Running After Quacks and Mountebanks…

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Running After Quacks and Mountebanks… Prog Health Sci 2012, Vol 2 , No1 Running quacks mountebanks Running after quacks and mountebanks… Ohry A.1*, Tsafrir J.2 1 Rehabilitation Medicine, Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University 2 Medical Librarian ABSTRACT __________________________________________________________________________________________ The phenomenon of quackery is reviewed, and that some treatments considered unacceptable in the illustrated with examples from history, the literature past have sometimes proved their efficacy over and the present. A distinction is drawn between time, and should not always be dismissed out of impostors or charlatans, and unorthodox but hand. professional healers. The lessons drawn to suggest Key words: quackery, professional healers, history __________________________________________________________________________________________ *Corresponding author: Rehabilitation Medicine Sackler Faculty of Medicine Tel Aviv University Private address: P.O. Box 2342 Savyon 56530, Israel E-mail: [email protected] (Avi Ohry) Received: 9.12.2012 Accepted: 24.03.2012 Progress in Health Sciences Vol. 2(1) 2012 pp 171-174. © Medical University of Bialystok, Poland 171 Prog Health Sci 2012, Vol 2 , No1 Running quacks mountebanks When Daniel Defoe wrote about "running manipulative surgeon," Sir Herbert Atkinson- after quacks and mountebanks for medicines and Barker [1869-1950], who achieved fame and remedies" in "A Journal of the Plague Year"(1) he recognition, although he was not medically distinguished clearly between quacks and "real qualified. On his return to England after some doctors." The Oxford English Dictionary (2) years in Canada, he became apprenticed to his defines quack: "abbreviation of quacksalver. i: an cousin John Atkinson, who worked as a bonesetter, ignorant pretender to medical skill; one who boasts a profession he had learnt from the famous Robert to have a knowledge of wonderful remedies; an Howard Hutton. The ambitious Herbert soon empiric or impostor in medicine; ii: one who opened his own "clinics", when he was only 21, in professes a knowledge or skill concerning subjects Glasgow and Manchester. He had a natural talent, of which he is ignorant; iii: as quack-doctor; to a strong personality, total devotion and loyalty to quack is to play the quack; to talk pretentiously his patients. He also knew exactly where not to and ignorantly, like a quack, to puff or palm off touch and manipulate. The medical and surgical with fraudulent and boastful pretensions, as in establishment despised him, mainly because he quack-medicine; to treat after the fashion of a had used commercial and business methods to quack; to administer quack medicines; to seek to promote his clinics. remedy by empirical or ignorant treatment." In 1911, Dr F W Axham was struck from "Quack" is also the harsh cry of a duck, and the the physicians' register because he gave anesthesia term may have been used to denote something for Mr. Barker. However, many celebrities were noisy or boastful [3] treated successfully by him, and an article Quackery is generally equated with published in 1912 in The Times, defended Mr. charlatanry: it is said that one Latan, a famous Barker's successes after many doctors had failed, quack, used to go about Paris in a splendid under the title: "What is a quack?" The general charabanc, in which he had a traveling dispensary. public stood firmly behind Mr. Barker. When war A man with a horn announced the approach of this broke out, the establishment refused to call Barker magnate, and the delighted sightseers used to cry to treat soldiers. The question was discussed in out "Voila le Char de Latan!" In Italian, the term is Parliament and even the Archbishop of Canterbury ciarlatano, a babbler or quack [4]. And was involved. Some years passed, and in 1926 "mountebank"? This was the bank or bench on Herbert Barker was knighted. Only then did Sir which shopkeepers of your displayed their goods - Herbert retire to the Channel Islands. The British street vendors used to mount on their bank to Orthopaedic Association invited him in 1936 to patter to the public. show his expertise at St Thomas' Hospital, as In the "Dictionary of Phrases and Fables" reported in The Lancet on 27/2/1937. In 1941 he [4] we see also: Rock, a quack: so-called after a was offered a post at Noble's Hospital, Isle of Man, certain Mr. Rock, a well-known quack who as a Manipulative Surgeon. No other bonesetter, practiced during the reign of Queen Anne. The "quack," feldsher or other non-medically qualified physician-poet George Crabbe wrote of him: "Oh, person ever equaled his fame. when his nerves had once received a shock, Sir It should be pointed out that even the Isaac Newton might have gone to Rock" Katerfelto "feldshers", those practitioners of medicine with is another generic name for a quack or charlatan. below-university level education, but well-trained, He was a celebrated "influenza doctor." A tall wrote an important and illustrious