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Beverwyck was a Dutch physician and a relative of Vesalius. He sent a copy of this work to Harvey with a letter praising him for his work on circulation, saying “As everyone here wonderingly admires this doctrine, so I too embrace it both both arms in the little book which I send ‘On the calculus of the kidneys and the bladder’”. Harvey replied at length, praising the work with the punning passage: “Pleasing me, learned and elegant, and truly original, your De calculo renum et vesicae, in which you have laid a firm and solid foundation for your name and fame; go on to build further day by day, and erect a splendid monument of your genius. I will, not unwillingly, add my stone...” He went on to provide a detailed and approving critique of Beverwyk’s work on the operation of the kidneys. see full details...
Having collaborated with Lavoisier on the latter’s pioneering chemical nomenclature and presented some seventeen memoirs to the Academy, the author was already an influential chemist when appointed inspector of dye works and director of the Manufacture Nationale des Gobelins in 1784. The Gobelins had their origins in the workshops of Flemish weavers brought to Paris by Henri IV in 1602 and were formally established by Colbert in 1667 as the “Royal Manufactury of Furnishings to the Crown”. They became the pre-eminent centre for tapestry weaving in Europe In the Éléments de l'art de la teinture Berthollet “endeavored to place the ancient craft of dyeing on a scientific basis by a systematic discussion of its procedures, coupled with an attempt to find an adequate set of theoretical principles to explain the chemical actions involved. His explanation was that, depending on the variable physical conditions of temperature, quantity of solvent employed, and so forth, when a cloth was dyed the reciprocal affinities of the particles of the dye, the mordants, and the cloth itself were responsible for the kind and quality of dyeing. The colors produced were due to the oxidation of the mordant by the atmosphere” (DSB). The British edition appeared in the same year as the French, reflecting the market for such a treatise in a country where textile production was becoming one of the most important national industries. A second British edition appeared at Edinburgh the following year and several reprints appeared in the nineteenth century, presumably a measure of the popularity and utility of this scientific manual of dyeing in the British industrial revolution. see full details...
Presented in two divisions, the first covering Faversham and environs; the second, the region of East Kent in general. The first division opens with a gazetteer of plants (and molluscs and insects) to be found in different parts of Faversham in each of the months of the year: Thorn Creeek, Ewell, Bysing Wood, Sittingbourne Road, Newnham Road, Cades and Ashford Road (each with subdivisions into smaller roads, woods and fields). Cowell is described on the title-page as ‘Corresponding member, and local secretary, for Kent, of the Botanical Society of London.’ The Society was then in its infancy, with the first volume of its Proceedings (1839) advertised on the final two advert leave shere. A Floral Guide... is dedicated to Lady Harris of Belmont House. William Ratcliffe was a second-generation Faversham printer and bookseller, working from 44-5 Court Street (now Lloyds bank) (see Richard Goulden, Faversham Book Trade 1730-1900, 1996, p. 32). see full details...
Edward Carpenter was an influential campaigner for sexual freedom, especially in same-sex relationships. Strongly influenced by Walt Whitman (who he visited in 1877) he pursued a utopian socialism, setting up his own working community near Sheffield. He worked with John Addington Symonds, who was preparing a major study of homosexuality with Havelock Ellis, supplying case studies from his private circle of friends. ‘In the course of 1894–5 the Labour Press, Manchester, published four of Carpenter’s pamphlets on sex: Sex-Love, and its Place in a Free Society; Woman, and her Place in a Free Society; Marriage in Free Society; Homogenic Love, and its Place in a Free Society... Among those who were influenced by his works were Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves, E. M. Forster, and D. H. Lawrence’ (Chushichi Tsuzuki in ODNB). see full details...
Willughby (1635-1720), author of some of the most important contributions in natural history before those of Linnaeus, toured the Continent extensively with John Ray, collecting material for his research and observing specimens to be reproduced in his drawings. He died before publishing his studies on fish. The large editorial work was undertaken by Ray, the renowned naturalist who had carried out extensive experimental work in embryology and plant physiology, a member of the Royal Society of London since 1667. Ray brought his taxonomy system to bear on Willughby's descriptions. Although broadly based on Aristotle's classification, it relied on anatomical and functional features, and was the first system based on the notion of species in the distinction of diverse animals and plants. The exceptional collection of plates is known in two editorial states, one with engravings on both recto and verso of each leaf, the second engraved on recto only. This copy has 'state b' plates, and the title-page which is sometimes bound before the plates is here bound at the beginning. see full details...
