall Physicke, trans. T. Timme (London, ). Duden, Barbara: The Woman Beneath the Skin: A Doctor’s Patients in EighteenthCentury Germany (Cambridge, ). Du Clos, Samuel: Observations on the Mineral Waters of France: Made in the Royal Academy of Sciences (London, ). Duffey, E.: “Aerial Dispersal in Spiders,” in Proceedings of the 17th European Colloquium of Arachnology, Edinburgh 1997 (Burham Beeches, Buckinghamshire, ), –. Duhem, Pierre: “Leonard de Vinci, Cardan et Bernard Palissy,” Bulletin Italien,  (), –. Dupré, Sven: “Newton’s Telescope in Print: The Role of Images in the Reception of Newton’s Instrument,” Perspectives on Science, ,  (), –. Duthie, Ruth: “The Planting Plans of Some Seventeenth-Century Flower Gardens,” Garden History, ,  (Autumn ), –. Eamon, William: “Cannibalism and Contagion: Framing Syphilis in CounterReformation Italy,” Early Science and Medicine, ,  (), –. —— : Science and the Secrets of Nature: Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern Culture (Princeton, ). The Earliest Volume of the Official Minute Book of the House of Commons, Covering the Reigns of Edward VI, Mary, Elizabeth I, James I and Charles I to 1629 (London, ). Ecklund, Jon: The Incompleat Chymist: Being an Essay on the Eighteenth Century Chemist in His Laboratory, with a Dictionary of Obsolete Chemical Terms of the Period, Smithsonian Studies in History and Technology,  (Washington D.C., ). Eddy, Matthew D.: “The ‘Doctrine of Salts’ and Rev. John Walker’s Analysis of a Scottish Spa (–),” Ambix, ,  (November ), –. Edgerton, Samuel: The Heritage of Giotto’s Geometry: Art and Science on the Eve of Scientific Revolution (Ithaca, ). Eglisham, George: The Forerunner of Reuenge. Vpon the Duke of Buckingham, for the Poysoning of the Most Potent King Iames of Happy Memory King of Great Britain, and the Lord Marquis of Hamilton and Others of the Nobilitie. Discouered by M. George Elisham One of King Iames His Physitians for His Majesties Person Aboue the Space of Ten Yeares (London, ). Ellenberger, François: History of Geology: The Great Awakening and Its First Fruits, 1660–1810 (New York, ). Ellis, William: The Country Housewife’s Country Companion (London, ). Elsner, Jaś and Rubiés, Joan-Pau: Voyages and Visions: Towards a Cultural History of Travel (London, ). Emerton, Norma: The Scientific Reinterpretation of Form (Ithaca, ). Engel, D.G.: “The Ingenious Dr King: The Life and Works of Dr William King (– ), with Particular Reference to the Tradition of Menippean Satire,” Ph.D. Dissertation (Edinburgh University, ).



bibliography

Erickson, Michelle and Hunter, Robert: “Swirls and Whirls: English Agateware Technology,” in Ceramics in America 2003, ed. Robert Hunter (Hanover, ), –. Erickson, Peter: “Review of David Jaffe, The Earl and Countess of Arundel: Renaissance Collectors (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, ),” Renaissance Quarterly, ,  (September ), –. Evans, Joan: A History of the Society of Antiquaries (Oxford, ). Evelyn, John: “An Advertisement of a Way of Making More Lively Counterfaits of Nature in Wax, Then are Extant in Painting: And of a New Kinde of Maps in a Low Relievo; Both Practised in France,” Philosophical Transactions,  (–), –. —— : The Diary of John Evelyn, ed. Guy De la Bédoyère (Woodbridge, ). —— : Sculptura: or the History and Art of Chalcography, and Engraving in Copper . . . (London, ). Ewan, Joseph, and Ewan, Nesta: John Banister and His Natural History of Virginia 1678–1692 (Urbana and Chicago, ). Exeter University: “Rewriting the System of Nature: Linnaeus’s Use of Writing Technologies,” Research Proposal for the Centre for Medical History, . http://centres.exeter.ac.uk/ medhist/projects/Linnaeus/project% details.pdf. The Family Memoirs of the Rev. William Stukeley, M.D., vol. , Publications of the Surtees Society (London, ). Family Search Genealogical Index, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. http: //www.familysearch.org. Farr, David: “The Education of Major-General John Lambert,” Cromwelliana (), –. —— : John Lambert: Parliamentary Soldier and Cromwellian Major-General, 1619– 1684 (Melton, Woodbridge, ). —— : “Kin, Cash, Catholics and Cavaliers: The Role of Kinship in the Financial Management of Major-General John Lambert,” Historical Research, ,  (), –. Farrer, William, and Brownhill, J.: A History of the County of Lancaster, Victoria County Histories,  vols (London, ). Feingold, Mordechai: Before Newton: The Life and Times of Isaac Barrow (Cambridge, ). —— : “The Mathematical Sciences and the New Philosophies,” in Seventeenth-Century Oxford, The History of Oxford University, ed. Nicholas Tyacke,  vols (Oxford, ), : –. —— : The Newtonian Moment: Isaac Newton and the Making of Modern Culture (New York, ). Ferussac, D., and Deshayes, G.P.: Histoire Naturelle Générale et Particulière des Mollusques Terrestres et Fluviatiles,  vols (Paris, –). Field, Ophelia: The Favourite: Sarah Duchess of Marlborough (London, ). Finberg, A.J.: The Tenth Volume of the Walpole Society (Oxford, ). Findlay, Alison: Playing Spaces in Early Women’s Drama (Cambridge, ). Findlen, Paula: Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (Berkeley, ). Firth, C.H., and Rait, R.S.: Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, 1642–1660,  vols (London, ). Fitzharris, Lindsey: “A Committed Helmontian: The Life and Works of Dr John Webster (–) after the Restoration,” D.Phil. Thesis (University of Oxford. ). Fitzmaurice, James: “Jane Barker and the Tree of Knowledge at Cambridge University,” Renaissance Forum, ,  (Spring ). Forbes, E.G.: “The Library of the Rev. John Flamsteed, F.R.S., First Astronomer Royal,” Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, ,  (), –.

bibliography



Ford, Brian. J.: “Shining Through the Centuries: John Ray’s Life and Legacy, A Report of the Meeting ‘John Ray and his Successors’,” Notes and Records of the Royal Society, ,  (), –. Foster, Joseph: Alumni Oxoniensis: The Members of the University of Oxford, 1500–1714,  vols (Oxford, ). Foucault, Michel: The Birth of the Clinic (London, ). Fournier, Marian: The Fabric of Life: Microscopy in the Seventeenth Century (Baltimore, ). Frank, Robert G.: “Science, Medicine, and the Universities of Early Modern England: Background and Sources, Part ,” History of Science, xi (), –. —— : “Science, Medicine, and the Universities of Early Modern England: Background and Sources, Part ,” History of Science, xi (), –. —— : Harvey and the Oxford Physiologists: A Study of Scientific Ideas (Berkeley, ). Friedman, Alice T.: House and Household in Elizabethan England: Wollaton Hall and the Willoughby Family (Chicago, ). Fulton, John F.: A Bibliography of the Honorable Robert Boyle, nd edn (Oxford, ). Fulwood, William: The Enemie of Idleness (London, ). Furdell. Elizabeth L.: Publishing and Medicine in Early Modern England (Rochester, NY and Woodbridge, Suffolk, ). —— : The Royal Doctors, 1485–1714: Medical Personnel at the Tudor and Stuart Courts (Woodbridge, ). Galley, Chris: “A Never-Ending Succession of Epidemics? Mortality in Early Modern York,” Social History of Medicine, ,  (), –. Garrett, Brian: “Vitalism and Teleology in the Natural Philosophy of Nehemiah Grew (–),” British Journal of the History of Science, ,  (March ), –. Gascoigne, John: Cambridge in the Age of Enlightenment: Science, Religion, and Politics from the Restoration to the French Revolution (Cambridge, ). Gerard, John: Herball or General Historie of Plantes (1613) (London, ; New York, ). Gibson-Wood, Carol: “Classification and Value in a Seventeenth-Century Museum,” Journal of the History of Collections, ,  (), –. Gilroy, C.G.: The History of Silk, Cotton, Linen, Wool and Other Fibrous Substances (New York, ). Girouard, Mark: Robert Smythson and the Architecture of the Elizabethan Era (London, ). Glauber, Johann: A Description of New Philosophical Furnaces, or, A New Art of Distilling Divided into Five Parts: Whereunto is Added a Description of the Tincture of Gold or the True Aurum Potabile : Also the First Part of the Mineral Work, Set Forth and Published for the Sakes of Them That are Studious of the Truth (London, ). —— : The Works of the Highly Experienced and Famous Johann Glauber, ed. Christopher Packe (London, ). Gleick, James: Newton (New York, ). Goad, John: Astro-Meteorologica, or, Aphorisms and Discourses of the Bodies Coelestial, Their Natures and Influences (London, ). Goddard, Jonathan: A Discourse Setting Forth the Unhappy Condition of the Practice of Physick in London (London, ). Goedartius, Johannes: Of Insects: Done into English and Methodized, with the Addition of Notes (York, ). Goldgar, Anne: Impolite Learning: Conduct and Community in the Republic of Letters, 1680–1750 (New Haven, ). Golinski, Jan: “Barometers of Change: Meteorological Instruments as Machines of Enlightenment,” in The Sciences in Enlightened Europe, ed. William Clark, Jan Golinski, and Simon Schaffer (Chicago, ), –.



bibliography

—— : “Chemistry in the Scientific Revolution: Problems of Language and Communication”, in Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution, ed. David C. Lindberg and Robert S. Westman (Cambridge, ), –. Goodman, Nicholas: Hollands Leaguer: Or an Historicall Discourse of the Life and Actions of Donna BRITANNICA HOLANDIAZA . . . (London, ). Gould, Stephen J.: “Father Athanasius on the Isthmus of a Middle State: Understanding Kircher’s Paleontology,” in Athanasius Kircher: The Last Man Who Knew Everything, ed. Paula Findlen (New York, ), –. —— : “The Jew and the Jew Stone,” Natural History Magazine, June . Goulding, R.W.: “Martin Lister, M.D., F.R.S,” Reports and Papers Read at the Meetings of the Architectural Societies of the Counties of Lincoln and Nottingham, ,  (), –. —— : “Notes on the Lords of the Manor of Burwell,” Reports and Papers Read at the Meetings of the Architectural Societies of Lincoln and Nottingham, ,  (), –. Grant, Michael: Galen on Food and Diet (London, ). Grasseus, Johannes: Arca arcani artificiosissimi de summis naturae mysteriis, in Theatrum Chemicum,  vols (Strassburg: heirs of Eberhard Zetzner, ), : –. Gravell, Thomas: Watermark Archive. http://www.gravell.org. Green, M.A.E.: Calendar, Committee for the Advance of Money: Part 1, 1642–45,  vols (London, ). —— : Letters of Queen Henrietta Maria (London, ). Greenfield, Amy Butler: A Perfect Red: Empire, Espionage and the Quest for the Color of Desire (New York, ). Gregg, Edward: Queen Anne (London, ). Grell, Ole: Paracelsus. The Man and His Reputation, His Ideas and Their Transformations (Leiden, ). Grew, Nehemiah: The Anatomy of Plants. With an Idea of a Philosophical History of Plants, and Several Other Lectures Read Before the Royal Society (London, ). —— : Musaeum Regalis Societatis: Or, a Catalogue and Description of the Natural and Artificial Rarities Belonging to the Royal Society and Preserved at Gresham College (London, ). —— : Tractatus de salis cathartici amari in aquis Ebeshamensibus et hujusmodi aliis contenti natura & usu (London, ). Gross, Alan G., Harmon, Joseph E., and Reidy, Michael S.: “Argument and thCentury Science: A Rhetorical Analysis with Sociological Implications,” Social Studies of Science, ,  (June ), –. Guerrini, Anita: “Anatomists and Entrepreneurs in Early Eighteenth-Century London,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, ,  (April ), –. —— : “Archibald Pitcairne and Newtonian Medicine,” Medical History, ,  (), –. —— : “Duverney’s Skeletons,” Isis,  (), –. —— : “James Keill, George Cheyne, and Newtonian Physiology, –,” Journal of the History of Biology, ,  (Summer ), –. —— : “Locovores and Carnivores,” paper presented at Food and Medicine – Conference, Wellcome Institute, London, Friday  May . —— : Obesity and Depression in the Enlightenment: The Life and Times of George Cheyne (Norman, ). —— : “The Tory Newtonians: Gregory, Pitcairne, and Their Circle,” The Journal of British Studies, ,  ( July ), –. Gunther, R.W.T.: “The Ashmole Printed Books,” Bodleian Quarterly Review,  (), –. —— : Early Science at Oxford,  vols (Oxford, –).