chapter in the man, who dressed in a long black gown and square history of medicine [8]. The story of 'physicians' or cap, he exhibited his solar microscope in London surgeons' assistants: the blood-letters, the barber- in 1782, and gave rise to tremendous excitement surgeons, midwives, "wundartz", and others, has by showing the infusioria of (muddy) water "and not yet been fully told. Sometimes the non- Katerfelto with his hair on end, at his own wonders qualified practitioners were called "quacks" wondering for his bread"[5]. There have been although they never claimed to be "doctors or numerous allusions to quacks and charlatans in the surgeons," and some of them proved to be quite literature [6; 7] successful in their healing abilities. In Thomas Hardy's "Jude the Obscure," There are certainly lessons to be learned Vilbert " was an itinerant quack-doctor, well from history: when the experienced and literate known to the rustic population, and absolutely surgeon-lithotomist-herniotomist, [Valentine unknown to anybody else, as he, indeed, took care Rawsworme (or Rosswurm(] one of Paracelcius' to be, to avoid inconvenient investigations." pupils, left Switzerland and settled in England, he There were, of course, some famous or was regarded by the British surgeons as a quack. notorious "quacks" in the history of disease and its The competition for wealthy patients in 16th cures - some were qualified practitioners who were Century London led the local surgeons to make involved in fraud, or who behaved unethically. On unjustified judgments [9]. the other hand, there is the story of the "bone- Even later, "it was perfectly plausible setter", or as he used to call himself "a around 1800 to represent Jennerian vaccination as 172 Prog Health Sci 2012, Vol 2 , No1 Running quacks mountebanks balderdash" [7]. There was also some historical such an evil; 3) a person - the quack - who claims confusion between the Italian "quack doctors of special knowledge or power to cure the particular Cerretani, who begged for alms for medical and evil; 4) a person - the orthodox medical religious foundations as a profession," and the practitioner - who holds out little or no hope of Preci School surgeons (admittedly not as famous cure." Other factors may play a part: the desire for as their colleagues at Salerno or Montpellier) who a cheap cure, rebellion against authority, hope, the performed lithotomy, phlebotomy and castration, elements of mystery, the natural repugnance to designing and making their own instruments, and surgical operation when such is the only remedy practicing cauterization and disinfection by fire recognized by the orthodox practitioner, the desire [10]. Some of the confusion arose with the for secrecy, etc. satyrization of physicians, and medicine in general, According to one, view expressed on the in the 17th and 18th centuries. There was very little "Quackwatch" homepage [24]: "Quackery is not an confidence in scientific healing, and doctors were all-or-nothing phenomenon," and although most portrayed in the "comic tradition of stupid, greedy definitions suggest that "quackery involves physician-quacks" [11]. deliberate deception," its paramount characteristic Porter [12] points out that the pre-modern is "promotion (the "quacking'" aspect), rather than medical world should not be "divided neatly fraud, greed or misinformation". In this discussion, between physicians and surgeons practicing their Barrett believes that "quackery could be broadly vocation, and disreputable businessmen selling their defined as "anything involving over promotion in proprietary pills to a gullible public." Medicine in the field of health, including doubtful ideas as well that period was an occupation rather than a as questionable products and services, and vocation, and both "regular" medical practitioners independently of their promoters". This leads us to and quacks were subjected to the vagaries of market conclude that if we are to make such a distinction, forces. so that the practice of "unconventional medicine" Chiropractic manipulation was long may keep its place alongside orthodox practices, regarded as quackery, but in recent years it has there should be a clear-cut boundary between acquired scientific backing as a beneficial and cost- effective, complementary or alternative medicine, effective procedure, especially in the case of low on the one hand, and "quackery" for the sake of back pain [13]. purely financial gain, on the other. A randomized, What about the remedies offered by these controlled study was designed to test the quacks or charlatans? We hear of the anodyne hypothesis that experts who review papers for necklace, for example, [14], or of "quack doctors" publication are prejudiced against an alternative in today's China, who extract "toothworm" from form of therapy [25]. Reviewers showed a wide toothache sufferers [15]. Another example of a range of responses to two versions of a certain dental quack was William Salmon, in 17th Century paper, with a significant bias in favor of the London [16], and Tim Bobbins "Lancashire Hob orthodox-conventional version.