“The most important book in the history of medicine. Harvey proved experimentally that in animals the blood is impelled in a circle by the beat of the heart, passing from arteries to veins through pores (i.e. the capillaries, seen by Malpighi with the microscope in 1660)” (G&M). It should also be regarded as “the first record of a complete biological investigation, giving a clear and accurate description of the methods employed to recognise the laws governing an important vital process, a knowledge of which had till then been befogged by mistaken conceptions…” (H.P. Bayon in Keynes). The translation is from the Rotterdam edition and includes the additional commentaries by Zachariah Wood and James De Back. This edition also contains the first English translation of Exercitio anatomica de circulatione sanguinis (of which the first edition had appeared in Latin at Cambridge in 1649) again taken from the Rotterdam edition. This is an important text in its own right, providing a restatement of Harvey’s hypothesis concerning circulation supported by further experimental proof. Harvey’s hypothesis, like almost all revolutionary hypotheses, was initially very unpopular and was widely refuted. Harvey himself admitted that his career was nearly destroyed by the publication of De Motu Cordis. However, it is interesting that Harvey was quickly vindicated and that the circulation of the blood became accepted as irrefutable medical fact within his own lifetime, albeit towards its end. This lifetime edition in English reflects that vindication. Keynes wrote of the text “It gives a vigorous if unpolished, rendering of Harvey’s book in contemporary language.” This is an unusually tall copy. In most copies the headlines, and sometimes even the top lines of the text, are shaved. In this copy none of the headlines is shaved, and on some leaves the lower edge is uncut. This copy has 11 of the 13 misprints (to pagination and signatures) listed by Keynes that were corrected as the book passed through the press. In addition, F3 is mis-signed F5. It is complete with the first blank leaf. see full details...
A very scarce Regency tavern-keeper’s guide, with invaluable information on the most popular wines, beers and spirits served in English taverns, together with instructions for making a range of cordials and bitters. The numerous recipes for English wine include cherry, cowslip, blackberry, birch and elderflower and there are also brief instructions for distillation and several good ale and beer recipes (for porter, amber, Windsor and spruce). The chapter on foreign wine gives advice on keeping and serving madeira, sherry, claret and port. There is a lengthy series of tavern-keeper’s tricks for preserving and recovering beverages past-their-best: recolouring claret with damsons and preventing sourness with the addition of crushed oyster shells or crab-claws. Though now scarce, the work apparently ran to at least three editions in a short time. see full details...
![HUES, Robert. D[enis] HENRION, translator.](/photos/551/main/551.jpg "HUES, Robert. D[enis] HENRION, translator.")
Hues had studied at Oxford where he became acquainted with Richard Hakluyt and later, Walter Raleigh and Thomas Harriot, before taking part in a voyage to Newfoundland. In five parts, the book describes the practical uses of the globes designed by Molyneux and, especially, how mariners could find the sun’s position, latitude, course and distance, amplitudes and azimuths, and time and declination. The fifth part describes the use of rhumb lines in navigation. The translation is by Denis Henrion, the Paris mathematician remembered for his edition of the works of Viète and for the introduction of the calculating device known as the proportional compass to France. Henrion’s is a faithful translation with numerous interpolations of his own (indicated by italics). In these, Henrion adds several practical details to the methods of calculation but also takes the opportunity to advertise his Cosmographie, which was not to appear until two years later. At several points he affirms Hues’ text while stating ‘comme nous avons enseigné en nostre Cosmographie.’ The notes on the operation of the proportional compass promised by the title are confined to very sparse remarks on how a lengthy calculation, for example, could be achieved simply with the compass. They would appear to be an attempt to advertise another of Henrion’s works, Usage du compas de proportion (also 1618) and perhaps the instruments themselves. see full details...