bibliography



—— : Further Correspondence of John Ray (London, ). Hake, H.M.: “Some Contemporary Records Relating to Francis Place, Engraver and Draughtsman, with a Catalogue of His Engraved Work,” Walpole Society,  (–), –. Hall, A. Rupert, and Simpson, A.D.C.: “An Account of the Royal Society’s Newton Telescope,” Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, ,  (January ), –. Hall, Marie Boas: Henry Oldenburg: Shaping the Royal Society (Oxford, ). Hamilton, Anthony C.: Memoirs of Count de Grammont, trans. H. Walpole (London, ). Hamilton, E.: Henrietta Maria (New York, ). Hammond, Paul: “Dryden and Trinity,” The Review of English Studies, ,  (February ), –. Hancock, E. Geoffrey: “Accidental Damage Leading to Retrospective Valuation of Historically Unique Molluscan Specimens,” in The Value and Valuation of Natural Science Collections, ed. John R. Nudds and Charles W. Pettitt (Manchester, ), –. Hannaway, Caroline: “Environment and Miasmata,” Companion Encyclopedia of the History of Medicine,  vols, ed. W.F. Bynum and Roy Porter (London and New York, ), –. Hannay, M.P.: “The Countess of Pembroke and Elizabethan Science,” Women, Science and Medicine, 1500–1700, ed. Lynette Hunter and Sarah Hutton (Stroud, ), –. Hanson, Craig Ashley: The English Virtuoso: Art, Medicine, and Antiquarianism in the Age of Empiricism (Chicago, ). Harkness, Deborah: The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution (New Haven, ). —— : “A View from the Streets: Women and Medical Work in Elizabethan London,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine, ,  (), –. Harley, David: “Political Post-Mortems and Morbid Anatomy in Seventeenth-Century England,” Social History of Medicine (), –. Harré, Rom: The Method of Science (London: ). Harris, Frances: A Passion for Government: The Life of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough (Oxford, ). Harris, John: No Voice from the Hall: Early Memories of a Country House Snooper (London, ). Harris, Oliver D.: “John Leland and the Briton Brykes,” The Antiquaries Journal,  (), –. Harvey, John H.: Early Nurserymen: With Reprints of Documents and Lists (London, ). Haslett, Simon: Coastal Systems (London, ). Hatch, Robert: “Scientific Revolution: Correspondence Networks,” http://www.clas .ufl.edu/users/ rhatch/pages/-Sci-Rev/SCI-REV-Home/resource-ref-read/correspondnet/sr-crrsp.htm. Hayter, Alethea: Opium and the Romantic Imagination (London, ). Hearn, Karen: “Cornelius Johnson,” Grove Art Online, http://www.groveart.com/. —— : Marcus Gheerhaerts II: Elizabethan Artist in Focus (London, ). Hearne, Thomas: Remarks and Collections of Thomas Hearne,  vols, ed. E. Doble (Oxford, ). Heaton, H.M. and Moore, H.: “A Study of Glasses Consisting Mainly of the Oxides of Elements of High Atomic Weight, Part I,” Journal of the Society of Glass Technology, XLI (), –. Hellyer, Marcus: “The Pocket Museum: Edward Lhwyd’s Lithophylacium,” Archives of Natural History, ,  (), –.



bibliography

Hembry, Phyllis May: The English Spa, 1560–1815: A Social History (London, ). Henning, George: An Account of Paris at the Close of the Seventeenth Century, now revised (London, n.d.). Herr, Harry W.: “ ‘Cutting for the Stone’: The Ancient Art of Lithotomy,” British Journal of Urology, ,  (May ), –. Heymann, Matthias: “The Evolution of Climate Ideas and Knowledge,” Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change ,  (), –. Heywood, Oliver: The Rev. Oliver Heywood, B.A. Autobiography, Diaries, Anecdote and Event Books, in Three Vols, ed. Horsfall Turner (Bingley, ). Highmore, Nathaniel: “Some Considerations Relating to D. Witties Defence of Scarborough Spaw (Abbreviated in Numb. .), Together with a Brief Accompt of a Less Considerable Salt-Spring in Somersetshire; And of a Medical Spring in Dorsetshire; By the Learned Dr Highmore in a Letter to Dr J. Beale at Yeavil in Somersetshire,” Philosophical Transactions (–),  (), –. Hilliard, Nicholas: A Treatise Concerning the Art of Limning, ed. R.K.R. Thornton and T.G.S. Cain (Ashington, ). Hirai, Hiro: “Kircher’s Chymical Interpretation of the Creation and Spontaneous Generation,” in Chymists and Chymistry: Studies in the History of Alchemy and Early Modern Chemistry, ed. Lawrence M. Principe (Sagamore Beach, ), –. Hirsch, August: Handbook of Geographical and Historical Pathology, trans. Charles Creighton (London, ). “Historic Building is given a new lease of life,” Telegraph and Argus,  August . http://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk. Holmes, Frederic L.: “Analysis by Fire and Solvent Extractions: The Metamorphosis of a Tradition,” Isis, ,  (Summer ), –. —— : Eighteenth-Century Chemistry as an Investigative Enterprise, Berkeley Papers in the History of Science (Berkeley, ). Hooke, Robert: A Description of Helioscopes and Some Other Instruments Made by Robert Hooke, Fellow of the Royal Society (London, ). —— : The Diary of Robert Hooke MA MD FRS 1672–1680, ed. H.W. Robinson and W. Adams (London, ). Hoole, Charles: A New Discovery of the Old Art of Teaching Schoole (London, ). Hopkin, S.P.: “Myriapodology Before and After Martin Lister’s Journey to Paris in the Year ,” Acta Myriapodologica. Memoris du Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle,  (), –. Hoppen, K. Theodore: Papers of the Dublin Philosophical Society, –,  vols (Dublin, ). Houghton, Walter R. Jr: “The English Virtuoso in the Seventeenth Century,” Journal of the History of Ideas,  (), –, –. Howard, Jean Elizabeth: Theater of a City: The Places of London Comedy, 1598–1642 (Philadelphia, ). Howse, Derek: Francis Place and the Early History of the Greenwich Observatory (New York, ). Hugo, Victor: Oeuvres Complètes de Victor Hugo, ed. Alexandre Houssaiux,  vols (Paris, –). Hunter, Lynette: “Women and Domestic Lady Experimenters, –,” in Women, Science and Medicine, 1500–1700, ed. Lynette Hunter and Sarah Hutton (Stroud, ), –. Hunter, Michael: Editing Early Modern Texts: An Introduction to Principles and Practice (Basingstoke, ). —— : “Elias Ashmole –: The Founder of the Ashmolean Museum and His World,” in Science and the Shape of Orthodoxy: Intellectual Change in Late Seventeenth-Century Britain (London, ), –.

bibliography



—— : Establishing the New Science: The Experience of the Early Royal Society (Suffolk, ). —— : John Aubrey and the Realm of Learning (Worcester and London, ). —— : The Royal Society and Its Fellows, 1660–1700: The Morphology of an Early Scientific Institution, British Society for the History of Science Monographs,  (Chalfont St Giles, ). —— : Science and the Shape of Orthodoxy: Intellectual Change in Late SeventeenthCentury Britain (Woodbridge, ). —— : Science and Society in Restoration England (Cambridge, ). —— : “The Social Bias and Changing Fortunes of an Early Scientific Institution: An Analysis of the Membership of the Royal Society, –,” Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London,  (–), –. Hunter, Phyllis W.: Purchasing Identity in the British Atlantic World: Massachusetts Merchants, 1670–1780 (Ithaca, ). Hunting, Penelope: “The Worshipful Society of Apothecaries of London,” Postgraduate Medical Journal,  (), –. Hymen, P.S. and Parsons, M.S.: A Review of the Scarce and Threatened Coleoptera of Great Britain: Part 1 (Peterborough, ). Iliffe, Robert: “Foreign Bodies: Travel, Empire and the Early Royal Society of London,” Canadian Journal of History,  (), –. Imperato, Ferrante: Historia Naturale . . . nella quale ordinatamente si tratta della diversa condition di Minere, Pietre pretiose, & altre curiosita. Con varie Historie di Piante, & Animali, sin’ hora non date in luce (Venice, ). Jardine, Lisa: The Curious Life of Robert Hooke: The Man Who Measured London (New York, ). —— : Ingenious Pursuits: Building the Scientific Revolution (London, ). Jennet, Sean: Beloved Son Felix: The Journal of Felix Platter: A Medical Student in Montpellier in the Sixteenth Century (London, ). Jessop, Francis: “A Letter of the Ingenious Mr Jessop of Broomhal in York-Shire, Containing a Further Account of Damps in Mines, Promised in Number  of these Tracts,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. Johns, Adrian: The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making (Chicago, ). —— : “Prudence and Pedantry in Early Modern Cosmology: The Trade of Al Ross,” History of Science,  (), –. —— : “Science and the Book,” in The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, ed. J. Barnard, D.F. McKenzie and M. Bell,  vols (Cambridge, ), : –. Johnson, Samuel: The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets; with Critical Observations on Their Works,  vols (Montrose, ). Jones, John: The Mysteries of Opium Reveal’d by Dr John Jones (London, ). —— : The History and Antiquities of Harewood (London, ). Joncquet, Denis: Hortus Regius. Pars Prior (Paris, ). Journal of the House of Commons: volume 3: 1643–1644 (London, ). Joyce, W.: The Wonders of Ireland and Other Papers on Irish Subjects (London, ). Kardel, Troels: Steno on Muscles: Introductions, Texts, Translations, Philadelphia, . Kaye, G.W.C. and Laby, T.H.: Tables of Physical and Chemical Constants, http://www .kayelaby.npl.co.uk/ general_physics/_/ __.html. Keats, John: The Life and Letters of John Keats, ed. Baron Richard Monckton Milnes Houghton (London, ). Keene, Nicholas: “John Fell: Education, Erudition, and the English Church in Late Seventeenth-Century Oxford,” History of Universities, ,  (), –. Keener, Frederick M.: English Dialogues of the Dead: A Critical History, an Anthology, and a Check List (New York and London, ).



bibliography

Keynes, Geoffrey: The Letters of Sir Thomas Browne (London, ). —— : Dr Martin Lister: A Bibliography (Goldaming, Surrey, ). —— : “Dr Martin Lister, F.R.S., Some Uncollected Authors,” The Book Collector,  (), –. Keynes, Geoffrey: The Works of Sir Thomas Browne,  vols (London, ). King, Edward: “Observations Concerning Emmets or Ants, Their Eggs, Production, Progress, Coming to Maturity, Use, &c,” Philosophical Transactions,  (–), –. King, G.M.: St Mary’s Parish Church, Melton Mowbray (Privately printed, n.d.). King, Henry C.: The History of the Telescope (New York, ). King, William: The Art of Cookery, In Imitation of Horace’s Art of Poetry. With Some Letters to Dr Lister, and Others (London, ). —— : A Journey to London, in the Year 1698. After the Ingenious Method of That Made by Dr Martin Lister to Paris, in the Same Year (London, ). Kircher, Athanasius: Athanassi Kircheri Mundus subterraneus in XII libros digestus (Amsterdam, ). —— : The Vulcano’s: Or, Burning and Fire-Vomiting Mountains, Famous in the World . . . Collected for the Most Part out of Kircher’s Subterraneous World (London, ). Kissack, Chris: Bordeaux Wine Guide, www.thewinedoctor.com. Klein, Lawrence E.: “The Figure of France: The Politics of Sociability in England, –,” Yale French Studies,  (), –. Knight, David: Ordering the World: A History of Classifying Man (London, ). Knight, Harriet, and Hunter, Michael: “Robert Boyle’s Memoirs for the Natural History of Human Blood (): Print, Manuscript and the Impact of Baconianism in Seventeenth-Century Medical Science,” Medical History, ,  (April ), –. Kostelnick C., and Hassett, M.: Shaping Information: The Rhetoric of Visual Convention (Carbondale, ). Kronick, David A.: “Anonymity and Identity: Editorial Policy in the Early Scientific Journal,” The Library Quarterly, ,  (), –. Kravetz, Robert E.: “A Look Back: Chamberpot,” American Journal of Gastroenterology,  (), –. Kusukawa, Sachiko: “The Historia Piscium (),” Notes and Records of the Royal Society, ,  (), –. L.P., M.A.: Two Essays Sent in a Letter from Oxford, to a Nobleman in London 1. Conceiving Some Errors about the Creation, General Flood, and the Peopling of the World, in Two Parts. 2. Concerning the Rise, Progress and Destruction of Fables and Romances, with the State of Learning (London, ). Lane, N. Gary, and Ausich, William. I.: “The Legend of St Cuthbert’s Beads; A Palaeontological and Geological Perspective,” Folklore (April ), –. Langford, T.: Plain and Full Instructions to Raise All Sorts of Fruit-Trees That Prosper in England (London, ). Lang, Carl Nicolaus: Historia lapidum figuratorum Helvetiae (Lucerne, ). Lankester, E. Ray, and Derham, William et al.: Memorials of John Ray: Consisting of His Life by Dr Derham: Biographical and Critical Notices by Sir J.E. Smith, and Cuvier and Dupetit Thouars : with His Itineraries, Etc. (London, ). Latham, Robert: Catalogue of the Pepys Library at Magdalene College (London, ). Latour, Bruno: Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society (Cambridge, ). Lawrence, Cynthia M.: Women and Art in Early Modern Europe: Patrons, Collectors and Connoisseurs (University Park, ). Leach, Peter: “Rose Windows and Other Follies: Alternative Architecture in the Seventeenth-Century Pennines,” Architectural History,  (), –.