Recommended publications
  • Slater V. Baker and Stapleton (C.B. 1767): Unpublished Monographs by Robert D. Miller
    SLATER V. BAKER AND STAPLETON (C.B. 1767): UNPUBLISHED MONOGRAPHS BY ROBERT D. MILLER ROBERT D. MILLER, J.D., M.S. HYG. HONORARY FELLOW MEDICAL HISTORY AND BIOETHICS DEPARTMENT SCHOOL OF MEDICINE AND PUBLIC HEALTH UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN - MADISON PRINTED BY AUTHOR MADISON, WISCONSIN 2019 © ROBERT DESLE MILLER 2019 BOUND BY GRIMM BOOK BINDERY, MONONA, WI AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION These unpublished monographs are being deposited in several libraries. They have their roots in my experience as a law student. I have been interested in the case of Slater v. Baker and Stapleton since I first learned of it in law school. I was privileged to be a member of the Yale School Class of 1974. I took an elective course with Dr. Jay Katz on the protection of human subjects and then served as a research assistant to Dr. Katz in the summers of 1973 and 1974. Dr. Katz’s course used his new book EXPERIMENTATION WITH HUMAN BEINGS (New York: Russell Sage Foundation 1972). On pages 526-527, there are excerpts from Slater v. Baker. I sought out and read Slater v. Baker. It seemed that there must be an interesting backstory to the case, but it was not accessible at that time. I then practiced health law for nearly forty years, representing hospitals and doctors, and writing six editions of a textbook on hospital law. I applied my interest in experimentation with human beings by serving on various Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) during that period. IRBs are federally required committees that review and approve experiments with humans at hospitals, universities and other institutions.
    [Show full text]
  • 260 Paul Kléber Monod This Is an Ambitious Book. Monod's
    260 book reviews Paul Kléber Monod Solomon’s Secret Arts: The Occult in the Age of Enlightenment, New Haven and London: Yale University Press 2013. x + 430 pp. isbn 978-0-300-12358-6. This is an ambitious book. Monod’s subject is the occult, by which he means ‘a type of thinking expressed either in writing or in action, that allowed the boundary between the natural and the supernatural to be crossed by the ac- tions of human beings’ (p. 5). Although he cites the work of Antoine Faivre, Wouter Hanegraaff and others, readers of Aries will doubtless be interested to learn Monod’s reasoning for using the term occult in preference to West- ern esotericism. In short, while acknowledging the important contribution of the ‘esoteric approach’ he also highlights its perceived ‘shortcomings’, namely a tendency to regard relevant texts as ‘comprising a discrete and largely self- referential intellectual tradition, hermetically sealed so as to ward off the taint of other forms of thought, not to mention social trends and popular practices’. Moreover, ‘scholars of esoteric religion’ apparently ‘have a tendency to inter- pret whatever they are studying with the greatest seriousness, so that hucksters and charlatans turn into philosophers, and minor references in obscure eso- teric works take on labyrinthine significances’ (p. 10). In practice, what Monod understands here as the occult is largely restricted to alchemy, astrology and rit- ual magic; a maelstrom which, among other things, pulled in readers of Hermes Trismegistus, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, Paracelsus, Jacob Boehme and the Kabbalah, outwardly respectable scientists and anti-Trinitarians (sometimes one and the same); Philadelphians; French Prophets; Freemasons; students of Ancient Britain and the Druids; cunning folk; authors of popular Gothic novels; certain followers of Emmanuel Swedenborg; Neoplatonists; advocates of Ani- mal magnetism; and Judaized millenarians.