The Subterranean Voyage of Nicolas Klim is one of the classics of speculative and utopian fiction, written fifteen years after Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and often compared favourably with that work. It is the first fully developed novel to
be set in the earth’s interior, a setting which has been utilised countless times in later science fiction. Klim, a poor student, falls through a hole in the earth just outside the Norwegian town of Bergen and finds himself on the inside of the earth’s crust. He lands on the planet Nazar (which orbits a sun at the centre of the earth’s cavity) where he finds a nation that lives according to the laws of reason and nature. The peasantry are considered very highly and therefore are the most distinguished class in the state; many of the highest offices are held by women, who are in every way equal to the men. Nazar presents an enlightened utopia, very much in the mould of the ideals of Montesquieu and Voltaire (who Holberg admired enormously) but Klim also travels to other states where the perfect state of society is not so fully developed or is perhaps degenerate, allowing a vivid comparison of political, social and philosophical systems. Holberg (like his hero Klim) was a native of Bergen at a time when Norway and Denmark existed as a twin kingdom. He saw himself as a fully European writer and the equal of the French philosophes. The majority of his works, including the present, first appeared in Latin, the universal language. The adventures of Nicolas Klim were immediately popular and were rapidly translated into all the major European languages. see full details...
Beginning with ‘Feinem Marocco Toback’, (Fine Moroccan Tobacco) the recipes are unusually detailed (usually covering a page or more) and offer specific ingredients and methods of tobacco preparation. Other tobaccos include ‘Feinen Pariser Toback’ (two different blends!), ‘Rappe d’Hollande Grand Cardinal’, ‘Bolongaro,’ two varieties of ‘Violet’. The ‘Morhendro’ blend seems especially potent, with the inclusion of 4 grains of opium. The contents of several tobacco canisters are also described, such as a Moorish blend (Canister 1), a Swiss blend (Canister 2), ‘Peter’s Best Blend’ (Petrum Optimum, Canister 3), and more. The upper cover bears the contemporary MS inscription of ‘J.A. Neeb’ (i.e. Johannes Adam Neeb) who was tobacconist active at Lich, Hesse (approximately 25 miles from Marburg) in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. A later owner has written inside the front cover in pen ‘Organist Joh. Adam Neeb’ in error: the organist in question was in fact Johannes Adam’s son Heinrich (1806-1878) who achieved fame as a composer, conductor and teacher in Frankfurt. (Franz Kössler, Personenlexikon von Lehrern des 19. Jahrhunderts: Berufsbiographien aus Schul-Jahresberichten und Schulprogrammen, 1825-1918, mit Veröffentlichungsverzeichnissen, 2007.) see full details...
The most influential and characteristic works by the renaissance physician and humanist, Symphorien Champier, colleague of Michael Servetus and François Rabelais at the Schools of Medicine at Lyon. An ardent Galenist and a neo-Platonist Champier sought to reform the French pharmacopoeia and materia medica, insisting that France had all the medical resources it needed in the form of herbs and medicinal plants without recourse to the exotic remedies espoused by the Arabic medical tradition. In doing this, Champier linked politics, culture, medicine and horticulture in praising the new cultural fertility of France (the Hortus Gallicus is dedicated to Francis I). He cites various drugs known to be ‘pernicious and venomous’ to Europeans, albeit perfectly suited to the inhabitants of other regions and other times (cf. Cooper, Inventing the Indigenous: local knowledge and natural history in Early Modern Europe, Cambridge, 2007). Champier’s thesis derives from his deep antipathy to Arab medicine: several of his many earlier works sought to purify Galenic and Hippocratic medicine of Arabic influence partly in the belief that by stripping away later Arabic influence the physician was drawing closer to the pure Classical origins of western medicine. It also expresses his persistent critique of the occultist tradition, so deeply ingrained in medical theory and practice at the opening of the Renaissance. Champier’s Renaissance attitudes to medicine were certainly influential. Lyon was one of the most important centres of the Renaissance in France (witness his prominent colleagues) and he was very prolific, writing or editing at least 45 individual books. Many of his works are hard to classify and their very diversity is typical of the spirit of the age. He has been criticised for attempting to uncover the truth by simply piling authority upon authority, drawing from history, poetry, philosophy, magic and medicine without distinction. This approach may be alien to the modern mind, but Champier wrote at the very beginning of the scientific Renaissance and his works are highly characteristic of the humanist cast of mind. ‘He shared with many humanists the capacity for oratorical exuberance. So that when Scaliger called him “insolens, tumens, turgens,” perhaps this spirit should be interpreted as an indication that he was full of the “spirit of the Renaissance,” that rare gas which the historical laboratory has never yet succeeded in holding in solution’ (Thorndike). The three works here have separate titles but were almost certainly issued together. The Campus Elysius contains several additional tracts: De sanguinis missione; Epistola J. Champerii avunculo suo Symphoriano (dated 25 June 1532); Speculum medici Christiani (dedicated to Champier's son Antoine) and De Theriacâ gallicâ. The Periarcha is dedicated to Charles de l'Estang, protonotaire of Saint-Siège. Each work is notable for the careful typography characteristic of Champier's printed works: he worked closely with his printers (Dumaitre, Histoire de la médécine et du livre medical, p. 195). Symphorien Champier was born into a bourgeois family at Saint-Symphorien-sur-Croise, near Lyon and studied at the University of Paris before 1495, when he matriculated at the medical school of Montpellier, which granted him his doctorate in 1504. He taught liberal arts in Grenoble and took a doctorate in theology in 1502. In 1509 he was appointed physician to Antoine Duke of Lorraine, who brought him to Nancy. Champier followed the duke several time to Italy, where he was involved in the battles of Agnadello (1509) and Marignano (1515). During his stays in Italy he won recognition as an academic teacher from the University of Pavia. In 1519 he became an alderman in Lyon, and for the last twenty years of his life he was at the centre of the cultural Renaissance of that city, while simultaneously promoting the study of medicine by helping to found the College of the Holy Trinity and sponsoring translations of, and writing commentaries on, the works of Hippocrates and Galen. see full details...
