Microcosmus Hypochondriacus

Past is Present: l'Arboro della Pazzia on Melancholystories.com

Fri, 12 Aug 2011 23:25:00 -0700

Who said that history, the arts or the humanities in general are of no use to the financial markets? Look for yourselves: is the clipping below not a perfectly apropriate depiction of today's financial madness?

The image is taken from a late 16th c. Italian broadsheet depicting in thirty similar scenes the dangerous aspects of human interactions, professions or activities.The caption under this scene says:

Dolce è ogni auanzo in qual sia modo fatto

per vendere e comprar stochi e bazari
dice i Merchanti per esser auauari

(thank you Adèle & Marco for helping me read this fragment)

Titled the Arboro della Pazzia, the broadsheet had a satirical & moralizing purpose following the tradition of humanist books on folly like Eramus' Praise of Folly.

Melancholystories.com contains a British Museum reproduction of the entire engraving.

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Change of air

Sat, 18 Jun 2011 20:25:00 -0700

Now that I arrived in Stanford, ahead of the Digital Humanities 2011 conference, I remembered how Robert Burton once advised the change of air, or travelling, as a treatment for melancholy:

Although our ordinary air be good by nature or art, yet it is not amiss still to alter it; no better physick [medication] for a melancholy man than change of air and variety of places, to travel abroad and see fashions. (...) No man (...) can be such a stock or stone, whom that pleasant speculation of countries, cities, towns, rivers, will not affect. (...) For peregrination charmes our senses with such unspeakable and sweet variety, that some count him unhappy that never travelled, a kind of prisoner, and pity his case, that from his cradle to his old age beholds the same still;

(Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, Partition 2, Sect. 2, Member 3)

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Scholars, Beware of Over-Studying. An Early Modern Case-History

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 11:17:00 -0700

Working at the Public Library in Geneva, I am surrounded by young undergraduates fervently reading, cross-marking & stabilo-bossing their coursework. I am amazed at how motivated and determined they are (possibly taking advantage of mild cognitive neuro enhancers* like italian coffee, or Rivella, the Swiss soft-drink and national treasure), in spite of the occasional side-line activities ranging from nose-blowing, non-verbal micro-talking to post-modernly incomprehensible courting & flirting.

But I wonder if they are aware how dangerous over-studying can become? Here is the story of a student who must have abused his daily dose of the early modern version of Aderal:

I have read that a young scholler [student] being in his studie, was taken with a strange imagination: for he imagined that his nose was so great and so long, as that he durst [dared] not stirre out of his place, lest he should dash it against something: and the more he was dealt with and disswaded, so much the more did he confirme himselfe in his opinion.

In the end a Phisition [Physician] having taken a great piece of flesh, and holding it in his hand secretly, assured him that he would heale him by and by, and that he must needes take away this great nose: and so upon the suddaine pinching his nose a little, and cutting the piece of flesh which he had, he made him believe that his great nose was cut away.

Excerpted from André Du Laurens, Discours des maladies mélancoliques (1594), trans. R. Surphlet, London, F. Klingston, 1599.

Robert Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) dedicated a long subsection of his First Partition to the excessive study as a serious cause of the melancholy disease. The title is self-explanatory:

Love of Learning, or overmuch study. With a digression of the misery of Scholars, and why the Muses are melancholy.

R. Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, Partition 1, Section 2, Member 3, Subsection 15, available on-line via an 1807 edition digitized by Google Books.

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*On a sideline, and more seriously, problems brought by modern day cognitive neuro enhancers were discussed in an excellent New Yorker piece by Margaret Talbot : Brain Gain. The underworld of "neuroenhancing" drugs (with some useful comments by Jonah Lehrer on his blog).

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A Remarkable Instrument: the Printed Book. A Reminder

Thu, 18 Nov 2010 11:42:00 -0800

Emerging from piles of digital articles, reading about digital corporations of all sorts, marvelling at ambitious national digitization projects with exotic names, I was lucky to find a very funny, sincere and touching essay on "how simple, how beautiful in concept, how smart and functional, how versatile the book page" really is.