    [Show full text]
  • Medicine, Astrology, and Written Records
    Casebooks in Early Modern England: Medicine, Astrology, and Written Records Lauren Kassell Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Volume 88, Number 4, Winter 2014, pp. 595-625 (Article) Published by Johns Hopkins University Press DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/bhm.2014.0066 For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/564670 [ Access provided at 5 Oct 2021 13:50 GMT with no institutional affiliation ] Casebooks in Early Modern England: Medicine, Astrology, and Written Records LAUREN KASSELL Summary: Casebooks are the richest sources that we have for encounters between early modern medical practitioners and their patients. This article compares astrological and medical records across two centuries, focused on England, and charts developments in the ways in which practitioners kept records and reflected on their practices. Astrologers had a long history of working from particular moments, stellar configurations, and events to general rules. These practices required systematic notation. Physicians increasingly modeled themselves on Hip- pocrates, recording details of cases as the basis for reasoned expositions of the histories of disease. Medical records, as other scholars have demonstrated, shaped the production of medical knowledge. Instead, this article focuses on the nature of casebooks as artifacts of the medical encounter. It establishes that casebooks were serial records of practice, akin to diaries, testimonials, and registers; identi- fies extant English casebooks and the practices that led to their production and preservation; and concludes that the processes of writing, ordering, and preserv- ing medical records are as important for understanding the medical encounter as the records themselves. Keywords: casebooks, medical records, astrology, paper technologies, cases, patients, Simon Forman, Richard Napier This research has been supported by the Wellcome Trust, through an Enhancement Award 2004–9 and a Strategic Award 2009–14 on “Generation to Reproduction” (grants 074298 and 088708).
    [Show full text]
  • Alchemy Archive Reference
    Alchemy Archive Reference 080 (MARC-21) 001 856 245 100 264a 264b 264c 337 008 520 561 037/541 500 700 506 506/357 005 082/084 521/526 (RDA) 2.3.2 19.2 2.8.2 2.8.4 2.8.6 3.19.2 6.11 7.10 5.6.1 22.3/5.6.2 4.3 7.3 5.4 5.4 4.5 Ownership and Date of Alternative Target UDC Nr Filename Title Author Place Publisher Date File Lang. Summary of the content Custodial Source Rev. Description Note Contributor Access Notes on Access Entry UDC-IG Audience History 000 SCIENCE AND KNOWLEDGE. ORGANIZATION. INFORMATION. DOCUMENTATION. LIBRARIANSHIP. INSTITUTIONS. PUBLICATIONS 000.000 Prolegomena. Fundamentals of knowledge and culture. Propaedeutics 001.000 Science and knowledge in general. Organization of intellectual work 001.100 Concepts of science Alchemyand knowledge 001.101 Knowledge 001.102 Information 001102000_UniversalDecimalClassification1961 Universal Decimal Classification 1961 pdf en A complete outline of the Universal Decimal Classification 1961, third edition 1 This third edition of the UDC is the last version (as far as I know) that still includes alchemy in Moreh 2018-06-04 R 1961 its index. It is a useful reference documents when it comes to the folder structure of the 001102000_UniversalDecimalClassification2017 Universal Decimal Classification 2017 pdf en The English version of the UDC Online is a complete standard edition of the scheme on the Web http://www.udcc.org 1 ThisArchive. is not an official document but something that was compiled from the UDC online. Moreh 2018-06-04 R 2017 with over 70,000 classes extended with more than 11,000 records of historical UDC data (cancelled numbers).