Friedrich Hoffmann (1660-1742), a German physician, practiced and taught medicine, chemistry and physics in Halle from 1693. He studied and wrote on such varied topics as paediatrics, mineral waters and meteorology and introduced many new drugs into medical practice (such as a compound spirit of ether branded “Anodyne” and “Hoffmanns-Tropfen” still today known as a household remedy). Hoffmann was among the first to describe several diseases, including appendicitis and German measles, and to recognize the regulatory role of the nervous system. The work contains examinations of common ailments such as fever, infections, haemorrhageing, cramps, spasms and convulsions, consideration of the cerebral and nervous system, lymph and glands, female complaints and childhood illnesses. It also includes numerous medicinal recipes and cures. see full details...
![GOUBIN, [Mathieu].](/photos/480/main/480.jpg "GOUBIN, [Mathieu].")
The neatly laid out text, with few corrections, suggest that the volumes were prepared, as was frequently the case in contemporary French universities, by copyists for sale to students attending lecture courses. In this case the owner was one Ludovic Loyau du Coteau, whose manuscript ex libris appears in volume 1 of the Physiologia. Goubin taught at Caen, one of the oldest French universities, from the 1750s and was also director of its Jardin des Plantes. Though an active teacher (presenting frequent anatomical dissections) he does not appear to have published anything under his own name, hence the value of this manuscript collection. While we have identified seven theses bearing his name presented at the university in the later 1750s, these are likely to have been supervised rather than written by him. The Physiologia begins with several short chapters on the nature of medicine, before turning to physiology on p. 16. The first volume describes the various functions of the body, the circulation of the blood, systole and diastole, fluids and secretions and nourishment. The second volume opens with a discussion of wounds and diseases, followed by discussion of the body’s processes, including perception, memory, sight, hearing, taste, smell, sleep, the nervous system, circulation and reproduction. The Pathologia is a complete treatise on physical and mental ailments. see full details...
At the time of its publication, Siris was the most popular of the author's many works. Berkeley had observed the use of tar-water among the native Americans and came to regard it as a panacaea in medicine, setting up an apparatus for its manufacture. "He recommends it not only in fevers, diseases of the lungs, cancers, scrofula, throat diseases, apoplexies, chronic disorders of all kinds, but also as a general drink for infants. It strengthens their bodies and sharpens their intellects. It is good for cattle... It is good for all climates, land and sea, for rich and poor, high and low livers, and he had himself drunk a gallon of it in a few hours" (DNB). The Siris is, however, more than just a medical work and the consideration of tar-water led Berkeley into a lengthy chain of reflections on the principles of the universe and of divine providence. see full details...
![[HOLBERG, Ludvig, Baron].](/photos/188/main/188.jpg "[HOLBERG, Ludvig, Baron].")