bibliography



Leedham-Green, Elizabeth: A Concise History of the University of Cambridge (Cambridge, ). “Leap Forward for ‘Flying’ Spiders,” BBC News,  July . http://bbc.co.uk Lee, Ida: Early Explorers in Australia (London, ). Leeuwenhoek, A. von: “An Abstract of a Letter from Mr Anthony Leewenhoeck of Delft to Mr R.H. Concerning the Appearances of Several Woods and Their Vessels as Observed in a Microscope,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. —— : “An Extract of a Letter from Mr Anthony Leewenhoeck F. or the R.S. to a S. of the R. Society,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. Lefanu, W.: Nehemiah Grew: A Study and Bibliography of His Writings (Detroit ). Le Févre, Nicaise: A Compleat Body of Chemistry (London, ). —— : Tracté de la Chymie (Paris, ). Lelong, Jacques, and Fevret de Fontette, Charles-Marie: Bibliothèque Historique de la France,  vols (Paris, ). LeMaire, C.: Paris Ancien et Nouveau, avec une Description de Tout ce qu’il y a de plus Temarquable dans Toutes les Eglises, Communautes, Palais, Maisons, Rues, Places, &c.,  vols (Paris, ). Le Neve, John and Hardy, Thomas. D.: Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae (Oxford, ). Lemire, Beverly: Dress, Culture, and Commerce: The English Clothing Trade before the Factory, 1660–1800 (New York, ). —— : Fashion’s Favorite: The Cotton Trade and the Consumer in Britain, 1660–1800 (Oxford, ). Leonhard, Karin: “Shell Collecting: On th-Century Conchology, Curiosity Cabinets, and Still Life Painting,” in Early Modern Zoology: The Construction of Animals in Science, Literature and the Visual Arts, ed. K.A.E. Enenkel and Paul J. Smith (Leiden, ), –. Letters of Eminent Men, Addressed to Ralph Thoresby, F.R.S. . . . in Two Vols (London, ). Levine, Joseph: The Battle of the Books: History and Literature in the Augustan Age (Ithaca, ). —— : Dr Woodward’s Shield: History, Science and Satire in Augustan England (Ithaca, ). Lewis, Rhodri: Language, Mind and Nature: Artificial Languages in England from Bacon to Locke (Cambridge, ). Lhwyd, Edward: Lithophylacii Britannici Ichnographia (London, ). Linda Hall Library, Women’s Work: Portraits of  Scientific Illustrators from the th until the st Century,” http://www.lindahall.org/events_exhib/exhibit/exhibits/ womenswork/index.shtml. Lindsay, H.: “Who was Apicius?” Symbolae Osloenses, ,  (), –. Linnaeus, Carolus: Systema Naturae (Magdeburg, ). Linus, Franciscus: “A Letter of Franc. Linus, Animadverting on Mr Newtons Theory of Light and Colors,” Philosophical Transactions, ,  ( January /), – . Lipscomb, G.: History and Antiquities of the County of Buckinghamshire,  vols (London, –). Lister-Denny, R.H.: Memorials of an Ancient House: A History of the Family of Lister or Lyster (London, ). Lloyd, Claude: “Shadwell and the Virtuosi,” Publications of the Modern Language Association of America,  (), –4. Lobel, Mary: A History of the County of Oxford: Volume 7: Dorchester and Thame Hundreds, Victoria County Histories (Oxford, ). Locke, John: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding: To Which are Now First Added, I. An Analysis of Mr Locke’s Doctrine of Ideas, on a Large Sheet. II. A Defence of Mr Locke’s Opinion Concerning Personal Identity,  vols (London, ).



bibliography

Long, Pamela O.: Openness, Secrecy, Authorship: Technical Arts and the Culture of Knowledge from Antiquity to the Renaissance (Baltimore, ). Long, W. Harwood: “Regional Farming in Seventeenth-Century Yorkshire,” The Agricultural History Review,  (), –. Lonie, Iain M.: “Fever Pathology in the Sixteenth Century: Tradition and Innovation,” Medical History Supplement, eds William F. Bynum and Vivian Nutton,  (), –. Lough, J.: “Martin Lister’s Travels in France,” Durham University Journal,  (), –. Lux, David S. and Cook, Harold J.: “Closed Circles or Open Networks: Communicating at a Distance During the Scientific Revolution,” History of Science, xxxvi (), –. Lyell, Charles: Principles of Geology, Being an Attempt to Explain the Former Changes of the Earth’s Surface, by Reference to Causes Now in Operation (London, ). Maat, Jaap: Philosophical Languages in the Seventeenth Century: Dalgarno, Wilkins, Leibniz (New York, ). MacEvoy, Bruce: “handprint,” http://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/artist.html. MacGregor, Arthur, White, Julia, and Mendoca, Melanie: Ashmolean Museum: Pt. I: Manuscript Catalogues of the Early Museum Collections 1683–1886, British Archaeological Reports (BAR) (Oxford, ). —— : The Ashmolean Museum: A Brief History of the Institution and Its Collections (Oxford, ). —— : Curiosity and Enlightenment: Collectors and Collections from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century (New Haven, ). —— : Tradescant’s Rarieties: Essays on the Foundations of the Ashmolean Museum (Oxford, ). —— : “William Huddesford (–): His Role in Reanimating the Ashmolean Museum, His Collections, Researches, and Support Network,” Annals in Natural History, ,  (), –. Macray, W.D.: Annals of the Bodleian Library A.D. 1598-A.D. 1867: with a Preliminary Notice of the Earlier Library Founded in the Fourteenth Century (London, Oxford, and Cambridge, ). Maehle, Andreas-Holger: Drugs on Trial: Experimental Pharmacology and Therapeutic Innovation in the Eighteenth Century, Clio Medica/The Wellcome Series in the History of Medicine,  (Amsterdam, ). Magnol, Pierre: Hortus Regius Monspeliensis sive Catalogus plantarum quae in Horto Regio Monspeliense demonstratur (Montpellier, ). Magnus, Olaus: Historia Olai Magni Gothi Archiepiscopi Upsalensis de Gentium Septentrionalium varris conditionibus etc. (Basel, ). Major, Johann David: Dissertatio botanica de planta monstrosa gottorpiensi mensis Junii, ani MDCLXV (Schleswig, ). Malden, H.: A History of the County of Surrey, Victoria County Histories,  vols (London, –). Mancall, Peter: “Robert Plot’s Natural History of Oxford-Shire,” Environmental History, ,  (), –. Margary, I.D.: Roman Roads in Britain, rd edn (London, ). Martini, F.W. and Chemnitz, J.H.: Neues Systematisches Conchyliencabinet,  vols (Nurnberg, –). Maton, William G. and Reverend Thomas Rackett: “An Historical Account of Testaceological Writers,” Transactions of the Linnean Society,  (), –. Mauelshagen, Franz: “Networks of Trust: Scholarly Correspondence and Scientific Exchange in Early Modern Europe,” The Medieval History Journal, ,  (), –.

bibliography



Mawe, John: The Mineralogy of Derbyshire with a Description of the Most Interesting Mines in the North of England, in Scotland, and in Wales (London, ). Mayor, J.E.B.: Admissions to the College of St John the Evangelist in the University of Cambridge; Part I January 1629/30–July 1665 (Cambridge, ). McAllister, Marie E.: “Stories of the Origin of Syphilis in Eighteenth-Century England: Science, Myth, and Prejudice,” Eighteenth-Century Life, ,  (), –. McMahon, Susan: “John Ray (–) and the Act of Uniformity,” Notes and Records of the Royal Society,  (), –. Mead, Richard: An Accurate Translation of Dr Mead’s Latin Treatise on the SmallPox and Measles (London, ). Mellick, S.A.: “The Montpellier School and Guy de Cheliac,” Australian and New Zealand Journal of Surgery,  (), –. —— : “Sir Thomas Browne: Physician − and the Religio Medici,” Australian and New Zealand Journal of Surgery, ,  (), –. Mendelson, Sarah and Crawford, Patricia: Women in Early Modern England 1550– 1720 (Oxford, ). Mendyck, Stan A.E.: “Robert Plot: Britain’s ‘Genial Father of County Natural Histories,” Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London,  (), –. —— : Speculum Britanniae: Regional Study, Antiquarianism, and Science in Britain to 1700 (Toronto, ). Merchant, Carolyn: The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution (San Francisco, ). Merians, Linda Evi: The Secret Malady: Venereal Disease in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Lexington, ). Meyers, Katheen A.: Fernández de Oviedo’s Chronicle of America: A New History for a New World, trans. Nina M. Scott (Austin, ). Miscellanea Genealogica Et Heraldica: fourth series, ed. W. Bruce Bannerman (Boston, ) Mitchill, S.: “A Discourse . . . Embracing a Concise and Comprehensive Account of the Writings which Illustrate the Botanical History of North and South America,” New York Historical Society Collections,  (), –. Molyneux, William: “A Letter from William Molyneux Esq; Sec. of the Dublin Society; to One of the S. of the R.S. concerning a New Hygroscope, Invented by Him,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. Moorman, Theo: “Some Newly Discovered Drawings by Francis Place,” The Burlington Magazine, ,  (June ), –. Morris, G.C.R.: “On the Identity of Jaques du Moulin, F.R.S. ,” Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, ,  (January ), –. Morton, John: The Natural History of Northampton-Shire: with Some Accounts of the Antiquities (London, ). Morton, Timothy: “Old Spice: William King, Culinary Antiquarianism, and National Boundaries,” Eighteenth-Century Life, ,  (), –. Moseley, Adam: Bearing the Heavens: Tycho Brahe and the Astronomical Community of the Late Sixteenth Century (Cambridge, ). Mosley, Charles: Burke’s Peerage and Baronetage, 106th edition,  vols (Stokesley, ). Mouffet, Thomas: Insectorum sive minimorum animalium theatrum (London, ). Müller-Wille, Staffan, and Scharf, Sara: “Indexing Nature: Carl Linnaeus (–) and His Fact-Gathering Strategies,” Working Papers in ‘The Nature of Evidence: How Well Do “Facts” Travel?’ London School of Economics,  (), –. Mullet, Charles F.: Public Baths and Health in England, 16th–18th Century (Baltimore, ). Multhauf, Robert P.: The Origins of Chemistry (New York, ).



bibliography

Mungello, David E.: Drowning Girls in China: Female Infanticide since 1650 (Plymouth, ). Munks Roll Online, Royal College of Physicians. http://www.rcplondon.ac.uk/heritage/ munksroll. Murdin, Lesley: Under Newton’s Shadow: Astronomical Practices in the Seventeenth Century (Bristol, ). Musgrave, William: “A Letter from Mr William Musgrave Fellow of New College Oxon: and One of the Secretaries of the Royal Society, to the Learned Dr Martin Lister, wherein He Endeavors to Prove That the Lacteals Frequently Convey Liquors That are Not White,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. Nagle, Garrett: Advanced Geography (Oxford, ). Nakajima, Hideto: “Robert Hooke as an Astronomer,” Robert Hooke: Tercentennial Studies, ed. Michael Cooper and Michael Hunter (Aldershot, ), –. Nance, Brian: Turquet de Mayerne as Baroque Physician: the Art of Medical Portraiture, Clio Medica,  (New York, ). Narbrough, Sir John: An Account of Several Late Voyages & Discoveries to the South and North towards the Streights of Magellan, the South Seas, the Vast Tracts of Land beyond Hollandia Nova, ed. Tancred Robinson (London, ). National Park Service, “Petrified Wood Colors and Petrification,” http://scienceviews. com/parks/ woodcolors.html. Naylor, Rachel: Carleton with an ‘E’ (Privately printed, ). Nelson, Ernest. C.: “Nicolaas Witsen’s Letter of  to Martin Lister about a Dutch Expedition to the South Land (Western Australia): The Original Text and a Review of Its Significance for the History of Australian Natural History,” Archives of natural history,  (), –. Newman, William R. and Principe, Lawrence M.: Alchemy Tried in the Fire: Starkey, Boyle, and the Fate of Helmontian Chymistry (Chicago and London, ). —— : “Alchemy vs. Chemistry: The Etymological Origins of a Historiographic Mistake,” Early Science and Medicine,  (), –. Newman, William R.: Atoms and Alchemy: Chymistry and the Experimental Origins of the Scientific Revolution (Chicago, ). —— : Gehennical Fire: The Lives of George Starkey, an American Alchemist in the Scientific Revolution (Cambridge, ). —— : “Newton’s Theory of Metallic Generation in the Previously Neglected Text Humores minerales continuo decidunt,” in Chymists and Chymistry: Studies in the History of Alchemy and Early Modern Chymistry (Sagamore Beach, ), –. —— : Promethean Ambitions: Alchemy and the Quest to Perfect Nature (Chicago, ). Newton, Sir Isaac: “An Accompt of a New Catadioptrical Telescope Invented by Mr Newton, Fellow of the R. Society, and Professor of the Mathematiques in the University of Cambridge,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. —— : “An Answer to this Letter [of Francis Linus],” Philosophical Transactions,  ( January /), . —— : The Correspondence of Isaac Newton, ed. H.W. Turnbull, J.F. Scott, A.R. Hall, and L. Tilling,  vols (Cambridge, ). —— : “Notes on the Mining, Preparation and Properties of ‘Saturn’ [i.e. Lead],” The Chymistry of Isaac Newton, ed. William R. Newman, http://www.dlib.indiana.edu/ collections/newton. —— : Opticks (London, ). Nichols, John: History and Antiquities of the Town and County of Leicester,  vols (London, –).