    [Show full text]
  • Ichthyocolla: Medicinal 'Fish Glue'
    Although applied in some contexts to a wide variety of ARTICLE bony fi shes, both freshwater and marine, in historical medicinal contexts ichthyocolla most commonly refers Ichthyocolla: medicinal ‘fi sh glue’ to the swim bladder of the Beluga Sturgeon, Huso huso (Linnaeus 1758) (Family Acipenseridae), sometimes re- Christopher J. Duffi n ferred to as the Isinglass Sturgeon (Figure 1). Th e source of beluga caviar (roe from the female), this fi sh is ana- Abstract dromous, migrating from salt waters into freshwater in Ichthyocolla is a collagen-rich medicinal simple, origi- nally derived from many parts of the parent fi sh, but more commonly restricted to Acipenseriform swim bladders imported from Russia in early modern times. Used to treat headache, tetanus and leprosy in classical times, the medieval Arabic tradition saw it utilised against haemorrhoids. Th e colloidal nature of the pro- Figure 1. Huso huso (Linnaeus, 1758) (Family Acipens- cessed material was exploited in early modern medicine eridae), the Beluga Sturgeon; complete fi sh in right lateral where it was used to treat haemorrhoids, leucorrhoea, view. (Source: From Stephenson (1838) Medical Zoology diarrhoea, and dysentery. Remarkable for its adhesive and Mineralogy, Plate 21, fi g. 2) properties, it was used topically to bind the separated lips of wounds together, to stabilise broken ribs, and in medicinal plasters. order to spawn. Late maturing, it can grow up to 7 me- tres in length, weigh up to 1,500 kilograms, and live Introduction for over 100 years. Now critically endangered due to Th e creation of a systematic inventory of the contents overfi shing and poaching, trade in Beluga Sturgeon is of surviving late seventeenth and early eighteenth cen- heavily restricted.
    [Show full text]
  • Cockatrice August A.S.49
    Cockatrice 0 Cockartice by Lord Quentin Maclaren August A.S. 49 August AS 49 Cockatrice Table of Contents Articles The Ripley Scroll Revealed Theophrastus von Oberstockstall ___ ____________ page 4 10 Things that you forget to tell the New Medieval Cook. Gabriella Borromei _____ page 21 Apple and Orange Tart Kara of Kirriemuir page 23 Recipes and Cooking in the Middle Ages – Tips and Tricks for All Kara of Kirriemuir page 27 Columns From the Editor ________________________________________________ page 2 Cockatrice FAQs _______________________________________________ page 30 This i s the August AS 49 (2014 ) edition of Cockatrice, a publication of the Kingdom of Lochac of the Society for Creative Anachronism, Inc. (SCA, Inc.). Cockatrice is an email publication only via subscription with the editor. It is not a corporate publication of SCA, Inc., and does not delineate SCA, Inc. policies. Credits for this issue: Cover Art: ©2014, Quentin Bourne, Used with permission Clipart: Medieval Woodcuts Clipart Collection (http://www.godecookery.com/clipart/clart.htm) Articles: p. 4 Andrew Kettle, ©2012, Used with permission p. 21 Donna Page , ©2014, Used with permission p. 27 Ra’chel Sihto, ©2014, Used with permission p. 30 Ra’chel Sihto, ©2014, Used with permission 2 August AS 49 Cockatrice From the Editor Greetings! putting the time, effort and enthusiasm into ensuring that this could happen. I am very happy to announce that we Thank you also to Lord Diego from finally have a Cockatrice website up and Masonry for all your help in this as well. running! At this stage it is in a blog format with an exciting subscribe now On a less positive note I was rather section! It is my hope that in the future disappointed with the number of we can start to load both back and contributions I have received recently.
    [Show full text]
  • SYDENHAM's IMPACT on ENGLISH MEDICINE* by R
    SYDENHAM'S IMPACT ON ENGLISH MEDICINE* by R. R. TRAIL A PRIME necessity for an assessment ofSydenham's impact on English medicine is a sympathetic understanding ofthe social conditions and ofthe troubled state of medicine in his day. In a coantryside with atrocious roads and a consequent lack of intercommunication, local prejudices and rebellion against central authority that undermined all attempts at national unity before the Restoration, back-breaking labour was the motive power of industry. Bone-aching and the winter-itch were the common lot of high and low; the townsmen, particularly in the ports, feared that fresh plague visitations would add to the miseries of tuberculosis, smallpox and the 'bloody-flux'. 'Man', wrote Robert Boyle in his Medicinal Experiments, could 'depend for continued health only on divine goodness.' The political and religious upheavals that culminated in the civil wars brought painful disruptions of family life, and the bewildering frag- mentations of non-conformity, the cold, Calvinistic doctrine of Hell and damnation to a people who had already lost the warmth and mental peace of a universal faith. Yet Bunyan's Pilgrim could encourage Faintheart, survive the Slough ofDespond and confront Giant Despair with the sturdy individualism that characterized the century. The state ofmedicine was still more chaotic than it had been in the sixteenth century. The three incorporated bodies of the College of Physicians, Barber- Surgeons and Apothecaries practised on no common standards, their individual members more interested in berating their competitors and in publishing speculative hypotheses and nostrums for self-advertisement than in recording details of the application and results of their therapy.