The Subterranean Voyage of Nicolas Klim is one of the classics of speculative and utopian fiction, written fifteen years after Swift's Gulliver's Travels and often compared favourably with that work. It is the first fully developed novel to be set in the earth's interior, a setting which has been utilised countless times in later science fiction. Klim, a poor student, falls through a hole in the earth just outside the Norwegian town of Bergen and finds himself on the inside of the earth's crust. He lands on the planet Nazar (which orbits a sun at the centre of the earth's cavity) where he finds a nation that lives according to the laws of reason and nature. The peasantry are considered very highly and therefore are the most distinguished class in the state; many of the highest offices are held by women, who are in every way equal to the men. Nazar presents an enlightened utopia, very much in the mould of the ideals of Montesquieu and Voltaire (who Holberg admired enormously) but Klim also travels to other states where the perfect state of society is not so fully developed or is perhaps degenerate, allowing a vivid comparison of political, social and philosophical systems.Holberg (like his hero Klim) was a native of Bergen at a time when Norway and Denmark existed as a twin kingdom. He saw himself as a fully European writer and the equal of the French philosophes. The majority of his works, including the present, first appeared in Latin, the universal language. The adventures of Nicolas Klim were immediately popular and were rapidly translated into all the major European languages. see full details...
It is “the first text on mechanics available in the English language. It is divided into two parts “Archimedes or Mechanical Powers” and “Daedalus or Mechanical Motions”- the latter part describing various machines, including strange devices and possibilities, such as a land vehicle powered by wind, submarines, flying automata, clocks, magnetic perpetuum mobile, etc. His sources were Guidobaldo’s Mechanicorum liber and Mersenne’s Cogitata physico-mathematica... One may see Wilkins’ work as a popular version of Mersenne’s work” (Biblioteca Mechanica). Wilkins was a leading figure in the English scientific renaissance, being, at various times influential at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge and in the Royal Society (of which he was president from 1660-1661). He is known also for his conjectures on extra-terrestrial life (The discovery of a world in the moone, 1638). Both the first and second editions bear the date 1648. see full details...
Mouchez was director of the Paris Observatory and commissioned two young astronomers, Prosper and Paul Henry, to prepare a photographic star atlas. "Arago had embarked on a program of improving Lalande's catalog of 50,000 stars with the aid of new, more precise measurements. Mouchez published the part observed up to 1875. Most notably, however, he enlisted the support of Sir David Gill, director of the Cape Observatory, to bring about an international astronomical congress at Paris in 1887. It was there decided to produce photographically a large-scale general map of the heavens and to establish a catalog giving the position and brightness of all stars up to the eleventh magnitude. Two young astronomers at the Paris observatory, the brothers Prosper and Paul Henry, both of whom were also talented opticians, had just completed an astrograph and Mouchez had it adopted for this gigantic undertaking, which took more than fifty years" (DSB). The first photograph (the frontispiece) depicts the moon's surface around the crater Eratosthenes; the second is of the Hercules cluster of stars; the third is a time-lapse series of depicting Jupiter, showing the rotation of the red spot; the fourth shows the rings of Saturn and the bands of Jupiter. This copy is inscribed by Mouchez to General Brugers, the future military governor of Paris. see full details...
Wickham, a French dermatologist and pioneer of radium therapy, began treating tumours and gynaecological conditions with radium in 1908. He and his younger colleague Degrais were among the first clinicians to treat human conditions with ‘radiumtherapy’ having obtained radium from the Curies. Wickham died in 1913, several months before his colleague Degrais inscribed this copy to Vannier. The work also appeared in an English translation printed in London in the same year. It was preceded by the larger work Radiumthérapie; instrumentation, technique, traitement des cancers, chéloïdes, naevi, lupus, prurits, névrodermites, eczémas, applications gynécologiques (Paris, 1909). see full details...
François Gattey was, with Legendre, one of the members of the convention established in 1795 to enact the definitive adoption of the metric system. “One of the most significant results of the French Revolution was the establishment of the metric system of weights and measures....On June 19, 1791, a committee of 12 mathematicians, geodesists, and physicists met with Louis XVI, who gave his formal approval. The next day, the king attempted to escape from France, was arrested, returned to Paris, and was imprisoned; a year later, from his cell, he issued the proclamation that directed two engineers, Jean Delambre and Pierre Méchain, to perform the operations necessary to determine the length of the metre. The intervening time had been spent by the scientists and engineers in preliminary research; Delambre and Méchain now set to work to measure the distance on the meridian from Barcelona, Spain, to Dunkirk in northern France. The survey proved arduous; civil and foreign war so hampered the operation that it was not completed for six years. While Delambre and Méchain were struggling in the field, administrative details were being worked out in Paris. In 1793 a provisional metre was constructed from geodetic data already available. In 1795 the firm decision was taken to enact adoption of the metric system for France. The new law defined the length, mass, and capacity standards and listed the prefixes for multiples and submultiples. With the formal presentation to the assembly of the standard metre, as determined by Delambre and Méchain, the metric system became a fact in June 1799. The motto adopted for the new system was ‘For all people, for all time’” (Ency. Brit.). see full details...