In a few paragraphs written for an e-diary which unfortunately has not been updated since 2007, Cécile Alduy* reminds us that there is nothing compared to the simple pleasure of randomly opening a book, turning its pages, reading it in broad daylight (well, Amazon likes to think that their new Kindle, as opposed to the iPad, can be extensively used while sunbathing poolside) :

plaisir de feuilleter, d'ouvrir le livre au hasard, de revenir sur ses pas, de faire tourner les pages avec le pouce sur la tranche comme un jeu de cartes à battre, de commencer par la fin, d'écrire dessus, entre les lignes, sur les mots, dans les marges, de récrire sur ces marginalia, de corner les pages, de les déchirer, de coller de marques pages et autres stickers de couleur.

De lire dans son bain, au soleil, debout dans le métro, dans un café, un avion, un bus, la cuisine, un parc, la forêt, la chambre (et ailleurs). (full text available here)

And my favourite line:

Le livre est poli: jamais il ne vous lancerait: "has unexpectedly quit."

The book is indeed more polite than any browser, it never freezes, dies or disappears; nor does it suddenly become auto-ironic. Something which is happening a lot to the Google Chrome browser. What follows is rather off-topic, but quite funny...

A few hours ago, I got suddenly disconnected from the Internet, so when I tried access the google.com page, I was shown the following text by the Google Chrome browser:

This webpage is not available.
The webpage at http://www.google.com/ might be temporarily down or it may have moved permanently to a new web address.

In a way, this implies that Google Chrome can never encounter any problems, and the careful wording of the error message moves the attention away from what might be a browser problem. While this might work for any other website (Google has enough authority to tell us when a website's gone, moved permanently, closed the business, unexpectedly quit, or disappeared mysteriously in the binary fog), it does sound a lot like involuntary humour when Chrome displays such a text in relation to their own website... Google has left the building.

*Cécile Alduy is assistant professor of French at Stanford and the creator of the Renaissance Body Project. The essay quoted above is part of the "Studio" – the "informal" part of the project, containing, apart from this e-diary, an unexpected Youtube video about which I am currently writing a post.

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The Anatomy of a Vase: Curiosity, Antiquarianism & Renaissance Medicine

Thu, 21 Oct 2010 10:22:00 -0700

I have just come across a very interesting, well written and inspiring blog hosted by the Philadelphia Area Center for the History of Science. In a recent post, one of the contributing authors reflects on how to "teach curiosity in the history of science":

The biggest challenge for this assignment seems to be teaching them [the students] how to be curious. Or, to put it more specifically, how to formulate and ask questions. For example, the other day we looked at a copy of Newton’s Principia mathematica that contains some marginalia. They seemed uninterested in the marginal notes or how they could be used to understand how a particular person had read the text.

I would like to offer a few comments and suggestions on this important methodological question. In my opinion, curiosity is not something which can be taught. It is not something one can force on students, but something which needs to be emulated.

I remember how I myself became curious, and ultimately decided to do my doctoral research on issues related to the history of Renaissance medicine and literature: it was, in part, thanks to a course on medical humanities at the University of Geneva during which we were shown images from Charles Estienne's De dissectione partium corporis humani libri tres. This work was an anatomical book published by Simon de Colines in 1545 and contemporary with Vesalius' De Humani corporis fabrica. On some of its very intriguing anatomical plates appear mysterious antiquarian vases...

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Where do those vases come from? How come they were pictured with so much detail and finesse?

These curious and unexpected objects were in fact meant to be subtle messages directed to one of the author's mentors & friends, Lazare de Baïf, the french ambassador to Venice. In 1535 Lazare de Baïf had re-published with the help of Charles Estienne a short book on antique vases, De Vasculis libellus. It is thus obvious that Estienne's picturing of the unexpected objects on the anatomical plates served as an erudite "clin d’œil" to Lazare de Baïf. It was also a clever way in which Estienne chose to show a sign of reverence & respect to the older humanist. A quotation in the margin, it worked as a coded intellectual exchange, a cyphered tweet.

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Equally important (even though quite common at the time), objects like those vases served as mnemonic devices for the book's redearship, which must have included students in medicine. Those devices got all their attention and helped them rememer better. This relates to the idea that memory was like a chamber in which were stored pieces of information on imaginary shelves. The recalling was eased by the presence of such well identifiable images: a town in the background, an antique ruin, or, in this case, a mysterious vase... They facilitate the process of learning and of remembering, they help contextualise the subject (anatomy), otherwise technical and difficult to memorise. A 16th century medical student might have said to his fellows: hey, remember that dissected body with a vase between its legs? (all this in latin, of course).