    [Show full text]
  • And Some Other Medieval Names of the Philosophers' Stone
    A note on lapis philosophicus, lapis philosophorum, and some other medieval names of the philosophers’ stone The first occurrences of philosophres ston registered in the Middle English Dictionary are from non-technical poems of the end of the fourteenth century: the Confessio Amantis refers to “the parfit Elixir Of thilke philosophres Ston,” and the Canon’s Yeoman like­ wise refers to the goal of alchemy in the words “The philosophres stoon, Elixir clept, we sechen.” 1 The fact that Gower and Chaucer evidently expected their readers to under­ stand the term although there is no earlier evidence of its circulation in English suggests very strongly that those readers would have encountered it in another language: in this case evidently Latin. In accordance with its usual policy, MED had little to say about the etymology of the English lexical item: it noted that philosophre is “From OFfilosofe & L philosophusf but gave no indication that philosophres ston translated a Latin lexical item. Although there have been a number of discussions of Chaucer’s alchemical know­ ledge, these do not appear to ask where in post-classical Latin the etymon of philosophres ston is first attested. The object of this note is to explore some answers to that question. Their formula­ tion began with consultancy work for the third edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, generated in the course of the revision of the entry philosophers' stone.2 This was origi­ nally published in fascicle Ph-Piper of the first edition of OED, which appeared under the editorship of James Murray in June 1906.
    [Show full text]
  • The Intellectual and Social Declines of Alchemy and Astrology, Circa 1650-1720
    The intellectual and social declines of alchemy and astrology, circa 1650-1720 John Clements PhD University of York History December 2017 Abstract: By the early decades of the eighteenth century alchemy and astrology had ceased to be considered respectable or credible by elite society. Astrology had been removed from university curricula, while alchemy largely ceased to be publicly practised by the educated and respected and became regarded by those of elite status to be little more than a tool for charlatans or quacks. This thesis draws out these twin declines and considers them in parallel, focusing on trying to analyse what changed intellectually and socially within England to so dramatically alter the fates of these arts. There is a scholarly tradition which has discussed the declines of alchemy and astrology as part of a broader notion of a decline in ‘occult practices’ or ‘magic’, an idea which is often twinned with the wider notion of a ‘rise of science’. This thesis will therefore consider alchemy and astrology as connected arts, which nevertheless possessed separate identities, and then analyse these arts’ declines alongside each other. Through this process it will explore to what degree and in what ways one can describe the declines of these arts as part of one unified trend, or if one needs to interpret these declines as purely grounded in their own unique circumstances. By utilising the works of alchemical and astrological practitioners and placing the decline of these arts in a longer historical context this thesis studies what those who practised the arts considered to be their core conceptual components and will therefore analyse how these elements were changed or challenged by intellectual developments that occurred in the second half of the seventeenth century.