![(BALLOONING/AERONAUTICS). [A collection of 7 very rare single-sheet advertisements/broadsidesVictorian.]](/photos/377/main/377.jpg "(BALLOONING/AERONAUTICS). [A collection of 7 very rare single-sheet advertisements/broadsidesVictorian.]")
(GREEN, Charles.) Under the direct patronage of Her Majesty. Royal Gardens, Vauxhall. Grand Balloon Fete, by day, Friday, Aug. 25, 1837. The most Extraordinary Attraction! Ascent of the Royal Nassau Balloon! And of Mr. Green’s own Balloon at the same moment!... [London, n.p. 1837.] (350 × 106 mm), 2 wood-engraved illustrations, hand-coloured. Laid-down, lightly browned. 3. (HAMPTON, John.) Flora Gardens, Bayswater. Grand Parachute Descent! Monday, July 29, 1839, Mr Hampton The Unrivalled and Intrepid Aeronaut, will make his 18th ascent with his magnificent balloon, the “Albion”, and at an altitude of at least 10,000 feet from the earth, separate himself and apparatus from the balloon, and descend in his Royal Safety Parachute. [London:] Sayers, Marylebone Press, [1839.] (368 × 120 mm). Wood-engraved illustration, printed on yellow paper. Carefully laid to paper, a few minor stains, but otherwise very fresh 4. (GYPSON, Richard.) Grand Balloon Ascent! From the Yard of the Bedford Gas Company, Mr. Gypson will make his Sixteenth Ascent in his Magnificent Nocturnal Balloon, On Friday Afternoon Next, May the 1st, 1840... Bedford: Hill & Son, [1840.] (280 × 75 mm). Wood engraved illustration, printed on yellow paper. Traces of gum at corner, slightly browned, but very good. 5 (GYPSON, Richard.) Grand Balloon Ascent from the spacious premises of Mr. Smith’s Wharf Yard, East Gate, Sleaford. Mr Gypson [From the Royal Zoological Gardens, London.] Will make his 46th and last ascent this season on Thursday October 28th, 1841, at two for three precisely, with his Magnificent Silk Balloon... Sleaford [Lincs]: J. Creasy, [1841.] (285 × 114 mm). Wood engraved illustration. Browned. 6. (GREEN, Charles.) Cremorne Gardens, Chelsea... the first and only Benefit ever taken by Mr Green, the Aeronaut, will take place on Monday next Sept. 1st, 1845... mr green will ascend at half-past Five o’Clock, in the Great Nassau Balloon! [London:] S. G. Fairbrother, [1845]. (245 × 124 mm). Laid down. 7. (GREEN, Charles.) Royal Gardens Vauxhall... Tonight! Tuesday, Aug. 26th, Magnificent Fete and Gala In honour of the Birthday of H.R.H. Prince Albert... On which occasion will take place a Great Balloon Race by Celebrated Aeronauts... On Friday next, Aug. 29 First Night Balloon Ascent This Season, by the Veteran Green, In a splendidly Illuminated Balloon The Ascent to take place at 10 o’clock. [text also in French on verso]. [London:] S. G. Fairbrother, [n.d.] This delightful group of seven handbills illustrates the Victorian craze for Ballooning and charts ascents by some aeronautical pioneers. The earliest advertises an audacious and ill-fated aeronautical experiment. The Eagle was “an airship designed by the Comte de Lennox in 1834 to create a direct communication link between the capitals of Europe. The first aerial ship of its kind, it was exhibited in the grounds of the Aeronautical Society in Kensington, London. It measured 160 feet long, 50 feet high and 40 feet wide, with a capacity of 98,700 cubic feet. The ship was cylindrical with conical ends and had eight paddle-shaped flaps, four on either side, which were intended to be worked backwards and forwards manually by a series of cords and chains. However, the airship proved too heavy to lift its own weight and was destroyed by onlookers after a failed ascent from the Champ de Mars, Paris, on 17th August 1834” (Science Museum, Science and Society Picture Library online). Though several prints and pamphlets accompanied the exhibition of the Eagle, we can find no other record of this handbill advertising admission to the “Dock Yard” of the Society opposite Kensington Gardens. Three of the handbills here advertise ascents by Charles Green, the first person to make an ascent (in 1821) in a balloon filled with coal gas. In his long career he made numerous ascents and had several lucky escapes: one of these escapes being related in the 1845 “Benefit” sheet here. Another advertises (and depicts) a parachute descent by John Hampton in July 1839. The previous year he had become the first Englishman to make a succesful parachute jump, from around 9,000 feet. Two of the bills are provincial, from Bedord and Sleaford, and advertise balloon ascents by Richard Gypson, who toured Britain and the Europe with his balloon. All are rare. see full details...