bibliography



—— : Illustrations of the Literary History of the Eighteenth Century,  vols (London, ). —— : Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century . . . (London, ). —— : The Original Works of William King . . . Now First Collected into Three Vols: With Historical Notes, and Memoirs of the Author (London, ). Nishikawa, S.: “Henry Compton, Bishop of London – and Foreign Protestants,” From Strangers to Citizens: The Integration of Immigrant Communities in Britain, Ireland, and Colonial America, 1550–1750, ed. Randolph Vigne and Charles Littleton (Eastbourne and Portland, ), –. Norris, John: “The Mineral Exhalation Theory of Metallogenesis in Pre-Modern Mineral Science,” Ambix, ,  (March ), –. North, R.: Lives of the Norths,  vols (London: Henry Colburn, ). North, Roger: Notes of Me, ed. Peter Millard (Toronto, ). Nuttgens, Patrick: The History of York from Earliest Times to the Year 2000 (Pickering, ). Ochs, Kathleen: “The Royal Society of London’s History of Trades Programme: an Early Episode in Applied Science,” Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, ,  (April ), –. Officer, L.H.: MeasuringWorth, http://www.measuringworth.com/ppoweruk/. Ogilvie, Brian: “Description and Persuasion in Seventeenth-century Entomological Illustrations,” Paper presented at the Seeing Science Conference, Princeton University, March . —— : The Science of Describing: Natural History in Renaissance Europe (Chicago, ). Oldenburg, Henry: The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, ed. A. Rupert Hall and Marie Boas Hall,  vols (Madison, –). Oldroyd, David: “Some Phlogistic Mineral Schemes,” Annals of Science,  (), –. Ong, Walter: “Latin Language Study as a Renaissance Puberty Rite,” Studies in Philology,  (), –. —— : Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (London, ). Ovenell, R.F.: The Ashmolean Museum, 1683–1894 (Oxford, ). Packham, John R. and Willis, Arthur J.: Ecology of Dunes, Salt Marsh, and Shingle (London, ). Pady, Donald S.: “A London Medical Satire of ,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences,  (), –. Page, William: A History of the County of Buckingham (London, ). Pagel, Walter: From Paracelsus to Van Helmont (London, ). —— : Paracelsus: An Introduction to Philosophical Medicine in the Era of the Renaissance, nd rev. edn (Basel, ). —— : The Smiling Spleen: Paracelsianism in Storm and Stress (Basel, ). —— : William Harvey’s Biological Ideas: Selected Aspects and Historical Background (Basel, ). “Paman, Henry,” Special Collections, St John’s College, Cambridge. http://www.joh .cam.ac.uk/library/special_collections/early_books/pix/provenance/paman/paman. htm. The Parish Register of Kirkby Malhamdale: Volume 1, 1597–1690, no.  (Leeds, ). Parker, John R.: “Arachnological England: Martin Lister’s England,” Newsletter of the British Arachnological Society,  (March ), –. —— : “Arachnological History: Martin Lister (–) and the Royal Society,” Newsletter of the British Arachnological Society,  (July ), –. —— : “Dr Martin Lister F.R.S. (–): Further Notes and Memorabilia,” Newsletter of the British Arachnological Society,  (July ), –.



bibliography

—— : “Dr Martin Lister F.R.S. (–): His Family and Their Estates,” Newsletter of the British Arachnological Society,  (November ), –. —— : “Dr Martin Lister F.R.S.: The First British Arachnologist with Some Notes on People and Places Associated with the Lister Family,” Newsletter of the British Arachnological Society,  (), –. Parker, John R. and Harley, Basil: Martin Lister’s English Spiders 1678 (Colchester, ). Parkinson, Anna: “John Parkinson: An Ancient Alchemist’s Wisdom,” The Daily Telegraph,  November . Parkinson, Anna: Nature’s Alchemist: John Parkinson, Herbalist to Charles I (London, ). Partington, J.R.: A History of Chemistry,  vols (London, ). Pechey, John: The Complete Herbal of Physical Plants (London, ). —— : The Whole Works of . . . Thomas Sydenham (London, ). Pelling, Margaret, and White, Frances: Biographical Database of Medical Practitioners in London in a Key Period in the History of Medicine (London, ). Pennington, Richard: A Descriptive Catalogue of the Etched Works of Wenceslaus Hollar 1607–77 (Cambridge, ). Pepys, Samuel: The Diary of Samuel Pepys,  vols, ed. J. Warrington (London and New York, ). Peter, John: A Philosophical Account of this Hard Frost . . . (London, ). Philo-Patriae, Eugenius: A Succinct Description of France wherein is a Character of the People, Customs, &c of that Kingdom (London, ). Pigott, Louis J., and Jessop, Leslie: “The Governor’s Wombat: Early History of an Australian Marsupial,” Archives of Natural History,  (), –. Pinkerton, John: General Collection of the Best and Most Interesting Voyages and Travels,  vols (London, –). Plot, Robert: “A Discourse Concerning the Incombustible Cloth above Mentioned; Address’t in a Letter to Mr Arthur Bayly Merchant, and Fellow of the Royal Society; and to Mr Nicholas Waite, Merchant of London,” Philosophical Transactions  (), –. —— : The Natural History of Oxford-Shire (London, ). —— : The Natural History of Stafford-Shire (Oxford, ). —— : “Observations of the Wind, Weather, and Height of the Mercury in the Barometer, through out the Year ; Taken in the Musaeum Ashmoleanum at Oxford, by Robert Plot, LLD. to which is Prefixt a Letter from Him, to Dr Martin Lister, F. of the R.S. Concerning the Use of This and Such Like Historys of the Weather,” Philosophical Transactions (1683–1775),  (), –. Pomata, Giovanna: Historia: Empricism and Erudition in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, ). Poole, William: “Sir Robert Southwell’s Manuscript Library,” paper presented at the “Manuscript Culture and the New Philosophy – Conference,” The Royal Society, London,  June . —— : The World Makers (Oxford and New York, ). Porter, Roy: The Popularization of Medicine 1650–1850 (London, ). Potts, W.T.W. and Fear, L: “Thomas Penny, the First English Entomologist,” Contrebis, XXV (). http://www.britarch.ac.uk/lahs/PENNyart.htm. Principe, Lawrence: “The Alchemies of Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton: Alternative Approaches and Divergent Deployments,” in Rethinking the Scientific Revolution, ed. Margaret J. Osler (Cambridge, ), –. —— : “ ‘Chemical Translation’ and the Role of Impurities in Alchemy,” Ambix,  (), –. —— : “Virtuous Romance and Romantic Virtuoso: the Shaping of Robert Boyle’s Literary Style,” Journal of the History of Ideas,  (), –.

bibliography



Prosperetti, Leopoldine van Hogendorp: “ ‘Conchas Legere’: Shells as Trophies of Repose in Northern European Humanism,” Art History, ,  (), –. Pumfrey, Stephen: “Mechanizing Magnetism in Restoration England: the Decline of Magnetic Philosophy,” Annals of Science, ,  (), –. Rappaport, Rhoda: “Questions of Evidence: An Anonymous Tract Attributed to John Toland,” Journal of the History of Ideas, ,  (April ), –. —— : When Geologists Were Historians (Ithaca, ). Raven, Charles E.: John Ray, Naturalist: His Life and Works (London and Cambridge, ). Ravin, J.G., M.D.: “Sir Hans Sloane’s Contributions to Ocular Therapy, Scientific Journalism, and the Creation of the British Museum,” Archives of Ophthalmology,  (), –. Rawson, Harold: Inorganic Glass Forming Systems (New York, ). Ray, John: Catalogus Cantabrigiam nascentium (Cambridge, ). —— : “A Confirmation of What Was Formerly Printed in Numb. . of these Tracts, about the Manner of Spiders Projecting Their Threads; Communicated by Mr John Wray, to the Publisher,” Philosophical Transactions,  ( November ), –. —— : The Correspondence of John Ray, ed. Edwin Lankaster (London, ). —— : “The Extract of a Letter Written by Mr John Ray to the Publisher from Middleton, July , , Concerning Spontaneous Generation; As Also Some Insects Smelling of Musks,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. —— : Further Correspondence of John Ray, ed. R.W.T. Gunther (London, ). —— : Observations Topographical, Moral, and Physiological, Made on a Journey through Part of the Low Countries, Germany, Italy, and France (London, ). —— : Three Physico-Theological Discourses, third edn (London, ). Read, Richard: “Some Communications, about an Early Swarm of Bees, as Also Concerning Cyder; Descent of Sap; The Season of Transplanting Vegetables . . .” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. The Record of the Royal Society of London, th. edn (London, ). Redi, Francesco: Experiments on the Generation of Insects, trans. M. Bigelow (Chicago, ). —— : “Some Observations on Vipers,” Philosophical Transactions,  (–), –. Renbourn, E.T.: “The Natural History of Insensible Perspiration: A Forgotten Doctrine of Health and Disease,” Medical History, ,  (April ), –. Reynolds, Andy: “Ballooning Dispersal in Arthropod Taxa: Conditions at Take-Off,” Biology Letters, ,  ( June ), –. Rhazes, Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Zakarīyā: “A Treatise on the Small-pox and Measles,” trans. William A. Greenhill, in Medical Classics,  (), –. Richardson, Glenn: “Introduction,” in The Contending Kingdoms: France and England 1420–1700, ed. Glenn Richardson (Aldershot, ), –. Riddell, William R.: “The Death of King James I: A Medico-Legal Study,” Journal of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology, ,  (May, ), –. Riha, Ortrun: “Surgical Case Records as an Historical Source: Limits and Perspectives,” Social History of Medicine,  (), –. Riley, James C: The Eighteenth-Century Campaign to Avoid Disease (New York, ). Riley, Margaret: “The Club at the Temple Coffee House Revisited,” Archives of Natural History, ,  (), –. Robertson, Alexander: “History of the Classification of the Genus Carex,” Taxon, , / (Nov. ), –. Robinson, Tancred: A Letter Sent to William Wotton . . . Concerning Some Late Remarks . . . Written by Mr Harris (London, ). Rolleston, Sir Humphrey Davy: The Cambridge Medical School, A Biographical History (Cambridge, ).



bibliography

Roos, Anna Marie E.: “All that Glitters: Fool’s Gold in the Early Modern Era,” Endeavour, ,  (December ), –. —— : “Lilies of the Sea: The Legend of St Cuthbert’s Beads,” Natural History Magazine, (December /January ), –. —— : “Limings of Love,” Arts and Antiques Magazine (), –. —— : “Lodestones and Gallstones: the Magnetic Iatrochemistry of Martin Lister (–),” History of Science,  (), –. —— : “Luminaries in Medicine: Richard Mead, James Gibbs, and Solar and Lunar Effects on the Human Body in Early Modern England,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine, ,  (Fall ), –. —— : Luminaries in the Natural World: Perceptions of the Sun and Moon in England, 1400–1740 (New York, ). —— : “Martin Lister (–) and the Chemistry of Fool’s Gold,” Ambix, ,  (), –. —— : “Nehemiah Grew (–) and the Saline Chymistry of Plants,” Ambix, ,  (March ), –. —— : “Salient Theories in the Fossil Debate in the Early Royal Society: The Influence of Johann Van Helmont,” in Controversies in the Scientific Revolution, ed. Victor Boantza and Marcelo Dascal (Amsterdam, ), forthcoming. —— : The Salt of the Earth: Chemistry, Medicine, and Natural Philosophy in England, 1650–1750 (Leiden, ). —— : “A Speculum of Chymical Practice: Isaac Newton, Martin Lister (–), and the Making of Telescopic Mirrors,” Notes and Records of the Royal Society, ,  (June ), –. Rosner, Lisa: “Ants in the Academy: Formic Acid and the University Dissemination of Enlightenment Science,” Eighteenth-Century Thought,  (), –. Rudwick, Martin J.S.: The Meaning of Fossils: Episodes in the History of Paleontology (Chicago, ). Ruestow, Edward G.: “Images and Ideas: Leeuwenhoek’s Perception of the Spermatozoa,” Journal for the History of Biology, ,  (), –. —— : The Microscope in the Dutch Republic: The Shaping of Discovery (Cambridge, ). Ruscoe, C: “An Insight into Collecting Sinistral Shells,” British Shell Collector’s Club, . http://www.britishshellclub.org.uk/pages/articles/sini/artsini.htm. Rushworth, John: Historical Collections of Private Passages of State, of Weighty Matters in Law, of Remarkable Proceedings in Five Parliament. Beginning the Sixteenth Year of King James, Anno 1618. And Ending the Fifth Year of King Charls, Anno 1629 (London, ). Rusnock, Andrea: Vital Accounts: Quantifying Health and Population in EighteenthCentury England and France (Cambridge, ). —— : “The Weight of Evidence and the Burden of Authority: Case Histories, Medical Statistics and Smallpox Inoculation,” in Medicine in the Enlightenment, ed. Roy Porter (Amsterdam, ), –. Sakula, Alex: “Doctor Nehemiah Grew (–) and the Epsom Salts,” Clio Medica, , – (), –. Sanctorius: Medicina Statica: Being the Aphorisms of Sanctorius, Translated into English with Large Explanations by John Quincy (London, ). Sandassie, Samantha: “Evidence-based Medicine? Patient Case Studies in English Surgical Treatises, –,” Medical Humanities,  (), –. Sarasohn, Lisa.T.: “Who was then the Gentleman?: Samuel Sorbière, Thomas Hobbes, and the Royal Society,” History of Science,  (), –. Scharf, Sara.: “Identification Keys and the Natural Method: The Development of TextBased Information Management Tools in Botany in the Long th Century,” Ph.D. Dissertation (University of Toronto, ).