    [Show full text]
  • Alchemy Book Collection\374
    Alchemy Book Collection Dictionary of Alchemical Symbols A Threefold Alchemical Journey Through the Book of Lambspring Alchemiae Basica Alchemical Catechism Alchemical Lexicon Alchemical Mass Alchemical Meditation Alchemical Writings The Emerald Tablet Paracelsus (The "Swiss Hermes") Alchemy: The Art of Transformation The Hidden Side of Reality The Matrix or Mother-Space The Inner Can be Known by the Outer The Greater World and the Lesser World The Two Heavens in Man The Arcana Man the Divine Book The Book of Nature The Inner Stars of Man The Preservation of a Thing Death and the Essence of Alchemy Thomas Vaughan (Eugenius Philalethes) The First Operation The Invisible Magical Mountain Eyrænius In "The Regimen of Sol" In "An Open Entrance to the Closed Palace of the King" Comments on Letting Conscience Act with Gentleness Count Bernard of Treviso Ethan Allen Hitchcock Comments on the Latter Stages of the Work An Open Entrance to the Closed Palace of the King Alchemists Garret Alchemists the Rosicrucians and Asiatic Brethrens Alchemy Ancient and Modern Alchemy Dictionary Alchemy Key Alchemy Rediscovered and Restored An Open Entrance to the Closed Palace of the King Aurora of the Philosophers Book Concerning the Tincture of the Philosophers Book of Alchemi Book of lambspring Coelum Philosophorum Corpus Hermetica Corpus Hermeticum Mead Trans. Emerald Tablets of Hermes English Alchemical Verse Frehers Process in the Philosophical Work Fundamentals of Alchemy Gnostic Duty Gnostic Sience of Alchemy Golden Asse Golden Chain of Homer Golden Tractate
    [Show full text]
  • Annotated Bibliography of the Works of Walter Charleton1
    ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE WORKS OF WALTER CHARLETON1 Published works Chorea Gigantum, or, The Most Famous Antiquity of Great-Britan [sic], Vulgarly called Stone-Heng, Standing on Salisbury Plain, Restored to the Danes, London, Printed for Henry Herringman, 1663. The Most Notable Antiquity of Great-Britain, Vulgarly called Stone-Heng, on Salisbury Plain, Restored, by Inigo Jones . to which are added Chorea Gigantum and Mr Webb’s Vindication, London, Printed for D. Browne Junior, and J. Woodman and D. Lyon, 1725. A facsimile edition of the 1725 edition has been produced, introduced by Stuart Piggot, Farnborough, Gregg, 1971. Charleton dedicated Chorea ‘to the King’s Most Excellent Majesty’, and referred to the monarch’s personal interest in the matter. In July 1663, when the physician presented his observations on Stonehenge to the Society, Aubrey was asked to look into the matter.2 He indicated that the King was quite taken with Charleton’s theory about Stonehenge. Charleton and Aubrey attended the King and the Duke and Duchess of York when they visited the area in 1663.3 Chorea contributed to contemporary debate about the origins of the mon- ument. It criticised Inigo Jones’ The Most Notable Antiquity of Great Britain, vulgarly called Stone-heng, restored, which argued for the Roman origin of the stone monuments. Charleton claimed that Stonehenge was in fact the construction of ancient Danes. This initiated considerable contro- versy, and was ill-received in London. Wood claims Charleton’s text was ‘exploded by most persons when t’was published’. Chorea garnered a severe retaliation from Jones’s son-in-law, John Webb.4 1 The works are organised alphabetically, and are designed to provide a quick reference while read- ing the main body of the book.
    [Show full text]
  • Chymische Schrifften, 1756. See DICTIONNAIRE HERMETIQUE, 1695
    318 SALLWIGT—SALMON SALMON 319 SALLWIGT (GREGORIUS ANGLUS). Continued. SALMON (WILLIAM). Continued. Pharmacopoeia Londinensis. Or, the New London Dispensatory. In VI. Books. [Another Copy.] 10 plates, uncoloured. Translated into English for the Publick Good, and Fitted to the whole Art of Healing. This is the second part of Welling's Opus mago- tre explained: 'Gregorius Anglus-Sallwight,' In any case they Illustrated with the Preparations, Virtues and Uses of all Simple Medicaments, cabbalisticum (q.v.), which did not appear till 1735. are treated as pseudonymous for Georg von-Welling, which The 1719 edition of Sallwigt's book is that quoted by is probably correct. Vegetable, Animal and Mineral, Of all the Compounds both Internal and External: and Kopp. He mentions the 1729 edition also, but, as he had not It is not surprising, therefore, that no notice has been of all the Chymical Preparations now in Use. Together with some choice Medicines seen it he did not know whether or not the two were taken of a fictitious personage in the usual sources of identical. There is no doubt about that. information. added by the Author. As also the Praxis of Chymistry, as it's now Exercised, fitted to Under the entry 'S., G. A.' in the British Museum The present work was also included in the ‘Viridarium meanest Capacity. The Fifth Edition, corrected and amended. By William Salmon, Catalogue, these initials are translated 'Georgio Anglo reformatum,' Francof. a. M., 1719, fol., by Michael Sallwigt,' but under 'Sallwight' (sic) they Bernhard Valentini. Professor of Physick: At the Blew Ball by the Ditch-side nigh Holbourn-Bridge.
    [Show full text]