• Online: Sir Hans Sloane

    As I’m finishing off a round of grading, re-writing a paper for publication, and planning the HAPSAT conference, I’m trying to find time to dig around for archival sources for my upcoming research trip to London. The National Archives can sometimes be difficult to maneuver, which is why I really appreciate efforts to catalog and organize… Continue Reading

  • Monday Series: A Disease with No Remedy V

    By the end of the eighteenth century, many medical men had written exhaustively on the hereditary predisposition to phthisis, implementing medical hereditarianism as a social recourse for advocating social distances between elements of society. Historian Sean Quinlan argues that between 1748 and 1790, heredity in France gave doctors an idiom for diagnosis in light of… Continue Reading

  • Monday Series: A Disease with No Remedy IV

    Dear Reader, My apologies for the lack of posts and the lateness of this one. Apparently I’ve been so tired I failed to notice I didn’t schedule the Monday Series post properly. As always, thank you for reading. -Jai A fascinating perspective for the popularity of the hereditary theory of phthisis is given by historian… Continue Reading

  • History Carnival

    With all the chaos in my life right now, I completely forgot to mention I’m hosting the next edition of the History Carnival, a monthly showcase of blog writing about history. I’m SO sorry! If you have a great historical piece to nominate, please send me an email or use the nomination form on the site.… Continue Reading

  • Monday Series: A Disease with no Remedy III

    In his A Treatise on the Consumption of the Lungs (1722), Edward Barry describes the influence of environmental stimuli upon an inherited malady such as consumption: “This constitution to some is natural and hereditary; but in many others be acquired, by the intemperate use of a hot, aromatic, saline, or animal Diet, or by previous… Continue Reading

  • UTSIC Website Active!

    I’m pleased to announce that the University of Toronto Scientific Instruments Collection Website is now active! The first post is an essay, “A Short History of the University of Toronto Scientific Instruments Collection, written by Erich Weidenhammer (IHPST, University of Toronto) & Michael Da Silva (University of Toronto Faculty of Law). The post is a reprint of… Continue Reading

  • Monday Series: A Disease with no Remedy II

          The word “tuberculosis” was not introduced as a classification term until 1834 by the German physician Johann Lukas Schönlein (1793-1864),[1] though it was first used by the British physician Richard Morton (1637-1698) in 1689. Commonly named by the medical community as “phthisis,” or “consumption,” signifying the wasting characteristics of the chronic disease,… Continue Reading

  • For the Maker of the Stars: The Cultural Reception of Print

    Accept then, most clement Prince, this gentle glory reserved by the stars for you. May you long enjoy those blessing which are sent to you not so much from the stars as from God, their Maker and their Governor. Your Highness’s most devoted servant, Galileo Galilei. Padua, Mach 12, 1610 -Galileo’s Sidereus Nuncius (Venice, 1610); Dedication letter to Cosimo II… Continue Reading

  • Balancing Value Systems

    A short book review: Stephen Bocking, Ecologists and Environmental Politics: A History of Contemporary Ecology (Yale University Press, 1997) In this  book, Stephen Bocking (Trent University) presents the history of ecology and its role in society by looking at the discipline’s respective emergence in Britain, United States, and Canada. Although at times Bocking’s writing style becomes… Continue Reading