bibliography



—— : “Multiple Independent Inventions of a Non-Functional Technology: Combinatorial Descriptive Names in Botany, –,” SponGe ,  (), –. Schiebinger, Londa: Plants and Empire: Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World (Cambridge, ). Schleck, Julia: “ ‘Plain Broad Narratives of Substantial Facts’: Credibility, Narrative, and Hakluyt’s Principall Navigations (Richard Hakluyt, Principall Navigations of the English Nation),” Renaissance Quarterly, ,  ( September ), –. Schneer, Cecil: “The Rise of Historical Geology in the Seventeenth Century,” Isis, ,  (), –. Scholten, F. “Review of Nigel Llewellyn’s Funeral Monuments in Post-Reformation England,” The Art Bulletin,  (), –. Schwartz, Louis: Milton and Maternal Mortality (Cambridge, ). Scott, Sir Walter: Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field (Edinburgh, ). Sebastian, Anton: A Dictionary of the History of Medicine (New York, ). Sereni, Fabio M.D, and Sereni, Lucia P.M.D.: “Exanthematous Infectious Diseases in Pediatrics: Curiosities from the Old Pediatric Literature,” Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal,  (), –. Settle, Elkanah: Threnodia Apollinaris. A Funeral Poem to the Memory of Dr Martin Lister, Late Physician to her Majesty (London, ). Shackelford, Joel: “Documenting the Factual and the Artifactual: Ole Worm and Public Knowledge,” Endeavour, ,  (), –. Shadwell, Thomas: The Virtuoso, ed. M.H. Nicolson and D.S. Rodes (Lincoln and London, ). Shapin, Steven: A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England (Chicago, ). Shapin, Steven, and Schaffer, Simon: Leviathan and Air Pump: Hobbes, Boyle and the Experimental Life (Princeton, ). Shapiro, Alan E.: Fits, Passions, and Paroxysms: Physics, Method and Chemistry and Newton’s Theories of Colored Bodies and Fits of Easy Reflection (Cambridge, ). Shaw, George Bernard: Man and Superman. A Comedy and a Philosophy (Westminster, ). Sheaham, James J.: History and Topography of Buckinghamshire (London, ). Sherley, Thomas: A Philosophical Essay (London, ). Sibbald, Robert: Scotia Illustrata sive Prodromus Historiæ Naturalis (Edinburgh, ). Siena, Kevin: “Pollution, Promiscuity, and the Pox: English Venereology and the Early Modern Medical Discourse on Social and Sexual Danger,” Journal of the History of Sexuality, ,  (April ), –. Simon, B.: “Leicestershire Schools, –,” British Journal of Educational Studies, ,  (November ), –. Simpson, A.D.C.: “Richard Reeve—The English ‘Campani’—and the Origins of the London Telescope-Making Tradition,” Vistas in Astronomy,  (), –. Simpson, William: A Discourse of the Sulphur-Bath at Knarsbrough in York-Shire (London, ). —— : Hydrologia Chymica or, The Chymical Anatomy of the Scarbrough, and Other Spaws in York-Shire: Wherein are Interspersed, Some Animadversions upon Dr Wittie’s Lately Published Treatise of the Scarbrough Spaw (London, ). —— : Zymologia Physica (London, ). Skippon, Philip: “An Account of a Journey Made Thro’ Part of the Low-Countries, Germany, Italy, and France,” in A Collection of Voyages and Travels (London, ). Skydsgaard, Morten A.: “It’s Probably in the Air: Medical Meteorology in Denmark, –,” Medical History, ,  (April ), –. Sloan, Kim: ‘A Noble Art’: Amateur Artists and Drawing Masters, c.1600–1800 (London, ).



bibliography

Sloane, Sir Hans: “An Account of Four Sorts of Strange Beans, Frequently Cast on Shoar on the Orkney Isles, with Some Conjectures about the Way of Their Being Brought Thither from Jamaica, where Three Sorts of Them Grow,” Philosophical Transactions,  ( - ), –. —— : Natural History of Jamaica (London, ). —— : A Voyage to the Islands Madeira, Barbados, Nieves, S. Christophers and Jamaica, with the Natural History of the Herbs and Trees, Four-Footed Beasts, Fishes, Birds, Insects, Reptiles, etc. (London, ). Smith, Emily Tennyson: Westminster Abbey (London, ). Smith, Pamela H.: The Body of the Artisan: Art and Experience in the Scientific Revolution (Chicago, ). Smith, Pamela H., and Schmidt, Benjamin: Making Knowledge in Early Modern Europe: Practices, Objects, and Texts, 1400–1800 (Chicago, ). Snider, Alvin: “Hard Frost, ,” Journal of Early Modern Cultural Studies, ,  (), –. Söderqvist, Thomas: The History and Poetics of Scientific Biography (Aldershot, ). Spatero, Michela, Meeks, Nigel, Bimson, M., Dawson, Aileen, and Ambers, Janet: “Early Porcelain in Seventeenth-Century England: Non-Destructive Examination of Two Jars from Burghley House,” British Museum Technical Research Bulletin,  (), pp. –. Sprat, Thomas: History of the Royal Society of London (London, ). Stafford, Richard: “An Extract of a Letter, Written to the Publisher from the Bermudas by Mr Richard Stafford; Concerning the Tides There, as Also Whales, Sperma Ceti, Strange Spiders-Webbs, Some Rare Vegetables, and the Longevity of the Inhabitants,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. Stainton, Lindsay, and White, Christopher: Drawing in England from Hilliard to Hogarth (London, ). Stallybrass, Peter: “Benjamin Franklin: Printed Corrections and Erasable Writing,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, ,  (December ), –. Stallybrass, Peter, and Jones, Ann Rosalind: “Fetishizing the Glove in Renaissance Europe,” Critical Inquiry ,  (), –. Stanley, A.P.D.D.: Sermons for Children, Including the Beatitudes and the Faithful Servant, Preached in Westminster Abbey (New York, ). Stearns, Raymond Phineas: Journey to Paris in the Year 1698 by Martin Lister (Urbana, ). —— : “Remarks upon the Introduction of Inoculation for Smallpox in England,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine,  (), –. Stegeman, Saskia: Patronage and Service in the Republic of Letters: The Network of Theodorus Janssonius Van Almeloveen (1687–1754) (Amsterdam and Utrecht, ). Steno, Nicolas: The Prodromus to a Dissertation Concerning Solids (London, ). Stoett, F.A.: “In zyn schulp kruipen,” in Nederlandsche spreekwoorden, spreekwijzen, uitdrukkingen en gezegden (Zutphen, –). Stott, R.M.: “The Library of Thomas Kincaid, a Seventeenth-Century Scottish Surgeon,” Canadian Bulletin of Medical History,  (), –. Stoye, John: English Travellers Abroad, – (New Haven and London, ). Strien, K. van: “A Medical Student at Leiden and Paris: William Sinclair (–): Part II,” Proceedings of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh,  (), –. Stroup, Alice: A Company of Scientists: Botany, Patronage, and Community at the Seventeenth-Century Parisian Royal Academy of Sciences (Berkeley, ). Strype, John: A Survey of the City of London and Westminster (London, ). Sturtevant, A.H.: “Inheritance of Direction of Coiling in Limnaea,” Science,  (), –.

bibliography



Swan, Claudia: “From Blowfish to Flower, Still Life Paintings: Classification and Its Images, circa ,” in Merchants and Marvels: Commerce, Science and Art in Early Modern Europe, ed. Pamela Smith and Paula Findlen (New York, ), –. Swann, Marjorie: Curiosities and Texts: The Culture of Collecting in Early Modern England (Philadelphia, ). Sweet, Rosemary: Antiquaries: The Discovery of the Past in Eighteenth-Century Britain (London, ). Sydenham, Thomas: The Whole Works of . . . Thomas Sydenham, ed. and trans. John Pechey (London, ). Theatrum chemicum, præcipuos selectorum auctorum tractatus de chemiæ et lapidis philosophici antiquitate, veritate, iure, præstantia et operationibus, continens,  vols (Strassburg, –). Thomas, H. Hamshaw: “Presidential Address: Experimental Plant Biology in PreLinnean Times,” Bulletin of the British Society for the History of Science, ,  (June ), –. Thomas, Keith: Rule and Misrule in the Schools of Early Modern England (Reading, ). Thomson, A.T.: Memoirs of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough,  vols (London, ). Thoresby, Ralph: Ducatus Leodiensis: or the Topography of the Ancient and Populous Town and Parish of Leedes . . . (London, ). —— : Thoresby’s Diary and Correspondence, ed. Joseph Hunter,  vols (London, ). Thorneycroft, W.E.: A Textbook of Inorganic Chemistry, Volume VI, Part Five: Antimony and Bismuth, ed. J. Newton Friend (London, ). Tilley, Christopher Y.: Metaphor and Material Culture (Oxford, ). Tillott, P.M.: A History of the County of York: The City of York, Victoria County History (London, ). Timbs, John: Club Life of London with Anecdotes of the Clubs, Coffee-Houses and Taverns of the Metropolis during the 17th, 18th and 19th Centuries in Two Vols (London, ). Tomalin, Claire: Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self (New York, ). Tomkeieff, S.I.: “The Basalt Lavas of the Giant’s Causeway District of Northern Ireland,” Bulletin of Vulcanology, ,  (), –. Topsell, Edward: Natural History of Four-Footed Beastes (London, ). Trengrove, Leonard: “Chemistry at the Royal Society of London in the Eighteenth Century—V. Dyes,” Annals of Science, ,  (), –. Turner, A.: “Robert Plot (–), st Keeper of the Ashmolean Musaeum,” Sphaera,  (), –. Turton, William: A Conchological Dictionary of the British Island (London, ). Tyers, P.A.: “Dales-Ware and Dales-Type Ware,” in Potsherd: Atlas of Roman Pottery. http://www.potsherd.uklinux.net/atlas/Ware/DALES. Tyler, Richard: Francis Place 1647–1728 (York, ). —— : “Francis Place’s Pottery,” English Ceramic Circle Transactions, ,  (), –. Unwin, Robert W.: “A Provincial Man of Science at Work: Martin Lister, F.R.S., and His Illustrators –,” Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, ,  (), –. Vai, Gian Battista, and Cavazza, William: “Ulisse Aldrovandi and the Origin of Geology and Science,” in The Origins of Geology in Italy, Geological Society of America Special Paper, , ed. Gian Battista Vai and W. Glen E. Caldwell (Boulder, ), –. Valle, Ellen: “Let Me Not Lose Yr Love & Friendship: The Negotiation of Priority and the Construction of a Scientific Identity in Seventeenth-Century Natural History,” in Discourse Perspectives on English, ed. Risto Hiltunen and Janne Skaffari (Philadelphia, ), –.