![BLONDEL, [Lieutenant Colonel d’artillerie.]](/photos/474/main/474.jpg "BLONDEL, [Lieutenant Colonel d’artillerie.]")
It was repared by a prominent artillery captain, largely from material gathered first-hand from visits to military academies (notably West Point), arms factories, arsenals and from observations aboard the US warships Tennessee and Kearsarge. The year 1881 saw a special diplomatic visit to the United States by representatives of the French armed forces, partly in celebration of the the centenary of the combined French-American victory at Yorktown. Descendants of the victorious Comte de Rochambeau and an array of military top-brass were lavishly entertained in New York, with a sequence of visits, dinners and balls. Among the guests were General Boulanger and Lieutenant Colonel Blondel. On November 9th The New-York Tribune reported the imminent departure of Boulanger for France and that ‘Lieutenant-Colonel Blondel will spend the next few weeks visiting West Point, the Frankfort and Springfield arsenals, and the firearms manufacturies at New-Haven and Bridgeport, in order to prepare a report on the subjects of arms and defence.’ This manuscript is an overview of the American armies and a description of the military curriculum of West Point, which is followed by the illustrated description of American weaponry, including a variety of artillery (large guns by Hotchkiss, Parrott, Dean, Sutcliffe, Lyman and Woodbridge are illustrated); small arms (the Springfield rifle is described and compared with the Martini-Henry model and the Colt, Schofield Smith and Wesson revolvers are illustrated). There is an extensive section on the specification of artillery shells and small arms cartridges and on the American preparation of gunpowder. Blondel adds several observations on artillery exercises aboard American ships, which include an early description of the use of telegraphy for range-finding. He notes at the opening that some of the information (comprising three sections) is derived from the [printed] reports of General S.V. Benet but that remainder was gathered from his own observations at the installations noted above. The report is remarkable for the detailed access the French were given to American military establishments, which is perhaps to be explained by the diplomatic context. The 1870s and 80s saw a rapprochement in French-American relations, and several celebrations of the natural connection between the two great republics: from the celebration of the Yorktown victory to the gift of the Statue of Liberty by the French nation. The manuscript is from the personal collections of General Boulanger. Boulanger continued his rise to prominence throughout the 1880s, firstly with popular army reforms and later with real political influence, to the extent that his popular right-wing Royalist stance while running for deputy of Paris threatened to topple the Third Republic in 1888-9. He was charged with treason and conspiracy and exiled by the government; a disgrace from which he never recovered. He committed suicide in a Brussels cemetery in 1891. see full details...
The manuscript includes 6 pages of finely-executed diagrams of alchemical furnaces and stills. The recipes include both ingredients and methods. At least a quarter are concerned with the central alchemical processes of transmutation and many involve metals: mainly gold, silver, mercury and the related element of antimony. These concern purification, the extractions of essences and alloying using processes such as melting and calcination (bringing about decomposition at a temperature below melting point). Others describe chemical offshoots from these processes and include practical applications for the manufacture of dyes and pigments, and of materials such as ‘malleable glass’. The medical receipts are not formally separated from the others and are interspersed throughout, as further examples of alchemical and hermetic philosophy. Their ingredients are both chemical (or pharmaceutical) and herbal. In addition to these numerous recipes the manuscript has also been used to copy up more theoretical texts in the alchemical sciences: we find substantial excerpts from the Italian alchemist Bernard of Treviso, from Ramon Lull, from the sixteenth-century Marcello Palingeni (his well-known reflection on the Philosopher’s Stone from his Zodiacus Vitae is reproduced here, see full contents below) and large extracts from the Rosarium philosophorum by the medieval Arnaldus de Villanova. Throughout, there are also many occasional references and allusions which might further illuminate the writer’s context. For example, we find: a transcription of a recipe (for ‘sale armoniaco’) from a manuscript of Theophrastus with a folio number (363), [our p. 67]; a description of ‘Ein Gradier Wasser von