That is why I think curiosity cannot be taught, it can be merely be inspired. As a student, I was taken in by the story. Of course, an anecdote like this one will not necessarily help students better understand the history of science, but it would certainly make them more curious and attentive. Just like an antique vase can do when drawn next to a dissected body...

In my view, it is important to ask the right questions, but also to tell the right stories. I think students need a base from where to begin their own curious expeditions. And for that they need to be shown images, told stories. This is what will engage them further to think and explore, then ask the right questions.

(A Very) Selective Bibliography

Charles Estienne, De dissectione partium corporis humani, 1545, available on Google Books and at the BIUM. High resolution images are to be found on the National Library of Medicine website.

Lazare de Baïf, De Vasculis libellus, a 1536 edition is available on Google Books.

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L. Bolzoni, The Gallery of Memory: Literary and Iconographic Models in the Age of the Printing Press. Jeremy Parzen (trans.), Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2001.

J. Céard (éd.), La Curiosité à la Renaissance, Paris, SEDES, 1986.

H. Cazes & A. Carlino, "Plaisir de l'anatomie, plaisir du livre : La Dissection des parties du corps humain de Charles Estienne (Paris, 1546)", Cahiers de l'Association internationale des études francaises, 2003, 55. p. 251-274.

N. Kenny, The Uses of Curiosity in Early Modern France and Germany, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2004.

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Twitter, Social Media and Renaissance Melancholy

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 16:23:00 -0800

I have studied alone for the most part of my PhD, alone in libraries, at my desk, or in the cellar of a Dominican monastery. After discovering the Georgian London blog I realised how important social media was for researchers in the humanities. Thanks to Lucy Inglis' Georgian London but also to the team from the Zotero.org project (which I also discovered rather late, during the final writing phase of my PhD...) I retook control over my Twitter account and then was inspired to create this blog.

My PhD supervisors often encouraged me to constantly speak about my research: discuss about it, share it. But to whom? Lack of dialogue is often what kills good research projects as students loose faith then focus. I suspect that is sometimes due to the classical how-interesting!-then-looks-away-and-leaves-before-you-had-a-chance-to-finish-your-140-syllables-synopsis-of-your-research kind of attitude... But like Lucy noted in her March 3rd blog post, social media solves part of the issue:

"Social media, primarily the Twitter contraption, but also Facebook have been instrumental in getting Georgian London out there. Perhaps people only want to read one post, or are interested in a single aspect of this fantastic city's eighteenth century. Others seem to love the whole subject as much as I do. What represents years of often boring, and certainly bum-numbing work in libraries and archives is now a shiny thing I can show to people who 'get it'. Imagine my delight and surprise to find that there are literally thousands of you! The internet and social media have done this for me."

The concept of a blog as "a shiny thing I can show to people who 'get it'" reminds me of how Early modern scientistsand historians managed to achieve this kind of social and intellectual interaction by creating a complex system of epistolary exchanges. Prof. Anthony Grafton had written here about Renaissance humanists as citizens of a universal Republic of Letters. He argued that the "epistolary networks gave the Republic its true circulatory system":

"It is above all in the thousands of surviving letters—letters that combined the official and professional with the personal in a way that in the pre-modern world seemed entirely natural— that the outlines, highways and capitals of the Republic can be glimpsed most vividly. Tucked into letters were the reports on barometric experiments and the movements of falling bodies, the specimens of Egyptian mummy and New World flora, the drawings of rhinoceros horn and Roman feet, the descriptions of newly discovered manuscripts of ancient texts, the historical and political information that enabled men and women to know what was happening in the great world outside their little town, and to compile the great syntheses of political, historical, philosophical and scientific information that we still read: the work of Grotius on natural law, Galileo on natural philosophy, Locke on the nature of property. To a world that has largely abandoned letters except when asking for money in a good cause, these epistles—with their formal Latin salutations and intimate details of urinalysis and kidney stones, astrological predictions and monstrous births—may seem quaint. In their day, however, they constituted the fragile but vital canals that connected and animated intellectual commerce in the far-flung parts of the republic." (A. Grafton, "A Sketch Map of a Lost Continent: The Republic of Letters ", Republics of Letters: A Journal for the Study of Knowledge, Politics, and the Arts, 1, no. 1 (May 1, 2009): http://rofl.stanford.edu/node/34)

Replace epistolary exchanges with a combination of Tweets & blog posts and this historic account becomes strangely familiar. Today's social media could become a New Republic of Letters, made of an ever increasing number of citizens all eager to find new ways to inspect the world, its "natural particulars" & its curiosities; then engage in a virtual yet permanent conversation with those who have an attention span of more than 140 seconds... And above all, in this Republic of Letters & Tweets one can always efficiently fight solitude.