bibliography

Van Helmont, Jan Baptista: Opera omnia (Frankfurt, ). —— : Opuscula medica inaudita: I. De lithiasi. II. De febribus. III. De humoribus Galeni. IV. De peste (Amsterdam, ; reprinted Brussels, ). —— : Oriatricke or Physick Refined: The Common Errors Therein Refuted, and the Whole Art Reformed and Rectified, trans. John Chandler (London, ). —— : Ortus Medicinae (Amsterdam, ). Vaux, Sir Theodore de: “A Discourse of the Viper, and Some Other Poysons, Wrote by Sr. Theodore de Mayerne, after Discoursing with Mr Pontaeus,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. Vertue, George: A Description of the Works of the Ingenious Delineator and Engraver Wenceslaus Hollar, (London, ). Vine, Angus: In Defiance of Time: Antiquarian Writing in Early Modern England (Oxford, ). Vogel, Brant: “Notation in Action: The Transmission of Martin Lister’s Barometric Graph through the London-Oxford-Dublin Network,” paper presented at The Circulating Ideas in Seventeenth-Century Europe: Networks, Knowledge, and Forms Conference, The Royal Society, London,  July . Vokes, Harold E.: “Miocene Fossils of Maryland,” Maryland Department of Geology, Mines and Water Resources Bulletin, 20. Waddell, Mark A.: “The World, As It Might Be: Iconography and Probabilism in the Mundus Subterraneus of Athanasius Kircher,” Centaurus, ,  (), –. Wainer, Howard, and Velleman, Paul F.: “Statistical Graphics: Mapping the Pathways of Science,” Annual Review of Psychology,  (), –. Walford, Edward: Old and New London: A Narrative of Its History, Its People, and Its Places,  vols (London, Paris, and New York, ). Walker, J. Holland: Links with Old Nottingham: Historical Notes by J. Holland Walker, ed. P.G. Whatnall (London, ). Walker, Obadiah: Of Education Especially of Young Gentlemen (Oxford, ). Wallis, John: “A Note of Dr Wallis, Sent in a Letter of Febr  /. Upon Mr Lister’s Observation Concerning the Veins in Plants, Published in Number  of these Tracts,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), . Walmsley, Peter: Locke’s Essay and the Rhetoric of Science (London, ). Walton, Amy Catherine: Penelope and the Others; A Story of Five Country Children (London, ). Ward, John: The Lives of the Professors of Gresham College: To Which Is Prefixed the Life of the Founder, Sir Thomas Gresham. With an Appendix (London, ; New York and London, ). —— : Romano-British Buildings and Earthworks (London, ). Warneke, Sara: Images of the Educational Traveller in Early Modern England (Leiden, ). Warner, John: Warner’s Mathematical Exercises for the Use of Schools (London, ). Watson, Hugh: “The Names of the Two Common Species of Viviparus,” Proceedings of the Malacological Society,  (June ), –. Wear, Andrew: “The Popularization of Medicine in Early Modern England,” in The Popularization of Medicine 1650–1850, ed. Roy Porter (London, ), –. Webb, Wilfred M., and Sillem, Charles: The British Woodlice, Being a Monograph of the Terrestrial Isopod Crustacea Occurring in the British Islands (London, ). Webster, Charles: Paracelsus: Medicine, Magic and Mission at the End of Time (New Haven, ). —— : “The Recognition of Plant Sensitivity by English Botanists in the Seventeenth Century,” Isis, ,  (), –. Webster, John: Metallographia, Or a History of Metals (London, ). Weekly Memorials for the Ingenious (London, /).

bibliography



Welch, Martin: “The Foundation of the Ashmolean Museum,” in Tradescant’s Rarities, ed. Arthur MacGregor (Oxford, ), –. Wendt, Johan: “Bidrag til meteorologiske Bemærkninger, især over den Indflydelse, Vindene i vort Climat have som Sygdoms-Aarsager,” Nye Hygæa,  (), –. Westfall, Richard: Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton (Cambridge, ). Weston, W.J.: Yorkshire: North Riding. Cambridge County Geographies (Cambridge, ). Whatnall, P.G.: Links with Old Nottingham: Historical Notes by J. Holland Walker (Nottingham, ). Wheatcroft, Penelope: “Merely Rubbish: Disposal of Natural History Collections,” Museum Journal, ,  (), –. Whittet, T.D.: “Apothecaries and Their Lodgers: Their Part in the Development of the Sciences and Medicine,” Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine Supplement No. 2,  (), –. Wilkins, Guy L.: A Catalogue and Historical Account of the Sloane Shell Collection (London, ). —— : “Notes on the Historia Conchyliorum of Martin Lister (–),” Journal for the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History, ,  (), –. Willan, Robert: Miscellaneous Works Comprising An Inquiry into the Antiquity of the Small-Pox, Measles and Scarlet Fever, ed. Ashby Smith (London, ). Williams, Elizabeth A.: “Medicine in the Civic Life of Eighteenth-Century Montpellier,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine, ,  (), –. Willis, Thomas: The Remaining Medical Works of Thomas Willis (London, ). —— : Dr Willis’s Practice of Physick (London, ). Wilson, A. Esq.: “The Life and Reign of James, The First King of Great Britain,” in A Complete History of England: With the Lives of All the Kings and Queens Thereof . . . in Three Volumes (London, ). Wilson, Adrian: “A Memorial of Eleanor Willughby, a Seventeenth-Century Midwife,” in Women, Science and Medicine, 1500–1700, ed. Lynette Hunter and Sarah Hutton (Stroud, ), –. Wilson, Catherine: The Invisible World: Early Modern Philosophy and the Invention of the Microscope (Princeton, ). —— : “Microscopy,” in the Encyclopedia of the Scientific Revolution from Copernicus to Newton, ed. Wilbur Applebaum (New York, ), –. Wilson, George: Compleat Course of Chymistry (London, ). Wilson, Johnny: “Experts Bid to Decode Roman Altar,” The Shields Gazette,  October . Wilson, Philip K.: Surgery, Skin and Syphilis: Daniel Turner’s London (1667–1741) (Amsterdam, ). Winstanley, Denys Arthur: Unreformed Cambridge, a Study of the University in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, ). Withington, Phil: “Views from the Bridge: Revolution and Restoration in SeventeenthCentury York,” Past and Present,  (), –. Witsen, Nicholas: Nieuwe lantkaarte van het noorder en ooster deel van Asia en Europe strekkende van Nova Zemla tot China (n.p., ). —— : “Part of a Letter from Mr Witsen, Burgermaster of Amsterdam and F.R.S. to Dr Martin Lister . . . Concerning Some Late Observations in Nova Hollandia,” Philosophical Transactions,  (), –. Wittie, Robert: Scarborough Spaw: Or a Description of the Nature and Virtues of the Spaw at Scarborough, Yorkshire (York and London, ). Wolstenholme Gordon, and Piper, D.: Portraits: The Royal College of Physicians of London (London, ).



bibliography

à Wood, Anthony: Fasti Oxonienses (London, ). Wood, S.: “Martin Lister, Zoologist and Physician,” Annals of Medical History,  (), –. Woolf, Daniel: The Social Circulation of the Past: English Historical Culture, 1500–1730 (Oxford, ). Woodcox, D.C.: “Paris,” s.v. The Literature of Travel and Exploration: An Encyclopedia, ed. Jennifer Speake (London, ), –. Woodley, Jeremy D.: “Anne Lister, Illustrator of Martin Lister’s Historiae Conchyliorum (–),” Archives of Natural History, ,  (), –. Woodville, William: The History of the Inoculation of the Smallpox in Great Britain (London, ). Woodward, John: An Essay toward a Natural History of the Earth and Terrestrial Bodies, Especially Minerals: As Also of the Sea, Rivers, and Springs: With an Account of the Universal Deluge: And of the Effects That It Had upon the Earth (London, ). Worm, Ole: Musei Wormiani Historia (Leiden, ). Wu T-S, Lin Y-M, Mauma M., Pan D-J, Shingu T., Chen Y.P,. Hsu, H.-Y., Nakano T., and Lee, K.H.: “Antitumor Agents,  Kansuiphorins A and B, Two Novel Antileukemia Diterpine Esters from Euphorbia kansui,” Journal of Natural Products,  (), –. Wylde, C.H.: “Mr J.H. Fitzhenry’s Collection of Early French Pâte-Tendre,” The Burlington Magazine, ,  (June ), –. Yeo, Richard: “Between Memory and Paperbooks: Baconianism and Natural History in Seventeenth-Century England,” History of Science,  (), –. Zeldin, Theodore: An Intimate History of Humanity (London, ).

INDEX aer atmosphericus – Agricola, Georges , , n, , ,  alchemy alkahest ,  gur or bur ,  metallogenesis – Newton, Sir Isaac – secrecy ,  Simpson, William – vs chemistry , n wittering ,  Aldrovandi, Ulisse , –, , ,  Alington, Hugh (husband of Jane Lister)  Allone, Abel Tassin d’, see D’Allone, Abel Tassin Almeloveen, Theodorus Janssonius van ,  Apicius – De Humoribus  relationship with Martin Lister – Anne, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland , , , , , , ,  Anne of Denmark (consort of James VI and I) ,  anonymous authorship –, see also L.P. antiquarianism – Apicius – diet – garum  identity of , – Arbeia Fort ,  Martin Lister’s Roman altar – Aristotle ,  empirical observation – Martin Lister’s views on –,  Posterior Analytics ,  taxonomy , ,  Arnoldsbiggin, Yorkshire Lodge, William  Ashe, St George  Ashmole, Elias , ,  Ashmolean Museum , , , –, , 

Martin Lister’s patient –, ,  Ashmolean Museum n, , , ,  Ashmole, Elias ,  Book of Benefactors  Huddesford, William – Lhwyd, Edward , n, ,  Martin Lister as donor –, –, , , , , –, –, n, n, –,  Plot, Robert , , , –, –, ,  Aston, Francis , , –, , –, –, , n, ,  secretary of the Royal Society , , , –,  Aubrey, John ,  Brief Lives , – Stonehenge  Ausich, William J.  Aylesbury Vale, Buckinghamshire  Bacon, Francis , ,  Instauratio magna ,  Bacon, Nathaniel  Badger, John  Banister, John –, , ,  Bank of England Martin Lister as original subscriber ,  Martin Lister’s annuities for his family , ,  Barbados ,  barite n as Derbyshire cawk ,  in glass of antimony  role in Newton’s telescopes  Barri, Giacomo  Bartholin, Rasmus ,  Bayulay, Charles  Beale, John ,  Beaumont, Dr John  Bede  Bedford, Duke of  Bedford, Francis ,  Bedford, Reverend William 394 Behn, Aphra 387 Belasyse, Thomas 

466

index

Bentinck, William (Lord Portland) , , , ,  Bentley, Richard  Berkeley, Lord George  Berward, Christian  Birch, Thomas , , –, ,  Bobart, Jacob  Boë, Sylvius (Franciscus) de le , , – Boerhaave, Hermann  Boethius  Book of Benefactors, see Ashmolean Museum Bosschaert, Ambrosius  Boucot, Nocholas  Boyle, Charles  Boyle, Robert , , , , , –, , , , , –, –, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,  Brahe, Tycho  Bralesford, Reverend Humphrey  Bramley, Andrew  Bramley, Ruth  brawn ,  Briercliffe, John  Briggs, Thomas , , , –, , , – as junior bursar  debts n Martin Lister’s fellowship –,  Bristow, John  Brockliss, Lawrence  Brooke, John , , ,  Brouncker, William (second Viscount Brouncker of Lyons)  Browne, Edward , , n Browne, Thomas , , , , ,  Bruce, Robert (second Earl of Elgin and first Earl of Ailesbury)  Buckingham, Duke of, see Villiers, George Bude, Guillaume  Bulkeley, Sir Richard , , n,  Burghers, Michael –, ,  Burke, Peter  Burnet, Thomas – Burwell –, , , , , , , ,  Burwell Park , , , , , , , –

Bushnell, Rebecca  Butterfield, Michael ,  cabinets of curiosities , , , , , , , , ,  Camden, William , , n Caracalla – Cardano, Giordano , ,  Carleton-in-Craven , , , ,  Carr, Jeffrey , , , , n, , , , n, , ,  Cavendish, Lady Catherine  cawk , , –, , , –, , – and glass of antimony , – Cay, Jabez  Cecil, Robert  Charles I (King of England, Scotland, and Ireland) , , , –, , ,  Charles II (King of England, Scotland, and Ireland) , , , , –,  autopsy – Goddard’s drops – levée  Charleton, Walter , , , ,  Charlett, Arthur , ,  Cheanitz, J.H.  chemical medicine , , , , , ,  chemistry , , , , , –, , , , –, , , , , –, –, –, –, , , –,  vs alchemy , n Cheyne, George  Chichester  Chiffinch, William  Child, Emma ,  Child, Sir Josiah , , ,  Churchill, John (Duke of Marlborough) , – Churchill, Sarah (Duchess of Marlborough) , , , , ,  letters  relationship with Jane Lister  relationship with Martin Lister  Clements, Henry  Clucas, Stephen 

index Columna, Fabii  Combe Hill  Committee for the Advance of Money  Cook, Harold J. , , ,  Cooper, Alix  Coorte, Adriaen  Courten, William ,  Covent Garden ,  Coxe, Daniel , ,  Craven Fault ,  Crew, Sir Thomas , ,  crinoid fossils , , –, , , , , ,  Lindisfarne – John Ray , , , –, ,  rosary beads  Saint Cuthbert ,  sea lilies , , – theories of fossilization , –, , , , – Croone, William ,  Cullen, Jane –, , , see Lister, Martin, marriage to Jane Cullen, Richard  Culpepper, Nicholas , , ,  Cuthbert, Saint –,  D’Allone, Abel Tassin  Dairval, Charles-César Baudelot de ,  Darwin, Charles , ,  Daston, Lorraine ,  Dear, Peter  Denis, Jean ,  Dent, Peter  Denton, Susan  Denton, Thomas  Derham, William , n,  Descartes, René ,  Dioscorides, Pedanius ,  doctors’ canes  Drapentier, Jan  Driver, Samuel – Drouyn, Abbé Philippe  Du Clos, Samuel Cottereau , , ,  Dublin Philosophical Society ,  Duchesne, Joseph  duelech – Duffey, Eric  Duverney, Joseph-Guichard , 