Lorenzen Camper[?] wie es dem Römischer Kayser Rudolfo [Rudolf II] übergeben un probiret worden’ [p. 75]; a remedy for gout proved in the city of Augsburg in February/March 1690 [p. 167]; and a recipe for malleable glass demonstrated to the Count of Fiesco in 1679 [p. 187-9]. This is a manuscript compiled over a period of time and the entries are often in a variable ink and slightly variable hand. Whether the latter indicates compilation by several people is debateable. The hand certainly changes as the manuscript moves between German, Latin and Italian, but it is quite possible (indeed probable) that the same writer changed his hand according to the language. Nonetheless there are certainly numerous corrections, amendments and annotations in other and later hands and at least one insertion of materials from elsewhere: the inserted bifolium pp. 193-6 bearing a list of herbal and medical ingredients. The status of the fine illustrations of alchemical furnaces towards the end is also arguable: they are drawn on the same paper-stock but are clearly by another hand to the main text. Variability of condition throughout suggests an oft-consulted and oft-amended text. The likely place of production is Augsburg or at least Southern Germany to judge by the reference on p. 167 and which might explain the presence of German and Italian texts within the same manuscript and perhaps the preponderance of texts of Italian origin in a largely Germanic volume. We have found only a few dated entries, of 1604 (p. 134), 1690 (p. 167) and 1679 (p. 187) and the styles of handwriting suggest writing and compilation around the latter dates. An unfortunate loss is from the central portion [pp. 89-104] of the extract from the Rosarium philosophorum which may have included the well known sequence of hermetical illustrations found in sixteenth-century printed editions. Contents: pp. 1-42: 85 chemical, alchemical and medicinal recipes in German and Italian: to make: aqua fortis (1), shining gypsum (1), gold plating (2), green pigment (2), a good furnace (4), an oil for gout (14); vitrum antimonii (16) red and black pigments (20); pearls, in the manner used by Pope Paul III (22); wine from legno santo (23); solid mercury (35); mercury sublimate (36); red flowers of antimony (39) &c. pp. 42-46: Ex Epistola Comitis Bernardi (Bernard of Treviso) (in German, probably an excerpt from the alchemical text Responsio ad Thomam de Bononia). 46-63: 25 alchemical recipes in German and Latin to make: oil of vitriol [sulphuric acid] (47); essences of antimony (47-8); purifying and preparing metals (49-52); extract from Ramon Lull (54-57); aqua solis (57); Arbor philosophorum (58); calcinatio solis (61 & 62); to make mercury from any metal (62) &c. 64-66: Ex Marcello Palingenis in suo Zodiacus Vitae [In Latin, Book 10, entitled Capricorn this excerpt being lines 180-238, the famous consideration of the Philosopher's Stone]. 66-80: 22 alchemical recipes in German and Latin, including several for processes involving gold. 80-88: Hec sequitia’ sunt ex Valde antique manuscipte excerpta… [fragmentary extract from the Rosarium philosophorum by Arnaldus de Villanova]. 89-104: blanks, on original paper stock, but apparently replacing a portion of the above text previously extracted. 105-109: [conclusion of Rosarium philosophorum]. 108-9 being a table and a list of metals and compounds with their alchemical symbols. 109-160: c. 50 alchemical texts and recipes, mainly in German and Latin, with some Italian, in several hands. Includes a recipe on p, 134 for ‘Ein schöner goldtgrundt’ for illuminating parchment, dated 1604 at head. 161-166: a register of recipes contained in the preceding text, with a continuation in a slightly later hand giving a table of recipes found in the subsequent text. 167: a medicinal recipe for the treatment of gout (‘Podaggra’) used in Augsburg in February 1690. 168-169: Requista. Seu proprietates Mercurii Sorfici, ad sequentem tractatum Elucitatio. 170-172: blank 173-191: Sapientia aperta / Incipit liber Sapientia, followed by c. 10 alchemical recipes and including a sketch diagram of what appears to be the exterior of a large alchemical laboratory. Includes an entry giving a recipe for malleable glass shown to the Conte Fiesco in 1679. 193-196: inserted bifolium, previously folded several times with a list of herbal and medical ingredients in Latin. 197-211: original blanks, followed by a number of inserted later blanks. 213-218: finely executed pen and ink drawings of alchemical furnaces and apparatus, captioned in a neat calligraphic German hand. 219-220: blank. Plus early notes to endpapers, two early inserted slips with manuscript text, 16pp. modern manuscript transcriptions loosely inserted. see full details...
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