Renaissance medicine had identified solitude as a key symptom of the highly dangerous and often considered deadly malady of melancholy (it was high time I got back to the subject of this blog!). The best remedy to the solitary noblemen suffering from chronic melancholy was to invite friends over. Physicians would then give secret advice to the guests: never confront the patient, always agree with his opinion, listen to him speaking, play games, take him out for walks while engaging in long discussions. Here is what the court physician André Du Laurens advised to his patient, the duchess of Uzès, herself suffering from melancholy hypochondria:

Les melancholiques ne doivent jamais estre seuls, il leur faut tousjours laisser compagnie qui leur soit agreable, il les faut parfois flatter, & leur accorder une partie de ce qu’ils veulent, de peur que ceste humeur, qui est de sa nature rebelle & opiniastre, ne s’effarouche ; parfois il les faut tanser de leurs foles imaginations, leur reprocher & faire honte de leur coüardise, les asseurer le plus qu’on pourra, loüer leurs actions : & s’ils ont autrefois fait quelque chose digne de loüange, leur remettre souvent en memoire, les entretenir de plaisans contes : on ne doit point leur proposer aucun subject de crainte, ny leur apporter des fascheuses nouvelles. Bref on doit les divertir le plus qu’on pourra, & chasser de leur entendement toutes les passions de l’ame, surtout la cholere, la peur, & la tristesse (...). (A. Du Laurens, Discours des maladies mélancoliques et du moyen de les guérir, Tours, Jamet Mettayer, 1594, p. 147v-149r. There is an English translation from 1599 but it does not seem to available online. I shall copy the English version of this fragment from our public library, then add it here).

Melancholy patients must never be alone, one must agree with their opinions, but also help them go past their deviant imagination. Give them plentiful of funny stories. But refrain from bad news. Always amuse them.... Twitter would have been such a great antidote to melancholy.

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Malachias Geiger 1652 book on Melancholy

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 05:22:00 -0800

In 1652 a German phyisican published a most extraordinary book on melancholy. It went beyond medicine and aimed at gathering together all that was known in connection to this illness:

Malachia Geiger, Microcosmus hypochondriacus, sive de Melancholia Hypochondriaca Tractatus, Monachii, apud L. Straub, 1652. [a digital copy is available at the BIUM digital library]

Hypochondria was considered to be an abdominal illness caused by an overabundance or plethora of black bile. This book gathers around the complex notion of melancholia a multitude of details about medicine, alchemy natural sciences, literature and mythology. It begins as a medicine book and evolves into a much more complex discourse. It represents the German couterpart to Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy.

Dealing with Early Modern curiosities about medicine and history, not knowing yet for which language I shall settle (French or English), I have thus decided to use Microcosmus hypochondriacus as the title of my research blog. I'll be back with more details about this book.

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Charles Estienne & La Maison rustique

Sun, 14 Feb 2010 14:46:00 -0800

I didn’t mean this to be my first post, it just happened. I noticed a tweet from @DaintyBallerina via @lucyinglis which reminded me of a Renaissance book I had come across while working on a chapter of my PhD. Instead of tweeting my remark, I decided to post a few more lines. Especially since it is rather difficult (and pointless ?) to use a shortener for long book titles. The title of the book was longer than 140 characters…

The tweet I mentioned referred to the latest post on the Fragments blog focusing on Thomas Hill’s fascinating 16th c. book on gardening: The profitable arte of gardening, London: T. Marshe, 1563.