467

Dwight, John ,  dyes and colours –, ,  black resin ,  cochineal , , ,  indigo ,  kermes ,  East Lindsey District Council ,  Eglisham, George ,  engraving , , , , , –, , , , , , , –, , , , see also Michael Burghers, Anna and Susanna Lister, Martin Lister, William Lodge, and Francis Place epistolary calibration – Epsom , , – Eugalenus  Evans, Owen  Evelyn, John , , , , , , ,  mezzotint  wax making  winter of  – Fagon, Guy Crescent  Farmery, Anne  Farmery, John  Feingold, Mordechai  Fell, John, bishop of Oxford , , , ,  fermentation theory of disease –, , –, , , ,  Ferrand family  Findlen, Paula , ,  Fioravanti, Leonard  Fisher, John and Samuel  Flamsteed, John , ,  formic acid , , ,  fossils ammonites , ,  brachiopods , , n crinoids , , , –, , , , , , , , , , ,  glossopetrae  Fothergill, John  Friars Head, Winterburn  Friend, John  Fuller, Samuel –,  funeral poem, see Settle, Elkanah Gale, Miles ,  Gale, Thomas 

468

index

Galen , , , , , , –, ,  Galenism , , , , ,  garum ,  Gascoigne, John  Geoffroy, Étienne François  George, Prince of Denmark  Gesner, Conrad , ,  Geta – Gheerhaerts the younger, Marcus ,  Giant’s Causeway  Gilbert, Adrian  Gilbert, William , , ,  glass of antimony –, , – glass painting , ,  Glauber, Johann Rudolph ,  gloves , , , ,  Goad, John  Goddard’s drops – Goedaert, Johannes , n, ,  Goldgar, Anne  Golinski, Jan  Grasseus, Johann – Arca arcani  metallogenesis  Greenwich Observatory  Gregory, George , – Gregory, Susanna (Martin Lister’s sister) ,  Grew, Nehemiah , , ,  Anatomy of Plants – dispute with Martin Lister , , , –,  Royal Society Repository ,  secretary of Royal Society –, – Grove, Robert ,  Guerrini, Anita n gur or bur , , ,  Gyles, Edmund  Gyles, Henry –, , , , –,  glass painting ,  Martin Lister’s patronage ,  monster  York virtuoso  Hall, Marie Boas  Halley, Edmund  Hamilton, Sir George  Harley, Basil  Harris, John  Harris, John –

Hartopp, Dorothy n, , n Hartopp, Sir William n,  Harvey, William , , ,  Havers, Clopton , ,  helioscope – helix apsersa, see snails helix lapicida, see snails helix pomatia, see snails Henrietta Maria (Queen of England, Scotland, and Ireland, consort of Charles I)  Herbert, Mary Sidney (Countess of Pembroke)  Herbert, William  Heywood, Oliver  Highmore, Nathaniel ,  Hilliard, Nicholas  Hilman, John  Hippocrates , ,  Hippocratic revival –,  barometric pressure – environmental constitutions ,  Sydenham, Thomas ,  weather  Historia Piscium , , –, –,  Historiae Animalium , , , –, , , , , , ,  “Histories of Trades”  Hodgson, Noah – hoglice  Hollands Leaguer  Hollar, Wenceslaus , –,  Holloway, Sarah (wife of Alexander Lister)  Hooke, Robert , , , , , , , , , , , , –, –, , , ,  Micrographia , ,  Philosophical Collections , ,  secretary of Royal Society  Hoskins, Sir John  Howlett, Samuel  Huddesford, William Historiae Conchyliorum  Martin Lister’s papers – Hugo, Victor  Hulse, Edward , , , , ,  Humfrey, Mr , ,  Hummelberger, Gabriel 404, 405

index Hungarian vitriol 216 Hunter, Lynette 111 Hunter, Michael , , n, ,  Hunyades, Johannes Banfi  Huygens, Christian ,  Hyde, Edward (Earl of Clarendon)  iatrochemistry , , , , –, , ,  iguana  Iliffe, Robert ,  insects ants , n, , , ,  cicindela (tiger beetles) – eruca  gall wasps ,  ichneumons , , ,  insensible perspiration Sanctorius, Sanctorio – tonus – iron  Method for the History of Iron , ,  mining –,  pyrites , , –, –, –, , – Isle of Sheppey  Islebian fish stones  Jamaica ,  James I (King of England, Scotland, and Ireland) , , –,  James II (King of England, Scotland, and Ireland) , ,  Jardin du Roi  Jardine, Lisa n Jennings, Frances  Jennings, Sarah, see Churchill, Sarah Duchess of Marlborough Jervas, Charles ,  Jessop, Francis , , , , , –, , , –, , – Johns, Adrian –, ,  Johnson, Cornelius –, n Johnson, Samuel  Johnston, Cudworth – Johnston, Nathaniel , , ,  Joly, Dr , n,  Joncquet, Dionys  Jones, Ann Rosalind  Jones, Colin  Jones, Dr John 

469

Journey to Paris –, –,  satire – William King –, – Jurin, James  Keats, John  Kincaid, Thomas  King, Edmund – King, Gregory  King, William ,  Bentley, Richard  Boyle, Charles  Johnson, Samuel  satiric techniques –, ,  works Art of Cookery , , – Journey to London – The Transactioneer  Kircher, Athanasius Mundus Subterraneus , –,  spontaneous generation , ,  Kirke, Thomas , , , , , ,  Kneller, Sir Godfrey ,  Knowler, Sir Gilbert  Knowler, Susanna (grand-daughter of Martin Lister)  L.P. –, – pen name of Martin Lister , – see also anonymous authorship Lambert, Frances (cousin of Sir Martin Lister, Martin Lister’s father)  Lambert, John, – Lambert, John (Martin Lister’s second cousin) ,  Lan, N. Gary  Langford, T. – Langius, Carolus  lapis judaica  Latour, Bruno  Leeuwenhoek, Antony van , , ,  engravings of, by Martin Lister’s daughters , ,  histology of wood ,  microscope , ,  salts , ,  Le Févre, Nicaise ,  Leland, John  Leonhard, Karin  Levine, Joseph , , 

470

index

Lewis, Rhodri ,  Lhwyd, Edward , , , , , , –, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,  Ashmolean n, , ,  fossil specimens , n mentor to Alexander Lister –,  works Lithophylacii Britannica Ichnographia  limning ,  Lindisfarne – Linnaeus, Carl , , , , , , , ,  Linus, Francis  liquamen  Lister family arms  Lister, Alexander (son of Martin Lister) , , , , , , –, ,  poor inheritance ,  marriage to Sarah Holloway  Lister, Anna (daughter of Martin Lister) –, , , –, –, , , , , , , , , ,  Lister, Lady Anne (wife of Sir Martin Lister)  Lister, Anne (sister of Martin Lister)  Lister, Barbara (daughter of Martin Lister) , ,  Lister, Barbara (sister of Martin Lister)  Lister, Charles (nephew of Martin Lister)  Lister, Dorothy (Martin Lister’s daughter) , ,  Lister, Edward (great uncle of Martin Lister) – Lister, Frances (daughter of Martin Lister) , –,  poor inheritance  Lister, Jane (Martin Lister’s daughter)  Lister, Jane (sister of Martin Lister) –, , , , , – Allington, Jane ,  Thynne, Jane – Lister, Joseph (relative of Martin Lister) – Lister, Captain Martin (uncle of Martin Lister) , 

Lister, Martin account books ,  Anne, Queen , , , – antiquarian interests , , , , –, , , –,  arachnology , , –, , , , , , – Cambridge , , –, –, , , , –,  casebooks , –, , , , , ,  Charles II – childhood –, –, – children –, , , , , , , , –,  collector –, , –, , –, ,  conchology , –, –, – death  death of daughter, Jane Lister – degree, University of Oxford , , , , ,  digestion, views on , n, – donor , –, , , , , –, , –, , , , n, , ,  education  Melton Mowbray Grammar School – St John’s College, Cambridge –, –, ,  Montpellier – engravings , , –, , , –, , –, , , , , , , , –, , , ,  eulogy – fossilization, theories on , –,  historgram – illness , , , ,  asthma , , , , , , , ,  hurt arm  kidney stones , , , ,  the stone , ,  Lhwyd, relationship with , –,  manuscripts adversaria n, , , , , , 

index “A Method for the History of Iron” , ,  pocket notebook , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,  marriage to Hannah Parkinson –, see also Parkinson, Hannah marriage to Jane Cullen –, ,  Montpellier (–) – natural history, views on , , , –, , , , , , , , ,  Paris (/) , , , – patients , –, –, , , , , , , , , ,  portrait – pottery, understanding of – prescriptions , , , ,  rabies (hydrophobia), views on ,  Ray, relationship with –, –, –, –, –, , , , , –,  residences Burwell , , , , , , – Cambridge –, , , , , , ,  Carleton-in-Craven –,  Epsom , , ,  garden at Epsom , – Nottingham  Old Palace Yard, Westminster –,  York  Micklegate , , ,  Stonegate – Roman altars , –, , n Roman pottery , ,  royal physician , , , ,  Royal Society , , , –, , –, ,  satire , , –, –, –, –,  smallpox, views on , , , , , –, ,  syphilis, views on , , , –, – variolation ,  will  works

471

Apicius , –, ,  commentary on Hippocrates ,  commentary on Sanctorius  De Fontibus , , , , , , , , –, , , , , , , , , ,  De Humoribus –, –, –,  Exercitatio Anatomica in qua de Cochleis , , , , , , , , –, ,  Historiae Animalium , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,  Historiae Conchyliorum , –, , , –, , –, –, , –, –, , , n, , n,  Journey to Paris , , –, ,  Letters and other mixt discourses  Octo Exercitationes medicinales n,  On Insects , , ,  Philosophical Transactions , , , , , –, , , , , , , –, , , , , , , –, , , , , –, , , , , , , –, , , , ,  Sex Exercitationes medicinales , , –, , , , ,  stratigraphic map , , – Tractatus de Araneis , , , ,  Lister, Sir Martin, father of Martin Lister , , , , –, , , , , –,  John Lambert  Long Parliament  member of Parliament ,  Parliamentary militia  relationship with Thomas Fairfax , ,  Temple, Susanna, wife, mother of Martin Lister , , –, –, , , –, 

472

index

Wenman, Mary, wife  Lister, Sir Matthew, great-uncle of Martin Lister affair with countess of Pembroke – education of Martin Lister ,  eye salve  politics –,  satire – Lister, Matthew, brother of Martin Lister ,  Lister Michael, son of Martin Lister death of  Lister, Richard, half-brother of Martin Lister ,  Lister, Susanna, daughter of Martin Lister –, , , , –, , , , , , , , , ,  Lister, Susanna, mother of Martin Lister , , –, –, , , ,  Lister, Susanna, sister of Martin Lister , and see Gregory, Susanna Lister, William, brother of Martin Lister ,  lixivium  Lloyd, John  Locke, John n–n, – Lodge, William , , , , , ,  Arnoldsbiggin, Yorkshire  friendship with Francis Place  scientific illustrations for Martin Lister –, –, , , , ,  unreliability , ,  Long Parliament  Lowther, Sir John  Lux, David  Lyell, Charles , –,  Maat, Jaap  MacGregor, Arthur  Major, Johann Daniel  Malham Cover, Yorkshire ,  Malpighi, Marcello , ,  De Bombyce  plant circulation controversy , –, –,  Mangol, Pierre  mannerism  Marchand, Leon  Marlborough, Duchess of, see Churchill, Sarah

Marlborough, Duke of, see Churchill, John Martini, F.W.  Mathesius, Johann  Mayerne, Sir Theodore Turquet de , , , , ,  Mead, Richard , , , , – medical meteorology , – medicaments aloe ,  antimony – archangelica officinalis (angelica)  asperula (woodruff)  gallium luteum (ladies’ bedstraw)  Goddard’s drops  guyac, see Peruvian balsam harts’ horn  laudanum  lemons  lesser spurge  mercuris dulcis (calomel)  mercury , , , ,  mithridate, see also theriac  monodon monocerous (narwhal)  opium ,  Peruvian balsam , ,  Peruvian bark  potentilla reptans (cinquefoil)  pulmentarium ad ventrum  rhubarb  ‘Royal Styptic Liquor’ – sal prunella  sales conditos ad multa  St John’s wort  theriac , ,  trachelium (Canterbury bells)  viper fat ,  vitriol of copper  wood spurge  zinc oxide ,  Mellor, J.W.  Melton Mowbray  Grammar school – Barwick, Mr  Humfrey, Mr  Martin Lister’s education  Stokes, Henry –,  Merrett, Christopher  metallogenesis , , –, ,  mezzotint , , –, , , 

index microscopes , , , , , ,  Hooke  Leeuwenhoek microscopes , , ,  observations by Martin Lister’s daughters , – pocket microscopes  Middleton Hall, Warwickshire ,  Millington, Sir Thomas ,  Milne, James, see Moulins, James mine damps ,  Moffet, Thomas  Molyneux, Thomas – Molyneux, William ,  Montague, Charles, Earl of Halifax  Montpellier – Bacon, Nathaniel  Bruce, Robert, Earl of Ailesbury  Crew, Sir Thomas , ,  Croone, William ,  dissections – fossils – Havers, Clopton  Howlett, Samuel ,  Jessop, Francis , ,  Joly, Dr  Joncquet, Dionys  Lections Achevées, or reading list ,  Balzac, Jean-Louis Guez de ,  Bary, R.  Corneille  De Callières  Faret  Scarron ,  Martin Lister’s diary ,  Martin Lister’s observations in natural history viniculture –,  waxmaking – Martin Lister’s voyage from – Martin Lister’s voyage to – medical school –, – Ray, John , – regius professors  Royal Gardens  Sampson, Henry  Skippon, Philip n, n, , , , – Steno, Nicholas , , – Vivian, Peter ,  Moore, Sir Jonas 