It reminded me of Charles Estienne’s (ca. 1504-1564) equally famous treatise on agriculture & hunting:

L’Agriculture et maison rustique de M. Charles Estienne,… en laquelle est contenu tout ce qui peut estre requis pour bastir maison champestre, nourrir et médeciner bestiail et volaille… Plus un bref recueil de la chasse et de la fauconnerie , Paris : J. Du Puis, 1564

Published for the first time in Paris in 1564, it comes from one of the most extraordinary Renaissance polymaths. A member of the respectable family of editors, son of Henri Estienne & brother of Robert Estienne, Charles is equally the author of a treatise on human Anatomy, practically cotemporary to Vesalius Fabrica, a Dictionarium historicum ac poeticum, a guidebook to all the routes of France (La Guide des chemins de France)…

The Maison rustique went on to become an editorial success throughout the 16th century. Revised editions were published well into the 18th century. (A 1658 copy is available via Google Books) The Maison rustique is to the French what Thomas Hill’s Arte of gardening was to the English. The treatise is meant to be the guidebook for noblemen in need to organise or reorganise their household. The first part offers advice as to the best position of the house:

Parce que (si possible est) faut choisir un lieu loin des marests, rivage de mer, & où ny le vent de Midy ny celuy de Bize, ny autres tels vents dangereux soufflent ordinairement (…) surtout qu’il soit près de quelque bon voisin, estant chose insupportale d’estre toujours en querelle avec un meschant voisin, qu’il soit fort esloignée de forteresses & lieux de garnisons, pour le danger de la tyrannie & incursions des gend’armes (…) (éd. 1658, p. 4)

It then provided advice as to how to choose well-suited household helps:

Eslisez un fermier entre deux aages, non maladif, puissant & robuste, & du mesme pays & terroir de vostre ferme (…) qui soit homme d’espargne & sobrieté (…) qui ne laisse rien trainer ny dechoir; soit le premier levé & le dernier couché; ne hante les marchez, foires des villages, si ce n’est pour ses necessitez. (…) Et n’est ja besoin qu’il sçache lire ny escrire [he does not need to know how to read or write] (…). Vostre fermier, encores qu’il ne doive estre letré, toutesfois par longue & asseurée exerience doit avoir quelque cognoissance des presages, des pluyes, des vents, du beau temps, des mutations & changemens du Ciel, des parties de toute l’anée, des qualitez d’icelle; des tempestes, orages, foudres, tonnerres, froidures, gelées & gresles; afin que selon les saisons oportunes, il mette la main à l’oeuvre, & fasse travailler ses ouvriers.

Once the perfect “profile” for the farmer is set, the author gives an account of the farmer’s wife ideal portrait:

J’entens aussi qu’elle soit obeyssate à Dieu & à son homme, mesnagere, serrante, diligente, paisible, aimant à ne bouger de la maison: douce aux siens quant il faut, & severe où il appartient, non querrelleuse, hargneuse, bavarde, lagagere, ny fetarde. (…) Qu’elle ait tousjours l’oeil sur les servantes, & soit la premiere en besogne, & la derniere qui en parte: la premiere levée & la derniere couchée (…)

She must know how to make bread and she will not throw away the wine marcs but use it to make an alcoholic drink for the servants, and keep the wine for her husband, the mighty farmer, and for guests. She will also know how to cure diseases, with natural remedies, but shall leave the more serious preparations to the physicians and apothecaries from the nearby towns:

Or les remedes naturels, desquels elle s’aydera à secourir ses gens en leurs maladies, pourront estre tels ou semblables à ceux que je mettray par escrit en forme de receptaire rustique, laissant les autres plus exquis remedes aux Medecins des villes.

In the first place come the remedies to plague, for obvious reasons. It is the most dangerous of all cotagious diseases and a quick intervetion is needed. The woman is then to be preached some simple cures for fevers. She must equally learn how to treat a number of headaches (summer headaches, due to excessive heat and usually affecting the reapers, wine headaches or cold headaches), all sorts of eye related diseases, tooth aches (douleurs de dens, dents qui tremblen, dents noires, dents rouges…). I shall finish this post with a couple of details about how to treat those headaches, hoping my new blog did not give you one already:

Pour pacifier douleur de teste accompagnée de grande chaleur, telle qu’est celle qui advient aux moissonneurs durant l’esté, faut mettre sur le front tranches de courges, ou linge trempé en eau rose (…)

Si la teste fait mal après avoir beu (…) boire de la rasure de corne de cerf, avec eau de fontaine ou de riviere.

***

In my next post I shall describe the choice of the blog’s title (microcosmus hypochondriacus).

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