473

Moore, Keith  More, Henry  mortarium  Morton, John  Moseley, Adam – Mouffet, Thomas –, ,  Moulins, James , – Moxon, Joseph  Multangular Tower, York  ashlars  bricks , ,  didoron  Vitruvius , ,  Mungello, David  Murgatroyd family – Musgrave, William  Needham, Walter  Neumann, Caspar  New College, Oxford  Newman, William  Newton, Isaac , , , , , , , ,  alchemy ,  antimony –, ,  cawk , , , , ,  gur  metalologenesis ,  Opticks ,  relationship with Martin Lister , ,  response to Francis Linus n Stokes, Henry ,  telescope –,  telescopic mirrors , –, ,  Nieuhof, Jan  nitrum calcarium –, , ,  North America , , –, , , – nudus aer  offa ,  Ogilby, John  Ogilvie, Brian ,  Old Palace Yard, Westminster –, ,  Oldenburg, Henry , , , , , –,  ballooning spider controversy , – death  letters from Martin Lister , , –, , , , , , 

474

index

letters to Martin Lister , , , , , ,  plant circulation controversy –, , , , , , , –,  Royal Society, early years  secretary of Royal Society  opiates  Oriel College, Oxford ,  Oviedo, Gonzalo Fernández de –,  Oxford Philosophical Society  oysters , ,  Paman, Henry , ,  bibliophilia  Martin Lister’s tutor , , – politics – Papin, Denis  Paracelsus ,  Paracelsian medicine , , , ,  Parker, John ,  Parker, Robert  Parkinson, Anne (née Ellis) , n Parkinson, Hannah , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,  Parkinson, John , , ,  Parkinson, Thomas , ,  Parrott, Stonier  patina  Peace of Ryswick , ,  Peacham, Henry  Pembroke, Countess of, see Herbert, Mary Sidney Penny, Thomas , ,  Pepys, Samuel , – cutting for the stone – Historia Piscium ,  Peter, John  Petiver, James , , ,  petrifaction , , , , , , , , , – gallstones  Lough Neagh  pyrites  petrified wood , ,  Petty, William , , –n, ,  Philo-Patriae, Eugenius Succinct description of France  Piso, Willem  Pitcairne, Archibald , , , , 

Place, Francis , , , , , , ,  as York virtuoso ,  friendship with William Lodge ,  landscapes  pottery , –,  scientific illustrations for Martin Lister , , , , , , , , , , , ,  Place, John  Plague (of ), Great ,  plant anatomy – Grew, Nehemiah , , ,  parenchyma , – “veins” , , , , , , – plant circulation controversy – archeus  Boë, Sylvius de le  conatus  fermentation , , Grew, Nehemiah , –,  ligature experiments , , ,  Malpighi, Marcello , –, –,  Martin Lister –, , –, –, , – sap –, –, , , , ,  Van Helmont, Johann – Wallis, John – Willis, Thomas – Plant species alchemilla vulgaris (Lady’s mantle)  atractilis gummifera (thistle)  carex  chelidonium majus (tetterwort)  euphorbia lathyris (caper spurge)  hieracium perpropinquum (hawkweed)  lactuca (wild lettuce)  lenticula marina (sea lentil or Sargasso weed)  twayblade orchid  valeriana greca (Polemonium caeruleum or Jacob’s ladder)  Plaxton, George ,  Pliny ,  Martin Lister’s views on , , , , ,  Natural History , , , , 

index Plot, Robert , , , , , , , , ,  involvement in Historia Piscium , –, , , ,  keeper of Ashmolean Museum , –, , ,  Natural History of Oxfordshire , , , ,  Oxford Philosophical Society  relationship with Martin Lister  secretary of Royal Society , , ,  Poole, William  porcelain – Francis Place , ,  Portland, Earl of, see Bentinck, William Post Boy, see Roper, Abel Principe, Lawrence , ,  Prior, Matthew , ,  priority of discovery , , , , , , ,  Prodromus , ,  pyrites , , , , – , , ,  chemistry –, ,  fossils , ,  gallstones , – magnetism , –, – spa waters , , –,  vitriol , , , , ,  wittering , , , , , , , , , , n, ,  Railton, Thomas  Ray, John Act of Uniformity s ballooning spider controversy –, – crinoids fossils , , , –, –,  fossilization, theories of –,  journey to Montpellier , – marriage to Margaret Oakley  relationship with Martin Lister –, –, –, –, –, , , , , –,  sexual dysfunction – Wilkin’s universal language ,  works Cambridge Catalogue of Plants ,  English Catalogue of Plants , , , , , , , 

475

Historia Piscium , , –, – Historia Plantarum –,  Redi, Francesco , , ,  spontaneous generation ,  vipers ,  Republic of Letters , , ,  Reynolds, Andy  Rhazes –, ,  Robinson, Tancred , , , , , , , , , , , , , , n, , , , ,  Roche, David  Rondelet, Guillaume ,  Roper, Abel  Post Boy  Rose, William, see William Rose case Rossi, Paolo  Rowland, John  Royal College of Physicians , , , , , , , , , ,  Royal Society –, –, –, , –, , , , , , , , , n, , , , , ,  collections ,  Historia Piscium , , –, – histories of trades  History of the Royal Society (Sprat, ) , ,  History of the Royal Society of London [1660–1687] (Birch, –) , , –,  Martin Lister as member of council , , , –, , –, ,  Martin Lister’s views on , , , , ,  Philosophical Transactions , , –, , –, , , , ,  repository , , , , , ,  Robert Hooke , , –,  Rupert of Bavaria, Prince ,  salt –, , , –, , , , , , , –, , , , , , –, , –, , , , , – Sampson, Henry  Sanctorius, Sanctorio – insensible perspiration – tonus –

476

index

sap, motion of –,  conatus  ligature experiments , , , , –, – plant bleeding , , , , ,  plant circulation controversy – Scaliger, Julius  Schaffer, Simon 104, 248 Scharf, Sara 118, 317 Scrinium Listerianum 267, 273 scurvy , , ,  Secret Treaty of Dover  Sendivogius, Michael  Septimus Severus  Settle, Elkanah – Shadwell, Thomas , –,  Shapin, Steven , , , ,  Shaw, George Bernard  shells Australian nautilus  chirality ,  concha persica clavicula radiate  concha veneris ,  conchology, standards  conus marmoreus (marbled cone) ,  Earl of Arundel’s collection ,  hippopus hippopus (bear paw clam) , ,  Historiae Conchyliorum , , , , , , , , –, , , , , , , ,  and humanism – Rembrandt’s depiction ,  strombus listeri  viviparus  Wenceslaus Hollar’s depiction ,  Sherard, James  Sherard, William ,  Sibbald, Robert ,  Simpson, William – rivalry with Martin Lister , – works Hydrologia Chymica  Zymologia physica ,  sinistral shells –, , ,  Historiae Conchyliorum ,  snail kings  Skippon, Philip n, n, , , , , , 

An Account of a Journey n journey to Montpellier – Slare, Frederick , ,  Sloan, Kim  Sloane, Hans , n, , , n, , , , , , , ,  smallpox , , , , , , , –, , –, , , –,  Smith, Edward – Smith, Thomas –, –, , – Smythson, Robert  snails clausiliidae (door snails) ,  cyclostoma elegans ,  euconulus fulvus  helix aspersa ,  helix lapicida  helix pomatia  hermaphrodites  hyalinia fulva  limax cinereus maximus  limax cinereus parvus  obba listeri  sinistral –, , , , , ,  Society of Antiquaries  Society of Apothecaries – Somers, Lord John ,  Sorbière, Samuel  spiders ballooning spider controversy –, –, ,  classification and taxonomy , – epigyne  Hulse, Edward , , , , ,  mating  Mouffet, Thomas –, ,  palps  Penny, Thomas , ,  species linyphiidae  opiliones or shepherd spiders – pachygnatha listeri  tegenaria duellica  Stafford, Richard  webs ,  Sprat, Thomas , ,  St John the Evangelist, Radclive , , , n

index St John’s College, Cambridge ,  Briggs, Thomas , , –,  Martin Lister’s education , –, ,  Martin Lister’s fellowship , , , –,  Paman, Henry –, –,  St Mary’s Parish Church, Melton Mowbray ,  St Mary’s Parish Church, Thorpe Arnold  St Stephen’s Church, Walbrook, London  Stafford, Richard  Stahl, George ,  Stallybrass, Peter  Stanley, Arthur  Stearns, Raymond , , n, n Steensen, Nicholas, see Steno, Nicholas Steno, Nicholas , , –, ,  dissections – Prodromus , ,  theories of fossilization –,  Stillingfleet, Edward  Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire ,  Stokes, Henry – Newton, Isaac ,  Sturdy, John , ,  Succinct Description of France  Philo-Patriae, Eugenius  Swammerdam, Jan , –, n, – Swift, Jonathan  Sydenham, Thomas , , , , ,  Tanner, Thomas – tartar – tartar emetic – Tempest, Pierce , ,  Temple Coffee House ,  Temple Coffee House Botanic Club –, ,  Temple, James  Temple, Sir John  Temple, Susanna, mother of Martin Lister , –, , see also Lister, Susanna Theophrastus ,  Thoresby, Ralph , , , , , n, , , ,  Thorpe Arnold, Leicestershire , , , , , , , 

477

Thynne, Jane (née Lister) –, see also Lister, Jane, Martin Lister’s sister Thynne, John  Timoni, Emanual  Toland, John  Torinus, Albinus ,  Tournefort, Joseph Pitton de , ,  Townes, Thomas  Tradescant, John, the elder, and John, the younger ,  Ashmolean –,  The Ark , , , n Trinity College, Cambridge natural philosophers  John Ray – Tufton, Thomas, sixth Earl of Thanet  University College, Oxford ,  University of Oxford , , , , ,  Bodleian Library  Unwin, Robert  Valentine, Basil , , ,  Valla, Lorenzo  Van Campen, Christophorus  Van Helmont, Johannes –, , , ,  chemistry , ,  duelech  gallstones – Martin Lister’s views on , , , , ,  offa ,  vitriol  works De Lithiasi  Oriatricke or Physick Refined  Vernon, James  Vertue, George  Villermont, Cabart de  Villiers, George, first duke of Buckingham ,  vitriol , , , , , –, , –, , , , , ,  oil of , ,  Vivian, Peter ,  Vlamingh, Captain William  Volcanoes  Kircher, Athanasius n, –, 

478

index

Martin Lister’s theories of eruption  Mount Versuvius  Mundus subterraneus –,  pyrites , ,  von Somer II, Paul , , ,  Wain, Captain  Wallis, John  plant circulation controversy – snails  War of Devolution  Ward, John  Ward, Seth  Warner, John ,  Webster, John , , –, , , , ,  Wilkins, Guy –,  Wilkins, John , , , , , , , , ,  Essay Towards a Universal Character , ,  Wilkins, Joseph  William III, King of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and Prince of Orange , , , ,  William Rose case  Williamson, Sir John  Willis, Thomas , , , –, –, , , , , , , ,  Willisel, Thomas  Willoughby, Francis , , – death ,  Middleton Hall, Warwickshire n, ,  ornithology ,  relationship with Martin Lister , , ,  relationship with Ray , , , , , –, , ,  Wollaton Hall, Nottinghamshire – works Historia Piscium , , , , – History of Birds , , ,  History of Insects , 

Willoughby, Thomas , , –, ,  Wills, John  Wilson, Catherine  wine –, , , , , , , , , , , ,  winter of / –,  barometer –, – Evelyn, John – frost fair ,  Peter, John  medical effects – Winterburn ,  Witsen, Nicholas Cornelisz  Australian marsupial  Australian nautilus – Wittie, Robert  spa waters – York Corporation of Physicians  Wollaton Hall, Nottinghamshire n, – Wood, Anthony à ,  Woodley, Jeremy ,  Woodward, John , , , , –, –, , –, – Worm, Ole , –, ,  Wotton, Edward ,  Wotton, William  Wren, Christopher , , ,  Wroth, Mary – York Micklegate Bar ,  Multangular Tower ,  population  Stonegate  trade – York Corporation of Physicians , ,  York virtuosi  Gyles, Henry , , ,  Jessop, Francis  Johnston, Nathaniel ,  Kirke, Thomas ,  Lodge, William  Place, Francis  Place, John  Thoresby, Ralph 